00:00:00:05 – 00:00:26:06
Clint Loveall
Hi friends, happy Monday and welcome to the first day of a new study for us. A look at the Book of Job. A fascinating book, a difficult book. We are going to spend a couple of weeks, and this one will be a little bit of a change of pace for us because it’s been our it’s been our pattern to just work through a book from start to finish, just chapter, chapter verse by verse.

00:00:26:11 – 00:00:49:40
Clint Loveall
We are not going to do that in this case, because the book of job, in our opinion, doesn’t lend itself particularly well to that. It gets very repetitive through the middle section. There are long, repeated cycles of dialog that really don’t add a great deal new. And and that part of the book of job is not a story.

00:00:49:40 – 00:01:14:22
Clint Loveall
So it’s not unfolding in a way. It’s not that those things aren’t important, but they do get a little repetitive. And so what we’re going to do is try to break this book up in pieces and then summarize those pieces each each week. Essentially, we’ll look at an aspect of the book, and we will go through it from start to finish.

00:01:14:22 – 00:01:34:31
Clint Loveall
In other words, we will follow the flow of the book, but it won’t be word by word. And so, we hope that okay, we hope that it works if if at any point it leaves gaps and you have questions, if there’s a thing you think we missed that you’d like to know something about, just please make it that aware.

00:01:34:39 – 00:02:14:45
Clint Loveall
Make us aware of that, and we’ll do our best to to, circle back and get that. We mentioned in our introduction, Michael, that job is a product of a genre of literature in the Bible that we call wisdom literature. And on the surface, the word wisdom would maybe sound like philosophy or perhaps teaching, but really, when we say wisdom in regard to the Bible, we mean books that don’t tell historical stories necessarily, but they engage some of the deeper questions of life and faith.

00:02:14:45 – 00:02:37:12
Clint Loveall
So we have those a small collection of books that really point us toward some of what we might say life’s mysteries, life’s difficulties, life’s challenges. They do that thoroughly in a religious or a faith based way. But these are some books that ask us difficult questions.

00:02:37:17 – 00:03:26:24
Michael Gewecke
I think that we need to orient ourself to Jobe. Jobe doesn’t do that for us. And so I think this first week is going to be us spending some time, doing some of the work in order to do that. And maybe our way into that is to start a little bit with us and our perspective. If you’re a modern Western person, if you’re part of the viewing audience here in the United States, it’s likely that when you went to school that much of the conversation that you had around history and around science was related to uncovering the way that things are, and by that we mean what actually happened or what is scientifically repeatable,

00:03:26:29 – 00:03:56:22
Michael Gewecke
these kinds of things. I think what is really, really important for us to know walking into this study, is that wisdom literature is not particularly interested in telling us, historical account of a particular story that happened at that time, with the idea being it’s going to nail down all of the details. It it is interested in showing us deeply beneath the surface of life.

00:03:56:31 – 00:04:24:08
Michael Gewecke
What’s the stuff of value and what matters. And this is coming from a people who spent a great deal of time thinking about what some of these deeper things of life are today. We use the word theology. They they would have simply thought of this from a far more relational and dialogical perspective. It’s a conversation between friends, mentors, teachers.

00:04:24:19 – 00:04:46:40
Michael Gewecke
It’s about exploring the things underneath the surface. Maybe you think of that kind of like what we do when you’re sitting around the campfire at the camp and you’re all talking about, what do you think the stars mean? But this is thoughtful. It is ancient. It’s engaging with these deep conversations, and the purpose of it is to not shy away from the implications of it.

00:04:46:40 – 00:05:07:25
Michael Gewecke
And this I think, Clint, for us, is often very uncomfortable because we like the idea of wrapping it up. We like the idea of at the end of the chapter, we have a clear, succinct summary of what we’re said and what it means. And when you enter into the wisdom literature, this includes something like Ecclesiastes. And it’s certainly true of job park salons.

00:05:07:30 – 00:05:19:54
Michael Gewecke
If you walk into a study of a book like this and you bring our assumptions of how it should end, what a satisfying ending would look like, you’re very, very likely to miss the ending. That’s actually there.

00:05:19:58 – 00:05:43:59
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I suppose there’s a sense in which some people might want to talk about the wisdom literature as philosophy. It’s asking philosophical questions. You know, you have a book like Ecclesiastes. What is the meaning of life? You have a book like job that’s going to tackle some questions about human suffering. And and those could sound like philosophical questions.

00:05:44:04 – 00:06:30:05
Clint Loveall
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Michael, except that in the Israelite worldview, wisdom always has to do with God. Wisdom is not some separate thing that we can discern on our own. Wisdom itself is a part of our relationship with God Almighty, and wisdom is the discernment of how God wants us to live. And so when you would ask those questions from a biblical Old Testament perspective, I don’t think it’s fair to call them philosophical questions because they can’t imagine those questions being answered outside of the existence and relationship of God to human life.

