Blindness II: the blinding judgment of Grace

It seems that a large portion of what God tried to get us to see is His grace. We tend to be blind to it, because grace is very different from our natural knowledge, which arises from our vision into how humans and the world function around us. We look for cause and effect, we seem to be hardwired for fairness and justice. But these all too human tendencies seem to go against what grace is, which may make our vision into God and his workings too dim. The blinding aspect is that we seem to force onto God our systems of moral justice and fairness. We try to mold him to fit within our models. God tells us that his ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts, yet in our pursuit of knowledge into the ways of God, we ignore this. Afterall, we can’t seem to help it.  

And so, the journey to see grace can go through dark places and even blindness. To see God and his grace, we need to become blind to man and his ways. Many bible stories demonstrate this truth, for example, the story of Job.

The story of Job is one of the most unsettling in the bible. The unfairness of what Job went through goes against our understanding of the goodness and love of God. Yet, it has a lot of important things to teach us. To Job and to us, it’s an existential problem, a mystery. Job has certain knowledge about God and is sure that he would be vindicated if he could get a hearing, yet God seems to be hiding from him.

Job then asks God three existential questions; questions we all ask:

• Why was I born? (or what is the meaning of my life?)
• How can I be good with God?
• If I die, shall I live again?

Job, like all of us, seeks a knowledge of God in order to control him. It is not an academic exercise, but a practical one. Job has suffered greatly and seeks God’s power to end his suffering. By understanding God, he thinks he might be able to harness that power. This is the pitfall of knowledge of God. We hold on to the mistaken belief that God is a God of cause and effect, of actions and consequences. More insight, we think, can be had through more prayer, more meditation, more study, more self-denial, and more piety.

Job said that even though he could not understand God (and even felt oppressed by him) he still believed in him. God taught him the important concept that the greatest obstacle to discovery of truth about God is not ignorance but, rather, the illusion of knowledge. God answered Job’s questions with questions of his own that were intended not to be answered but rather to provide insight and enlightenment. The problem with Job’s friends was that they sought to counsel Job but their knowledge of the truth about God was utterly misguided.

Instead of answering Job’s questions, God asks him questions. Seventy-seven of them. God is not in the business of providing answers, but of asking questions. He is the producer, not the product. He is the teacher, not the student; the examiner, not the examinee. 

In rapid succession, He fires off 77 questions to Job concerning the credentials to be God. These questions uncover the details of God’s creative power (chapter 38) and the details of his actions in nature (chapter 39) and they make two powerful statements. First: “I’m God and you’re not”; and second: “You cannot accuse Me of being indifferent to My creation, since I know everything about the creation, and I indeed have engineered it all.”

Job is blown away by God’s response and humbled to the point of contrition. He becomes dismissive of his concept of injustice and the fact that he has been treated poorly. Job then answers God and says: “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that darken counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore, I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.” 

‘Who is this that darkens counsel without knowledge?’ Here, Job repeats the question which God had asked in Job 38:2, admitting that he spoke out of limited knowledge, too confidently of things too wonderful for him to understand. He seems to be saying that the truth about God requires repentance and the retraction of preconceived notions. Repentance and dust and ashes evoke the scene where Job’s friends found him sitting in ashes—a sign of silent humiliation. 

Thus the book of Job reveals three elements necessary for understanding the truth about God. Number one: To understand the truth about God there must be a retraction of preconceived notions. Number two: There must be repentance. He says, “I repent, In dust and ashes.” Repentance is a word which means “turning in a new direction.” And finally, number three: A humble silence before God, allowing instruction to be heard. 

What Job came out with was not the knowledge he sought about God, but rather a spiritual insight of God. Job was able to know God on a level he never did, yet it wasn’t intellectual knowledge. Somehow it is a visual type of knowledge.

Let us start from where almost any discussion about these matters tends to begin, the creation of Adam and Eve. 

