I Am Job
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If one is groomed to think that the Christian life is one of boundless pleasures and no hardships, what shall be the condition of his faith when he meets with difficulties? That person is actually providing Satan with a tool to fight him with. "Does Job love You for nothing? How can he but love You when you have blessed him immensely and protected him from harm in all directions. Deprive him of these and see whether he will not curse you to your face", said Satan. Of course, Job's response was, "shall we receive good from God and also not receive bad?"
To him, his love for God superseded his love for material things. How would the man groomed to believe that material wealth was a reward for faithfulness to God have responded upon the loss of his property? Could he then have denied God and forsaken Him? The person's faith could collapse and he could ask God "why must I suffer seeing that I am a devout Christian? What have I done wrong? And if I have not done anything wrong, why this, why me when there are people out there who do not care one way or the other about God and are none the worse for it?"
This speculation as to the cause of his misfortune achieves nothing. It interferes with his prayers, and can instill doubt in his mind. Doubt destroys faith, and without faith how can our relationship with God be sustained? Why do the righteous suffer? This question, like any other, may be posed harmlessly as an academic exercise. In the midst of a trial, however, it is counterproductive for it does not help the person bear the burden in what must be a very sorrowful situation. It is a question directed consciously or unconsciously at God. “Lord, why do I as a devout Christian suffer when there are others who are not as righteous as I who never face a trying moment in their lives?”
What this does, of course, is accuse God of injustice; for He being in control of everything has visited the righteous with misfortune and blessed the wicked instead. This, by all accounts, is unjust, and by asking the question we do accuse God of injustice. This is an act of defiance and unfortunately, rebellion. It serves no useful purpose. Even if it were not an act of implied defiance and rebellion, we have no way of telling that the sinful live easy and comfortable lives. Unless we are vindictive or nosy, the only time we explore the topic is when we or people dear to us are undergoing some trial. Drawing a comparison in this circumstance is decidedly shortsighted for it implies that, because we are suffering, then those who, to us, are perceptibly unrighteous should suffer proportionately at the same time.
The fact is that we do not know the private lives of others. They might be outwardly affluent but suffer great miseries in their families. But this is beside the point. Their suffering or not suffering does not affect our condition one way or the other and we should not
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About the Book
This book deals with the age-old question of why the righteous suffer. The central theme is not finding an intellectual answer to the question but assisting the sufferer survive the experience. It is my opinion that during the experience, knowing why one suffers even if it were possible to do more than speculate, in no way helps alleviate the pain. What the book concentrates upon is how the person can survive the experience with as little damage to his faith as possible. The form adopted is that of a collection of stories of God-fearing men under trial, recited in first person narratives. The emphasis is on the way they handled their problems and how they got out of them. Some of the stories are based on real life experiences. The first is an adaptation of the book of Job. It is written as a narration by Job, reflecting on his trial many years after the experience. The second is based on the experiences of a Nebraskan farmer upon the loss of his farm. His endurance and recovery is treated. The third is that of a Christian Jew. It details his emotional and material trials after his conversion.Although he was beset by doubts and uncertainties in this rather unique situation, he survived with his faith intact. The story treats how each handled his misfortune and how each made decisions they had to under stress and how they survived with their faith intact. In conclusion, the predominant purpose is surviving a trial. In suffering, not to ask God “why?”, but to ask Him “how?”, and to trust Him. We should concentrate on praying for the strength to endure that which has befallen us and to come through it stronger than we were before.
About the Author
Dr. Effiong Ibok has a PhD in Engineering. In his professional career, he has multiple publications and 60 patents. However, he has been a born again Christian since 1968 when he was a teenager in high school. He felt the urge to write this book after morning devotion on June 8th, 1983 perhaps building on the theme “Must man condemn God that he might be righteous?” that came to him after morning devotion in May of that same year.
The author grew up in a small village in Nigeria and lived through the civil war as a teenager. In spite of the disruptions of the civil war, he managed to come to the United States on full scholarship at the age of 21 and three years later, got his first Engineering degree with honors. He proceeded to an Ivy League school for graduate studies and four years later received his PhD in Engineering.
As a teenager, he was actively involved in Evangelical Crusade Ministries. During this time, he wrote two plays: “Bonfire X” and “As in the Days of Noah”. Apocalyptic plays given to crusade teams as ministerial aids. In the summer of 1974, he wrote “Time’s End”, an apocalyptic book drawn with great faithfulness from the Book of Revelations and from the perspective of someone who was narrating an eyewitness account of the events from the Beginning of Sorrows to the end of the Millennium of Peace. His next book, “The Custodians”, a historical fiction based extremely loosely on the history of the United States was written in 1984.