Job is tested, through an unpleasant discussion between God and Satan, almost a wager. Go ahead, test him, but don’t harm him, God tells Satan. Job loses everything, his family, his wealth, his health. His friends taunt him, trying to prove to him that God couldn’t be loving, or couldn’t even exist, if God’s letting all this horrible stuff happen. Other than retaining his life, Job holds on to one thing. His faith.
It’s an interesting irony, that for Job to cry out that he cannot perceive God, that God’s not there, there’s an implicit and deep belief that God is.
There’s a phenomenon that happens with people of faith that some call the dark night of the soul. It’s that period of deep doubt, and darkness where God feels distant. Despite being such a beacon of light and God’s love, Mother Teresa experienced this sense of separation from God for years and years. Her personal writings were released after her death in a troubling book, Come be my Light. It recounts her deep sense of the absence of God. Looking at her life, you’d not know.
When all hell breaks loose, when God feels distant, when we doubt God’s providential love, it’s interesting that this is often when our faith shines through like a spotlight. I say that because to cry out to God, to wonder where God is in the midst of the storm or test, all of that demonstrates a deep faith that God is.
For me, when I see a beautiful mountain vista, or the dew on a new flower, or get a hug from my husband, it’s easy to praise God. Happy feelings equals gratitude for God. Beauty equals praise for creation. That’s not really faith, as much as it is acknowledging that God does equal goodness. I substitute God for my internal emotional response to good things. Commutative property. God=Good, therefore Good=God.
But when things are hard like they were for Job, when you see immense pain and suffering like Mother Teresa, you don’t have the luxury of that simple equation. Yes, God=Good. But if you don’t sense the Good, does that mean Not Good=No God? For these people of faith, the answer was no. They continued to pray, to believe in God, despite this equation being all messed up.
This morning, I’m thinking about how easy it is for us to unintentionally reduce God to an oversimplified algebra equation, and how easy it is to lose our faith, as a result. If we attribute only some of our life’s experiences to God, we risk not seeing God in the rest life. I am not suggesting that it’s easy to see God in the pain, or the loss. But to even acknowledge that God is there too is to break open that over-simplified God=Good thinking.
Today, I want to think about what my equation for God would be, if that’s even a thing. Yes, God=Good. But God is also in the void, the absence, the lonely, the dying, the pandemic affected. I want to be a person who behaves as if I believe God equals all. In everything I’m sensing, feeling, thinking, fearing, mourning, loving. God is.
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