"Why is this happening?" | VJ Sathyaraj | November 9, 2025

Just when you thought things were at their worst, something even worse happens. At a time when nothing seems certain—not food, not travel, not jobs, not health—the book of Job offers insights for us to ponder. Why is this happening to me? Undeserved hardship, punishment, unbearable pain, bereavement, or the suffering of those close to us. This is the question running through the book. This question does not allow an easy or trite answer. And further, we have to ask ourselves if our faith and beliefs and worldview are dependent on everything going well, and if we suffer catastrophe, whether our faith also would suffer if things do not go our way. Do we conclude that God is absent and that faith is for the foolish?

Through the ages, the story of Job has addressed various audiences, including the displaced population of Judah—the entire nation defeated and destroyed and taken into captivity after they had entered into a covenant agreement with God who rescued them from slavery in Egypt. How could they now be back in slavery? And as we hear about tragic events in the world, the same question hangs in the air. And we should note that it's not just warfare that kills people. According to the National Safety Council, over the past two years, about 80,000 people were killed in the United States in traffic accidents. Man-made calamities seem to be much worse than those that occur in nature.

Why me? And we note that this was not a question that troubled Job when he was wealthy, highly respected, and when he feared God. The fable-like beginning and ending to this book sort of correspond to the formula “once upon a time” and “at the end he lived happily ever after.” The story begins with Satan suggesting to God that Job is God-fearing only because everything is going well for him. But if those things were to be removed, his faith also would be gone. Setting aside for now the troubling question of whether Satan can manipulate God, we discover that the calamities that Job then suffers correspond to the calamities that people of all time have gone through, making Job's story very true to the trauma in our own lives.

First, his animals are all captured and his workers murdered. Then, fire destroys all of Job's farms, and all the animals and workers are helpless victims. Next, all of his trade—his businesses—are destroyed with the loss of his people and their camels. After that, a great wind destroys his home and kills all his children. But this is not yet the end for this man. Finally, his body is struck with a gruesome illness. He has terrible outbreaks on his skin. And so bad is his condition that his wife suggests to him that he euthanize himself by cursing God. But his noble response is to ask, “Shall we accept only good from God and not accept evil?”

But his woes do not end there. He is visited by his friends who come to help him but end up causing him much greater anguish. The personalities of his friends are varied. Eliphaz is a kind of prophet. Bildad is a wise man. Zophar rambles on about not being able to understand fully the ways of the Almighty. And together they unleash what can only be called a marathon of mansplaining.

That doesn’t sit well with Job. They advise him to plead guilty because he must have done something wrong to bring on this punishment. And so his punishment must be well-deserved. And if nothing else, he must be guilty of original sin—sin that he was born with and that must be the cause of his suffering. And Job, at this point, his frustration vastly increased, wishes that he could put God on trial and present his case of undeserved suffering in a court of law. He feels that he is no more than an uprooted tree. He is alone, abandoned, and mocked by all.

But then a ray of hope emerges in his darkness. He imagines that in the future his case would be inscribed on a monument and everybody in the future would know that Job was innocent. And then he goes on to imagine a wonderful thing. He imagines that a redeemer will appear to be his advocate. And that's when he says, “I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.”

And so Job's rehabilitation begins here with a new understanding of God. He previously thought, as even we might secretly believe, that God is a vengeful, narcissistic tyrant who has to be appeased. You cross this God in some way, and he will zap you in an instant. Thus, it's critical to offer sacrifices and follow the law—to pay protection money and perhaps increase your pledge.

But now God appears in a different way to Job. Job begins to acquire a glimmer of wisdom because God steps in to provide him with a new perspective. God takes Job with him deep into the vast domains of the cosmos, the free domains of the wild, into nature, and the imaginative domains of the primordial. Job has to leave behind the physical horrors of his existence to explore the complexities of the universe. He is forced to recognize the smallness of his own existence—that he is merely an infinitesimal part of the grandeur of the universe—and that his life can only become meaningful when he acquires wisdom: the wisdom that is to be found in a new level of consciousness, a consciousness that can root his existence in God and not in all the material things that he previously thought defined his life.

But wisdom is not something to be acquired in the manner in which one acquires college credentials. It is a driving force in nature. It is a dynamic dimension of the universe. It was discerned by the ancients. And that quest for wisdom continues in our time. God says to Job, “Discern the origins of the earth. Observe the limits of the ocean. Locate the place of the dawn. Probe the domains of the deep. Discern the places of light and darkness. Observe the weather. Research the realms of space.”

And in this grand tour and consideration of some of the varieties of life that exist, all kinds of animals are named: the ostrich, the donkey, wild ox, mountain goat, hawk and eagle, ibis, lion, rooster, and the raven. And there's a magnificent passage that describes horses:

“Do you give the horse its strength

or clothe its neck with a flowing mane?

Do you make it leap like a locust,

striking terror with its proud snorting?

It paws fiercely, rejoicing in its strength,

and charges into the fray.

It laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;

it does not shy away from the sword.

The quiver rattles against its side,

along with the flashing spear and lance.

In frenzied excitement it eats up the ground;

it cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.

At the blast of the trumpet it snorts, ‘Aha!’

It catches the scent of battle from afar.”

And God asks Job, “Did you have anything to do with this?”

Such is the wonder of creation and the power of nature to heal. And in exploring it with God, Job gives up the ego-centered consciousness with which he had lived. He re-enters his consciousness in God. He concludes, “I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.”

Job came to the realization of who he is before an omniscient God. This is a point beyond the demanding answers we wish for based on the limitations of our rational minds. And this is what we saw in our gospel reading today: a clever question based on limited understanding. If a married person remarries upon the passing of a spouse, whose spouse will they be in heaven?

Job's elevation to this new consciousness and appreciation of the mystery of God is what people are trying to discover in various ways in our own time. How does the individual connect with the great mystery of what lies beyond what we can see and can never fully understand? This question is being investigated by some scientists—the search for order, the order that underlies what we see in the material world—that we get glimpses of through moments of experiences that are both startling and transforming.

The Santa Fe Institute, for example, has as its mission searching for order in the complexity of evolving worlds. C. G. Jung introduced the term synchronicity to describe the inexplicable relationship between two unrelated events that can bring about transformation in the life of an individual. Joseph Jaworski, a major figure in management and the training of global leaders, created a forum to train global leaders to be servant leaders. He was heavily influenced by the physicist David Bohm, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. And Bohm said:

“The field of the finite is all that we can see, hear, touch, remember, and describe,

but the infinite is subtle and intangible, conveyed by spirit,

whose root meaning is wind or breath.

This energy or spirit infuses all living beings,

and without it any organism must fall apart into its constituent elements.

That which is truly alive in the living being

is this energy of spirit,

and this is never born and never dies.”

To recognize this is to discover what Job discovered—that God is spirit. May God transform our helplessness, grief, and despair to infuse us with the joy of mission, giving up an egocentric life and offering our resources in creaturely submission.

In the words of Frances Havergal, daughter of an Anglican priest whose profound experience of God led her to compose a variety of hymns, including this one:

Take my life and let it be

consecrated, Lord, to thee.

Take my moments and my days;

let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands and let them move

at the impulse of thy love.

Take my feet and let them be

swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my voice and let me sing

always, only, for my King.

Take my lips and let them be

filled with messages from thee.

Take my silver and my gold;

not a mite would I withhold.

Take my intellect and use

every power as thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it thine;

it shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart—it is thine own;

it shall be thy royal throne.

Take my love—my Lord, I pour

at thy feet its treasure-store.

Take myself—and I will be

ever, only, all for thee.

Amen.