What The Hell Is God's Problem?

A reader puts God, the Book of Job, and Ask Matt in the dock

From the The Creation of the Heavenly Bodies fresco on the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo

Editor’s Note:  Ever question yourself? You should. You have a lot of explaining to do. But if you’re too busy living in denial, Ask Matt a question, any question, at askmattlabash@gmail.com

For those of you who’ve been reading Slack Tide for a while, you know we cover the waterfront.  Since I’m easily bored, and a professional generalist/dilettante besides, one day, I might go thundering on about how a certain brand manager/former president of the United States shouldn’t be wearing an orange spray tan, but an orange jumpsuit in a minimum-security facility. Though one without internet access so he can’t egg on the Q-ballers. The next, I might be enthusing about fly fishing or fireflies  or bluebirds.  I always enthuse about music.  I make no apologies for the schizophrenia. As I indicated at the outset of this enterprise, life is large, and we seek to inhabit all of it. I do plenty of politics here. But show me a man who dines on politics alone, and I will show you a man who is slowly poisoning himself. (These days, maybe not so slowly.)

One of the subjects I buzz by sporadically is religion, usually interwoven into pieces about something else.  Though since I dislike the connotations of the word “religion,” let’s go with the G-word instead, “God.” Or as some of my Jewish friends prefer, “G-d.” (Sorry, Q-Ballers, hate to disappoint, but I have some Jewish friends. And precisely none of them own space lasers that start wildfires.)  I do this often enough that Slack Tide is now ranked number five in Substack’s “Faith and Spirituality” category. It’s hard to get too uppity about being number five. Which is why I hope we never climb to number one. It might swell our heads. And as my pharisaical friends will (happily) remind me, pride cometh before a fall.

But a weird thing has happened in the course of me writing this column with periodic God-references.  I have attracted a lot of atheist and agnostic readers, who often tee off in the comments section, respectfully, of course, since I’m a pretty ruthless bouncer when it comes to incivility. I don’t know why they’re drawn here. Maybe they’re God-curious. Maybe they smell weakness, and are moving in for the kill. I just think of myself as a lukewarm Christian kid who tries to keep his nose clean, even if he does so by sometimes blowing snot-rockets on other people. (Which isn’t very Christian, come to think of it.)  But I welcome all here, even skeptics, a group in which I sometimes claim membership. There’s plenty to be skeptical about.  Which is why I’m running this Very Special Ask Matt ⟨™⟩.  My latest piece was a meditation on the front porch, a sacred space to me.  I didn’t intend for it to come off as a God-centric piece, because it wasn’t. But by the end, I made several mentions of yelling at God from the porch when I needed to have a stern word with him, and made some extensive references to the book of Job. I won’t rerun those passages here. If you care to revisit or to visit for the first time if you missed, it’s near the end of this link.

But a reader named “Chuck E’s In Love” (not his real name) took serious and extended issue in my comments section. Being a huge fan of his cousin, Chuck D, I decided to elevate his mini-essay-length commentary  into a question. Generally, I discourage readers from going on this long in Ask Matt features, you should know. If you want to write essays, start your own Substack. If you want me to answer your questions here, keep them tight. Listening to readers for too long takes away from valuable time in which I could be doing more talking. But I like the Job-like wrestling match of all this, so let’s let Chuck E have his say, and then I’ll meet him on the other side:  

Dear Matt,
I continue to be somewhat baffled by your belief in the Biblical God. Maybe it's your relative youth and the scales have not yet fallen from your eyes. Or maybe I stopped believing because I have given in too fully to reason (although I'm prepared to accept the possibility that the God I do not believe in might be stronger than my disbelief). But given your belief, the Book of Job should trouble you deeply.

It contains the most words spoken by God directly in any of the books of the Bible, and probably beats their combined word count by a factor of five or more. God goes on a tear in Job, and it ain't pretty. (The lines you quote are but a majestic and benign snippet.)

To recap, God is giving an audience to a group of angels, and Satan is among them. (?!) God asks Satan where he's been. Satan says that he's been walking to and fro on the earth. God says, Did you check out my faithful servant, Job? Satan says, Yeah, saw him. So what? God says, You weren't impressed? Satan says, Why should I be? You heaped all sorts of blessings on him. Take them away, and he'll curse you. God says, Au contraire! You may go fuck with him all you want, but you cannot lay a hand on him personally. You'll see.

