Human suffering, as opposed to that of animals, transcends the realm of the “phenomenological” to that of self-conscious interpretation. The purely animal mind is immersed in the present moment, and its suffering (though real) is experienced without context, without a story, with no sense of meaning or ulterior cosmic purpose.

When Job was tested by God, he was immersed in a religious philosophy that provided a “map” for ordering the temporal circumstances, or phenomena, of human life. Good and evil were descriptive categories grounded in God’s approval or disapproval of a person’s character and choices. If evil things happened, then, God was expressing his disapproval of the behavior or character of the person; if good things happened, God was expressing his approval…

This was the rather crude idea of “karma” that lay behind much religious superstition and nonsense of that time. If a person suffered, then God disapproved of the person (or ignored him), and conversely, if God approved of the person, suffering would not occur. And it was sometimes unclear exactly what pleased God or offended him, ideas of “luck” and “chance” blended in with superficial notions of moral cause and effect. Superstitious religiosity thus sought to improve a person’s spiritual condition by “bribing” God through flattering words or rituals, or by seeking his approval by doing good deeds….

Meister Eckhart once said that we need God to deliver us from “God,” by which he meant that we need the revelation of truth to deliver us from our illusions of who God is and what God is like. After all, people tend to make God in their own image, and yet the LORD forbids all such forms of idolatry. We need God to know the truth about God.

This might explain Job’s wife’s response to the loss of her home, her children, and the tortuous suffering of her husband. “Curse God and die” she counseled, which might mean: “Everything you’ve believed about God is an illusion – you have been ‘religious,’ you have been pious of heart, you have been a good man, and yet all this woe has befallen us… You seek for answers using terms of a religious philosophy to get us through life, and for awhile that map seemed to work, but now it has shown itself to be untrue, or at least it is powerless to help you. Forget the map! Forget the attempt to decipher why you (and me) are suffering – for the map itself has led you astray, and there is nothing left but to let it all go – to die to all that….”

On the face of it we tend to condemn Job’s unnamed wife for being faithless, but just imagine what she was going through at the time, alongside her husband…. Her words of exasperation were unsettling, to be sure, but they were the words of someone who was greatly suffering and in need of grace….

The religious philosophy of karma runs deep within the human heart, even among the Jewish people. The law itself is karmic. How else could the “good Pharisee” pray: “I thank you God, that I am not like other men…” His gratitude was based on his comfort that he had played the “game” of religion better than others. Is that the best that legalistic Judaism can offer?

Among other things, the Book of Job “deconstructs” the religious idea of God as strictly karmic to be something more than we can fathom, as King Solomon later said during the dedication of the Holy Temple, “Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).

And yet is this not the very thing we must do, to “make a place” for God within us? “Let them make for me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them” – וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם (Exod. 25:8). Moses’ instruction to build a Mishkan was symbolic, of course, for the people were acquainted with the vast glories of the Egyptian temples, pyramids, and so on. By contrast, the Mishkan was small, humble, and nearly inconspicuous; it represented God’s Presence in disguise, unseen by proud eyes, but the very place of the Spirit of God and truth (Isa. 45:15). “Building a Mishkan” then meant “enshrining faith, hope, and love” within our hearts, beautifying and magnifying the greatness of God within us. It is an idea of God that goes well beyond “mechanical karma” to that of deep heart relationship with the Lord…

God spoke to Job from the midst of the whirlwind (סְעָרָה), and it was from the midst of the head-spinning revelation that he heard God speak…. But how did Job get there? Was it not only after he had rebuffed the religious philosophy or “map” that his friends sought to justify his sufferings? Job was adamant, however: that map didn’t work – “God” had failed him; “God” had hurt him unjustly, etc. All this “God-talk” was just that – ignorant blather used to justify the old news of karma – but something more else was going on – truth was beginning to be revealed. Using Eckhart’s terms, God was delivering Job from his illusions about “God.”

