Maggot Theology

Faced with all this, Job asks the question we have all asked at some time. Why doesn’t God do something? Why does he let injustice go on and on? Job’s list of crimes is perhaps a conventional one. We can come up with a contemporary list, and ours is more extensive. TV coverage makes us aware, night by night, of the immeasurable evil all over the world. To the sins of individuals in Job’s list, we can add the wars taking place, government corruption, atrocities in countries, terrorism, genocide . . .

Why doesn’t God DO something? When we ask this question today, we need to be more nuanced than Job could be in his context. We know enough now, with the whole of the Old Testament and the revelation that Jesus brought us, to reflect that if God did “do something,” we ourselves would not be left unscathed. It’s all too easy to see sin, like the list of crimes in this passage, as bad things that other people do. Jesus had something to say about “motes” and “beams” (Matthew 7:5, KJV).

But that’s to skip ahead a thousand years. Bildad had a response to Job in his own time. Some of it’s even true. But Bildad misunderstands God in one very serious way. His thinking about God is just what we might think if God had not shown us otherwise. We are not like worms or maggots. He created us and he loves us and treasures us. Even Jews in the Old Testament grasped this (e.g. Deuteronomy 7:6-8, Psalm 8). Even Job knew that he mattered to God. Read Day 25 to see what Job thought of Bildad’s final shot.

Respond in Prayer

Father, thank you for loving me and caring for me, even though I don’t deserve it. Thank you for sending Jesus, who showed us what you are like, and who died on the cross for our sin. Thank you that you continually help us to grow more like you.

Annabel Robinson

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®).