So what do we have here? God is essentially using Job to prove a point to Satan. Why would God feel the need to justify himself to anyone, much less Satan? And why does Job have to suffer so God can win this ego bet?

So Satan, being Satan, has all Job's crops burned down (and the servants tending them burned to death, too), his oxen and camels stolen (and the servants tending them put to the sword), and his brother's house blown down by the wind -- killing the brother and all his sons and daughters. No complaints here from God, by the way. What are the lives of scores of servants and a whole family when a wager with Satan is on the line?

Job, as you would expect, complains mightily. He doesn't specifically blame God (preserving God's bet), but he does ask why he has been singled out for such catastrophes and tragedies.

So now comes God with his boffo speech (Where were you when I laid the four corners of the earth, shut in the sea with doors, brought forth the leviathan and behemoth, etc.?), and the fun stuff you quote.

But there's a far less seemly part, that extends much longer:

God berates Job for whining:

Gird up your loins like a man;
I will question you, and you will declare to me.
Have you an arm like God,
and can you thunder with a voice like his?

Deck yourself with majesty and dignity;
clothe yourself with glory and splendor.
Pour forth the overflowings of your anger,
and look on everyone that is proud,
and abase him.
Look on everyone that is proud,
and bring him low;
and tread down the wicked where they stand.
Hide them all in the dust together;
bind their faces in the world below?

Well, gee. No, God, I can't.

So, Job being adequately cowed and Satan proven wrong, God restores all Job's wealth, by a multiple, and gives him an abundance of sons and fair daughters, and a long life, full of days.

But that's scant comfort to Job's dead brother and family and all the dead servants who were pawns in this sordid show of force.

Like a good reporter, you need to ask the follow-up questions. Next time you're on the porch, yelling at God, bring up the Job thing again. Say you got some more questions. Say {Chuck E.) wants to know.

But watch out!
Best,
Chuck E.’s In Love

Hey Chuck, I'll bring it up at the next quarterly meeting with God on your behalf. Though I will need you to sign some liability waivers in case he goes all Job on your ass.

Less glibly? You know your Job! Impressive.  I suspect you're a lapsed believer.  Or else you were a church conscript early on. Or.....like my old, late pal Christopher Hitchens - the world's foremost atheist of his time - you've been in enough debates that you know your Bible better than many of the Bible-beaters do.  (Hitch used to run circles around many of his men-of-the-cloth debate partners when quoting Scripture. One-upmanship is a powerful motivator.)

Even though many much older than me (and you) subscribe to God, I do thank you for paying me the unintentional compliment of mentioning  my relative youth. Makes me think that exfoliator is really working for me, now that I've passed the half-century mark.  But I might surprise you by giving in a little upfront. You ask hard and valid questions.  Questions that if I could answer them satisfactorily, I would know the mind of God (assuming there is one), and if I were able to do that, I'd probably be doing something much more valuable than writing a Substack and tussling with commenters. I'd likely be at the racetrack, cleaning up on the Trifecta.

But go with me on something for a second. Let’s presuppose for the sake of argument that there is a God, and he’s not just George Burns in a bad seventies movie, chomping on a cigar and pulling the chair out from under us for yuks.  If so, what we can fairly surmise is that his ways are not our ways. Self-evident, since we have to spend so much time puzzling over and trying to suss out what the hell he’s up to.  The most human of desires often seems to be the need to be understood, or to inflict what we think we understand on others.  Hence, my writing. Hence, you’re writing in comments sections.  God, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to let the mystery ride.

Yes, there is a lot that seems unfair on its face about Job. Yes, God seems like a bit of an egomaniac. (A problem he never quite shakes throughout Scripture - maybe we really are made in his image!)  I will humbly submit, however, that you might be missing one of the most interesting points about the whole book. Which is not so much the answer, as the questions that get asked.  If Job is part of the canon, part of the "Word of God”  - it is thought to be roughly 400 years older than Genesis - why did God allow it to make the cut? Could it be because God himself encourages dissent?  (As happens in the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes, and other books as well.) You're not a heretic for asking. Which is why I yell at God on the porch with a clean conscience, and freely admit it.  As I've pointed out in print before, even Christ doubted God in the Garden of Gethsemane when knowing what he was facing (crucifixion), while asking for his cup to pass. And according to Christian theology, Christ is part of Team God.  Which means he was essentially questioning himself. If it's good enough for Christ, it's good enough for Job and you and me.

