When it comes to pain and suffering, how is it that we can be closer to Job's clueless "friends" than Jesus? See also the critique of the pop dictum "God Never Gives Us More than than We Can Handle."
Granted we can read Job as a story that has a Walt Disney ending all because of Job's faithfulness. That's not the only reading we can employ though. So why come down on the side of meanness instead of generosity and grace? Does God really take away our health - or dish up trouble- whatever the reason? Does God really extract everything from our lives so that one day, when everything and everyone is gone, we'll somehow accept Jesus? That is so unnecessary and harmful.
In ethics, we would call that employing the ends to justify the means. That very reasoning is used to justify any and all kind of harm done to others. I find it very sad and draining whenever I encounter it- and I do all too often with "believers." But applying this kind of toxic rationale to God is an ethical and theological nightmare we don't have to dive into. Nor should we!
I suggest we choose Jesus over whatever reading of Job may please us: "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on the them- do you think they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?" Luke 13:2-4 By offering these rhetorical questions, Jesus has our number too. The issue is about what's in our control, not about the stuff that happens to us. It's about our own choosing- or repentance.
Better to change your own mind about God than misrepresent both God and God's world! Even though we can be artists at projection, let's allow the Holy One to be better and bigger than us, full of grace, truth, and wonder. We don't need to add to the world's suffering by making faith a cover for our own meanness, sin, and small-mindedness.
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