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One of Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons is called "God at his computer." It shows God with long white hair and beard watching a computer screen where an unlucky-looking fellow is walking down a sidewalk with a piano suspended by a cable over his head. God's hand is on the computer keyboard, and his finger is hovering over a key labeled "SMITE."3

The cartoon suggests two things about God's way of determining a person's fate: first, that God is impersonal and inaccessible. God with his finger on the smite key is no more personally involved with the man whose fate he's deciding than a child playing video games is with the Super Mario Brothers. Second, God appears arbitrary and capricious: "Shall I smite this guy or spare him? What kind of a mood am I in today?"

Our first look at Job may have left us with the same impressions about God. He's distant, unconcerned, playing games with Job's life and fortunes just to see what happens. But today's lesson challenges those impressions. In chapter 23 we see that Job doesn't believe God is either impersonal or arbitrary.

Of course, Job has every reason to think God is remote and aloof. "Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling!" Job cries. God appears to have moved and left no forwarding address. In chapter one, Job knew where to find God: He prayed and made all the required burnt-offerings, confident that God was listening and responding the way he was supposed to. But now Job wonders whether he had been naive to think God was listening, or whether God has broken faith with him.

It's a common complaint of people who suffer: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The writer of Psalm 22 and Jesus on the cross both felt as though God had turned his back on them. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize-winning author and concentration camp survivor, has written of how Jews in World War II often felt that God had abandoned them.

Job felt that way, too. "Where is God in my suffering? I can't find him in front of me or behind me, on my left or on my right." But Job wouldn't settle for that. Despite appearances to the contrary, despite feeling as though God had left him alone in deep darkness, Job believed that God was there; Job was confident that God was approachable. God wasn't like a kid playing video games, or like the Wicked Witch of the West watching Dorothy in her crystal ball. Job believed he could talk to God about his problem and God would hear him.

"Even when God is silent," Job seems to have thought, "even when God is hidden, we can depend on our relationship with him." Martin Luther once said, speaking of the Bible's assurance that God hears our prayers, "If it weren't for the promise I wouldn't pray."4 That might have been Job's motto: "If it weren't for the promise I wouldn't pray." Job, too, trusted that God would not break faith with anyone who called out to him.

Job not only believed that God was approachable, he wanted to see him. One might have expected him to turn his back on God, the way it seemed God had turned his back on Job. I'm sure we all know neighbors or family members who haven't spoken to each other in years out of indignation over some injustice or hurt feelings. You may also know people who don't believe in God any more because God let their child die, or their business fail. That's just what Satan was hoping Job would do when he proposed his test. Satan suspected that once the material advantage of faith in God was lost, Job would want nothing more to do with God.

But he was wrong. Instead of swearing off religion once God let him down, Job went looking for God. Job wouldn't let his relationship with God die. When a friend or relative or spouse has hurt your feelings, you can walk away from the relationship, or you can go to the person at fault and raise the issue with them in hopes of solving the problem. The first alternative might save your pride and preserve your indignation, but the second might save the friendship or the marriage. Job chose the second alternative when he didn't feel like God had treated him fairly. "God," he said, "I need to talk to you."

In fact, what Job really said was "God, I demand to talk with you." This isn't the same Job we saw in chapters one and two, the patient sufferer willing to accept both good and evil from God. "If I could find God," Job said, "I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments." That's bold talk. That's audacity. That even sounds sinful, for Job to argue with God and announce that he can force God to change his mind, doesn't it?

I recently heard a story of a retired pastor, a faithful, devout and humble man. Around Easter one year his wife, who was several years younger than he, was taken ill, and by the end of the summer she was dead. He was devastated. He grieved inconsolably for months; a year later he would still burst into sobbing tears several times a day. His family began to fear for his mental health. He was utterly unable to accept his wife's death. He often admitted that he was tempted to be angry with God, to ask why God would have taken his wife from him, but he didn't dare. He obviously was angry with God; he did want to know why. But he didn't believe he was allowed to feel that way, and his hidden anger and confusion ate up his soul like acid.

