Agnosticism - Chambers, Oswald

Job 9–10

Pour forth and bravely do your part, o knights of the unshielded heart! Forth and forever forward! Out from prudent turret and redoubt, and in the mellay charge a main, to fall but yet to rise again.

R. L. Stevenson

Agnosticism is not always the deplorable thing it is imagined to be. An acknowledged intellectual agnosticism is a healthy thing; the difficulty arises when agnosticism is not acknowledged. To be an agnostic means i recognise that there is more than i know, and that if i am ever to know more, it must be by revelation.

1. The cosmic refraction of god ( job 9:112)

If you accept Jesus Christs presentation of god and then look at the present order of the material uni- verse you will find what is meant by the phrase, the cosmic refraction of god. Whenever god presents himself in the present order of things, he appears refracted, that is, distorted to our reason; we cannot understand him. When a man comes face to face with nature, god seems to be almighty against all His conceptions. God allows things in the cosmic world which are a refraction, they do not continue in the straight, simple line my mind tells me they ought to take. Job says, in effect, if god chooses to be almighty against me, where am i? If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand. The eccentric old poet, george herbert, has a poem in which this phrase recurs be not almightie, let me say against, but for me. The reason for jobs agony and distress is not a temperamental one; he has been brought to the heart of things and finds tragedy there, and a gap. The only way out is by means of the redemption; in the mean- time job is stating the perplexity as it appears to a man who is really beginning to think. Every one of us in our day and generation whether we have ever thought deeply or not, has faced this problem: if god is love, why does he allow the hawk to kill the spar- row? As tennyson puts it. . . Nature, red in tooth and claw. Why does he allow one animal to feed on another? Why are nations allowed to fight each other? These are not passing perplexities but real puzzles, and the only thing to do is either to deny the facts or to confess we are agnostic. Job is up against the problem that things do not look as they should if god is the kind of god his implicit belief constrains him to declare he ought to be. Jobs friends deny the facts; they wont have it that there is any perplexity, and they say to job, the reason god appears refracted is because you yourself are refracted. The cosmic force makes god appear indifferent and cruel and remote, and if you become a special pleader of any particular creed you have to shut your eyes to facts. The only revelation which gives a line of explanation is that there is something wrong at the basis of things, hence the refraction. The apostle paul says that creation is all out of gear and twisted; it is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of god. In the meantime, the problem remains. Look at the world through either a microscope or a telescope and you will be dwarfed into terror by the infinitely minute or the infinitely great; both are appalling. When you touch the cosmic force, apart from the blinkers of intellect, there is a wild problem in it. Nature is wild, not tame. No man is capable of solving the riddle of the universe because the universe is mad, and the only thing that will put it right is not mans reason, but the sagacity of god which is manifested in the redemption of Jesus Christ. A christian is an avowed agnostic intellectually; his attitude is, i Humbly accept the revelation of god given by Jesus Christ.

2. The conscious resurgence of goodness ( job 9:1320)

How much less shall i answer him, and choose out my words to reason with him? Whom though i were righteous, yet would i not answer, but i would make supplication to my judge. ( job 9:1415)

Resurgence is used here to mean the re-consideration of a former judgement. The majority of us start out with the belief that god is good and kind, and that he prospers those who trust in him. Job believed this, but he has a conscious resurgence against that belief now, and it is jobs goodness, not his badness, which makes him reconsider things. There are things in the experience of us all which call for a revision of our credal findings about god; there are other elements that will not come into our declaration as to the kind of being he is. Eliphaz and bildad have no problem along this line; their one aim is to convict job of being a black- guard. The sign of dishonesty in a mans creed is that he finds out defects in everyone save himselfit is not possible for me to be mistaken in my view of god. Bildad and eliphaz would not admit that they could be wrong; they had the ban of finality14 about their views. Trouble always arises when men will not revise their views of god. Bildad tells job that if he was upright he would not suffer as he did. Job maintainsi am upright, and yet everything has gone wrong with me. Job stuck steadily to facts, not to consistency to his creed. Over and over again a man is said to be a disbeliever when he is simply outgrowing his creed. It is a most painful thing for a man to find that his stated views of god are not adequate. Never tell a lie for the honour of god; it is an easy thing to do. Job refuses a presentation of god which does not face the facts; he has no scepticism about god, no hesitation about his existence, but he does tirade all the time against the way in which he is being presented.