How did Mary Magdalene come to know the truth? How did the unnamed tax collector at the Temple who dared not lift up his eyes toward heaven? How did Jonah? How did you? Indeed, how can anyone come to know God apart from having their “world” crumble into dust and ashes before them? And in the midst of the implosion, in the eye of the whirlwind that churns overhead, God then speaks words to the heart…

Whatever the words are – divine poetry of the sort Job heard or something else, it doesn’t matter so much what is being said but who is saying the words, that is, who is looking upon you in all your frailty, brokenness, and ruin – whatever the words, then, what is crucial is that the person hears, the person believes, the person is wholly engaged before the One who is beyond all our understanding, and the One who is beyond all our understanding then condescends and speaks into our tears, imparting peace that is beyond all our understanding – peace that is essentially ineffable, incommunicable – an inner sense of knowing that (despite everything) “all is well, and all manner of thing shall be well…”

Did God answer Job’s question, then? Yes he did, for he gave Job what his heart needed most of all. Like the distinction between the “good Pharisee” and the “bad tax collector,” God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts than our thoughts, and therefore his Spirit “cuts through the soul and the spirit, and the joints and the marrow” to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12). We are whatever we are by the grace of God, and faith is the “substance of hope” that affirms that this story, our story, is a good one, no matter what may happen. Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind.

“For we don’t live for ourselves or die for ourselves. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom. 14:7-8). Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). “In me is darkness, but with You light; I am lonely, but You do not leave me; I am feeble in heart, but with You is help; I am restless, but with You is peace. In me is bitterness, but with You is patience; I do not understand Your ways, but You know the way for me” (Bonhoeffer). “Let me seek you in the darkness of my silence, and find you in the silence of Your light, which is love shining as the sun, flowing like the river, and joying like the heart” (Meister Eckhart).

“The whole world sighs…” (Apostle Paul). “It is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning” (Merton). Amen, the final word is found in the resurrection life of our Lord, the one who emptied himself, clothed himself in our frailty, and overcame the sickness of death on our behalf.

God is both infinitely just and infinitely loving, and both of these “attributes” are inseparably a part of who he is. God is One. Nonetheless, the cross of Yeshua proves that “love is stronger than death, passion fiercer than the grave; its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame, the very flame of the Lord” (Song. 8:6). Amen, and shalom to you, chaverim.

 

Hebrew Lesson:

 

• Jer. 31:3b Hebrew page (pdf)

 

 

“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance” (Bonhoeffer: Cost of Discipleship). It’s “cheap” because it is offered as salve for a guilty conscience, a “get out of hell free” card that makes no demand and costs you nothing to possess… “Cheap grace is the idea that ‘grace’ did it all for me so I do not need to change my lifestyle. The believer who accepts the idea of ‘cheap grace’ thinks he can continue to live like the rest of the world. Instead of following Christ in a radical way, the Christian lost in cheap grace thinks he can simply enjoy the consolations of his grace” (ibid). Because it denies the radical problem of our sin, however, “cheap grace” offers a correspondingly shallow solution to what brings utmost anxiety and despair to the human heart. Indeed, those who disregard the seriousness of sin correspondingly disregard the significance of grace, as Yeshua said: “To whom little is forgiven, the same loves little” (Luke 7:47).

There is a high cost for the grace of forgiveness, friends, first of all seen in the priceless sacrifice of Yeshua who died a harrowing and bloody death to make it “theologically possible” for us to be forgiven, and secondly, as seen in the wholesale demand to surrender our lives to God in response to his compassion toward us. Forgiveness is not just about our individual acts of sin – those various moral failures and perversities of heart we all have perpetrated – but is about our inner life and about who we ultimately are. Forgiveness is not accidental to our lives but is necessary and essential. We are not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. The root of our sinful condition is the lethal sickness called “spiritual death.”

On the other hand, “costly grace” redeems and transforms the sinner. It is costly because it required all of God’s heart, soul, mind and strength, and therefore it likewise requires all our heart, soul, mind, and strength in response… “Salvation is free (for you), but discipleship will cost you your life.” We do not receive God’s grace as license to coddle our lower nature but to enter into a new realm of existence as a child of God who desires righteousness to reign within our hearts. When Yeshua says to the trusting sinner, “Go and sin no more,” he meant “Go in the reality of my love; go in the awareness of my grace; go in the assurance of my acceptance… and you will then sin no more.” We best deny ourselves when we forget ourselves in the glory and beauty of our Lord….

Of course we can’t do any of this in our own strength. We are saved from ourselves only by the miracle of God. “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the LORD of Hosts (Zech. 4:6). To those who “receive” him, God gives power (i.e., ἐξουσία, transcendent being) to become children of God. They are those “who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). This is the miracle that comes by faith, for faith “receives” the promise and trusts in God’s power to do the impossible for us.

