"Just Curse God and Die"
Ash Wednesday is in two tomorrows. First comes Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), a day in which we are meant to feast in order to enter a season of fasting. Then comes the time of reflection on our lives and ultimate reality. But I can’t help but want to avoid the feast and head straight to the fast. I want to put on sackcloth and sit in ashes and wait for another era in our lives to begin. Yet, Ash Wednesday remains a future reality still. Feasting is needed to build us before we are torn down. Ash Wednesday and all of Lent is close but is not yet here. So I sit and, instead of preparing a feast or starting a fast, I sip my whisky and write about Job.
Most of the time, I hate the book of Job. It is one of those books that can be used to beat us into abject resignation, a complete giving up on God or faith or even connection to our fellow humanity. At the same time, Job can be used to tell the one who questions the theology of the Church to just trust in the ways of the Lord. The book begins with suffering and ends with Job questioning God.
I serve a ministry context full of people who have questioned. They may have questioned God, but the definitely questioned the Church and the answer they often received was something like, “Who do you think you are?” Or, “How dare you question the authority of the elders?” Or even, “You just need to have a little more faith.” I can’t help but realize how similar this response is to God’s answer in Job. Because when Job, having lost everything, and yet never cursing the God who allowed it all to happen, asks God a simple “Why?” God does not give a satisfactory answer. Instead of an explanation or a comfort or an offer of renewed strength for the journey of life, God responds to the question, “Where were you when I founded the earth?” It is as if God does not think Job has the right to question the situation or the God of the universe who created things the way they are.
Now, I am going to admit that I do not know how God would respond to a question like this. Even after reading the life of Jesus in all four canonical gospels and several more pseudoepigraphical gospels, I can say this: Jesus is unpredictable. Sticking just to Luke, Jesus is asked to heal a servant by a Centurion and he says that he has the most faith of anyone he has ever met. And just a few short chapters later, he is asked by a man with a demon possessed son to bring healing and Jesus begins a tirade in which he wonders aloud what he will do with this wicked and depraved generation. So, maybe God is like this. Maybe God is capricious and doesn’t always care about our anxieties and our need to be healed. But I don’t think so.
I’m exploring the why to that inclination. Perhaps this is the purpose of this newsletter. Perhaps I am here to help myself articulate what is happening within me as I see uncomfortable truths in faith, but still stand by my heart that says that “God is love.”
Back to Job. Job looks at his life and he wants to remain faithful to God, even with all that has happened to him. He feels hurt. He feels utterly emotionally and physically destroyed. He complains. He pours out his heartache. And his wife says, “Just curse God and die.” This feels more like my understanding of the way the world works. We bring our hurt, our trauma, our challenges, our pain, our heartache and the people of God, so often in the form of a faith leader, either minimizes it, gives trite advice, or blames us or our faith for it. I don’t think it well-represents God or the best humanity has to offer.
“Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” - Augustine
And so, our response has to be that no, we won’t just curse God and die. We will try to remain faithful. We will ask the hard questions in hope that our God of love will calm our hearts and assuage our fears. We will do it all in the hope that our hearts will find their rest in the God of the universe. Till then may we know our sacred worth. May we know that God is with us when we tearfully lay, wearing sackcloth and covered in ash, waiting for that rest.