Defiant Faith in the Face of Suffering

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Collin Hansen
Why, God? you probably haven’t ever suffered the same level of death and disease as job. But you’ve probably turned to God in dismay through your own trials. We are all like Job, right Bill kinds and will kinds in their new book, wrestling with job to find faith in the face of suffering, published by IVP academic. We are, quote, engaged in a mysterious cosmic battle as everyday our faith is put to the test. And God himself is honored when we trust, obey and worship him as the great and glorious God that he is and quote, they’ll kinds as a TGC council member and until recently served as the longtime senior pastor at Cornerstone Evan Jellicle Free Church in Annandale, Virginia. His son, Willa is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He has written extensively on the book of Job and wisdom and suffering in the Hebrew Bible. Both of them earned their PhD from Cambridge University. Their book wrestling with job combines the X academic expertise of will with the homiletical insights of Bill. I’ve really never read anything like it or quite like it before. They find in Job real faith that holds us together, when it feels like our world is falling apart. Defiant faith in the face of suffering takes our anguished questions to God they right because He cares for us. Job knows that God is good. That’s why he can’t make sense of this evil that has befallen him. The kinds do Oh writes this, following Job’s example, glorifying God as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death means taking one’s experience of God’s first sacredness directly to its source God himself. It doesn’t mean giving up God’s goodness or power, but it may mean holding God to those standards of his own character, and grappling in the darkness, as Jacob did Genesis 32 Until the sun begins to rise, that is a real faith and, quote, love that line. Below, join me now on gospel bound to discuss whether job is an example or warning, the difference between lament and grumbling. The problem of God is the author of evil and more bill will. Thank you for joining me on gospel bound.

Bill Kynes
Pleasure to be with you, Colin.

Collin Hansen
All right. We’ll, how do you get to a point where you say I want to spend my life studying job?

Will Kynes
Oh, well, it really started for me, after I graduated from college, I moved to Kenya where I was working in a church for about five months.

Will Kynes
And while I was there, I got really sick, as sick as I’ve ever been in my life. And I couldn’t even leave the house. And so I had a week where some nice missionaries allowed me to stay in their apartment. And I thought, You know what, maybe I’ll read through job. And I was feeling kind of job like during that time, and I’d read job before, but I had never really had the life experience for it to connect with me personally. And as I read that book, I was just shocked by what I found there. Because it was asking exactly the kinds of questions that I was asking, you know, why God, why are you allowing this to happen? But it wasn’t providing the answers that I expected from the Bible, and particularly, the fact that we job, yes, He’s faithful and all that at the beginning of the book, but then the kinds of ways that he talks to God is not what I expected in the Bible, and then God’s response to job is not what I expected from God. You know, it’s not the like warm and cuddly kind of God that we may often be tempted to think of. So coming out of that experience, and I did get better. But I was just fascinated by the book.

Will Kynes
And so that led to going on to seminary and then going on to do my PhD and deciding to do my PhD on job. And the thing is that spending three years during my PhD, I don’t feel like I’ve answered all the questions of job. I mean, it just, the more I dig into it, the more questions I have, and the more ways that it’s helping me to think spiritually about the nature of God and what it means to relate to God. And one other thing I’d say is that after finishing my PhD, I had a serious back injury, which for two years left me in pretty constant pain. And I feel like I learned even more about the book of Job during that time, when I was going through pain myself than I did even when I tried to read every article in book written on job during my PhD. And so that’s one of the amazing things about this book is that it connects with our lives. We’re all at some point going to face suffering. And it speaks to us in the midst of that, but it also challenges us in the midst of that as well.

Collin Hansen
Bill, I still think there’s got to be some point where a dad says, Son, have you ever considered Philippians?

Will Kynes
It is true that you know people stay if you really want understand job, like I was just saying you have to suffer. So I did have done some work on proverbs. And I think to understand Proverbs, you really have to be successful. So I’m hoping that that changes my life trajectory.

Collin Hansen
We can hope for that. Now, Bill. Here’s here’s the big question. And one of the questions you guys address in the book is job an example or a warning of how we should relate to God?

Bill Kynes
Well, you could say almost cynically, Job is an encouragement, because I doubt if many people suffer as much as job and so you can say, well, at least I’m not suffering as badly. Seriously.