 

Hebrew Lesson:

 

• Psalm 51:1 Hebrew page (pdf)

 

Many of us deal inner conflicts, self-reproach, and meagerness of faith…  It is reported that on his deathbed Rev Zusya said, “I am not afraid that the Holy One will ask me, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Moses?’ Rather, I fear the Holy One will say, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Zusya?'” This Hasidic story is interesting because, on the one hand, how could Zusya be anyone other than he is? and on the other, why is Zusya afraid that he is not who he should be? Zusya’s parable reveals that there is an inner conflict in his soul. He senses that has not lived as he ought, that he has failed himself (and God), and that he is lost in the rift between the ideal and the real… His struggle, then, is with himself. Who he is and who he thinks he should be are at odds within his heart.

The question of who we are supposed to be haunts us, and consciousness of the failure to practice our ideals leads to a sense of guilt, anxiety, and shame. For those who believe in Yeshua the question is essential to the question of what it means to be an authentic disciple. How are we to live before God and be accountable for what we do? For instance, we read Yeshua’s message in the Sermon on the Mount and we eventually realize – if we are honest with ourselves – that it is not within our nature to be able to do as he teaches, and this leads us to a despair not unlike that which Zusya experienced. A divided house cannot stand….

Rev Zusya’s despair can be remedied only by overcoming the inner divide through a personal relationship with Yeshua, for salvation is not simply deliverance from the accusations of conscience (i.e., the verdict of the law) but constitutes the healing grace that delivers us from ourselves. Yeshua did not die on the cross to simply take away our sins, but to create within us indestructible new nature that it no longer enslaved to the power of sin. The message of the gospel is that your heart can, and ultimately will be, transformed by the miracle of God.

Salvation is not a matter of “religion” or of man’s attempt to justify himself by some kind of reformation of character. Yeshua is not the “second coming of Moses,” after all. Try as you might to live a “good life,” keep the commandments, and aspire to elevate yourself spiritually, you will eventually come to realize that it is impossible to change yourself. You will then be faced with a decision: either to deceive yourself about who you are, or to be honest and confess your wretched and hopeless condition. This is the “lawful use of the law,” that reveals the “ought-to-be” self so that the gap between the ideal and the real becomes unsurpassable, and we know ourselves as lost sinners who are in peril over ourselves…

In our natural estate we are “fallen,” shattered of heart, full of trouble “as the sparks fly upward.” As Simone de Beavoir once wrote: “In the very condition of man there enters the possibility of not fulfilling who he is” (Ethics of Ambiguity). The breach between who we are and what we ought to be creates a sense of alienation from ourselves, a “shadow self” that we deny, suppress, or try to control. In a moment of rare lucidity, the “natural man” cries out to God: “What do you want from me?” This is the moment when truth has its opportunity, when the heart is stirred to confess its need for deliverance and to accept God’s love, despite the brokenness and incoherence of life.

When we escape from the “hard yoke” of our laws, and our vain attempts at self-justification, we do not encounter yet another set of laws, or yet another heavy yoke, but rather we take hold of the love of God, a personal love, and we engage in relationship with God as the central (and unifying) reality of our lives. Deliverance from ourselves is not found in religious (or “spiritual”) recipes of any kind but in our connection with the truth of who God really is, trusting in his love and healing for all that we are, have been, and ever shall be, amen.

“Salvation is of the LORD,” which means that God does the work of righteousness within you. When you say “I can’t,” you are either looking at yourself or at God. If you are looking at yourself, “I can’t” is better understood as “I won’t,” and the problem then is a lack of faith. On the other hand, if you are looking to God, “I can’t” is followed by “but You can, O Lord” and faith trusts that God will complete the good work that he has begun in you.

It has been said that God sends each soul into the world with a special message to deliver, a revelation that only he or she can disclose… No one else can bring your message to this world – only you can do this. And since God is entirely unique, you are called to be who you were created to be, and not someone else. As George MacDonald once said, “I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.” That’s the good news of the gospel, friends: God not only saves us from ourselves, he remakes us to be true bearers of his image and likeness. He works all things together for his glory and our good. Amen, let it be so, O Lord.

 

By the grace of God I am what I am.”
(xάριτι δὲ θεοῦ εἰμι ὅ εἰμι)

Hebrew Lesson

 

• Ezek. 36:26a Hebrew page (pdf)