The Dread of the Wild [in the Book of Job]

The Dread of the Wild [in the Book of Job]

If you have ever heard an atheist describe the wonder of creation, and the amazing facts scientists have learned about the natural world, you have heard the closest thing to atheist-worship:

The natural world is rightly perceived by the atheist as a world of splendor with mysteries both inexhaustible and searchable. The discovery of why an animal does this, or gravity does that, or why a star pulses in such a way is sometimes stunning and sends a jolt of awe through our being. It is actually right to do what the atheist does when he observes the creation and is filled with a religious awe (though he certainly needs the further step of acknowledging God).

In fact this curious observance of the natural world is the prescription of God toward complaining Job in the book of Job.

In fact, the world God describes to Job to answer his complaint about what we would call "the problem of evil" is familiar and horrifying.

Indeed the way a Richard Dawkins is taken in by the inexplicable nature of the stars, and animals is exactly the tact that God uses to dismiss Job's complaint of unjust treatment by the LORD.

But just as Job considered the world perfectly explicable all the way up to the providential mistreatment of him by God, so the Atheist stops short of the lesson of the much bigger cosmic reality surrounding this seemingly straightforward cosmos we inhabit.

We may - as Job did - herd cattle and other animals and become acquainted by their manners and know how to keep them healthy and happy for their produce. But what we lack in this over-familarity is the lack of wonder at what is before our eyes.

We think we know, but thinking we know, we lose the ability to see.

The summation of God's line-item explanation of his role as head of creation is this: ‘you don't even see stuff that surrounds you, so how can you tell me how to do my job’?

You see, when we "arrive" before the Lord, whether it is a happy or unhappy arrival, we will be quite surprised. We will suddenly become acquainted with a view of the world we were in with an entirely different set of eyes.

Our joys and sorrows will be shuffled and arranged in a much different manner.

Poor Job, whose book we scarcely dare to read because of the pain we have at seeing him lying there on the ground, complaining to the LORD, badgered for chapter-on-end by his "friends," is then always seen not only in his recompense of the Book of Job's last chapter, but also the countless lives who were comforted and restored by the lessons it contained.

We will see the Paparazzi-Tailed Elites as the beggars and paupers. We will never again look at the world's hierarchy in the same way. The devil, called a "god" in a fallen world, will be the most punished and miserable being of all eternity. No longer with an entourage but rather with unspeakable desolations eating his existence for all eternal time.

And so, we must, with dread like Job before the whirlwind, see the dreadful and unsearchable nature of the world around us. Let us confess, we certainly have some answers about the world which helps us exist in it and use it, but we don't *know*. We don't see.

We must open our eyes to the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, the grass of the field, the wind and the waves, the sun and the moon, and hear the unsearchable glory which is passing us by when we shrug, thinking "we know."

Nate