hn 9:1-3]).
A few days after the terrorism of September 11th, some attempted to explain our national tragedy in moralistic terms: This was God's judgment on the nation for its immorality. Bad things happen to bad nations. Bad things happened; therefore, our nation must be bad-or, at least, certain elements in this nation must be bad, for which we must all suffer.
But does God operate this way, quid pro quo, this punishment for that evil? Most who suffered had little to do with the bad morals for which God was supposedly punishing the nation. We need to recall that God was willing even to let the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah off the hook for the sake of ten righteous men (see Gen. 18:32). One wonders, in retrospect, what would have happened if Abraham had gone down to one righteous man, which is where God eventually ended in reconciling the wicked world to himself for the sake of his righteous Son.
Consider the classic sufferer Job. The Book of Job is a biblical burr under the saddle of such cause-and-effect theology. Bad things happened to Job, not because he was bad, but because he was good. Job was the kind of man to whom good things ought to happen. By God's own testimony, he was "blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." Yet he lost health, wealth, and family for no good reason. We readers alone are privy to the secret that these terrible events happened because God and the devil were having a little tte--tte over the basis of Job's faithfulness. Job's friends-Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar-were quintessential theologians of glory, interpreting his suffering as evidence of divine displeasure and urging their suffering friend to get right with God so that God would get right with him. But that offered Job no real comfort.
Even when God finally broke through in a rhetorical whirlwind (see Job 38-40), no explanations were forthcoming. Job never learned why he suffered. Were God to have ventured an explanation, Job would not have understood. God is God; Job is not God-and that's good enough for Job. In the end, the only response was for Job to repent in dust and ashes for himself and for his friends. "My ears heard of you but now my eyes have seen you" (Job 42:5). Job and his friends had spoken recklessly. In the end, God vindicated Job's suffering. He restored wealth, health, and family to Job in a grand type of the resurrection from the dead. Yet the cause of Job's suffering remained hidden to him, a mystery disclosed only to the book's readers.
The theology of glory cannot account for the "innocent sufferer" or the victim of oppression, injustice, or genocide. Moralistic models of cause and effect fail utterly to deal with suffering. It makes good moral sense when the habitual drunkard develops cirrhosis of the liver; it makes no moral sense at all when her baby is born with fetal-alcohol syndrome.
Some people confronted Jesus with a political atrocity that sounds as though it had been ripped straight from the front pages of their tabloids. Pilate had slaughtered some Galilean worshipers and mingled their blood with their sacrifices. What did Jesus think?
His answer is a rhetorical question that cuts to the very heart of the theology of glory. "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus?" Can we discern the hidden mind of God or the spiritual condition of these Galileans by their awful suffering and death? Jesus' answer is a firm "No!" along with a warning, "Unless you also repent, you will all likewise perish." Then Jesus adds an atrocity of his own-a kind of "I'll see your act of political terrorism and raise you one construction accident." "What about those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Were they worse sinners than all the other inhabitants of Jerusalem?" Again, the answer comes back, "No! And I'm telling you that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish" (Luke 13:1-5).
The only response to suffering and death, whether by political atrocity or the sheer dumb luck of being under the wrong tow