Wondering When You’d Rather Not

Sept 15, 2020 | Shayley Martin DC ‘22

You can wonder at something—stand in awe of it, find yourself unable to explain it—and you can wonder about something—examine it, ask questions about it. Human beings can do both at the same time, which is why toddlers go through the “asking 400 questions a day” phase. Say a little kid loves pulling carrots. The way they grow underground is so mind-blowing to her that she yanks them up too early, just to marvel at them. She also asks constant questions: Why are they orange? How do the roots grow if they can’t see the sun?

A liberal arts education is just the grown-up version of the 400-questions phase. We wonder at the topics we study; they grip us and don’t let go. We learn under professors who have each wondered so hard at something as to make it their life’s work. We’re not driven purely by respect for truth and hard evidence––we want the truth because we’re in awe of the subject matter. And the way we express that awe on paper, and the way we hope to strike other people with it, is to wonder about the specifics. How does the author construct meaning in this poem? What does this DNA sequence look like? People stay motivated to keep investigating hard questions only because they refuse to separate wondering at and wondering about.

But what about when life is hard? When we confront suffering and fear and despair and our own deep flaws, we can find plenty of painful questions to wonder about. If we were made by a God who is all-knowing and intricate, then how can our everyday lives feel so tedious and aimless? Is He really good? Does He really care about us? If God is perfectly just, then why do good people suffer? Why is there no courtroom where we can contest suffering?

During hard times, Christians also confront the fact that God is there watching as we struggle. Is this mostly silent, constantly invoked and variously interpreted God really somebody we can wonder at? Where are we supposed to get our awe from, when we don’t even feel like getting up in the morning? Can we be reverent in surroundings that don’t make any sense?

Should we? Is it a waste of time? Maybe we should throw out our reverence so that we can really start to question injustice and pain––isn’t that the only way to analyze things impartially, and eventually see improvement? Or maybe, in order to hold onto our reverence, we should stop asking questions––who’s to say that the hard ones even have answers, much less ones that we would like? For example: If God wants us to love and care for other people, then why is He allowing a global pandemic that punishes us for getting near them?

According to the story of Job, we should keep both our reverence and our hard questions.

In the Bible there’s a guy named Job. No sorrow in my life—or probably yours—has ever come close to his. At first, everything was going great––he was healthy, wealthy and respected, and he had a wonderful family. But Satan came up with a plan to take away these perks in order to find out whether Job would still love God, and God approved that plan. So God allowed Job’s family to die, and allowed Job himself to be afflicted with an illness so painful that Job actually wished for death.

Job did a lot of wondering about in those days, questioning aloud how the world was run and how fates were meted out. He presupposed a few things: that his own personal understanding was limited, and that God was good. And then he asked away, voracious for answers. He longed for some courtroom where he could file suit, or at least for some opportunity to confront God and talk matters out.

If only I knew where to find him;

if only I could go to his dwelling! 

I would state my case before him

and fill my mouth with arguments.

I would find out what he would answer me,

and consider what he would say to me.

Job 23:2-5

The Book of Job is not a monologue. His wife told him to curse God and die, that is, to stop wondering both at and about. In other words, Just. Give. Up. Four of Job’s friends also chimed in periodically. Their contribution was basically this: “Job! Quit questioning God, He knows better than you. He is so much higher than us; what can we hope to learn about Him anyway?”  Their approach was the “wonder at, but not about” approach. In other words, they told him to Suck. It. Up. 

Can you fathom the mysteries of God?

Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?

They are higher than the heavens above—what can you do?

They are deeper than the depths below—what can you know?

Their measure is longer than the earth

and wider than the sea.

If he comes along and confines you in prison

and convenes a court, who can oppose him?

Job 11:7-10

But Job refused. He would not suck it up. He had seven dead sons and three dead daughters. Boils rose from his flesh as he sat in the dust. He had questions, and not abstract questions— concrete, serious, sorrowful questions, such as “God, you said yourself that I’m righteous; why are you working against me?” Job was scared and probably deathly tired, and nobody around him supported his line of inquiry. Yet he refused to stop talking to God.  

