Job on Pain and Providence

...Ara vos prec, per acquella valor

que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.
        - Purgatoria, XXVI, 145-148, The Divine Comedy by Dante

I would give everything to speak with God. 

Some of the greatest literary poems in this world speak of emotions in my heart. Emotions I know not. Emotions I  know not that I have or still have. Emotions I know not that I could ever have or would wish to have, no, not someone like me. As throbbingly painful and beautiful as lyric poetry can ever be, the poems speak of this world and the worldly emotions we may humanly perceive but with little comfort or consolation to my heart in pain, however crafted by the art of language with the wonder of human creation. They may resonate but they may never tell of why.

As Job cries out in human affliction and emotional agony to come before God for a judgement of his righteousness, the manifestation of theopany in man and the last of secular wisdom through Elihu paint a prelude to the magnificant picture in anticipation of God who speaks at the end in the book of Job. Certain parts of my faith resemble that of Elihu, and I certainly hope to represent, through faith, this scriptural character who says beyond the boundaries of his age: "great things doeth He, which we cannot comprehend." (Job 37:5, KJV). God may not be directly accessible to us but Elihu eloquently calls us to "hear attentively the noise of his voice, and the sound that goeth out of his mouth. He directeth it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of the earth...God thundereth marvellouosly with his voice" so "Hearken unto this...stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God" (Job 37:2-4, 14, KJV). Contrary to some scholars who view this as a message that suffering is pedagogic, the message also speaks somewhat of the providence of God. 

And God's providence speaks of omnipotence and His boundless power over both primary and secondary causes. Aquinas, employing the Aristotelian category of natural causes, recognised that the scripture speaks of both divine and natural causes -- in God's predestination of all things that come to pass through primary causes and in the human actions that God honours through secondary causes. Originally, the word providence means the act of foreseeing (providentia, the Latin equivalent of Greek promētheia (ἀπὸ τής πρόμηθείας)) or foreknowing (pronoia, πρόνοια). The Christian faith understands the providence of God to mean that all things are not only known by God in advance but determined and ordained in advance. It is "that will of God by which all existing things receive suitable guidance through their end" - John of Damascus. So providence is the act of God by which from moment to moment, he preserves and governs all things.  It is not only to 'see for' but also to 'foresee'. Yet, the providence of God does not cancel out secondary causes, human responsibility or wishes within the concurrence of God's will. What marks Christianity uniquely different from other religious beliefs (perhaps rooted in deism or pantheism that may come close to secular notions of "fate" and "chance"), is that providence includes God's care through secondary causality of the created order of natural law as he maintains it, including us.

God is never idol. He never stands by passively looking on. With divine potency, he is always active in both nature and grace. According to Bavinck, providence therefore is a positive act, not a giving permission to exist but a causing to exist and working from moment to moment. Scripture tells us both that God works all things so that the creature is only an instrument in his hand, that providence is distinct from creation and presupposes the existence and self-activity of creatures. Secondary causes are subordinated to God as the primary cause and in that subordination nevertheless remain true causes. With his power, God makes possible every secondary cause and is present in it with his being at its beginning, progression and end. It is He who posits it and makes it move into action and who further accompanies it in its working and leads it to its effect. He is "at work' [in us] both to will and to do for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13) but this energising activity of the primary cause in the secondary cause is divinely great in that precisely by that activity, He stirs those secondary causes into an activity of their own. 

“Concurrence is precisely the reason for the self-activity of the secondary causes and these causes, sustained from beginning to the end by God's power, work with a strength that is appropriate and natural to them.” As Bavinck puts it, precisely because the primary and the secondary cause do not stand and function dualistically on separate tracks, but the primary works through the secondary, the effect that proceeds from the two is one and the product is one. There is no division of labor between God and his creature. The product and effect would be also in the same sense totally the product and effect of the primary as well as totally the product and effect of the secondary cause. For we must not suppose that God works in an iniquitous man as if he were a stone or a piece of wood, but He uses him as a thinking creature, according to the quality of his nature, which He has given him. For what power would there be in faith that recommends stoical indifference or fatalistic acquiescence as true godliness?

While riddles remain for human understanding of providence (and God should have His mystery), this theological framework affords the believer with consolation and hope. For a humble Christian mind like mine, who wonders if the mistakes of mine are part of God's plan and surely, not actions which would change the greater course or cause of His, theology speaks of a God who knows all permutation of all possible action, inaction, decision and determination of ours as well as all and each probability of outcomes which chart out the paths He wills at His good pleasures and works along the concurrence of primary and secondary causes of this His world and our world. In other words to put it crudely, He respects our choices and parents us along the way.

So as Job asks and knows through the rhetoric of his pain: "Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whoes hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind...with him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding" (Job 12:10-13, KJV), God appears at the end in answer to Job's appeal and speaks directly to Job of the infinite and intimate connection of God with God's world as well as His careful and detailed superintendence that cannot be understood within the human compass, but only within the framework of a vision of God that can clarify the present puzzles of human existence in a life yet to come. So as we are blindsided by broken hearts and drowning in emotions not dissimilar to Job's outcry in the bitterness of his soul that is weary of its life where if "my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together...it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up"  "for the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me" (Job 6:2-3, 3:23-25, KJV), be reminded of the limited horizon of our knowledge of this world and of baffling human experiences constricted by the present passage of time. Be reminded of God's words in the interlude of Job where wisdom is found (Job 28: 12-24):

"But where shall wisdom be found?
and where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.
The depth saith, it is not in me; and the sea saith, it is not with me.
It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
... God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.
For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven" 

Echoing that of Job's emotional turmoil of darkness:"as for that night, let darkness seize upon it...let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein...let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day." (Job 3: 6-10, KJV) is Pablo Neruda's poem. Precisely where Neruda's famous poem ends in "Tonight I can write the saddest lines" is where I would continue with "Tomorrow I will face the world with a smile".  

For we live in hope and in Him and in the hope of Him, and there is nothing I would not give to know Him and speak with Him. 

Take this piece as fictional and not founded in research or facts. All moral rights belong to the author except to the extent other works are quoted or otherwise referred to in this piece.