In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were blind to their nakedness, but also to the goodness of God. They roamed around Heaven and God provided for all their needs. They were like children, they received everything they needed without having a care in the world. Perhaps our lament at having been kicked out of Eden and a wish to return there is an unconscious longing for our own childhood. After they ate from the forbidden truth, their eyes were opened. They saw their nakedness, but they found it guilt and shame producing and sought to hide from God, even though God evidently did not share this perspective. They were able to judge good from evil, but the important distinction here is that they were doing it from mankind’s perspective, not God’s. God was shocked at their self-assessment. It was and remains his prerogative to judge our nakedness. He provided, and still provides, an all-embracing environment of grace that does away with the need for self-assessment on our part.

Yet, it seems that when we declare that we can see, when we are confident of our vision, the landscape of our vision is of man and his ways. Like Adam and Eve, our eyes open up to the suffering, to the toils and snares of life, and to death, the ultimate enemy. When we are in this state, we tend to be blind to God and his ways, namely, Grace. It seems like the next step on the journey is another act of grace, although it may not seem like it to us. It is blindness. 

 We see clearly in the story of Saul/Paul this blinding judgment. Saul’s mission was to destroy the disciples of Jesus, yet God appeared to him in a light so bright that effectively blinded Saul. 

Notice two things about Saul’s experience on the Damascus Road. First, it’s an intense sensory overload. When God shows up, as usual, he starts with questions: “Why are you fighting me?” God asked Saul. This is a universal question. Why are you fighting me? Why are you fighting God? God is the solution, not the problem. He is the answer, not the question. It is the fundamental condition of mankind to see God as the problem, the adversary, the condemner. When God is in fact the God of grace to all mankind, why are we fighting him? Why are we opposing God, he asks. “I’m the solution to your problems, not the problem itself.” 

Second, when grace finds you, it doesn’t just affect you. It affects those around you as well. The men who were with Saul stood speechless, hearing the voice but beholding no speaker. The discovery, the revelation, of grace has an effect on everyone who’s near. It’s apparent to all and it defies explanation. It leaves them speechless. The experience of grace is so dramatic, that there can be no question about where it comes from. The origin of grace is not ambiguous. “Who are you, Lord?” Paul says. He asks and answers the question all at once. There is only one answer. Grace comes from God, because grace is God. 

Grace, we see from the story, blinds us also to the road that we are on. We are shut out of our own independent pathway. We are led by the Spirit in the way of faith. We are blind to our way and we are led into God’s way. Saul arose from the earth, and when his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. They had to lead him by the hand to Damascus. Grace, you see, raises us from the earth, from our own ways, and it leads us by the hand into God’s ways. This God plan is part of the transformational power of grace.

Job’s and Sauls’s view of God was too small, too restricted, too limited; while their views of themselves were too expansive, too large, too inflated. This, it seems, is the chronic condition of fallen Mankind. We see neither God nor ourselves in the proper light. God’s questions are designed to expose both of these errors.

This illustrates the power of questions to change thinking, to stimulate thought, and to inform ideas. God’s questions are designed to change thinking about Him and about ourselves. The question: “Where are you?” put to Adam in the garden of Eden was to show Adam that his view of God was too limited. God is of course everywhere and cannot be hidden from. “Who told you you were naked?” starkly exposed Man’s limitations with regard to self-assessment. He asked Abraham and Sarah, who had a limited view of God: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” In asking Jacob, “What is your name?”, God was asking him to recognize his fallen condition and that despite his best efforts he would never overcome God in any contest. In asking Jonah: “Do you have a right to be angry?” God was asking if Jonah’s assessment of Nineveh was more accurate than His.

When Jesus asked the pharisee’s the question: “What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?” They answered that he was the son of David. The answer expressed the idea that Christ was just like them, since they considered themselves to be the sons of David; that they were equal to Christ. They had a too exalted a view of themselves and a too limited a view of God.