In the book of Job, God might pull rank on Job, reminding Job of his God-ness, but he still entertains the inquiry. And in fact, in later verses, he even upbraids the people who were tormenting Job for suffering and for questioning God, as they implied that Job was suffering God's judgment. God even establishes they did not speak the truth about him.  Were there a lot of civilian casualties in this experiment? Hell, yes.  Which doesn't make God come off well, even if he was allowing it, instead of causing it, in the narrative. However, I'm going to let you in on a little life secret: we all die. I'm gonna die. And you will too. And we will both leave behind people who love and depend on us, and God will allow that as well. He will arguably even cause it. Is that fair?  The mortality rate has hovered right around 100 percent since the beginning of time, and hasn’t budged in many millennia. So there's inexplicable unfairness in the world, if the fact of death and suffering is our yardstick.

If there is a God, and if Job is real, I don't know why he allowed this test. Except it was a real conversation-starter. Because we're still trying to wrap our heads around it thousands of years later.  So maybe asking questions - hard ones, like you just did - isn't against God's will. But part of the necessary inquiry.  A conversation that warrants having. Not the end of a conversation, but the beginning of one.

That said, when it comes to matters theological, I am a mere layman. And therefore, reserve the right to take it to a pro, which I just did. I sent your question(s) to Dr. Michael Easley.  An old pal of mine, Michael used to be my minister a couple decades ago, until he moved on to become president of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.  From there, he headed to Tennessee, where he now pastors a church in Brentwood, as well as running a robust online/podcast ministry called InContext.

Just as I don’t typically fork over this much column real estate to a question, I likewise don’t often do so for someone else’s answer.  But I’m going to give Michael the floor for a bit, as I respect him, and think he says things worth hearing. This is Michael Easley:

Striking - but patently obvious - the book is long, arduous, and deals with the human condition: sin, pain, unanswered questions. Every person who lives will face Job-like experiences and have unanswered questions. All critical points are often missed. Why would God provide a personal (individual Job, not theological constructs)  reality of disasters, injustice, complaint... and how {does} a faithful - not perfect - human respond? Job's wife and friends ultimately fail in, first and foremost,  a humble submission to God. From a literary standpoint it is sometimes called "comic literature" in that, the first portion is everything is great, happy... then the long slide into disaster... the resolving conclusion, so think of drawing a smile... But as a piece of literature, most….. pastors/theologians come to the conclusion that even though Job's "fortunes" are restored, how can the loss of children ever be restored? Even as remarkable as Christ's atonement is for our sins, we live with scars, consequences, injustices... those won't be truly restored until the kingdom….God's ways are unknowable. The human condition is knowable, fraught with pain, injustice, sin, and unanswered questions. Job's "lessons learned" are wonderfully summed up in the passages you note and others. God: “You think you can understand My way?” The all too human demand for fairness, justice, explanation reveal the one immutable trait: hubris. Ever since they ate the fruit, they wanted to be like God. Greatest irony of all time, God made man in His image; man makes god in his image. You hear this anytime someone gets close to, "I could never believe in a God who____?” They've just made God in their image. Why would God allow war, AIDS, abuse, slavery, suffering... all expose the same presupposition: I have a better god in mind. Consequently, fallen men cannot come humbly, cannot pound their chest, "be merciful to me, the sinner" or "remember me when you come into your kingdom". We prefer, "if you are God...." fill in the blank, prove it, do "x" for me, do things my way.  Job is remarkable in innumerable ways. Larry Crabb {the Christian counselor/author} put too fine a point on it and called Job's sin "demandingness." He extrapolated that into all his counseling. We demand God give us an explanation. C.S. Lewis - if memory serves - wrote a collection of essays called God in the Dock that played off this. I learned {this} many years ago - from a heavyset bearded  Vietnam Vet Harley Davidson looking guy who worked with kids who were exposed to all manner of evil. We're talking even genuine satanic ritual stuff, I mean these kids were sexually abused in ritual evil……and were hurt beyond definition. I sat through a full day of secular continuing education (with a psychologist friend) on how to help these families…….He showed slides of the most horrific stuff I've ever seen, stuff he dealt with firsthand. He sat, without affect, on a stool for the entire day talking, teaching, showing pictures, answering questions. Even the unbelievers in the room were gut-punched. The one indelible mark he left on me was that the turning point in these kids - mostly teens and early 20's -  was if he could get them to the place where, "you have to accept that most of your 'why' questions will never be answered." He believed that was the only opening / opportunity for change and hope. All that to say, I think that's Job. You think you can understand why God allowed Satan to do what he did? You think you can understand what is fair / unfair, just / unjust in God's economy? Do you think you can understand why people die? Do you truly think you can handle it? If so, gird up your loins and if you can't grasp the A,B,Cs, how in the world can you grasp God's sovereignty? At the end of the day, Job is about, will you believe, will you serve God for nothing? If He never "does" anything for you except forgive your sin and grant you eternal life, if Jesus Christ's all sufficient work isn't enough for you, you'll die in your pride. You've made God in your image. 

