Making Sense of Things

Sometimes there's no making sense of things. At least that's the conclusion drawn by the biblical character Job. He doesn't understand why God has treated him unjustly, as if he were a reprobate.  Surely God knows his heart and yet he believes that God has taken from him everything he cares about. Job's theology acknowledges freewill but leaves little room for evil. And because of this, Job spends a majority of his book questioning and even challenging God (see Job 13:20-24).  He's so convinced of God's "sovereignty" that he's forced to accept a God who does evil in the world. As you can imagine, Job is having a crisis of faith. It never dawns on Job to question his theology instead of questioning God's character. That's the same dilema many Christians are faced with. They've been raised on such a hefty diet of God's sovereignty  that they cannot digest into their theology, a God of self-giving love.  In this post 9-11 era, this has contributed to a crisis of faith for many Christians. But the biblical tradition proclaims that the God we crucified on a cross 2000 years ago is at war against (to borrow from our baptismal liturgy) the spiritual forces of wickedness and the evil powers of this world. Isn't this the whole premise of the book of Revelations? The good news is, we know how this ends...God wins!