Teeth Still Gnashing! - Father Dave's Blog

“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38:1-4)

Hi Fighter,

We’ve reached the pointy end of the Book of Job. It’s been a long and painful story of a good man who lost everything – his family, his possessions. his health, and his reputation – and was thrown on to the ash-heap. For thirty-seven chapters we watched Job struggle. He argued endlessly with his wife and friends, but all Job really wanted was to have it out with God directly – to go toe-to-toe with the Almighty in the way his ancestor, Jabob, once did (Genesis 32). Finally, just when all the combatants seem ready to fall in a crumpled heap, Job gets his wish. He gets a shot at the title. God emerges from the whirlwind and engages with him!

Of course, it’s not a fair fight. It was never expected to be. Job didn’t think he could win. All he wanted was the opportunity to face his antagonist. He gets that, and he learns from the encounter that his wisdom is never going to extend far beyond the ash-heap. He grasps something of the vast and intricate complexity of the created order. Of course he can’t understand the injustice he suffers. He can chalk that up alongside the billion other things going on around him that he can’t understand. The universe is complicated.

I’m not sure whether my summary does justice to this section of the Book of Job. Read it through and decide for yourself. Either way, I won’t delve any further into God’s response to Job as I don’t think it’s really the point of the book. Yes, God is responding to thirty-seven chapters of arguing and complaining, but I don’t believe the purpose of the Book of Job is to give us an answer to the mystery of suffering. I think the point of the book is to be found in these first thirty-seven chapters. What Job gives us is a model of engagement with God.

We talk about the patience of Job but, from the beginning, Job comes across as angry and impatient. Chapter 2, verse 10 said that, in all his fuming, “Job did not sin with his lips.” The implication though is that what was going on in his head was not something that could be repeated!

Job battles depression, argues with his wife, and fights with his friends – each of whom present theologically sound arguments as to why Job should just shut up and quietly accept his fate. Interestingly though, at the end of God’s exchange with Job, God says to Job’s friends, “I am angry with you … for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7) It seems that God was more pleased with Job’s angry fuming than with the facile rationality of his mates!

God expects us to fight! That’s what I get from the Book of Job. So often life doesn’t make sense. Stuff happens, and some would see the proper spiritual response as one of ‘Let it Be’ and learn to accept things the way they are. Indeed, that’s pretty much what Job’s wife and friends were saying, yet they ‘did not speak accurately about God’ as did Job!

I saw those images of children being burnt to death in the hospital in Gaza. I am never going to be OK with that. I will never accept that. I don’t understand how God can let that happen. I don’t expect I will ever understand it, but I will not stop asking God why, and I will keep fighting to stop things like that happening again!

I remember many years ago, when I was studying Aikido, some of the guys were talking about an event they had attended in Japan where their master was grading for a high-level black belt. They said he was wrestling with four other combatants and, eventually, the four had him completely pinned down – one on each arm and leg – but, they said admiringly, “his teeth were still gnashing”!

That’s the sort of fighter I want to be – overwhelmed at times but never admitting defeat. That’s the sort of fighter Job was. Yes, as the Serenity Prayer says, “we must accept the things we cannot change”, yet there are a whole lot of things that we can change, and perhaps some of those things that look unchangeable just require a bit more tenacity and stubborn effort, or perhaps we just have to wait a little bit longer for God to emerge from the whirlwind? Either way, we must keep fighting, believing that, in the end, justice will come.

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Eucharist last Sunday. A big thank you to Father Mark and to Rob. Listening again to the recording of our Bible Banter, our discussion was eerily reminiscent of the dialogue between Job and his friends. I’ve chosen a couple of ‘shorts’ below that illustrate this. I’ll let you decide who is playing the part of Job and who the friends, but I’m pretty sure none of us speak from the whirlwind. 😉

This Sunday I’m looking forward to having my good friends, Karyn Hemming and Andrew Logan with me on the panel, and I’m hoping that our Swedish brother, Father Ola, will also grace us with his wisdom. Do join us live from noon at TheSundayEucharist.com and on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn or Streamyard. I look forward to sharing this Eucharist with you.

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What’s On?

Sunday, October 20^th– Our Eucharist from midday via thesundayeucharist.com (or through Facebook , YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn or Streamyard).
Tuesday, October 22^nd – Boxing at The Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Thursday, October 24^th – Boxing at The Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Saturday, November 9^th–Father Dave vs. Tony Brazier. NSW Professional Master Title (6 rounds) @Cowra Showground

I do consider it a gift to still be fighting at age 62. I don’t know what I would do if I wasn’t able to fight. Of course, I’m not just talking about boxing, though that is an integral part of me. I mean the greater fight – the Good Fight – to which we have all been conscripted. We must keep fighting. If we don’t fight, we’ll be overwhelmed – in the ring as in all of life.

The spiritual war seems to have been particularly vicious this last week. I don’t think there is anything more despicable than burning children alive in a hospital. Humanity seems to have sunk to new levels of depravity. What can we do but to keep moving forward as best we can.

Thanks again to Mark who has continued to publish on www.israelandpalestine.org, and thanks to Diane too who started writing down her thoughts on the war this week – trying to make some sense of it all. We do need to make sense of things at some level but, as we know from Job, this can take time. For now, as we say in boxing, we keep our hands up and ensure we don’t give away any free shots.

Your brother in the Good Fight,