Absolute Integrity

Job 1:1,2:1-10; Psalm 26

When I was a kid, I had a number of chores I was expected to do each week. Saturday was always the day I was expected to clean my room. In addition to cleaning my room, my brothers and I were expected to clean up the den and the rec room where we all played together. Sometimes the messes we are expected to clean up weren’t caused by us. I can remember going to bed on Friday night hoping and wishing that all the messes I had made that week would just magically disappear by the morning. As an adult, I sometimes do the same thing. But the messes of my life have become more complicated than a few socks and toys and art supplies strewn about the floor. Physical ailments, emotional distress, sickness, financial burdens and debt, strained relationships, arguments, political standoffs, religious debates…all manner of mistakes, missteps, words spoken thoughtlessly and carelessly, injuries dealt and received. Have you ever gone to bed wishing that all the mess would just disappear and you could start again with a clean slate in the morning?

Despite my childish longings and yearnings, I would always wake up on Saturday to the same mess I went to sleep with on Friday. My room would not clean itself. The same is true now. My messes don’t clean themselves, nor do the messes of others with which I am expected to deal. There is a degree of dread or suffering that I experience in facing all of them…a dread that often makes ignoring these problems a more enticing option than facing them. Sometimes, by ignoring my own mistakes I can also avoid suffering on account of them. But just because I’m not suffering as an immediate result of my words or deeds doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t.

My deep desire is that I don’t suffer. God’s deep desire is that no one suffers. Understanding this, we can then begin to understand the importance of integrity. It is tempting to follow the paths that would lead us away from the negative consequences of our actions, while claiming that those who do suffer and struggle in this world have somehow deserved it. When pursuing our will results in the suffering of others, that is sin. That is why God despises sin, because it goes against God’s will that no one suffers. The temptation of sin and the tension between God’s will and our will create a tremendously complicated quagmire.

Enter Job. Job had 10 beautiful children and tremendous wealth: seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pairs of oxen, five hundred female donkeys…he was a big deal. Job would regularly prepare burnt offerings for himself and for his children, just in case they ever “sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” He lived a clean life. Even God bragged of his “absolute integrity,” to which Satan responds, “Well duh, he can afford integrity because he’s rich and he’s never had to suffer.” Satan suggests, “Stretch out your hand and strike all he has. He will certainly curse you to your face.”

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the story of Job is God’s response to this suggestion: “Okay, go ahead and do it.” Satan might suggest the calamity, but God permits it. How can God, whose deep desire is for a redeemed creation in which there is no suffering, permit Satan the freedom to bring calamity into the world? Job’s flocks and servants are raided and destroyed and his children all die in a freak tornado that knocks a house down on top of them. “In all of this, Job didn’t sin or blame God.” And all of this happens in the first chapter, we pick up the story today with God continuing to brag about Job to Satan, “He still holds onto his integrity even though you incited me to ruin him for no reason.” “Skin for skin,” Satan replies, meaning: I still think Job’s integrity is only skin deep. So Job is then cursed with painful sores from head to foot. As he sits scraping his sores with a potshard, his wife asks with seeming disbelief, “Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die, already!”

There is a lot to deal with in the book of Job but the thing that strikes me in these first two chapters is the conflict between a God who despises sin, and yet permits an innocent man to suffer. We would expect Job, like the Psalmist, to demand fair treatment on account of his integrity: “Have mercy on me, don’t make me suffer consequences I do not deserve!” We might also expect Job to become bitter or vengeful, that’s what we’re used to seeing, and perhaps that is also what Satan was expecting to see. Human integrity is challenged by suffering.

My deep desire is that I don’t suffer. God’s deep desire is that no one suffers. The tension between these two desires creates a true test of integrity in a world that offers a shortcut to our desires at the expense of God’s. Power and prosperity afford some an opportunity to avoid the consequences of their actions at the expense of others. The Psalmist often laments the injustice of this, “Why do the wicked prosper?” The flipside of this injustice, “the suffering of the righteous,” is the central theme of Job. This injustice in tension with our deep desire to avoid suffering poses a great challenge to our integrity, because it seems to suggest that wickedness is the only way we can truly avoid suffering in this life. You can avoid suffering if you are willing to lie, and cheat, and steal. It’s even possible to do this and still claim that we are acting with integrity.

Others are easy to trick, and we are even capable of deceiving ourselves. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Only God knows our hearts and minds fully. God knows what we have thought, and said, and done, thus only God can judge our integrity. It is said that Job feared God and avoided evil, but I tend to fear God on account of the evil that I know I’ve done but don’t want to fess up to. I relate less to Job’s absolute integrity, or the Psalmist who claims to have walked with integrity, and relate more to Paul’s statement from Romans 3, “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.”

I can claim no integrity before the God who requires that I “seek justice, love kindness, and walk with humility” before him. I know who I am called to be by God, but I am also very aware of how my integrity to that calling will result in my undue suffering in a world that deals injustice, exalts hatred and cruelty, and rewards arrogance and pride. The psalmist walks with integrity for he has “refused to let his thinking and doing be formed and guided by the falsity, hypocrisy, and wickedness prevalent among some in the society.”[1] We are called to live with integrity for the Kingdom of God in the midst of a world that rewards our corruption.

Our only hope for success in this endeavor is revealed by God in our ultimate failure. As it was in the case of Job, so it was in the case of Christ: God permitted an innocent man to suffer. How does this serve God’s will? I have concluded that I will never satisfactorily answer this question, no matter how hard I try. I simply accept that God is able to know and see much more than I can ever hope to see and know. God’s will for redemption is everlasting, while my will to avoid suffering is futile, because one day I will die. Through the cross and resurrection, we are enabled to see and come to trust God’s everlasting plan. Through the crucifixion of Jesus, the injustice and corruption of this world was laid bare for all to see. Those who claimed power and righteousness on account of that corruption could no longer claim integrity before God. Those who had suffered poverty and hunger and oppression on account of that corruption were set free.

We are all called by grace to begin again with a clean slate and to live out God’s calling for our lives with integrity. God does not want us to suffer, even if we deserve it, nor does God want anyone else to suffer…the poor, the weak, the sick, the hungry. I mentioned a few weeks back that in a world ruled by illusions of wealth and power, the poor and weak will be the first to suffer by the attempt to reveal the corruption of these illusions. Here’s where following Jesus gets difficult, because those who follow Jesus with integrity will find themselves suffering alongside the poor, the weak, the sick, and the hungry until all come to see the corruption of the world as revealed through the cross and trust the redemption of the world made possible through grace. Our absolute integrity requires trusting God’s vision and trusting God’s provision, even in the midst of suffering. Our absolute integrity requires grace. Thanks be to God that grace upon grace has been given. Amen.

[1] Mays, James L. “Psalms” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 129.