This is the doctrinal deficiency we face: Too little God, too much of ourselves. Our view is that God is just like us, only smarter, bigger, faster, stronger.

Perhaps that’s why in the bible, God seems to be the questioner rather than the answer man.  Whenever God shows up, the questions start. Our human tendencies tell us the answer is supreme, we seek answers and control over everything. We would rather hold onto a wrong answer rather than not know. but to God, it is the question that holds the higher value. Due to our ever-evolving knowledge, answers tend to be time and space constrained, yet questions are immortal and boundless. Questions tend to be unsettling; they create doubt, they shake our security in our beloved answers. Yet, perhaps that’s exactly where God needs us to be. When we are confident of our vision, when we claim that we can see, it seems that we are the most blind. Yet, when we are shaken from our understandings and knowledge, we are in sacred ground, where God can lead us with his light and grace. 

Like the biblical stories of Job and Paul, we can welcome the judgment of grace, this blinding aspect that forces us to reexamine our preconceived notion of ourselves and of who God is and how things work. And when we are on shaky grounds, when we are unsure of our understanding of who we are and how the world functions, we can take heart in the effectiveness and relentlessness of God’s grace. 

In closing, I would like to offer Job’s statement of faith as a prayer, that we may also see God instead of just hearing about him: “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that darkens counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore, I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.” 

Is repentance in dust and ashes the prerequisite to seeing grace? Or is it what comes after seeing grace? How confident are you of your vision/your knowledge about God? If the teachers of the religion are as blind as Job’s friends, how are we to see God like Job did? What did Job do for God to personally show him his grace? What did Saul do for God to personally show him his grace?

David: I find myself wondering whether Job became enlightened. God was saying to Job: “You think you’re in the light, but you’re not; you think you know, and you don’t.” Then God asks 77 questions to prove His point. Job seems to become enlightened, simply by realizing he cannot answer those questions. But over the millennia, we’ve actually learned to answer about 50 to 60 of those 77 questions through science. So are we even more enlightened? 

If humanity has grown more enlightened over the millennia, what does that mean for the future? Will the enlightenment continue to unfold, and at what point will it stop?

Reinhard: I think the book of Job is really teaching human beings two things; first, about God, when God asked Job “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?” (Job 40:8; New International Version). Job had essentially asked why God allowed Satan to inflict such suffering on him and his family. But to question God is to put oneself (the creature) on the same level as God (the Creator.) This is an important lesson. 

God never answered Job’s question. He simply remarked: “Would you discredit my justice?” Yet in the end Job came to see that God has a purpose even though we can’t know it.

Second, we learn that Satan cannot interfere with our lives if we don’t allow him. He has limits. He may influence our thoughts, but when we depend on God, he cannot enter our minds. Only God knows what’s in our minds. So without God allowing that to happen to Job, Satan could not have done what he did. So, the lesson is that when we depend on God, God is our shield, our defender, and Satan cannot enter, cannot do anything to us. He can only act when God allows it, as in Job’s case. 

So we should be happy that God always prevents bad things from happening to us as long as we depend on Him and obey. Evil and Satan cannot just enter our lives without His permission.

Donald: It seems to me that there are many aspects to the word “grace” and I’m not sure we carefully differentiate them. God forgives me—that’s an act of grace. God spares me—that’s an act of grace, and that’s quite different. God blesses me—that’s an act of grace. I didn’t deserve it. God saves me—that’s an act of grace. But these are all different aspects of grace. So when we use the word grace, it’s kind of like the word love. There are so many aspects that we’re not careful about specifying which dimension of grace we are referring to in a conversation. 

I is hard to wrap one’s head around God permitting suffering. God put us on this earth, and it was not intended that man should fall, but we did, and because of that, we live in a war zone. Some of us are wearing life protection, some are taking too many chances, and some find themselves where bullets seem to be flying. I feel persecuted, why? I feel horrible when you encounter people whose lives just seem filled with unheard-of challenges. Why didn’t God spare them? Why did he bless me? Sometimes I feel like maybe I got hit. So it seems to me we need to be careful about what aspect of grace we’re talking about. 

