The Problem of Suffering: What Missionaries Should Learn from Job
Jamie Bissmeyer (MDiv, ThM, PhD, The Master’s Seminary) serves as the Academic Dean at Grace Life Theological Seminary in Visakhapatnam, India. His research interests include the book of Job, hermeneutics, and justification.
Suffering may be mankind’s most prevalent experience. Missionaries on the field inevitably encounter affliction, and they need to be able to think through human suffering, whether caused by disaster or injustice, in their ministry context. This essay examines the problem of justice and human suffering from the standpoint of the Book of Job and the suffering Job experienced. It argues that for the church, the primary comfort in suffering does not come from a change in circumstances or greater justice. Rather, a person’s comfort and joy in life comes from faith in a caring God who will overcome suffering in the end. The aim of this essay is to encourage missionaries around the world, as they remain diligent in mercy ministries and in serving the poor, to keep their focus on the hope of the gospel as humanity’s ultimate and only certain solution to injustices and suffering.
Job’s Theology of Suffering
The Book of Job affirms that human suffering is real and prevalent in the world. Job is largely an extended dialogue between Job—a blameless and upright man who suffers the devastating losses of his wealth, children, and health in quick succession (Job 1–2)—and four friends who, hearing of Job’s affliction, come and seek to counsel him through it (2:11; 33:1). All of the speakers in Job agree that suffering is not simply something that happens arbitrarily but is a symptom of mankind’s fallenness and separation from God (4:17–21; 7:17–18). Suffering thus does not happen in a vacuum. Behind hardships is the question of what those hardships potentially imply about how God administers justice in this world.
Job’s friends viewed suffering as a simple outworking of God’s judgment upon sinners: All suffering is God’s retribution for specific sins committed, while all material blessing is a reward for obedience (Job 4:7–9). Thus, to them human suffering was not a problem needing a solution but divine judgment for a specific sin that ought to lead a sinner to repentance (5:17).
Job’s understanding of suffering was more complex. The reader knows the reason for Job’s affliction. Rather than judgment for a specific sin he committed, his afflictions were Satan’s tempting and God’s testing (Job 1:6–12; 2:1–6). Moreover, Job blessed God and accepted his emotional and physical hardships (1:20–22; 2:9–10). Over time, though, he began to doubt the goodness of God for allowing his hardships without explanation (3:11, 20, 23; 10:1–3). What caused this shift in Job’s thinking? His suffering was severe, including deep sorrow from loss and extreme, physical, persistent pain (2:7–8; 7:5; 19:20; 30:17, 30). But in the end, what caused Job’s despair was not his suffering or loss by themselves but his perception that God might be cruel and uncaring to him and to mankind in their suffering (7:17–19; 9:22–24; 24:1–17).
But Job did not remain in despair. In faith, he hoped for things about God that, if true, would enable him to endure and even have peace in his present circumstances. At Job’s highest moments of faith, he did not want his old life back nor merely for his miserable condition to cease. Instead, he wanted his sins forgiven and to be reconciled to God (Job 7:21; 9:34). He even drew comfort from the hope of getting a new body free from sin and suffering (14:13–17; 19:26–27).
At Job’s lowest moments, he battled a self-righteous distrust of the wisdom and justice of God, and he expressed a desire for his old status and possessions (Job 29:12–16; 31:13–23; cf. 32:1–2; 38:2). Job’s fourth friend Elihu rebuked Job’s self-righteousness (32:2; 33:10–13; 35:3) and called him back to humble trust by arguing that suffering can be God’s method of teaching humans to reach for His grace, which overcomes their sinful fallenness and reconciles them to Him (33:19–30; 36:17–18).
God’s speeches to Job affirmed Elihu’s exhortation (Job 38:2; 40:6–8; cf. 35:2, 16). God’s confrontation of Job also resulted in Job’s repentance, where he drew comfort from trusting in how God works out His justice in the world with wisdom and power (42:1–6). Job does affirm that part of what an upright person does is alleviate suffering when they have the opportunity to do so (29:12–17). Nevertheless, he ultimately wanted his friends not to alleviate his suffering but to comfort him with sympathy and truth (6:14–16, 24–26). Once again, Job’s greatest comfort came not when his circumstances were reversed but when he trusted God to be wise and just in how He works in the world (42:1–6).
The above-cited passages demonstrate this core reality: The ultimate question in human suffering is not what man can do to mitigate it but what God has planned to do about it. Without any change in his circumstances or any answer from God explaining the reason for his suffering, Job had hope when he focused on God’s wise governance and plan to deal with sin and death. Conversely, Job implied that if he could not trust God to overcome sin and death, then mankind’s life is ultimately pointless suffering. The best thing God can do for people is leave them alone in their suffering until they die (7:1–3, 17–21; 14:1–16).
Conclusion: Preach the Gospel of Hope
Wherever the missionary serves, they may encounter suffering such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, political violence, internal strife, disease, and hunger. How can missionaries keep the proper perspective and bring true hope to themselves or those around them who suffer? They must hold out Job’s hope to a suffering world. Mercy ministries and action for social change have their place, but when the church allows them to become the primary hope that it offers to suffering people, it robs them of the best and only lasting comfort they could possibly receive.
Only the proclamation of the gospel, in which man’s reconciliation to a holy God is provided in Christ, can alleviate what ails man most—his sinful state before a holy God (Job 9:2; Rom 3:23–24). If sufferers repent and come to believe that the blood of Christ makes them right with God, they will understand that their suffering is not a sign of God’s retribution. They will be free to hope in the life to come with Christ when all things are made right (Col 3:1–4; Rev 21:4), even if their temporal circumstances do not change. And for the local believer or missionary who suffers, Job’s hope fulfilled in the gospel gives them hope that God’s wise governance of the world is perfect and purposeful.