00:06:30:05 – 00:06:59:49
Clint Loveall
So that takes us specifically to the book of Job, where we tackle, I think, what might be one of the more difficult questions of human life, why do we suffer? And specifically, there are there is a fork in the road because sometimes we know the answer to the question. Sometimes we suffer because of our poor choices. Sometimes we suffer because of our lifestyle.

00:07:00:00 – 00:07:37:44
Clint Loveall
Sometimes we suffer because of our input. We we create the circumstances that lead to our or other people’s suffering. The more difficult answer is the other path. How do we explain? How do we come to terms with suffering that seems undeserved? Suffering that seems to be unfair, unwarranted? And this is really the heart of the question that that the book of Job is going to wrestle with in seminary.

00:07:37:44 – 00:08:22:51
Clint Loveall
Michael and I would have learned this under the heading theodicy. Theodicy is essentially the shorthand academic answer for why do people suffer? Why is there suffering in a world created and managed and ordered by a good, loving God? How is suffering at home in that world? Why do people suffer now? I will warn you that if you if you approach the book of job believing you’re going to get clear cut, rock solid answers for those questions, you are likely to be disappointed.

00:08:22:51 – 00:08:54:58
Clint Loveall
And and I would say, Michael, that perhaps this is where the wisdom literature and philosophy do overlap, that ultimately the the power they offer is not in the answer they give, but in the struggle to go looking. And I, I don’t think there’s a better example of that in the entire scripture than the book of Job. The search for meaning is the point of this book, not some answer at the end, which I think will ultimately not be satisfactory.

00:08:55:02 – 00:09:24:15
Michael Gewecke
That is the tough hook for this series claims, because we live in a world, and I just think we need to show a little grace for ourselves and for others. We live in a world that has suffering. You don’t need us to tell you that. To know that that’s true. We have all brushed up against it ourselves, and sometimes we’ve actually set up our tent in the valley of it where we’re surrounded by it.

00:09:24:16 – 00:09:51:57
Michael Gewecke
It presses in on us. And if you are there right now, or if you have a memory of it, Clint, this is not the kind of topic that we think to ourselves. Well, I can’t wait to jump into that and to ask the question, God, where are you in this suffering? We this isn’t a light subject, right? That being said, we are often too afraid to engage it or we don’t know how.

00:09:51:57 – 00:10:17:26
Michael Gewecke
We don’t have the language. We don’t have the courage sometimes to really look suffering in the face and say, so if this is true, where is God in this well? Where is God’s presence and where is God’s hope and and how am I a part of this thing that I know is happening? And Clint, you and I being pastors, we’ve had both the privilege and also the pain of being with people in suffering.

00:10:17:31 – 00:10:39:36
Michael Gewecke
And we all respond to it at different times and in different ways. I’ve literally heard people take a kind of extreme responsibility, say, it’s all my fault, it’s all consequences from what I’ve done, which is sometimes a lot of the truth, but never completely true. And then I’ve heard people, you know, say, well, none of this is my fault, and it’s completely unfair.

00:10:39:36 – 00:11:14:47
Michael Gewecke
And then you say, well, but it is this really a task about assigning percentages, or is this about asking the question in light of the fact of what is the darkness, the pain, the struggle? It is this a moment in which we need to ask ourselves, who am I and and who? And where is God? And those conversations are simultaneous, though if we’re really going to stare suffering in the face, if we’re going to enter into the text with Jobe, we’re going to have to be willing to allow there to be layers in that conversation.

00:11:14:47 – 00:11:31:36
Michael Gewecke
We’re going to talk about characters another day. So I’m not going to go further down this road. But Clint, you can’t just read this book and say, well, this character said this. It’s true. You can’t read the book. And there are many arguments made. And Jobe makes it clear some of those arguments aren’t good. And some of those arguments are good.

00:11:31:40 – 00:11:54:13
Michael Gewecke
There’s complexity in this book for the purpose of pointing out to us that there’s not a simple rubber stamp answer, that you can just plop down on the book of job and say, this is what Joe wanted you to say, or to know, because it’s irreducibly complex. It’s intentionally trying to help us look into the heart of a dark and difficult thing.

00:11:54:18 – 00:12:32:40
Clint Loveall
I think I would go so far, Michael, and I’ll, I’ll probably say something like this in a few weeks when we wrap this book up. I think if you approach Joe looking for an answer, you will be disappointed. If you approach Joe willing to sit with suffering for a while, you may learn something. And therein, I think, is what makes Joe like life.