In that C.S. Lewis book that Michael references above, God In the Dock, there’s a passage that sticks to me a bit:

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man, the roles are quite reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge; if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and diseases, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God is in the dock.

Do I believe in a God I cannot fully explain, so that I, too, have to ride the mystery? Guilty. Years ago, I did a debate  in Slate with A.J. Jacobs, a gentleman agnostic (like many who read my site)  who had just written a book titled: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Request To Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible. It was a participatory journalism book which was no easy feat, since there aren’t a lot of Amalekites around to smite anymore.  Yet I explained to A.J. my faith, such as it is, as such:

I suppose I could’ve dipped into the usual bag of tricks, pointing to the definitive works of Christian apologetics (C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica) or their Judaic equivalents (Shmuley Boteach and Uri Gellar’s Confessions of a Rabbi and a Psychic). But I’ve always found these ultimately unconvincing on their own. For reason will only take you to the edge of the cliff. Then, you’ve got to get out of the car and jump. Faith is a leap. That’s why they call it “faith.” Otherwise, they’d call it “logic.”

Which is the best I can do for you, my friend. I’m not spiking the football, or pretending I won this “debate.”  You can fly at me in a hundred ways, poking holes in what I’ve just said. As someone who is accustomed to winning arguments, I understand and admit that.  And yet, you’re allowed to put God in the dock.  I do it all the time. And you just did, too. And neither of us got struck dead for our troubles.  So ask your questions. Of him, not me.  See if he answers you. Maybe he just did.

Bonus Track(s):  Today, in honor of Chuck E’s question, I’m going to offer a little musical yin’n’yang. Here’s a good doubter/questioning God song, by Father John Misty. (He is not a priest. His honorific is self-bestowed.)  Like me, Misty grew up evangelical. Though his upbringing doesn’t seem to have taken. He has issues with God. He puts him in the dock.  Which, as the last 3,000 words just proved, I don’t believe in shying away from. Plus, it has some beautiful lyrics.  Including this one:

Oh, it's just human, human nature
We've got these appetites to serve
You must not know the first thing about human beings
We're the earth's most soulful predator
Try something less ambitious the next time you get bored

Oh, my Lord
We just want light in the dark
Some warmth in the cold
And to make something out of nothing sounds like someone else I know

And here is one of my favorite preachers, Tom Waits, singing “Come On Up To The House” off his sublime 1999 album, Mule Variations.  Waits, almost never explicitly religious himself, comes at it from a more faithful direction. Since he’s hard to understand with his junkyard-dog growl, I’ll print the lyrics beneath the song, which basically says: “Get Over Yourself.”

Well, the moon is broken and the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house
The only things that you can see is all that you lack
Come on up to the house

All your crying don't do no good
Come on up to the house
Come down off the cross, we can use the wood
You gotta come on up to the house

Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through
You got to come on up to the house

There's no light in the tunnel, no irons in the fire
Come on up to the house
And you're singing lead soprano in a junkman's choir
You got to come on up to the house

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short
Come on up to the house
The seas are stormy and you can't find no port
Got to come on up to the house, yeah

You gotta come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home I'm just a-passing through
You got to come on up to the house, yeah

You gotta come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
The world is not my home
I'm just a-passing through
You got to come on up to the house

There's nothing in the world that you can do
You gotta come on up to the house
And you been whipped by the forces that are inside you
Gotta come on up to the house

Well, you're high on top of your mountain of woe
Gotta come on up to the house
Well, you know you should surrender, but you can't let it go
You gotta come on up to the house, yeah

Gotta come on up to the house
Gotta come on up to the house
The world is not my home I'm just a-passing through
You gotta come on up to the house