Bill Kynes
I think you have to see Job as an example. Because James in the New Testament does that he points to the prophets, the suffering of the prophets, and then he points to Joe. And so I think we have biblical warrant for looking at Jove as an example. And I think, rightly understood, Job is seen to be in the right in the way he speaks. And I think we contend in 42, six, a contested verse, the job doesn’t repent, for the way that he speaks to God. No, I don’t think that’s the right way of understanding that and job shows us that you can speak honestly with God with the way you’re feeling. And there’s a very pious job, and job one and two, blessed to be the name of the Lord, the Lord gives us more takes away. But that’s not all there is to life in this fallen world. And I think people know that they recognize that and, and in that way, Job is an example of what it means to grapple with the pains and trials of this fallen world and maintain a real faith, which in some ways, becomes a defiant faith because it challenges God to say, What’s going on here. Meet with me explain this to me, somehow reveal Yourself to me. And that’s the experience that many people have. And I think when I preached on job, I think people were first curious, what is he going to say about this?

Bill Kynes
But then I think they found it freeing, because I think many people can relate to that experience of what is going on here, Lord, yes, I’m supposed to be the job of, of job one. Bless it be the name of the Lord, whatever happens, but that’s not how I feel. And I think we’re encouraged to know, yes, wrestling with God is appropriate, and can be helpful.

Collin Hansen
You mentioned some of the argument about whether or not job repents. But there is no moment when God tells Job’s who repent, is that correct?

Bill Kynes
Right. There’s no point at which God in some ways absolves him of sin after the supposed repent. And so I think all that point to the fact that that’s not really what’s going on there.

Collin Hansen
Very interesting. Well, I wonder if sometimes it’s too easy to dunk on Job’s friends. As you point out, the only New Testament quotation of job sites elephas. It’s Paul in First Corinthians 319. My broader question is, why do you think we need 24 chapters of back and forth between Job and his friends about whether or not he sinned?

Will Kynes
Yeah, so I mean, there are two things there. One is what values do the friends play in the book, and one way that I like to think about them, it’s a bit like, if you put your clothes in a washing machine, they’re not going to get clean unless you have some kind of agitator in there, right? That’s that thing in the middle of the washing machine. And not only that, but also like those granules or whatever that you put in with them, that rub against the clothes and that’s what gets the dirt off. I think that the friends to some degree are like agitators, in that they give job an opportunity to wrestle with them about the nature of his suffering. This is one role that they play in the book, but in terms of not dunking too easily on Job’s friends. For me, I think a lot of time spent with this book has actually the friends had been a really valuable lesson to me when I started to put myself in their shoes in the way that there are encountering and experiencing job suffering. I realized that actually I fall into a lot of the same kind of responses to suffering myself. I mean, what’s going on with them is they’re seeing that this righteous friend of theirs has suffered in some terrible way. And the fear is, if it can happen to them, then it can happen to me. I mean, if it can happen to Joe, right, then it can happen to them as the friends. And I mean, I noticed this in my own life during COVID, in that you would hear stories of like a young person who would die from COVID. And I noticed this happening in my psychology where I would listen out, well, what was their comorbidity? Right? What was the complication that that person has that I don’t have?

Collin Hansen
Or, what did they do wrong? Yeah.

Will Kynes
So that I can feel safe, you know, maybe they never wear their mask, or maybe they didn’t get the vaccine, whatever it is, but what’s going on there is we’re trying to create a category that we don’t fit in, that that person fits in. And so we feel safe from the potential suffering that they have. And that’s exactly what Job’s friends are doing to him when they are charging him with some kind of unrighteousness or sin that must have brought about the suffering in his life, they’re trying to put him in a different category than they are in. So I think it’s wrong to dunk on their friends, because we we do the same thing all the time. That’s why blaming the victim is so common. And so the friends, are there a great challenge to us in terms of how we respond to those who are suffering around us.

Bill Kynes
Yeah, and I’m just gonna add a couple of the things that part of the message of job is found in the literary form, the actual way that it’s written, and the fact that it goes on and on and on and on with this dialogue, this debate is part of the message that dealing with suffering in a person’s life is not easy. There are no easy answers. There’s no quick fixes. It takes time. It’s a journey. And I think the very literary form of job in its length. And this kind of dialogue reflects that it reflects the kind of thing that goes on person’s head. As you’re wrestling with these things, you’re saying these things to yourself. So you’ve got your friends, or are speaking to yourself as you’re wrestling with these things. So I think the literary form of it reflects some of the message.

