Post
by steve » Wed Aug 25, 2010 3:46 pm
I see the implications of 1 John 3:8 and Matthew 5 considerably differently, but I see no need to belabor those points. I would clarify, however, that your last paragraph seemed to misrepresent or misunderstand my position.
1. I do not see God "actively involved in torturing" anybody—whether they are good or bad. The Book of Job does not see God as the active agent in Job's troubles, and neither do I. It is clear from the beginning that Satan is the initiator and actor throughout Job's ordeal. God is the passive agent, but one who chooses to be passive without that being His only option. God chose to allow Satan to afflict Job, and He must have done so for a good reason. It was also Satan who engineered the crucifixion of Christ, though Jesus saw His Father's fingerprints all over it. So did the Prophet, who wrote, "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him" (Isa.53:10). All that Satan did to Job or to Jesus (or to you and me) is done "on God's watch" (Matt.10:29), and it is His to decide whether or not to permit it. When He does permit suffering, we accept it, as Jesus did, as something chosen for us by "a faithful Creator" (1 Peter 4:19).
2. To say that Job was "blameless" is true, and certainly would make God out to be a scoundrel if He saw fit to punish him. But this is not the explanation of Job's sufferings. They were not a punishment. His friends thought that they were, but they were rebuked for their comments.
Job was tested. Just like Jesus, and the rest of us, Job was in a school of faith and obedience, in which tests are given. When professors give tests to their students, they are not thereby punishing them—even if the student finds the taking of a test to be "torturous."
Seen yet another way, though Job was blameless (and therefore not in need of punishment), yet he was part of a spiritually sick race, and (like the rest of us) was a patient in God's hospital. Surgery is not punishment for the sick patient. Nor does God punish believers, for whom "there is no condemnation." The cancer-ridden child that sees every surgery permitted by his father as a punishment will certainly have difficulty loving his dad. But neither will it give any peace to the child to think that his father is helpless to spare him from the capricious whims of a mad surgeon.