The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - October 4, 2009

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer.

Today we are going to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly. Has anyone here heard of it? … I thought so.

Job was a good man. He did everything right and he did it all for the right reasons. He was a very good man. So along comes this Satan guy, in this story he is one of God’s scouts, who says “this man is just too good to be true. I’ll just go convince God to test him so I can prove he really isn’t this good.” So Satan convinces God to test Job. Here comes the bad. Some really bad things happen to Job. In fact, a lot of extremely bad things happen to him. It gets really ugly.

Good person, bad things, ugly situation.

This isn’t how it is supposed to happen, but it does.

Did anyone here watch “Little Mosque on the Prairie” this past week? For those who don’t know the series, it is about a small town called Mercy where the small Muslim community worship in the downstairs of the Anglican Church. In last week’s episode, a new Anglican priest comes into the community. He is very religiously intolerant. He wants the mosque out of the church. In the end, he invites them to stay because he realizes that there will be too much backlash from his congregation if he doesn’t. In his sermon he talks about loving your enemies, but always remember that they are your enemies.

Good things, bad person, ugly situation.

This isn’t how it is supposed to happen, but it does.

Both of these stories are exaggerations of life as we know it. Bad things happen to good people. Bad people do good things. And if that weren’t bad enough. Good things happen to bad people and good people to bad things. Where is the justice?

Job isn’t the only book in the Bible that looks for the meaning in bad situations. Many of the psalms and most of lamentations do this just for a start. One of my favourite psalms is psalm 137. By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept. It is a cry for justice. The people of Israel are living in exile under harsh rulers. They are miserable. The call out to God “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy the one who pays you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rocks.” They are angry. They are looking for meaning in the bad things that have happened to them.

Those in exile were trying to be good people. Their situation was very bad. Their emotions got ugly.

This isn’t how it is supposed to happen, but it does.

This last story is much easier to identify with. It is not talking about people who are perfect. It is not talking about people whose faults are so over the top that they become comedic. It is not idealized. It is human and real. It is about people whose lives and livelihood are torn from them. Like real people, they get angry and want revenge.

How do we deal with a world that isn’t fair? What is our response to injustice?

If we follow Job’s example, we continue along stoically. We accept the bad and the good never complaining about our lot in life. Never trying to avoid or fix the bad things that happen to us. Job is a great character to help us explore the meaning in the bad things in our lives, but he is not very human.

If we follow the example of the new priest in the small town of Mercy, our motives are irrelevant as long as we do the right thing. This is very human but it isn’t very Christian.

If we follow the example set out in psalm 137, we look at our lot in life. We get angry at what is unjust. We yell at God. We get mad at God. We ask God why. And if we continue on this path, what is the next step?

As I see it we have two choices, with many shades of grey in between. We can stay angry. We can leave the church and turn our backs on God. We can be bitter. We can live just to better our own lives.

Or we can use our anger to fuel change. We can look for ways to change things so that the world is at least a little better. Sometimes we can’t improve our own lot but we can pretty much always find something that we can do to improve life for someone else.


What is your choice?