There Has to Be a Reason

I’ve had a few more thoughts on the Book of Job lately, so here they are in my latest post. I was helping a friend with homework on Job yesterday and we got into an interesting discussion debating the question of whether or not God causes suffering or if He just allows it. In the Book, God has a bet with the devil saying that Job won’t curse Him even if he loses everything. My friend claimed that this was cruel on God’s part, and I admit it certainly does seem that way. Why would God so mercilessly allow the devil to ruin Job’s life? My question is this, why did God allow my dog to die at the age of three? Why did God allow my great Uncle who I just got to really know die of a stroke? Why did God allow the turmoil of last year’s issues in my life? The answer, well honestly I don’t know. But I do know this fact, God is good, and all good things come from Him. The key note I tried to stress to my friend is that the devil was the one who ruined Job’s life, not God. The devil took Job’s family, flocks, and health – God just gave him the freedom too. So is it cruel of God? Well, what about my examples from my own life, was God being cruel to me, or is it just that bad things simply happen to good people? Back when Job was written the Hebrew people had a very simplistic view of life; if you are a good man you have a good life and if you sin you have a bad life. Really, the author of Job is using his story as an example of the fact that life is not so simple. I demonstrated to my friend that a large chunk of the Old Testament is law; you’ve got parts of Exodus, and then Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The magic formula said that if you follow these laws you will have a good life. Here’s the thing though, the world is imperfect because of sin. No one is perfect, and the world is in an imbalance because of it. Evil men live long prosperous lives while good men often suffer. Does that mean that God is bad or cruel, no, it just makes a statement about the fact that the devil can, and often does, ruin things in our lives by causing bad things to happen. This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have any power or say though; God can use those bad things for His glory and our good. Through our struggles we can move on and do God’s work here on earth, completely reversing the devil’s work. God has the ultimate power to take a negative and turn it into a positive. Is that the reason for suffering? Well I think the reason for suffering is the simple fact that our world is an imperfect one, but the fact that God can use our suffering for good just goes to show you that ultimately He is always in control and looking out for us.