Does God Want Flattery?

Did God send the tornadoes? Or did God just permit them to operate according to the normal rules of nature? But if God only permitted the tornadoes to land on whomever they landed on, doesn’t that still make God responsible? But if God really loves human beings, then surely he can’t be responsible for storms that destroy human lives, can he? But if that’s the case, then what are e doing here worshiping this supposedly almighty God?

Are these questions you have asked yourself since Wednesday afternoon? Do any of these questions make you uncomfortable, as though they might offend God, or make you sound less than faithful? I hope not. If there is one message we need to hear from the Word of God this Sunday after the devastating tornadoes that struck Alabama last Wednesday, it comes from the book of Job. God prefers our honest questions and complaints to what C.S. Lewis called a flattery that is resentment based on fearful submission. Submission to God out of fear is not as faithful to God as submitting to him our questions, even the angry ones.

The book of Job consists of a long dialogue between Job and his friends about why he has suddenly been afflicted with every possible disaster, short of death. It becomes a fierce debate as Job questions and complains against the silent God he holds responsible for his suffering, and his friends defend God just as fiercely. But as Lewis noted, their defense of God is all false flattery. Job’s friends aren’t really trying comfort Job so much as they’re trying to comfort themselves. “You see my flattery,” Job tells them, “and you are afraid” (6:21). They see all the terrible things that have happened to Job: the killing of all his children, the complete destruction of his wealth, the profusion of painful, oozing itchy sores all over his body. They assume that God has done all that to Job. And they are afraid God might do it to them. So they flatter God by blaming Job, in the hope that God’s wrath won’t be directed at them.

And so it goes, chapter after chapter, until finally the LORD God does answer Job. One of Job’s friends, Elihu, hears the rumbling thunder of God’s voice when he says to Job, “Do you know how God lays his command on the lightning…Do you know the balancing of the clouds?” (37:15-16). And then God himself speaks to Job out of the whirlwind (38:1), thundering, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Afterward, a humbled Job can only say, “know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted…I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:2-3).

And so Job kneels before God and says, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). Or perhaps the Hebrew might be translated, “I am comforted in dust and ashes.” In the end, God doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions about human suffering. Instead, God asks Job to trust in God’s purpose for him, a purpose that will be fulfilled whether Job lives or dies. And in that trust, Job is comforted, and repents. God then turns his anger toward Job’s friends, those flatterers of his, and says, “I am angry with you, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has” (42:7-8). It seems that God prefers Job’s hard questions, however wrong they might be, to the fearful flattery of his friends.

What is God’s loving purpose for us in this state after last Wednesday? None of us can answer that question for anyone but themselves. For in truth, there are as many answers to that question as there are human souls in Alabama. I believe that God will give those answers to those who do not settle for fearful flattery. In God’s good time, God will give his answers to those who, like Job, stand up to him with their questions, and wait for the thunder. In the meantime, as we begin our efforts to help with relief and recovery, let us all wait with each other. Let us all wait with each others’ questions. And let us all wait with each other for the thunder.