Collin Hansen
Well, that’s helpful. It’s very helpful. Bill, it’s another thing that came up as I’m looking through it, and there are so many different lessons you guys have pointed out that we can pull from job. But I’m wondering, is this is this? Is this a model? For how we should this model for how we should or should not counsel our grieving friends?

Bill Kynes
Right? I mean, what, you know, what are the friends do wrong? I mean, the friends are there, which is, which is one thing, right? You got to commend the friends for coming.

Collin Hansen
And don’t say anything for a long time, right?

Bill Kynes
Yes. They perform Shiva. They’re grieving with him at the ash heap. And so you got to commend the friends for that. But then, in the end, it seems as though and I love Christopher ashes, illustration, the difference between an armchair theologian and a wheelchair sufferer. And they end up being armchair theologians, trying to address the head of Joe, and they miss his heart altogether. They don’t empathize with him. They don’t. They’re not sensitive to his emotional state. They, they, they miss the point of what’s going on in his life. And I think they need more sensitivity, more empathy, compassion, patience, even humility, as they’re addressing him because they do not know the mind of God in the situation, they get it wrong. And I think sometimes we need to be careful that we think we know what God is up to in a person’s life, or even our own life. And there just needs to be humility there. And then, ultimately, I think, for us point people, to the ultimate answer, which in the book of Job is God Himself. So to pray for people, and pray that they may be pointed toward God in the midst of their suffering is ultimately and finally the most important thing we can do?

Collin Hansen
It seems that I often pick up a response to when it comes to grieving people saying no, don’t don’t bring your theology to grieving. Just be quiet, don’t say anything. And first of all, that does seem to miss that some people actually want to talk through these wrestling’s they will they want, that they they want that? And second, it seems as though this book does show us that both. I mean, there’s an interplay between both there is the ministry of presence. And yeah, clearly, as you pointed out, the friends are not a good example. But the reason we have the In the in the canon is, at least in some part because it does lead to theological conclusions about about God. And one thing I want to come back to, of course, is the overall view that ultimately what this is about is Job’s relationship with God. That’s his real suffering in there. Go ahead. Yeah.

Will Kynes
Well, into your point, Colin, we do have to bring theology to situations of suffering. But there’s a difference in the way that the friends do it in the way that job does it. So the friends, they have such a small view of God, that they have to attack job to fit him into their small view of what Job has such a big view of God, right? This is a good in sovereign and just God, he’s actually willing to attack God Himself, in order to pursue that justice to call God to live according to what He has revealed Himself to be.

Collin Hansen
Well, that’s a good segue here will. One of the things I loved in seminary was being introduced to the concept of the history of interpretation. I took a class with Bob Yarborough on the history of New Testament interpretation made me think here, my goodness, the history of interpretation of job must be fascinating. Yeah. It certainly i My guess would be that earlier generations didn’t have the same level or the same kinds of theodicy questions. So as you were reading exhaustively, everything had been written about job earlier generations more likely than ours to say, I mean, whatever God ordains is, right, what questions were they trying to answer from this book?

Will Kynes
Yeah, so I mean, the book and at, it raises so many questions that, you know, they’re trying to answer lots of kinds of questions from it. I wrote an article for the Scottish Journal of theology, a few years back, where I traced some of the most prominent Christian readers of job across history. So people like Gregory the Great, and Aquinas, and Luther and Calvin, and then Bart, and Kierkegaard. And what was fascinating is, they all had different ways of understanding Joe. But in the end, all of them said, well, Job did something wrong. Job did not, in the end, speak rightly, of God. And so there is this consistent tendency, particularly in Christian interpretation, Jewish interpretation is a little bit broader on this, but in Christian interpretation, to say, you know, each of these interpreters, they had a different way of trying to explain what Job was doing. And you know, Calvin, for example, says that Job had a good case, but he carried it out. Ill, right improperly, not well. But all of them, in the end, say, well, but you just can’t talk to God, that way. They’re uncomfortable with the way that job interacts with God. And as we’ve already kind of alluded to, that’s not the way that we understand what’s going on here. But you can understand the motivation there. Right, which is, if you have this very high view of God’s sovereignty and His goodness and justice, then why why would you wrestle with God in this kind of way, we just submit to God. But there is a, there’s a bigger tradition here across the Bible, of God desiring people to bring their suffering to him in to relationally, work through that suffering with God. So we’ve got entering into our suffering with us that I think we read job in that broader context. And we can appreciate more of what’s happening here and the relationship between job and God.