00:12:32:45 – 00:12:59:54
Clint Loveall
We ultimately won’t be able, with confidence to say why things do or don’t happen the way that they do or don’t happen. But if we’re willing to sit and to be uncomfortable in those moments, and to ask uncomfortable and difficult questions that may not have ready answers, I do think we have the opportunity to learn and to grow.

00:12:59:54 – 00:13:26:00
Clint Loveall
I think ultimately that’s job’s story, and I think the power in it is that it reflects our own story. And it’s interesting to hear you say that, you know, these are struggles for us. It is good to be reminded that the book of Job, at least some parts of the Book of Job, are thought to maybe be among the oldest scripture that we have.

00:13:26:00 – 00:14:02:06
Clint Loveall
Not not the whole book necessarily, but pieces of job are thought maybe to be very, very ancient. And if so, that reminds us that these are not new questions. For the centuries upon millennia that we have been asking, why we as of yet, even those of us who live in the umbrella of faith, we still don’t have clear or what I would say, certainly we don’t have easy answers to those difficult questions.

00:14:02:11 – 00:14:29:42
Clint Loveall
Though it is a very rare person who gets through life with the luxury of not having to ask them, very few of us make it through the days that we’re given without reflecting on suffering and and unfortunately, experiencing suffering. And so I do think this is a conversation that is deep, rich, profound, difficult, but extremely important.

00:14:29:42 – 00:14:35:44
Clint Loveall
And I think that job gives us lots of opportunities to to participate in it.

00:14:35:49 – 00:15:09:12
Michael Gewecke
Check me on this, Clint. It seems to me, and we’ll talk more about this when we talk structure. But it seems to me that one of the commitments we should make to each other as we enter into this study together is to start with the awareness that having doubts is not a new thing in the scripture, that having struggle with where is God in the midst of difficult places is not a thing that Scripture dances around.

00:15:09:12 – 00:15:43:35
Michael Gewecke
And we often I I’ve heard so many times I’ve felt it in myself. If my faith was stronger, I wouldn’t have doubt. If my faith was stronger, I would know what to believe in this situation. If my faith was fill in the blank. We always think that there’s a better version of us. I think job has a way of of bearing that from the start, that even when you say the right thing at the right time, that your heart might be in a completely different place, and that you can even come maybe with the right vernacular or vocabulary.

00:15:43:42 – 00:16:11:52
Michael Gewecke
And when you use it, you use it for the wrong purpose. And that realistically, one of the questions about Where’s God in the midst of our suffering hinges not upon the answer of Where is God? And can he be found in this exact, concrete moment? But what is our openness to trust that God is present even when we can’t see him, even when we’re in the world, when what does that mean when it, is a Christian, a person trying to hold the faith?

00:16:12:05 – 00:16:37:17
Michael Gewecke
I think sometimes, Clint, it it makes us uncomfortable. But the truth is, and we see this in not just Joe, we see this in the wisdom literature writ large that the moment you want to control the narrative of what God is, because you have it completely understood, is the moment it will slip from you. And so if that’s the standard you set for yourself, you’re going to struggle, I think, to read this book and to hear what it has to say to us.

00:16:37:31 – 00:17:09:29
Clint Loveall
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s fair to say, Michael, that job’s driving assertion is that his suffering is unfair, which is very close in his world to saying that God has gotten it wrong, that, yeah, that God is not acting in accord with the way God should act. And that’s an uncomfortable question. Certainly, it’s an uncomfortable faith question.

00:17:09:34 – 00:17:43:24
Clint Loveall
It is, without doubt, an uncomfortable question. When you’re in the midst of that kind of of struggle. But but again, and, and I know this is difficult because we often believe that above all else, the Bible has answers for us, which is is true. But but I would want to push back that more accurately. The Bible has meaning for us, and what it doesn’t answer, it still informs.

00:17:43:39 – 00:18:16:03
Clint Loveall
And so I think if we can, to whatever extent it’s possible, if we can enter the world and the story of Jobe with with as few assumptions as possible and with an open as mind as possible to truly try to listen, not to what we wish it said, but to what it is saying, we will be far more likely to bring something valuable back out of it with us.

00:18:16:08 – 00:18:32:18
Michael Gewecke
There’s a great summary word for today that we’re going to try to orient ourselves for the remainder of this week. If you are new here, this is a great time to hit subscribe, because it will make sure that you get the rest of the episodes as we go through Jobe together. Otherwise, certainly. Give us a comment.

00:18:32:18 – 00:18:38:43
Michael Gewecke
Let us know you were here. Like, so that, others can find it in their own study. And, friends, we will see you as we continue on tomorrow.

00:18:38:47 – 00:18:39:26
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.