Stolen Camels
Have you ever read the book of Job? As far as my research and study has gone, it’s the oldest book in the Bible in terms of date of composition. It’s at the beginning of what most scholars call “wisdom” literature, which also includes greatest hits like Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Perhaps the last two aren’t on your greatest hits list? If you really knew me, you would know that when I was about fourteen, I read Ecclesiastes over and over again because I was full of angst at the meaninglessness of the world. I still love that book, but I giggle when I read it sometimes because I think about how hormonal and emotional I was as a teen. But we’re not talking about my teenage hormones today (thank God). Today, we’re talking about Job.
The book of Job opens up by telling us about our title character. We learn that Job is “blameless and upright”, has 14 kids, is super wealthy, and “was the greatest man among all the people of the East”. Then, with literally no warning at all, the scene shifts to heaven. With God, the angels, and Satan. Yes, you read that correctly. Satan shows up in heaven and has a weird conversation with God that goes something like this:
God Satan, what have you been up to?
Satan Not much, just roaming about on the earth, as one does.
God Oh, well, in that case, have you met my boy Job? Ain’t nobody as righteous as my boy Job.
Satan Yeah, sure. Job’s got it made, though! Anybody will praise you and do what you say when their life is easy! You take all his stuff away and he’ll curse you.
God Alright then, take away everything he has, but you can’t hurt him. See if he doesn’t still praise me.
So, Satan leaves and the scene abruptly changes again. Job is just chilling on his porch, I presume, and he gets four messages, one after another, so quickly that they almost overlap. First, all his cattle have been stolen and every servant but the one delivering the message was killed. Second, “the fire of God” burned up all his sheep and the servants with them except for the one delivering the message. Third, all the camels have been stolen and all the servants with them were, you guessed it, killed except for the one delivering the message. And finally, a wind blew over the house where all fourteen of Job’s children were feasting and they’re all dead. The servant escaped to deliver the news.
Pretty good start to a Monday.
Job is, obviously, distraught. But, just hang onto your britches, we’re not done yet. Scene change again, we’re back in heaven with God and Satan having another weird conversation.
God Satan, what have you been up to?
Satan Not much, just roaming about on the earth, as one does.
God What do you think of Job now? I let you take everything away from him, for no reason, by the way, and he still hasn’t cursed me. What do you have to say to that?
Satan That anybody will withhold a curse if you let them keep their life. You haven’t harmed his body at all. Do that and he’ll surely curse you to your face.
God Alright, then. You can harm his physical body, but you can’t kill him.
“So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.” (Job 2:7-8, NIV 1984)
Just to recap: In one day, Job lost most of his wealth and all of his children. We don’t know how much later, but shortly after, he lost his health. And the dude is just pitiful sitting underneath a tree and scratching himself with pottery. AND God himself said that this was for no reason at all. “Though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” (Job 2:3b, NIV 1984)
If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been sharing some of the hurt and trauma I experienced in my ten years in Radford and Pulaski County. I want to thank you for holding space for me and for treating my story with care. You might think, though, that I find comfort in the book of Job because it talks candidly about suffering. I do find comfort in it for that reason, but I said above that it’s hitting me differently this time. On this trip through Job, I’m mostly interested in the responses of Job’s friends.
What I just summarized for you is the first two chapters. At the end of chapter two, Job’s three friends show up, sit with him in silence for a week, and then Job starts talking. And they start talking. And they all go back and forth and round and round until like chapter 38 when God starts talking and everyone else shuts up.
Job laments his situation and grieves his losses. He says some really depressing, but understandable things. He shakes his fists at the sky and asks God over and over again for an explanation. He says that God alone is the one to blame for all of this because he, Job, is blameless. And here’s something really important: he’s not wrong. God himself told Satan that he could afflict Job precisely because Job was blameless and righteous before God. So, Job is not off base when he doesn’t understand what’s going on.
But his friends are.
They immediately lay into Job, trying to make sense of this tragedy. Surely, surely he did something wrong. Surely he is unrighteous. Surely there is some sin lingering in the undergrowth of his life that he does not know about. God does not let bad things happen to you when you do the right thing, so Job must have some way, somehow, done the wrong thing. Oh, my poor misguided ancient friends.
We know that God does sometimes let bad things happen to you when you didn’t do anything to deserve them because of the explicit conversation between God and Satan in chapters one and two. I want you to notice something. I already quoted part of it above. God says that Satan “incited” him against Job. Meaning that it was ultimately God who was afflicting Job. Also, Satan couldn’t just do these things on his own. God had to give him permission. There is no doubt about who is in control during the course of this conversation.
And, if you’ve lived in the world for longer than five minutes, you’re going to realize that bad things just happen. It doesn’t matter how good you are or how many rules you follow. Sometimes bad things happen to you when you don’t do anything to earn them. Sometimes bad things happen to you when you actively work against them. This world is not as it should be and bad things just happen, even without cosmic interference.
Part of what made my experience over the past ten years so difficult was that I was subtly blamed for all of the difficulty, just like Job. I would lament the pain of motherhood only to be met with platitudes and advice that I didn’t ask for that all boiled down to the fact that it would be easier if I were a stay at home mom. I would grieve the uniquely challenging atmosphere in which I was trying to do ministry and would be met with blame for doing it the way that I did. If only I did this “easier” thing or didn’t focus so much on caring for those “messy” people, then I’d have hundreds of people at my events. I would venture to open up about my childhood and the pains and traumas I experienced only to be told that I couldn’t speak negatively about members of my family or to be gaslit into thinking that it was me who was the problem.
When we can’t accept that we aren’t going to get good things just for being good and keeping all of the rules, we start to blame others or ourselves when tragedy strikes. We start to sift through the debris and rubble of our lives and try to figure out where it all went wrong and how we can prevent it from happening again. But the truth is that sometimes bad things just happen and we don’t know why and we never will. This idea that doing good things and following God results in good circumstances in your life is a neo-prosperity gospel that is rampant in evangelical Christianity. It basically says that if you follow all of the behavioral rules that the pastors have sussed out of the Scriptures for you, then you will be blessed. Read: your circumstances will be pleasant and you’ll be happy. Tragedy will never come to your house.
On my way out of my career with Young Life someone told me that this whole experience must be pretty disorienting because there’s no one to blame. While I disagree in the strongest possible terms and think that there are quite a few people to blame, I do think that, taken all together, there must be something besides the incompetence and selfishness of poor leaders at work. The world is broken, after all. I’ll drive myself crazy trying to figure out what went wrong - I’ll blame myself.
But the truth is that I didn’t deserve this. All I did was pour out every ounce of strength, love, mercy, grace, and energy that I could into my job at Radford University. All that I did was seek to do the right thing and apologize when I screwed up. All that I did was show up in a community of faith as my authentic self only to be rejected for not fitting a mold that they wanted to pretend didn’t exist. I was “blameless” in this and I got treated like garbage over and over again.
And this is the other thing about the Book of Job that I really love- God speaks to Job, but he never tells him why any of this happened. He restores his family and his wealth and his social position to him, but Job never knows about the weird conversation in Heaven. We, the readers, do, but the characters have no idea.
I wonder if the same isn’t true in all of our stories? Perhaps I’ll never know why I had to endure such abuse for ten years. Perhaps I’ll be restored to health and hope at the end of all of this. No matter what, though, I have to trust that God’s purposes are real and true. I have to trust that something is going on beneath the surface to make all the broken things whole, to make all the sad things untrue, to restore the world to the way it was meant to be.
And, if I had to suffer some abuse so that that could happen for us all? It’s a price I’m glad to pay, though it cost me everything I had.