Collin Hansen
Oh, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. Now, Bill, you preach through job. It’s one of the things I would commend people for their use in this book is, you’re not going to be able to tackle this book as as if you were expositing Philippians, you’re line by line exegesis is going to get bogged down in those 24 chapters. I have to imagine. How did your congregation respond when he preached job? And including, how do they respond when you announce, hey, we’re heading into a blank week series on job?

Bill Kynes
Well, I was over 30 years in my preaching ministry before I even attempted.

Collin Hansen
So, maybe not the first series that you preach?

Bill Kynes
And I was faced with a challenge. How do you preach this book? First of all, it’s very long. And then it’s mostly poetry, which is a challenge in itself with all the imagery and so forth. And then a lot of it are the friends who don’t speak the truth about God. So how do you how do you expand that in a helpful way?

Collin Hansen
Or, the full truth about God? I mean, partial truth some of what they say is true.

Bill Kynes
Yeah, how do you parse what’s true and what’s not and what they say? Yeah, so it took a long time to kind of figure out how would I do this and you know, working with It was a great joy as we wrestled with this. And he was a great help as we interacted. And so I divided it up and ended up with like 10 sermons that took us basically through the book. And I wanted to respect the literary quality of the book. It wasn’t simply somatic. I kind of walked through the book. Because again, I think the literary form is important in how in the message that’s being communicated. But I was I walked through it in 10 sermons, which wasn’t too long. But it was kind of a Lenten journey began in January, I thought about doing in the fall, but that would, you know, we’d end up in the holidays and who wants to be in job in the holidays? Christmas with job, you know, January to Easter. And it was a kind of a journey that then led to Easter and then culminated in kind of how, how do we see Jesus in job? And there are lots of important lessons there. I mean, I think people were purse at first curious, because they hadn’t I mean, I’d been at the church 30 years, I’d never preached through job. I’ve mentioned job, obviously, but never preached through it. How is he going to deal with this? What’s this? What’s this gonna look like? A lot of people have questions about job, obviously. So I think there was a good deal of curiosity. But then the kinds of feedback I got, were, you know, I can relate to Joe, I can relate to those kinds of feelings. I’ve been through some tough times. And I have felt like job. But I was afraid to express it. Because Christians aren’t supposed to be like that. First Christians are supposed to be joyful all the time. And I think they added guilt to their suffering as a consequence. So I think there was a sense of freeing to think, yeah, I can be honest with God as Joe was, and not be not be disrespectful for God. And I think I think that was one of the main things and then I think, ultimately, was just a bigger picture of who God is. And I think that’s part of what it means to fear God that God is God and I am not. And that’s a good thing. And and job, the book does not explain suffering. And in some ways, it says it’s inexplicable. God doesn’t explain it. What does it mean that God allows job to suffer for no reason? It’s inexplicable. But there is a sense in which God is so great. And ultimately, we trust so good, that God has his reasons that we must trust. And that’s where we end up and I think a lot of people were encouraged by that message.

Collin Hansen
Well, this stood out to me in the book, the difference that you guys identify between lament and grumbling, that was very helpful, especially the way you handled that within the Hebrew Bible, the differences between what we see in job and say, and say Exodus. Just explain that for listeners, because I think we probably are pretty prone to conflating them probably for the reasons that that bill just related that we’re expecting, Christians are supposed to be happy all the time. Therefore, anybody who’s raising complaint, Allah biblical lament, it sounds to them like sounds to us like grumbling.

Will Kynes
Yeah. And it’s a subtle difference. And so you can understand why people can get confused, but it’s a difference that we can recognize. And you can recognize that if you have kids, the difference between grumbling and a complaint that comes from a place of faith in you as a parent I tried. And trust, right, there’s a difference. But often, the actual words may sound almost exactly the same, right? But some of the examples, the prime example I think, of the way that lament, or what we are calling defiant faith plays out would be Genesis 1825, where Abraham says to God, so God is contemplating destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham is arguing well, but what if there are righteous people in the city, in, in Abraham says, Shall not the Judge of all the earth, do what is just and so that’s a complaint to God that’s coming from a position of deep belief that God is indeed just, you’re gonna live in expecting God to live according to that commitment to his justice. But the example is like an exodus that you point to this is the people they’ve just been brought out of Egypt. And they say wood that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the fall, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger, right, that comes from a lack of faith in who God is, which is shocking to us when we think about what they these people have just seen. God do so the distinction there is where the complaint comes from. Does it come from a deep set belief in who God is? Or does it come from a lack of faith in who God is? And so what We think Job is doing in the book of Job as He is complaining to God from the context of that deep faith that God is indeed good. And just if you can just be convinced that job situation is not evidence of that goodness and justice, that God will demonstrate that Justice better through restoring him, then he will change his ways he will intervene on jobs.

