July 17, 2009
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I like Philip Yancy books, and I especially like books that deal with the problem of pain, sin, and evil in the world (theodocy). This is one of the emails I received this morning by subscription to Zondervon Books; it's an excerpt from Yancy's "Where is God when it Hurts?". This particular book is seven years old, so it came out of the post 9-11 furnace.
Throughout the Bible, an analogy that illustrates the relationship between God and his people keeps surfacing. God, the husband, is pictured as wooing the bride to himself. He wants her love. If the world were constructed so that every sin earned a punishment and every good deed a reward, the parallel would not hold. The closest analogue to that relationship would be a kept woman, who is pampered and bribed and locked away in a room so that the lover can be sure of her faithfulness. God does not "keep" his people. He loves us, gives himself to us, and eagerly awaits our free response.
God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly. That, I believe, is the central message of Job. Satan had taunted God with the accusation that humans are not truly free. Was Job being faithful simply because God had allowed him a prosperous life? Job's fiery trials proved the answer beyond doubt. Job clung to God's justice when he was the best example in history of God's apparent injustice. He did not seek the Giver because of his gifts; when all gifts were removed he still sought the Giver.From the Philip Yancy book "Where is God when it Hurts?"
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