Suffering & Hardship
It feels like God is punishing me and I cannot work out what for. I am not a bad person. Why is my life like this?
“I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.”
Job is not raising a theoretical question. He has lost his children, his health and his livelihood, and he asks God directly to show him what he is being condemned for. The book takes that question seriously enough to run for forty two chapters around it. Worth noticing: God never answers Job with a list of his sins, because there was no such list.
“Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”
People bring Jesus news of eighteen killed when a tower collapsed in Siloam, fishing for the moral explanation. He refuses it outright: those people were not worse sinners than anyone else in Jerusalem. He will not permit a tragedy to be read as a verdict on its victims. It is among the clearest things he ever said on the subject of suffering and blame.
A path forward
Write down what you suspect you are being punished for. Seen in daylight, most of these accusations turn out to be things already confessed, or things that were never yours to begin with.
Take that list to God in prayer, and if the shame is heavy, to a pastor or trusted believer too. Confession has a shape and an ending. Free floating guilt has neither.
Notice when the punishment thought tends to arrive: late at night, after a setback, around a particular person. The timing usually says more about your exhaustion than about God's verdict.
Closing verse
“The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.”
- Nahum 1:7
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