Disappointment With God, Part 3
Disappointment with God comes from faulty theology.
It was not fair. Not at all! There was no reason on earth for him to suffer like this. Job was more than a good man; he was nearly perfect. God said so.
There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil (Job 1:8).
But in just one day, in a series of fierce, God-allowed and Satan-directed disasters, Job lost his sources of wealth and his children—all of them. Then he was afflicted with a skin disease so horrible that for relief he sat on an ash heap scraping his oozing sores with a shard of broken pottery.
It was an appalling sight for people who had known him in his healthy, wealthy days. He mourned the loss of their companionship.
All my close friends abhor me, and those whom I love have turned against me (Job 19:19).
Children ran from him, and young men jeered and taunted him. But their rejection could not compare to his wife’s coldness.
Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die! (Job 2:9).
What else could he lose? He could have lost his faith. At first it seems intact, unshaken.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. . . . Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? (Job 1:21, 2:10).
But soon, in deep post-traumatic grief, Job went beyond mourning his losses to a roller-coaster of thoughts and emotions. He cursed the day he was born, then insisted that he knew God was in control. He declared he would trust God even if God killed him, then almost immediately demanded to know why God was treating him like an enemy.
Job’s disappointment was deep. He had never claimed personal perfection but protested he was being punished way out of proportion to his sins—a claim that his three miserable comforters could not endure.
This has to be your fault. You obviously have done something really, really bad. God always blesses good people; God only punishes bad people.
Their understanding of God was not just simplistic; it was wrong, and it drove Job’s disappointment even deeper. Faulty theology will do that.
There is a principle called sowing and reaping, and there will be a judgment day. But harvesting does not come a day after planting, and God’s accounts are not always settled at the end of the month. We often do not have any idea why God is doing what He is doing, when He is doing it.
In this world, there is no clear line from actions to consequences. Sometimes we do our best and still fail. Sometimes we do right and suffer. Sometimes evil people are allowed to prosper for a while. Sometimes the wicked triumph over the good. We can be perfect and still be crucified.
Since that is not the way we would do things if we were God, we question whether He has lost control of His world or whether He is the good God we thought He was. Questions like that shove us right down into the ditch of disappointment with God.
Faulty theology pulls God down off His throne to judge Him in the courtroom of our minds. God is not the same as we are. His purposes are loftier and nobler than ours, and His goals for us soar high above our earth-based comforts. He always does what is right—not what is right to us, but to His holy Self. That’s what the scriptures say.
He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He (Deut. 32:4).
Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? (Gen. 18:25).
Spend time getting to know the God of the Bible (not the one of your imaginings), and your disappointment with Him will dissolve into praise for His goodness, sovereignty, and perfection. When you know Who He truly is, He will be enough for you, whatever your circumstances.
You will move from a shallow, secondhand knowledge of God to an up-close, intimate friendship with Him. And with Job you will say, I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You (Job 42:5).