The will of the creator and the sufferings of Job
What can we learn about creation from the book of Job? In his book Creation Untamed, Terence E Frotheim brings out these three points:
1. Human Beings are Finite
We are created with limits
We suffer from the weather and diseases because we cannot fully understand them now can we manage them
The experience of pain and disease in a universal human reality
Both natural evil and moral evil happens in God’s world in ways that move beyond human knowledge and ability to control
2. God created a dynamic world
The world that God created is not and never has been a risk-free place
God has created a world that has significant if limited elements of disorderliness, which can adversely affect its inhabitants - both human and animals,
God’s creation is a dynamic environment, with all sorts of turbulence in its becoming, and these events have the capacity to bring suffering to human beings and animals
3. God uses agents in the creation of the world
He chose us and animals to work as agents in continuing to work creatively in the world
God’s creation is good, but in being what it was created to be (and become), it has the potential of adversely affecting human beings, quite apart from the state of their relationship with God.
God enters deeply into our suffering, rather than control things from without, God works from within. Rather than remain in heaven above the storms of life, God chooses to join Job (as he does with us) in his suffering and seeks to bring healing from within.
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