Some one wrote about “not letting God off the hook.” in a recent post.

This was in reference to Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Job that said that Job didn’t let God off the hook but kept demanding a hearing, justice for himself in the face of what seemed unjust.

We will go there in our thinking and acting IF our relationship with God is akin to the “quid-pro-quo” of paganism, that says that somehow God owes us if we do what is right and suffering is can only be because we have failed in doing what God requires. The brokenness and suffering in the world are not God’s fault. It is the consequence of Adam and Eve choosing to believe they needed something more that God to make life whole and complete. And ever since, humanity has follow their folly.

Jesus gives a similar parable about a widow “bugging an unjust judge to get recompense. In the parable the judge who cares nothing for God or mankind, gives in because the widow is wearing him out. Jesus was not comparing God to a wicked judge. Jesus tells His followers that if a wicked man will give in from being pestered, God, our loving Father will certainly answer us when we seek Him with our whole heart.

So, I asked, “Who put god “on the hook”? Who put God in the dock?’

The person answered: “God did. He created human beings in His image, with the free will to choose Him or reject Him. So, He put Himself on trial. Satan is the accuser, and we must make up our minds what to believe about the nature and character of God. But He willingly puts Himself in a position to be questioned. He actually invites our honest inquiry! It boggles the mind, but there it is.” 

I responded: Asking questions and earnestly seeking God is not the issue for me. Being "on the hook" is a term I have always associated with someone's culpability in having done wrong to another. Thus, we "don't let them off the hook" for what they have done.

Truth is, I can only know of God what God has revealed. The finite cannot comprehend the Infinite on its own. Thus, the Incarnation, "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father."

Jesus always was open to inquiring hearts, but had little or no time for those who just wanted to argue in order to justify themselves and their behavioral choices.

God has told us that if we will seek Him (not some idea we have dreamed up as to how we want Him to be) with our whole heart (and desperation in seeing our condition as being unhealable by any stretch of human effort will cause such earnest seeking) we will find Him because He will let us find Him. He will reveal Himself.

As C. S. Lewis stated in his essays, under the title of "God in the Dock" we humans tend to want to take credit for the good we experience and blame God for the evil and suffering we know,  forgetting that the brokenness of our world goes back to Eden's Garden and the infection we all have borne because of Adam's folly.

The Cross of Jesus Christ is the place where infinite justice was exercise and infinite mercy bore what we never could. In so doing, His ultimate, infinite suffering turns the tables to even cause our present suffering to become redemptive. Job came to see that God was God, and that he wasn’t. He put his hand over his mouth in shock.

God’s revelation of Himself does that. It shows us we are not God, and that He is, and that He loved us enough to come to redeem and rescue us from the impossibility, our being dead in sin, to ever cause ourselves to “live again” through human effort.