The Passion of Job: Why Job suffered and what we can learn from it

Chapter 5: Our Relationship with God

Elihu begins his instruction of Job with the central issue: God is greater than man. Job might have acknowledged that this is true, but Job certainly didn't believe it in the depths of his heart otherwise how could he accuse God of making such a large error or any error for that matter. Part of being greater than man, and by this I mean really greater than man, means that man is not in a position to correct God. Of course, when directly asked, I am sure any believer would agree that God is greater than man. The problem we all have from time to time is one of understanding what that means. Specifically, what does it mean in terms of each individuals relationship to God? The perhaps vague statement that God is greater than man should really be phrased as God is exalted over me. From the standpoint of rediscovering awe, this is all that is necessary – understanding what it means when you acknowledge that God is greater than you. A big part of your own sense of wonder towards God involves putting God in the right place in your life. It means exalting God over you. It means attaching meaning in terms of your own life to the words God IS greater than me.

In order to do just that, in order to place God above yourself in all aspects of your life, you need to understand as best you can who God is. Elihu understood this and so he did not stop his interaction with Job at "God is greater than man." He knew (or better yet, God knew) that Job (and us) needed to learn what that meant in his (and our) life. So, Elihu continued to instruct Job and the nature of that instruction points us in the direction of other aspects of God that should inspire awe. They are all part of what it means to understand that God is greater than man. The first issue that Elihu raises involves understanding God's relationship with man.

Awe and Fear

If all we understand about God is that He is greater than us that should be enough to generate awe in God. However, that awe would most likely be dominated by fear. After all, fear is one of the major components of awe. We tend to fear what we don't understand and we really fear when what we don't understand is much more powerful than us. For example, there was a time when man was in awe of the weather particularly weather phenomena such as thunder. That awe was predominantly fear. Man feared thunder because they didn't understand it but they also feared it because it appeared to be so powerful. After, what could be making a noise so loud that it could be heard over vast distances? What ever it was, it was amazing but it was also very scary. So man would worship whatever it was that made thunder but that worship was mainly out of fear. The goal of the worship was to appease whatever it was that displayed such power. The hope was that if you worshipped it, it wouldn't hurt you. The problem with this kind of awe, awe that is dominated by fear is that it generates a strong motivation to try to control the source of that awe. Hence, pagan religions consisted mainly of a set of gods. Each god represented one of the sources of awe. Often times there was a god of thunder, a god of war, a god of the sea, a god of lightning, and so on. Sometimes there were gods assigned to things that may not have been frightening but man still did not understand them like a god of love or a god of wine. Man was but a play thing to these "gods." Since these gods only generated fear, most early religions involve ways in which the "gods" could be appeased. Appeasing a "god" was simply a means to deal with the fear of the "god."

In some ways that was Job's problem. If Job had any awe of God to begin with it was based on fear. Job tried to learn the rules so he could avoid the wrath of God. That is why Job was so strongly motivated to pray for everything and anything that his sons may have done wrong. Job did not want to leave any stone unturned in his effort to ensure that God would bless him and his family but more importantly he didn't want to find himself on the wrong side of God.

It is not unusual to find believers today with a sense of awe that is dominated by fear. They don't want God punish them. They don't want to end up in hell for all eternity. So, they worship God because they fear the consequences of not worshipping Him. While they worship God and they are in awe of God, neither is complete. They lack the full range of awe. For them, awe is not a mixed feeling of reverence, fear and wonder, it is primarily fear. They lack the sense of joy and wonder that creates a balanced approach to awe of God. Perhaps most importantly, they do not seek a relationship with God.