Questions

Two strangers end up sharing the same space. Could be a doctors surgery, could be a train carriage, could be a social occasion, could be a church pew.

What happens next?

Well that depends almost entirely on who the two people are.

Let me engage in some outrageous racial stereotyping.

If they’re Americans or Africans, chances are they’ll break the ice almost immediately. The Africans will be laughing and sharing stories within five minutes, the Americans swapping business cards by the end of the conversation.

If they’re Irish they’ll soon be planning to have a drink somewhere and working out what family or friends they have in common. If they’re Northern Irish they’ll be trying to work out which side the other person belongs to. If they’re English they’ll smile politely before hiding in a book or a newspaper.

If, by nature, they’re reserved folk, it’s quite possible that they’ll play the game we all play now and again of pretending the other person doesn’t exist. They’ll read or fidgit, or daydream, but they wouldn’t dream of breaking the silence. The potential for social transgression feels much too great.

In those circumstances, God bless the one who takes the initiative and asks the first question, because it’s that brave step into the unknown which opens up the rich possibilities of human intercourse. The other may choose to barricade that avenue straight away, but at least the effort was made.

This is how it goes. When you meet someone for the first time, it’s the questions you ask which allow the other to disclose something of who they really are. Where they’re from, what they do, who they belong to.

Your questions create a space into which the other can choose to step, and as they’re answered and reciprocated, lo and behold, a relationship begins to form. It might last mere moments, it might last for decades. But it’s there in embryo. And it all begins with your questioning. Your willingness to engage.

And where there are no questions, there’s no engagement, and by default, no relationship. Just awkward silence and polite distance. And we were made for more than that, I think.

Now with that in mind, I want to challenge a myth this morning. It’s the myth that if we have difficult questions about God we should just keep them to ourselves. The really devout person, this myth suggests, keeps a lid on it. Sweeps their doubts under the carpet. Refuses to rock the boat.

And I want to tell you this morning that that’s unbiblical nonsense.
You don’t find that view in Scripture. You find the complete reverse of it.

God is more than able to deal with our questions. What he can’t abide is folk looking at the way the world is and not caring enough to have questions.

A question, even an angry one or a misguided one, is a sign of a mind and heart that are engaged. That’s far better, in God’s eyes, than a mind that hides in awkward silences and polite distances.

Children have something to teach us here. They are always asking questions.

I came across a wee book a while ago called “Children’s Letters To God” and there were a few real gems of questions in there:

Dear God. Are you really invisible or is that just a trick?

Dear God. How come you did all the miracles in the old days and you don’t do any now?

Dear God: Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?

Dear God: What does it mean that you are a Jealous God? I thought you had everything.

Dear God: Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don't You just keep the ones You have now?

Out of the mouth of babes…..

Lovely, innocent questions. But in adulthood the stakes are raised because it tends to be in the hardest times that we frame our questions to God.

In that sense, Job speaks for all of us because his woes were about the very same things we tend to get stressed about – family, health and material things.

It’s a large book, the book of Job. It runs to 42 chapters. And the story begins with Job, a wealthy and successful man, losing all that he has – his family, his flocks and his fields; even his health. The author presents this as a form of testing, sanctioned by God but enacted by one called the Accuser, or Satan in the Hebrew. God wants to prove to Satan that Job will remain faithful to him, even if all that he has is taken away. So Satan is allowed to test him.

Now we might balk at the idea of God treating people so capriciously – I know I do – but even though the author of Job presents the story in a way that sounds crudely mythic to our ears, his logic is faultless. When bad things happen – as they regularly do – believers have to reckon with the fact that our omnipotent God has allowed them to happen. And that should raise questions in anyone’s mind.

It certainly raises questions for Job. According to the wisdom of his day, if you lived a godly life you would prosper in the here and now, and if you lived a godless life you would suffer in the here and now. That’s how everyone would have thought. That’s how they understood the world.

But Job, first hand, discovers that that’s just not true. He’s lived a good life – he’s done everything he was asked to do – and calamity still comes. It feels utterly unjust. And although he stops short of cursing God, or abandoning him, he rails at him for the next 35 chapters – flinging a barrage of woes and questions at the Almighty.