But he stands alone, and who can oppose him?

He does whatever he pleases.

He carries out his decree against me,

and many such plans he still has in store.

That is why I am terrified before him;

when I think of all this, I fear him. 

God has made my heart faint;

the Almighty has terrified me. 

Yet I am not silenced by the darkness,

by the thick darkness that covers my face.

Job 23:15-17

Then all of a sudden, after chapters and chapters of sorrow piled on sorrow, God spoke. He did not actually answer Job’s questions about why He acted as He did. Instead He says (and this is a very loose paraphrase), “You have been right to wonder about Me. Now wonder at Me. This is who I am. I am answering you with Wonder. I am answering with Myself.” 

Can you raise your voice to the clouds

and cover yourself with a flood of water?

Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?

Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?

Who gives the ibis wisdom

or gives the rooster understanding?

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?

Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens

when the dust becomes hard

and the clods of earth stick together?

Job 38:34-38

Then He scolded Job’s friends, the “just-suck-it-up” friends, and gave Job the gift of a new family, plus twice the wealth he had before.

The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so Job died, an old man and full of years.

Job 42:2-17

Wonder can come from inconvenience, disappointment, or, in Job’s case, life-wrecking pain. It is easy to stop wondering at and about God because the answers may come too close to us, impose on us, show us how little we really know. Or because, like Job’s friends ended up doing, we’re afraid to say the wrong thing. 

Sometimes Job did say the wrong thing. For example, several times he accused God of trying to kill him, which was factually inaccurate. But God honored his words in the end, saying that Job alone out of the five men had spoken rightly. If we wonder, we probably will say the wrong thing, and quite often—but God can take it. 

Maybe we give up on wonder not because we’re afraid of having to change or being wrong or blaspheming, but because we’re tired and burnt out, and we don’t know where to start. Job was probably tired, too—he was sick and bereaved and spent a lot of time crying. But instead of jumping immediately into trying to recover what Satan took from him––he could, after all, have tried to regain his wealth and livestock from scratch—he sat on an ash heap and thought and talked. He started with a hypothesis: God is good and always acts rightly. That one central thought pulled him along when his energy fled, and when his friends ripped apart his arguments. 

Job did something hard. He asked God questions; he poured them out earnestly and un-self-consciously. And he asked constantly. He didn’t get lazy or cynical; he didn’t excuse himself from the conversation. When his friends told him it was better to keep quiet, he kept talking with them, too, reeling them into the discussion. His obvious suffering and sincerity forced them to  confront the very questions that they discouraged him from asking.

Job didn’t suck it up, not until he heard from God. His friends told him that he could choose either reverence or indignation, but he clung to both. He despaired, but he didn’t stop asking why and how and when, except to listen for a response. And as he sat on the ashes, in the lowest possible spirits, he still looked forward to meeting the same God that he accused and cried out at. He insisted, 

And after my skin has been destroyed,

yet in my flesh I will see God;

I myself will see him

with my own eyes—I, and not another.

How my heart yearns within me!

Job 19: 26-27

Job was never given an explanation for his suffering, but an explanation certainly existed: anyone who reads the first few chapters of Job knows exactly why God let Job’s life be torn apart. Job also asked for a mediator, someone to speak with God on his behalf and protect him from God’s anger (Job 9:32-35), and he didn’t get that either. But long after Job died, God became a human being, Jesus, in order to provide the mediation that Job described. 

Job wondered about, and God was pleased with his questions, even if He didn’t answer them to Job’s satisfaction within his lifetime. Job wondered at, and waited and waited, and then God showed Himself, His complexity and power, His care for big and small creatures alike.

It’ll be tough and confusing sometimes, but like Job, let’s do both kinds of wondering about God. We may not end up with the answers we set out for, but if we seek Him with our whole hearts, we will find God Himself (see Jeremiah 29:13). And that’s even better.

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