3. The concentrated reaction of grief ( job 9:2135)

For he is not a man, as i am, that i should answer him, and we should come together in judgement. Neither is there any days man betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both. ( job 9:3233)

Job is giving expression to a new conception of god; his hope is that an umpire, a days man, will arise who will not only justify god, but also justify him. My creed does not do this, he says, neither does my experience, or my way of looking at things. It was grief that brought job to this place, and grief is the only thing that will; joy does not, neither does prosperity, but grief does. The great factor in the life of Jesus Christ, the redeemer of the world, is this very thing. . . Yet it pleased the lord to bruise him (Isaiah 53:10). Once grief touches a man he is full of reaction, he says spiteful things because he is hurt, but in the end grief leads a man to the right point of view, viz. That the basis of things is tragic. As long as i am happy and things go well, i say what a famous philosopher said this is the best of all possible worlds. It plainly is not, and the bible reveals why it is not. The world as god originally designed it, was the best of all possible worlds, but it has now become the worst of all possible worlds; in fact, the bible reveals that it could not be any worse than it is. Individual men who take the wrong line get worse, but the world itself cannot get worse. Grief brings a man to see this more quickly than anything else, and he longs for an umpire who will hold the scales. There is no use telling job that there is no god or that he has not suffered: he has had too much experience of god and of suffering. It is useless to tell him that his creed is the umpire that arbitrates between himself and god: it leaves too much unsolved. Job is the type of man who could never rest in the church, or in the scriptures; he needs living reality. The man who rests in a creed is apt to be a coward and refuse to come into a personal relationship with god. The whole point of vital Christianity is not the refusal to face things, but a matter of personal relationship, and it is the kind of thing that job went through which brings a man to this issue.

4. The conceptions for rejection ( job 10:117)

jobs utterances are the last word in the expression of certain forms of grief. These particular verses are stately and terrific; job is trying to state to his own mind why god seems to have rejected him, and also why he should reject the way god is being presented to him

thou knowest that i am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand. Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. ( job 10:78)

All along job bases his conceptions on the facts which he knows, and this is the only thing to do,

Although many of us would rather tell a lie for the honour of god than face the facts. A fanatic is one who entrenches himself in invincible ignorance. Job will not accept anything that contradicts the facts he knows; he is not splenetic, he does not say god is cruel, he simply states the factsit looks as though god is rejecting me without any reason, all the facts go to prove this and i am not going to blink them. Job will not lay a flattering unction to his soul on the line of expediency. No man ever puts a stumbling- block in the way of others by telling the truth; to tell the truth is more honouring to god than to tell a lie. If god has done something for you, you will know it unmistakably, but if he has not, never say he has for the sake of other people. Job sticks to facts, that is what confuses his friends; but in the end job is brought face to face with god.

5. The case for refuge ( job 10:1822)

Are not my days few? Cease then, and let me alone, that i may take comfort a little, before i go whence i shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death. ( job 10:2021)

I see no way out, says job. He lies down, not in weakness, but in absolute exhaustion. Job is not talking in a petted mood, but saying that unless god will be a refuge for him, there is no way out, death is the only thing. In every crisis of life, as represented in the old testament as well as in the teaching of our lord, this aspect of god is emphasised god is our refuge; yet until we are hit by sorrow, it is the last thing we seek for god to be. There is a difference between the weakness of refusing to think and the weakness that comes from facing facts as they really are. Job is seeing for the first time that god is the only refuge, the only way out for him; yet he cannot get at him through his creed, it is all confusion; the only thing to do is to fling himself on god. It is this aspect of god which is at the basis of the redemption. When a man gets convicted of sin (which is the most direct way of knowing that there is a problem at the basis of life), he knows that he cannot carry the burden of it; he also knows that god dare not forgive him; if he did, it would mean that mans sense of justice is bigger than gods. If i am forgiven without being altered, forgiveness is not only damaging to me, but a sign of unmitigated weakness in god. Unless it is possible for gods forgiveness to establish an order of holiness and rectitude, forgive- ness is a mean15 and abominable thing. The human problem is too big for a man to solve, but if he will fling himself unperplexed on god he will find him to be the kind of refuge job is refer- ring to. We know nothing about the redemption or about forgiveness until we are enmeshed by the personal problem; then we begin to understand why we need to turn to god, and when we do turn to him he becomes a refuge and a shelter and a complete rest. Up to the present job has had no refuge any- where; now he craves for it. When a man receives the holy spirit, his problems are not altered, but he has a refuge from which he can deal with them; before, he was out in the world being battered, now the center of his life is at rest and he can begin, bit by bit, to get things uncovered and rightly related.