Suffering has always raised deep spiritual questions. Job, the Hebrew poetic drama, came from roots that seem to go back more than 1000 years before Christ. The ancient drama showed Job facing awful loss and agony. Though at first his friends sat with him in silence, they soon began to offer simple, black-and-white answers to explain his suffering.

• Job’s “friend” Eliphaz asked him bluntly, “What innocent person has ever perished?” He clearly believed God was the reason for everything bad that had happened to Job, to teach him a lesson for something he’d done wrong. Have you ever asked the same question, inwardly or outwardly, about something bad that happens to you or someone close to you?
• Careful readers saw the answer to Eliphaz’s question before he even asked it. Job 2:7 made it plain that Job’s troubles came from “The Adversary” or “Accuser” (Hebrew “ha satan,” a title rather than a personal name), not from God. What human or natural forces have you seen cause suffering or pain that God did not desire?