I’m troubled with the idea that God allows me to be persecuted, or God allows me to be troubled. Some people think that’s a blessing, but it certainly doesn’t seem like one from my perspective.

Reinhard: Job is a very unique case. You have to know the context: Satan came to God, and God called all the beings in heaven. God wanted to show Satan that a human being can be very devoted and obedient. Satan didn’t come to that same level; he didn’t follow God. Job was the perfect person in the world, and that’s why God wanted to show Satan that even man can follow him. 

If some inflictions happen to us, maybe they are not as heavy as Job’s loss of his family, illness, and wealth. But again, it serves as a lesson. God went to the extreme to teach us that He’s in control. He asked Job, “Do you want to undermine my justice?” God has a purpose in this story—to show us that He’s in control and can take us and put us back in a place of happiness. I think this is the only case where God went to such an extreme, as long as we depend on Him. 

Of course, some mystery remains. We don’t know why God acts as He does, but maybe someday we will know the answer in the life hereafter. I believe we just need to stay strong and know that God is always there, providing what we need and bringing us out of bad situations.

Donald: What do you think about the word “spared” as in “I was spared.” Why me? Why am I spared? Or why is that person not spared? Probably the most important statement here is: You think you know, but you don’t. We just don’t know. We think we know, we try to understand, but we’re human.

Sharon: I don’t think anyone is eventually spared. There are definitely people who suffer earlier in their lives and who face significant challenges. But as Donald said, we’re in the battle zone, and if you think you’ve been spared, you’d better watch out. The aspects of sin have touched all of us, and the bacteria and things that could call us out are real for everybody. I have two dear friends—both husband and wife—who just found out they have stage four cancer, both of them. He’s a physician, and she’s already survived one round of cancer about six or seven years ago. I was asking the same question: why, Lord, why? But we’re in the battle zone, and the amazing thing is that they have a close walk with the Lord, but their family has been dinged many times. The battle was won at the cross, and grace is ours. Regardless of what we’re struggling with, the battle was won by our Savior, and all we have to do is, in our blindness, walk with Him.

Donald: I couldn’t agree more. Should we frame it as: the battle has been won, but we still live in a war zone, and until we’re no longer part of the war zone, we can get “dinged,” as you described it? It’s very serious, and I’ll never forget the story Don told years ago about a devout, faith-based person who, following surgery for cancer (and prayer by her faith community) went into remission but later relapsed and died. He community blamed her lacked of faith for the relapse. Is that what we should be doing, or should we just recognize that bacteria are all around us?

Michael: It seems that we have a problem with suffering as if it’s some form of judgment from God. We easily accept the suffering of Jesus on the cross, but when it comes to us, it’s different. We take the story of the cross as something distant, something Jesus went through for us. But when we suffer, we don’t accept it the same way.

David: It seems to me that all the evidence points to a conclusion that God cannot (and I know those two words tend not to go together) prevent suffering, God cannot prevent evil. Is grace God’s way of making up for that? He can’t prevent suffering, he can’t prevent evil, but he can ameliorate suffering through grace. If God created everything that exists, then he necessarily created evil. I’m not sure we can say that God “allowed” Satan to do his worst on Job; maybe he could not have prevented Satan from doing it. 

To Michael’s point about our too-ready acceptance of Jesus’ suffering on the cross: Is there something more to this story? Is it that God could not prevent the suffering of His own Son? Since we are His children too, perhaps we need to reconsider our perspective.

Donald: We’re able to accept that God could have intervened early on and wiped out Satan and evil, but He chose not to, so we would have a choice. So, the language we should be using is that God chooses not to prevent evil. He certainly can. The sticky part is, if He can keep us safe or allow us to be unsafe, does He choose to keep you safe or not? That’s where things get complicated. Maybe this is a preconceived notion that needs to change, and maybe it’s the blindness Michael referred to.

