Reading through the book of Job, I’ve been trying to think through it from an uninvented perspective. I’ve realized it would be difficult to see it as merely a figment of human imagination, as if some ancient screenwriter was preparing a script on suffering for a Netflix TV series. Who knows how it actually played out, but the realness lies in the antagonists thinking they get God and why he does what he does; we know, the ending doesn’t let them do that.

Sinful human beings have a nasty habit of thinking they can comprehend God, who by definition is incomprehensible. However, since we are made in God’s image and made to know him, we can have some, although not exhaustive, knowledge of God. We don’t have exhaustive knowledge of anything, even ourselves! If we’re honest, we’re willing to admit we’re often a mystery to ourselves. It’s interesting, then, when reading Job to see how each of the characters seems unwilling to admit there is any mystery in what is happening to Job. Although to Job his suffering is a mystery because he “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”

Theology isn’t an option in the Christian life, but I wasn’t even introduced to the concept until I’d been a Christian for over six years. Until then, I was under the impression it was just me, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t deny the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with helping us understand Scripture, only we’re never called to bypass our brain. I seemed to think there was a wire in my brain going up to heaven, and when God wanted me to understand something, zap! That’s not the best hermeneutical principle.

Why is theology important? It is the study (ology) of God (theos in Greek), so yeah, it’s important. And Paul in Ephesians 1 prays

¹⁷ that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, ¹⁸ having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

The two requirements for us to grow in our knowledge of God is work and effort, and God revealing truth about himself to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it’s more than just reading the Bible; it’s studying the Bible, studying God in the revelation of himself to us in his word. Paul is telling us without the Christian concept of revelation, we would be as benighted as Job and his friends, his “miserable comforters.”

This includes having some idea of the principles of biblical hermeneutics, of how texts ought to be interpreted. I hadn’t even heard that word, let alone knew what it meant, until I had been Christian for more than six years. I learned the text of the Bible wasn’t magic, but it had a specific meaning the author intended when he wrote it. That’s called, not surprisingly, authorial intent. We must ask what the author intended his audience to understand when he wrote. Which further means the context is critical to understanding the text. Which even further means the Bible wasn’t written to me! It was written for me, but not to me, big difference.

All of this requires study outside the Bible itself. We’ll get a lot of this every Sunday in church if the pastor is doing his job, and in my 44 years as a Christian I’ve found that always to be the case. It’s why they go to seminary. But that doesn’t let us off the hook. We must read more than the Bible. A study Bible is helpful, as are the innumerable commentaries and books on the Bible, as well as the inexhaustible sources on the Internet. It’s amazing how alive the text and the stories in Scripture become when we know more about the author and the historical context. Most amazing of all is the ultimate biblical hermeneutical principle that Jesus gave us: the entire Bible is about him!

When I was introduced to theology at 24, I began with reading the Systematic Theology of Charles Hodge, the great 19^th century Princeton Theologian. It blew my mind. In a chapter on the knowledge of God Hodge writes that God is inconceivable, incomprehensible, and that our knowledge of him can only be partial, but he argues it is real knowledge. The problem is when we think our knowledge of God means we can understand him, why and how he does what he does. The reason Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done . . .” is because we don’t, and we can’t! The book of Job makes that very clear. This problem of thinking we can figure out God’s thoughts and motives is endemic to the human condition, and both Christians and non-Christians are afflicted by it.

If we give it a moment’s thought, we’ll realize our pretension of thinking we can probe the depths of God’s being and mind is ridiculous. It’s stunning if we really ruminate upon it, how totally and completely inconceivable and incomprehensible God is. For example, he created everything out of nothing by the power of his word, “and God said, ‘Let there be . . . .’” Try to wrap your mind around that. God is also omnipresent, everywhere at once. He is also omniscient, meaning he knows all things. And omnipotent, meaning he possesses all power. Think of the devastating power of splitting the atom, and he made every single one! He is also aware and intimately involved in the lives of every single human being on earth, at the same moment.

I could go on, but you get the point. All we can do is fall down in praise and adoration of a being so great, and proclaim in doxology with King David,

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.

Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.