Job 21

Here Job finally answers, for himself though probably not his critics, the question of instant karma. His critics have been saying that he must have sinned against God to have such horrible things happen to him because "that is just how it works" (paraphrase). With powerful language Job answers them:

"How often is it that the lamp of the wicked put out?
That their calamity comes upon them?
That god distributes pain in his anger?
That they are like straw before the wind.
and like chaff that the storm carries away?
You say, 'God stores up their iniquity for their children,'
Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it"

Job spends most of the chapter talking about how pleasant their life is, their children singing and dancing, their calves born healthy and the weather so nice... with dinner parties and egg salad though they say to God 'Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways." If they are so wicked as to hate God then why are they not destroyed like Job has been?

I some how doubt Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar will acknowledge Job's point. Jesus however certainly agreed with Job here pointing out "God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust" and when a tower collapsed killing the workers people said it was because of some sin Jesus said "Be careful or something worse could happen to you." But my favorite would be in the Gospel of John when his disciples asked Jesus why this man was born blind, "For his sins or the sins of his parents?" Jesus does more than refute the instant karma argument which says if you do evil, evil will come to you, he answers why God who is all powerful, all knowing and all loving would not just allow but perhaps even to causes someone to be born blind. Jesus says "It was not for this man's sins or his parents' sins that he was born blind but so that God's power could be shown through him." God allows suffering so that He can reveal His character by comforting and healing that suffering.

Of course, the counter argument from the peanut gallery is "Wouldn't it have been better if God had simply never allowed any suffering to enter the world? Wouldn't the man still have an argument against God for the first 30 something years spent blind." My only answer is that we can not answer that question for other people. It is insufficient to answer this question "in theory" for someone else.

Now the cured blind man in John could have perhaps said "God you were wrong to have made me blind." But theoretical philosophers, such as myself, cannot say with justice if God's healing was worth the suffering endured. We can only answer for ourselves.

For myself... I have suffered a fair share of undeserved calamity, most of it in the first ten years of my life. I don't know how you can say "it could have been worse" fairly but certainly I have met people who have endured much worse. Still the result of what I did suffer caused great despair and my old motto "my world is cold and without hope" was not melodramatic but a common sense (almost bored) assessment of my life up to that point.

I can say for me who has suffered that God's healing extended through time and made the whole of my life a blessing rather than a curse and I praise Him and His wisdom in allowing what has happened in my life.