Don: Because of blindness to cause and effect—man’s ways—we want to ascribe them to God. Who decides which preconceived notions to discard? Who is the arbitrator of bad decisions or badly held viewpoints? 

With regard to David’s question about God’s 77 questions, 60 of which have been answered: if He were doing it today, I think He would ask questions at a molecular level that would reset the bar to 77.

David: Point taken!

Carolyn: I choose to talk to the Lord all day long, and what we’re saying is true. Even Jesus asked if the cup could be taken from Him, and it says, “The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” What are your opinions on prayer in relation to our subject today?

Don: The book of Romans talks about our not knowing how to pray. It’s not that we don’t know the words to say, but rather what our expectation of prayer is. We want prayer to work like magic, where we say something and God responds as we wish. But when God says we don’t know how to pray, it means we don’t know what to expect from prayer or that our expectations may be unrealistic. We need to rethink our expectations: what should prayer be doing for us? Maybe some preconceived notions need to be set aside to understand God’s plan for us.

Carolyn: But being told that “If we had the faith of a mustard seed,…” gives us expectations.

C-J: The problem with expectation is that it has boundaries; except means we let God determine. Because we’re human and live in a finite world, we measure things by our environment. In places like Gaza, people just want the violence to stop. If you’re observing, you pray for a resolution that brings peace and prosperity, knowing it could take generations to rebuild. We think like that as humans. But we want all the good and none of the bad. 

In my relationship with God, it’s organic, in flux at every level. It’s like a seesaw; you need balance. We are binary—good or bad, enough or not. Grace must be foundational in our relationship with God. It’s not something we can give ourselves; it only comes from God.

Anonymous: It’s perplexing, hard to understand. I’ve been in this battle myself lately. Can’t find answers. I want to know how to pray. I don’t know anything. I’m hoping, in the little time I still have, that I might understand, that maybe I’ll see. The only thing I can do is surrender, not ask for understanding, but ask to see God’s purpose in my life. There has to be a reason why He prolongs our lives sometimes, saves us from certain deaths, and carries us through tribulations. If we don’t get there, what’s the purpose of our life? 

I’m sure He’s working a good work, and He’s the beginner and finisher of our faith. I’m expecting Him to finish His work and teach me, even after seven decades, what it is. It would be nonsense if I don’t get there before I die. I think it’s about giving it all up, humbling ourselves, and accepting whatever comes. Maybe through submission, we might be led to see things His way. Other than that, I’ve done all I can. I had answers, but they don’t add up. Do I have to understand? Must I know before I go? I don’t think I can change my thinking or views. 

Waiting on Him requires complete submission, complete surrender, and just walking blindly. We cannot see. I thought I saw before, but things change, and God is not satisfied with what we think is good. So, I pray for blindness to the world, blindness to our ways of understanding, and blindness that leads to surrender. Just let go and see where God takes us.

Don: You sound like you’re coming very close to where Job came to: without answers to his questions, but with the satisfaction that surrender was the only option.

Anonymous: That’s true, because we don’t even know how to pray. I pray to learn how to pray. I tell Him, “Lord, I don’t know what to say or ask. Just finish the work you started in me, and let me recognize it. Let me feel fulfilled—not just intellectually, but let it be a conviction in my heart, something I can live with.”

Reinhard: Endurance and acceptance—surrender to God—is key. Even Jesus went through suffering. He could have avoided it, but He allowed Himself to go through the process because it’s part of the master plan of salvation. There’s freedom of choice and a tendency to rebel, which started with Adam and Eve. When you see the big picture, suffering now is nothing compared to the glory that will be revealed. As long as we stay close to Him, as Psalm 23 says, even when we walk through the darkest valley, we need not fear evil. God’s presence is our comfort.

Don: That’s a good note to end on. 

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