November 6: University of North Florida - Nicholas is a philosophy professor at the University of North Florida. Evidently he has quite a following of students who really like him. And, evidently, he uses his philosophy class to call into question the goodness of God as depicted through the Old Testament story of Job.
Most people know this story, but in case you don’t, here are the high points. Satan has wandered through the earth and then comes to appear before God. God boasts of his servant, Job, as being a righteous man, but Satan accuses Job of only being righteous because God has blessed him. He claims that if Job had difficulties in life, he would curse God. God allows Satan to do what he wants with Job and is confident Job will pass the test. Satan brings immense suffering on Job and Job does pass the test and even comes out better in the end after he comes to understand that the Sovereign Lord can do whatever He pleases in the affairs of men and that we have no right to judge the Almighty.
However, most skeptics see something different in this story. They claim God is evil for allowing Job to suffer so at the hands of Satan. After all, God could have prevented Job’s suffering and, the skeptic will claim, you or I would have intervened to stop Job’s suffering if we had the opportunity and power. The obvious implication: we are more compassionate and just than God Himself.
I’ve debated Job before, but Nicholas was different. He was absolutely relentless in his questioning and accusations toward God. He would not budge one inch to any of my arguments. I contended that the writer of Job certainly did not think God was evil and worth of accusations. In fact, those in the book who accused God were soundly rebuked by the end of the story. I also contended that the real evil character was Satan – that when God gave Satan the power to do as he pleased, he did not chose to bless Job with health and abundance, but to curse him with poor health, poverty and the death of family members. But again, Nicholas would not relent from his accusations toward God.
I began to suspect something much deeper going on here. Nicholas dressed in all black from head to toe. His accusations against God were of an extraordinary character. I wondered if, perhaps, Nicholas was a Satanist and, so, I asked him. His response was very non-committal. I pressed further: “The really evil one in this story is Satan. He is the one who accused Job and sought to destroy him, and yet, you accuse God. Why don’t you direct you anger at Satan?”
He refused to do so. In fact, when I specifically challenged Nicholas to repudiate Satan and declare that Satan was the bad guy in this story, he resolutely refused to do so. The closest he came was to acknowledge that God, Satan and Job – all three – had faults, but he would not speak directly against Satan.
He tried to regain the upper hand by accusing God of all the suffering in the world and went into an extremely heart-breaking description of a starving kid in Africa who was suffering because God would not do anything to stop it. I sought to turn the discussion from an unknown person in a distant land by asking Nicholas how he, personally, had been hurt by God and I made the point that anyone so vehement in their accusations against God must believe that they have been personally hurt by God. Interestingly, when the subject of his personal pain came up, he picked up his briefcase and split! He was obviously unwilling to be open and vulnerable when students – including members of his fan club – were listening.
Personally, I’m sick and tired of universities hiring professors like this who use their classroom to destroy the faith of their students. I was even more concerned when I was told later that evening that Nicholas at one time professed Christ and attended the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on campus. And, I was even more irritated when a freshman student who is a believer in Christ told me the next day how much she had enjoyed our interaction and was, therefore, thinking of taking Nicholas’ philosophy class the next semester! Scripture warns us against sitting in the seat of scoffers (Psalm 1:1) and this would definitely seem to be a class that qualifies. She did have the wisdom to see and articulate some valuable spiritual insights about how suffering deepens our character and makes us more genuine and loving people. She understood how death helps us to appreciate life and how sadness deepens our capacity for joy. Indeed, although we may not always understand it, God has His purposes for suffering. We count Job blessed because He endured and kept his faith in God. His faith even deepened and was purified through His sufferings.