Collin Hansen
You know, I think I have the personality and the thought process to connect with you guys and, and enjoy the challenge of job. And it there are still so many things. I mean, even like that pretty simple distinction between lament and grumbling that I hadn’t thought about. And so clearly, as you guys lay out in this book, another thing that came out to me in the book is how you guys identify that job is less concerned with losing his money and his family. And I thought, boy, isn’t that fascinating. That’s he doesn’t talk about that. He does not talk about that he’s less concerned with losing his money in his family than He is in restoring his relationship with God. And maybe the that’s the whole point, that it strikes me as very countercultural for me, and probably for a lot of others in the relatively affluent West today. Bill, I’m wondering, as a pastor, how do you try to convey this sensibility to modern Christians for whom the felt need of a relationship with God being restored is probably less than the thought of what would happen if I lost my whole family and my health and my riches? And I’m not talking about in health and wealth conversation congregations, I’m just talking about suburban ones, like you and I are in

Bill Kynes
Right, right. Yeah, I was reflecting on that a bit. And, and part of it is, why do we want money? What does family mean to us? Why is it important? And when you probe beneath the surface, what are we really looking for? We’re looking for security, we’re looking for safety, we’re looking for significance, we’re looking for our place in the world. We’re looking for things that these are means rather than ends when you really look at it. And in fact, God is the end of all of those things. Where do we ultimately find our security and safety? Where do we ultimately find our meaning and significance? Where do we ultimately find our place in the world? And what we most want is to love and be loved. And often we think money will get us that or having a family will get us that if I just find the right person, to you know, my soulmate, then I get that. But these are all kind of earthly versions of pointers to the deeper and final source of all of those things. Which is God Himself.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. To be to be known and loved by the same people. Yes, yeah, ultimately by God, but getting known and loved by the same people. Yes. Yeah.

Bill Kynes
So I think it’s helping people to appreciate those things are good. Absolutely. There’s nothing bad about them. But they’re not ultimate. And the ultimate is found in God Himself.

Collin Hansen
Now, will this a question that stood out to as Bill referenced earlier, questions aren’t answered? No, the way that we would perhaps expect? So if his questions are not answered, at least in the way we as readers would expect, how can he then be satisfied with God? And it’s not and then that happens before his riches and his family? I mean, then this new family and everything else, his health are restored? Again, perhaps something that maybe it’s just me, but I think probably others are in my boat, as well, there.

Will Kynes
Yeah. So you see Jesus do this all the time, and that people bring questions to him. And he basically says, You’re asking the wrong question,

Collin Hansen
The wrong questions.

Will Kynes
I’m gonna answer the right question for you. And I think that’s what happens with job. So Job’s question is really its fundamental question is answered. And that question is, can I trust God, in the midst of my suffering? And when God appears, to Jove, he doesn’t say, Well, you know, there was this wager with the Satan. And that’s the reason why all of this happened. Right? He doesn’t say any of that stuff. But what he communicates through this, this amazing description of his creative power and his love for his creation and his power over even the monstrous and chaotic elements of His creation, is that he is indeed sovereign he is in can troll of what Job is facing. But he also is meticulously caring for his creation. And so if he cares for the baby ravens for the ostrich egg, then clearly he cares for Jehovah. And Jesus picks up on that same kind of idea. Right? Yeah, God cares for the lilies. Pharaohs. Yeah, exactly. So clearly he cares for you. And so when Joe responds in 42, and then two and following, he’s acknowledging that he’s learned these things from God, right? I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. And that’s what leads to verse six. Well, verse five, I’d heard of you by the hearing of the year, but now my eye sees you, right? There’s that restoration of the relationship, and he’s understanding God in a new and deeper way. That leads to in verse six, the way we understand it is something like and therefore, I set aside my morning, and I am consoled or I’m comforted, on dust and ashes, or in dust and ashes, you know, this is, every word in this first is debated. But that Job is saying, I received the consolation of comfort that you have offered me God through appearing to me in the powerful way that you have,

Bill Kynes
it’s helpful to see that dust and ashes is a form of ritual mourning. And it was the job of friends to enable the mourner to be released from that state of mourning. And these friends fail to do that. And, and only God in the end could do it. And he does it and job is then able to re enter into normal human life and escape from this state of mourning.