To add insult to injury, three of his friends pitch up, supposedly to comfort him, but all they do is rub salt into his wounds. They represent the worldview of Job’s day – which says ‘if bad things are happening to you, you must have done something wrong to deserve it”. Come on, Job, they keep saying. What have you done to deserve all this? You know how things work. Innocent people don’t get this kind of treatment. What have you done to make God angry?

But Job maintains his innocence. And in the final few chapters of the book, his complaints are silenced when he has a powerful personal encounter with God. Significantly, he gets no answer to the question of his suffering, but the question itself pales into insignificance alongside the awesome mystery of his God. Job, in the end, is justified and restored, while his friends are rebuked and only spared because Job prays to God on their behalf

Commentators differ on whether Job was a real person, or whether this book has been written as a parable to illustrate truth. I sat and read it through again this week, and I have to say it struck me more as story than history – great swathes of it are carefully constructed poetry rather than the kind of dialogue which would readily fall from someone’s lips.

But whatever the truth of that, there’s a clear purpose to the story. The author’s using the example of Job to show us that there’s no real correlation between the amount of wrong we commit and the amount of trouble we experience in life. It’s not that simple.

Job is right to defend his innocence, but he’s wrong to assume that innocence will guarantee him a trouble-free existence. That’s his main line of argument. God, why have you done this to me when I’ve done nothing wrong?

But life isn’t a vending machine. It isn’t the case that if we put the right coins in the slot, the right product will come out. It doesn’t work that way. We might wish it did, but it doesn’t.

We know there are times when the good die young, and the wicked go down to their graves in peace. When the honest get taken for a ride, while the greedy and selfish prosper. When the feckless get everything they want and decent folk have even their small hopes dashed. We know these things happen, and when they do, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t question God’s justice. It seems desperately unfair, in a universe that’s supposed to be governed by a good God.
We’ll leave that discussion for another day. All I want you to see and understand this morning is that God has patience with our questions – because, as the Psalmist puts it, he knows how we are formed: he remembers that we are dust.

Now when we first hear God’s response to Job in the last few chapters, he seems to be anything but patient with his questioning. “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” he says.

He’s definitely angry here – but he’s not angry with Job for questioning. He’s angry because of this worldview that Job and his comforters have been arguing about. A worldview that tries to conform and constrain the mystery of God into categories we can manage and domesticate. If I do X, God must do Y.

It’s like trying to put a collar with a bell on it onto a lion. You cannot domesticate God. You cannot assume that your insight and understanding are the whole picture or the last word because they never are. God has lived longer, and sees further than any of us.

“Where were you when I laid the earths foundation? Tell me if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
Or who laid its cornerstone
While the morning stars sang together
And all the angels shouted for joy?”

Three chapters of this kind of stuff, and Job knows he needs a different way of thinking. He needs a new model of how things work. One that doesn’t reduce the universe to mere cause and effect, but allows room for God to be God in everything; even in our sufferings.

When our model of how things work breaks down, we are bound to question things. When the redundancy notice lands on your desk, or the x-ray comes back with worrying shadows, or that person you love goes through something that seems desperately unfair, we’re given permission to question.

We’re given permission by a Biblical record that is literally full of faithful people pouring out their complaint to God. Asking questions of him.

From the Psalmist crying out “Why, O Lord do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble”

To Christ on the cross, whispering “My God, My God, why have you deserted me”.

When the going gets tough, the faithful ask questions. And perhaps it’s in this that their faithfulness is made most evident. It would be easier to walk away, sometimes. To lose faith. And many do, when things go wrong in their lives. But the story of Job shows us that a faithful man or woman who stays engaged with God despite the pain and confusion, and gives voice to their questions, will earn God’s respect and in the end be vindicated.

We may not get the kind of answer we are looking for to our questions, but we will get an answer. Very often the answer is that God in his mysterious presence draws close and holds us in our pain. Reminding us that despite how things seem, there is life and hope beyond our pain.

It’s good to ask questions, because our questions open up a space where relationships can form and grow and deepen. And that’s as true of God as it is of other people.

But one last word in closing. It works both ways. God has questions he wants to ask of us. But more about that in the weeks to come.