How to contemplate tragedy
Verse of the day: Why have waves of death surrounded me, torrents of wickedness have terrified me?God’s way is perfect. (2 Samuel 22:5, 31)
- After the loss of his ten children due to a natural disaster (Job 1:19).
- Job said.
- “The Lord gave him and the Lord took him; Blessed be the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:21).
- At the end of the book.
- The inspired writer confirms Job’s understanding of what happened.
- Does he say that Job’s brothers and sisters comforted him with all the evil that the Lord had sent him? (Job 42.
- 11).
Does this have many crucial implications for us when we think of the great tragedy that occurred on December 26, 2005 in the Indian Ocean, one of the deadliest natural disasters recorded?
Satan participated in Job’s misery, but did not have decisive participation. God gave Satan permission to afflict Job (Job 1. 12; 2. 6). But Job and the author of this book see God as the final and decisive cause. When Satan afflicts Job with wounds, Job said to his wife, “We have received the good of God, and will we not also receive evil?(Job 2. 10), and the writer calls these satanic tumors “the evil the Lord sent him?”(Work 42. 11). Therefore, Satan is real. Satan brings misery. But Satan is neither supreme nor decisive. He’s under arrest. It does not go beyond what God allows decisively.
God claims power over tsunamis in Job 38:8 and 11, when He rhetorically asks Job, “Or who closed the sea with doors when it erupted from the womb?”And he said, so far you will come and no more, and here the Pride of your waves shall be broken?Psalm 89: 8-9 states: “SEIGNOR? You dominate the fury of the sea; when their waves go up, do you like them?. And Jesus himself still has control over the mortal threats of the waves today: “Jesus, he rebuked the wind and fury of the water. Everything stopped and calm came?” (Luke 8. 24). In other words, even if Satan had caused the earthquake, God could have stopped the waves.
Your goals are not simple. Job was a pious man, and his miseries were not God’s punishment (Job 1. 1,8). Its purpose was to purify, not punish (Job 42. 6). But we do not know the spiritual condition of Job’s children, he was certainly concerned about his children (Job 1. 5). God could have taken their lives in court. If this is true, then the same calamity has finally turned out to be mercy for Job and judgment about his children. This is true for all calamities. They mix judgment and mercy, they are both punishment and purification. Suffering, and even death, can be both judgment and mercy.
The most obvious illustration of this is the death of Jesus; it was both judgment and mercy. It was Jesus’ judgment because he took our sins (not his own), and it was mercy for us who believe that he endured our punishment (Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 2:24) and that it is our righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Another example is the curse on this fallen earth: those who do not believe in Christ experience it as a judgment, but believers experience it as a merciful, if painful, preparation for glory. “For creation is subject to vanity, not voluntarily, but by the one who submitted it, with hope?(Romans 8. 20) It’s God’s submission.
When the Bible says, “Do you cry with those who cry? (Romans 12:15), he does not add: “Unless God has made us cry. “Job’s work would have been better to cry with him than to talk so much. This does not change, when we discover that Job’s suffering ultimately came from God. No, it’s fair to cry with those who are suffering. Pain is pain, no matter who causes it. We’re all sinners. Empathy does not arise from the causes of pain, but from the company of pain And in that, we are all together.
This is the meaning of mercy: undeserved help. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you?”(Luke 6. 27).
By: John Piper, © Desire God? Solid joys. Original: December 26th? How to contemplate the tragedy, © 2017 Faithful Ministérium. All rights reserved. Website: MinisterioFiel. com. br. Translation: Camila Rebeca Almeida. Review: André Alo-zio.
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