Collin Hansen
Mourning, but also repentance. Does that mean with dust and ashes, right? Or? What do you how do you guys interpret that?

Will Kynes
So it can be used in that kind of context as well. But I wonder how much the mourning is really the heart of what’s going on? I think repentance and mourning are often intertwined with one another. But in the context of job, he certainly doesn’t have any repentance at the beginning of the book. No, that’s right, this process. So that that sets the meaning of those that imagery for the book.

Bill Kynes
There’s an interesting case of Jacob in the Old Testament, who refused to be comforted when he thought that he had lost his son.

Collin Hansen
Interesting. Okay. Well, so I was gonna say there’s a lot of different kinds of mourning, right? I mean, Psalm 51, is a Psalm of repentance, but it’s also mourning. Right? I mean, David is mourning the his sin and the consequences of his sin. So you can have a different kind of dust and ashes in that case, but you’re exactly right. There is no evidence that that job would have done I mean, that’s certainly not where it was instigated it was instigated precisely because He is a righteous man. Not because in David’s situation, he was manif Gonzo at heart, but also very sinful. All right, so Bill, I’m gonna leave your the elder statesman here among us. And tip your cap. I’m saving the hardest question for you. I, this this is one of the thorniest things I think anywhere I think consistently when I’m teaching the Bible, especially Old Testament. I have the hardest time with this and, and some of my, you know, I’ve got a well worn compatibilism I can handle the cross. I can handle Peter sermon at Pentecost. I can handle Stephens sermons like it just I can handle Josef’s story you intended for evil but God intended for good. But there are some other passages that seem to border on God as the author himself of evil job. 4211 is one of the examples you guys cite here. It’s not the only one though. We could multiply them Jeremiah 44 to zekiel 1422. Of course, we’re talking the context of the exile, which is one of the clearest examples of this long with I’d say soul, as well as Pharaoh. How do you explain this? How did you how did you preach this? We got I mean, Scripture tells us God cannot be the author of evil but wow, these passages seem pretty straightforward.

Bill Kynes
Well, it’s interesting in some people try to get God out of it, even in the book of Job and say, Oh, God didn’t do anything wrong. It was the Satan and it was the Serbian and it was the the natural forces so God is off the hook. But that’s not right. Because the whole book is the whole point of arguing with God. God is ultimately risk Honorable. And I think we have to understand that God is sovereign, and nothing happens apart from the ultimate will of God. Now we use the language God allowing permissive will. And I think that reflects the notion that God uses secondary moral actors in creation, that have real moral responsibility. And here’s what I think is most important for an act to be evil. It must be performed by a moral actor with an evil intent, and an evil. Okay, and by definition, God cannot have an evil intent or an evil purpose. Now, God allows evil god is evil is a part of God’s world. And sometimes in the book of Job, people use the divine speeches related to a behemoth and the way God allows these apparently evil creatures to exist. But they’re always under his control. And that’s part of the message as well. So I think when you understand this notion of, yes, there’s evil in the world, and that is perpetrated by evil actors. But God is above that. He’s over that, and God’s intent. And, and anything is never evil, with never with an evil purpose.

Collin Hansen
So it’s not just the consequences of the action that are evil, but the intent, yes, behind them. That’s God, by definition, cannot have an evil, intent,

Bill Kynes
evil intent and evil purpose. And that’s ultimately the competence that we have, whatever evil things we experience. God is the great Alchemist God is the God who can turn the lead into gold. And he will and that’s the great hope that we have that God can transform the evil experiences that we have, and somehow turn them to His glory and ultimately, for our good

Collin Hansen
is a beautiful place to end. I hope. I hope a lot of people read this book, and I hope they determined to preach job and to study it together as a church as small groups. Even just personally, I can’t think of many things that would be more rewarding. And it may be counterintuitive, but I think with your guys’s help, they’ll be able to do it. We’ve been talking about wrestling with job defiant faith in the face of suffering with Bill kinds and Wilkins. Check out their new book from IVP academic bill will thank you.

Bill Kynes
Thank you, Colin.

Will Kynes
Thanks, Colin.