Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

by Philip Yancey

they cannot force you to love them. The fact that love does not operate according to the rules of power may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle — the kind we may secretly long for — do nothing to foster that love.

With remarkable consistency, the Bible’s accounts show that miracles — dramatic, showstopping miracles like many of us still long for — simply do not foster deep faith.

And if I ever wonder about the appropriate “spiritual” response to pain and suffering, I can note how Jesus responded to his own: with fear and trembling, with loud cries and tears.

Would it be too much to say that, because of Jesus, God understands our feelings of disappointment with him? How else can we interpret Jesus’ tears, or his cry from the cross? One could almost pour the three questions of this book into that dreadful cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God’s Son “learned obedience” from his suffering, says Hebrews. A person can only learn obedience when tempted to disobey, can only learn courage when tempted to flee.

Job is on trial. The point of the book is not suffering: Where is God when it hurts? The prologue dealt with that issue. The point is faith: Where is Job when it hurts? How is he responding?

What the book of Job is really about

Why the delay? Why does God let evil and pain so flagrantly exist, even thrive, on this planet? Why does he let us do slowly and blunderingly what he could do in an eyeblink? He holds back for our sakes. Re-creation involves us; we are, in fact, at the center of his plan. The Wager, the motive behind all human history, is to develop us, not God. Our very existence announces to the powers in the universe that restoration is under way. Every act of faith by every one of the people of God is like the tolling of a bell, and a faith like Job’s reverberates throughout the universe.

We tend to think, ‘Life should be fair because God is fair.’ But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life — by expecting constant good health, for example — then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment.

At once, the Cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love.

As Paul Tournier said, “Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either.”

And, because of Jesus, perhaps he does understand. At Gethsemane and Calvary in some inexpressible way God himself was forced to confront the hiddenness of God. “God striving with God” is how Martin Luther summarized the cosmic struggle played out on two crossbeams of wood. On that dark night, God learned for himself the full extent of what it means to feel God-forsaken.