In the end, rather than an answer, Job gets an exhaustive divine tour of creation, some fairly stern reminders that he was responsible for bringing precisely none of this into existence, and a rather loud “shut up and know your place!”  Not exactly the happy ending we were hoping for.  Not exactly the nice logical solution to the problem of evil and suffering we would prefer.

Indeed, not only do we not get an answer for the problem of evil, we don’t even get much help in thinking about the question of whether or not worship and obedience of God ought to be done primarily for the benefits they can secure.  In fact, the ending positively complicates things for us.  Job gets his stuff back—he gets his livestock and his wealth back, even some new kids to replace the ones he lost (!)—thus suggesting that he is getting his prize for faith after all.  Perhaps most confusing of all, God says that Job, with all of his groaning and complaining and lamenting, all of his insistence upon his own righteousness, had spoken rightly of God, while the three friends who insisted upon a one-to-one correspondence between virtue→reward and sin→suffering, had not.

It’s a rather bewildering picture.  Both Job and his three friends expected life with God to work like a formula.  Job was complaining because the formula didn’t seem to be working, his friends were insisting that it was working just fine thank you, and the sooner you, Job, realize that you’re on the wrong end of it, the better.  Both Job and his three friends are rebuked at the end, but for very different reasons—Job for his presumption, his friends for their… well, for their what?  For their lack of compassion?  For their expectation that God worked like a formula?

Why do we cast our lot with this God?  If we can’t count on faith and obedience to produce goodies for us in this life, what about the next one?  That is, after all, the ultimate prize.  Even if we throw up our hands and despair of figuring out any connection between virtue and reward in this life, we can always look to eternity for our prize, right?

Well, yes, actually.  Eternal life is described throughout Scripture as a kind of “reward” at the end of the race well run, as compensation for sufferings endured, as the fulfillment of hopes left unfulfilled.  We may never experience a consistent connection between virtue and reward on the micro level, but the Christian hope is that the macro story is one where our intuitive longing for this connection will be finally validated.

Of course, many will ridicule this.  It’s an intellectual cop-out, an easy answer.  It just pushes the “explanation” beyond any parameters within which we might evaluate it!  It’s a little too convenient to just say that heaven will heal the wounds of earthly existence.  At its worst, it keeps those who are suffering compliant and submissive, content to accept their plight because they have eternity to look forward to.

But perhaps at the absolute rock bottom level, the question we are faced with is this.  Is there goodness and meaning behind this story of the cosmos and humanity within it, or isn’t there?  If our answer is no, then we ought to be content to abandon our expectation that there be any connection between virtue and reward, and we should stop criticizing God (or his followers) because the world doesn’t work this way.

But if our answer is  yes—if we do believe that whatever our present experience, our story was birthed in and is being guided by meaning and goodness—then we perhaps ought not to be too ashamed to expect, to hope for, even to demand that these same things show up at the end as well.

Ryan Dueck