Who Causes Your Suffering? The Sovereignty of God and Reality of Evil
by Christopher Ash
When suffering comes to us, we naturally —
instinctively — want to
know what or who has caused it. The answer to
that question often
affects how we respond to the pain. We focus
immediately on the
obvious causes. For an illness, we think about
what has gone wrong
with our body biochemistry. After an accident,
we visit and revisit
what happened, how it happened and whose fault
it was.
“When suffering comes to us, we naturally —
instinctively — want to
know what or who has caused it.” Tweet Share on
Facebook
When a so-called “natural” disaster strikes, we
may think about why
people were living where they lived, why the
early warnings didn’t
work, why the flood defenses were inadequate,
and so on. We want to
blame somebody or something. And, whether or not
we can blame a
human agent, behind all that we want to blame
God. For God — if
there is a God — must have something to do with
it all.
After that, we may react with bitterness,
recriminations, or
resentment. Perhaps these are specific, or maybe
we are just left
with a residual sense that we have been unfairly
treated. At the
beginning of the book of Job, Job suffers four
terrible tragedies
(Job 1:13–19) before losing his health (Job 2:7–
8). Two of the four
tragedies we might today call “natural
disasters” (although the
Bible never uses this expression); the other two
would perhaps come
under the label of “terrorism.”
God’s Job or Satan’s?
One of the deepest questions in the book of Job
is this: who caused
Job’s terrible sufferings? There is one clear
answer, given or
assumed by Job, by his three so-called
“comforters,” and by the
divinely-inspired storyteller. This answer is
expressed crisply at
the end of the book, where the narrator
describes how Job’s family
and friends “comforted him for all the evil that
the Lord had
brought upon him” (Job 42:11).
The Lord, the covenant God, is the one who
brought these sufferings
upon Job. He did not simply allow them; he
caused them to come upon
Job (the Hebrew verb here indicates active
causality). Job shows
that he knows this is true when he says, “. . .
the Lord has taken
away” (Job 1:21). He reiterates this conviction
when he says to his
wife, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall
we not receive
evil?” (Job 2:10). In saying this, the inspired
narrator indicates
that “Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
. . . Job did not
sin with his lips” (Job 1:22; 2:10). Job
believes God has done it;
and Job is right to believe this.
In both Job 2:10 and Job 42:11, the word
translated “evil” indicates
not moral evil, but disaster — things that are
terrible to
experience. The three friends share this
conviction. The most common
title for God in the book is “the Almighty”
(e.g. Job 5:17).
God’s Strange Servant
But under and alongside this shared conviction
of the active
sovereignty of God, there is an important
subsidiary conviction:
Satan causes Job’s sufferings. Satan (or, more
properly, “the Satan”
– this is more of a title than a name, and means
something like “the
adversary”) is a supernatural creature who has a
strange place in
the council or cabinet of the “sons of God”
(ESV) or “angels” (NIV).
He is utterly evil and malicious; and yet he has
a job to do. It is
his “hand” that actively strikes Job (Job 1:12;
2:6). So, in a
sense, he causes them. But as we see if we read
the book carefully,
he is not the ultimate cause.
“Satan is God’s strange servant to do the will
of God by afflicting
Job with suffering.” Tweet Share on Facebook
Older liberal commentators take the easy way out
of splitting Job
into a part in which God causes Job’s sufferings
and a part in which
Satan causes them. So, for example, H.H. Rowley
takes the words
“that the Lord had brought upon him” in Job
42:11 as simply
indicating the (erroneous) assumptions shared by
Job and his
friends. But these words are spoken by the
inspired narrator of the
story, so we must not take this erroneous,
albeit easy, way out.
But more responsible commentators recognize that
the Bible holds
these together. The parallel accounts of David’s
census demonstrate
this same parallelism of views. Who motivated
David to call this
census? The Lord did (2 Samuel 24:1); and Satan
did (1 Chronicles
21:1). The Bible — and the book of Job — hold
these together. Satan
is God’s strange servant to do the will of God
by afflicting Job
with suffering. Satan does this out of malice;
the Lord out of a
loving concern for his glory. Satan is — as
Luther so vividly put it
— “God’s Satan.”
Those who reject the sovereignty of God will
either ignore clear
verses on God’s sovereignty over our suffering
(like Job 1:21; 2:10;
42:11) or assign it (as Rowley does) to the
possibly mistaken view
of the human characters. Nevertheless, when
referring to the “evil”
that came upon Job, it is clear “that the Lord
had brought [it] upon
him” (Job 42:11). This is clear throughout the
book and it is
written for our instruction.
Evil for Our Ultimate Good
It is of great pastoral importance that we grasp
what the Bible
teaches about the causality of disaster when it
comes to believers.
There are two common mistakes. On the one hand,
we may neglect Satan
altogether and just assume that God rules the
world in a simple and
direct way. This is, I am told, close to the
view of Islam. Some
Christians tacitly assume this, but it is not
the teaching of the
Bible. On the other hand, we may think of Satan
as a second,
independent, autonomous power of evil, in which
case the universe
becomes a terrifyingly uncertain place, since we
may never be sure
whether God or Satan will win any particular
round of their contest.
“Satan strikes Job out of malice. The Lord
strikes Job out of a
loving concern for his glory.” Tweet Share on
Facebook
The Bible, however, teaches that God has chosen
to exercise his
absolute, direct, and intentional sovereign
government of the world
through the agency of his chosen council or
cabinet of intermediate
powers (the “sons of God” or “angels”), some of
whom are evil. These
powers have no autonomy whatsoever. And yet, in
the purposes of God,
they are significant and do exert influence, as
God has chosen that
they will.
To grasp this deep truth about the government of
the universe will
give Christian believers great confidence — for
the sovereignty of
God is unchallenged — and yet also great
realism, for we will take
seriously the role of supernatural evil in the
infinite wisdom of
God, who is himself utterly untouched by evil,
and yet who chooses
to weave evil into his purposes of ultimate
good.
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