Job didn't have such scruples about giving God a piece of his mind. He was angry, and he believed that it was best to get his complaint out in the open. It didn't seem to matter to Job whether he was acting in a proper, God-fearing manner or not. He was simply being honest about the way he felt.

One student in a college Bible survey class was offended that Job would challenge and argue with God. "What did Job think gave him the right to talk to God that way?" she asked. Another student spoke up and said, "Faith. Job trusted God enough that he knew God wouldn't turn against him even if he lost his temper. If you really love someone," she went on, "and know that they love you, you don't have to be afraid to let them know when you're unhappy."

Job's faith is evident in ironic ways throughout this chapter. Far from being signs of lack of faith, his anger with God and his desire to confront God and argue his case before God actually show how firmly he believed God had entered into a relationship with his people that allowed them access to God.

The second idea about God that Job rejected in this passage was that God is arbitrary or unfair. Job was convinced that God is just, and if he could prove to God that he was innocent his suffering would end. Job couldn't believe God would ever let an innocent man suffer and he expected to win a reprieve if he could get a hearing in God's court.

Job is crawling out on a mighty skinny limb here. The idea that innocent people don't suffer and guilty ones do is exactly what the opening of Job's story cautioned against believing. There is no necessary connection between suffering and guilt. So, is this story trying to tell us God plays games with our fate, or that we can't expect fair play from God? No, but in a world deeply immersed in sin and torn apart by the conflict between good and evil, there is no simple way to define a category like fairness.

By late Old Testament times the people of Israel were starting to realize that. The author of Job, along with the writer of some latter parts of Isaiah, began to think about the problem of innocent suffering. Job found it vexing, while Isaiah found it revealing, even redemptive. In the New Testament we see the idea of fairness come completely unbuckled when God puts innocence itself to death on the cross in the person of his Son Jesus.

But Job didn't understand that yet. He knew how he expected God to act, and couldn't imagine that God would have standards different from his own. Job didn't realize that God exists and acts far beyond the realm of human judgment. We can't look at God's actions and call them fair or unfair, or right or wrong. God is sovereign, God is absolute, God answers to no authority or standards of justice but his own.

And Job's reliance on his own judgment caused him another problem. His claim to righteousness was based completely on his good works. He had done right, he hadn't done wrong, therefore God owed him a judgment in his favor. But as Paul wrote in Romans (3:20, 23), no one can make that claim. By virtue of being members of a sinful humanity we are all guilty before God, whether we've broken any rules or not. If God were to be completely fair with us we would all suffer condemnation. It's only by God's mercy that we receive any blessings at all, for we certainly don't deserve them.

So when Job suggested that God hadn't been fair with him, he unwittingly made another confession of faith. God doesn't deal with us as we deserve, but as he chooses. God doesn't give us what he owes, but what he wants to give us. One commentator on Job wrote, "The questioner scans the heavens and finds the supposed throne of mercy without an occupant."5 But I don't think that's Job's problem. Job isn't looking for God in the throne of mercy, but in the throne of justice. That's the throne that's empty. Job is looking for the wrong thing from God.

Job never asked God for mercy, or help, or love, or grace, only for a verdict. Yet even though Job may have asked the wrong questions of God, and made the wrong assumption about how God acted, at least he asked. His challenge to God was the real mark of Job's faith. He never doubted that God was there, that God was in control of the situation, or that God listened and responded to human cries.

We experience the same doubts, the same nagging absences of God that Job did. But we have some advantages. We know that God came into the world to redeem suffering through the suffering of his Son. We know that God has restored us to life by grace, not justice. And when we don't seem to be able to find God anywhere he shows himself to us in the preaching of his Word, in the waters of baptism, in bread and wine. His presence among us in word and sacrament proves that he is neither distant nor uncaring.