Have you ever raised your eyes toward God and sobbed, “I don’t deserve this”? Perhaps it was after a doctor shared a dreaded diagnosis or when you were alone at night in an empty house because a loved one had died.
Perhaps you have heard a similar comment from someone trying to comfort a friend. Frequently you hear words such as “He/she was a good person and didn’t deserve something like this.”
Somehow the notion that one can manipulate God, can put God in his or her debt by righteous living, is a pervasive idea. Some call it “pragmatic religion.” Mark Twain embraced this concept when he argued that a gentleman who gave his carriage to a widow lady on a rainy night did so to make himself feel better, not to help the widow. Likewise we do things for God for personal gain, not because we love God.
Pragmatic religion is about what one gets out of serving God. It is the concept that one serves God and is moral and upright in order to receive His blessings and be healthy, wealthy and wise.
But those who live by this false teaching are bound for disappointment. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said to “[l]ove your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Why? “In order that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven.”
Jesus then illustrated that God’s blessings reach all people by saying, “for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Being good does not automatically ensure a trouble-free life. Nor does being bad ensure punishment.
To be sure, God purposes for His people to do good deeds but not for personal gain or to draw attention to themselves. Good deeds are supposed to glorify the Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).
Pragmatic religion was the dominant concept in Job’s day. His friends made that clear. Eliphaz asked a rhetorical question, “[W]ho ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright destroyed?” (Job 4:7). Bildad declared, “If you are pure and upright, surely now He would rouse Himself for you and restore your righteous estate” (Job 8:6). Zophar said Job deserved what had happened to him. “Would that God might speak and open His lips against you,” he said (Job 11:5).
All three contended that bad things do not happen to people who do good things. Bad things happen to people who do bad things, they believed.
Today we are not so bold as to proclaim that conclusion. But when we protest, “I don’t deserve this,” we also announce that some people do deserve the tragedies that befall them. Usually they deserve the afflictions because they wandered from the paths of righteousness. They did bad things.
Evidently pragmatic religion is still alive and well.
Job was “blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil” (Job 1:1). His reputation was sterling. Eliphaz said of him, “You have admonished many and have strengthened weak hands. Your words have helped the tottering to stand and you have strengthened feeble knees” (Job 4:3–4).
Satan contended that Job was all these things because God had blessed him with family, wealth and influence. Satan said if the blessings were removed, then Job would curse God to His face (Job 1:10–11).
The question was clearly defined. Did Job serve God because of the blessings He poured out on him, or did Job serve God because he had the opportunity to serve Him? Was Job’s religion pragmatic or was it personal? That is an important question for each one of us as well.
The heart of the Jewish faith is expressed in the words of Deuteronomy 6:4–5, “Hear O Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
This truth is worn around the heads of male Orthodox Jews during morning prayers in a box called a phylactery. Jesus called these words the “greatest commandment” (Mark 12:31).
According to Jesus, love is to be the defining characteristic of the relationship between God and His children. First John 4:19 declares, “We love because He has first loved us.” God loved in creation. God loved as He reached out to humanity through covenant. Ultimately God loved by sending His Son, Jesus, to die for our sin.
The response God desires is love returned — loving Him with heart and soul, mind and strength through faith in Jesus Christ. That kind of love has no room for a pragmatic religion in which one tries to earn God’s blessings through good works or attempts to manipulate Him by personal righteousness.
Job was never told why he suffered. But in the midst of his suffering, he declared, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Of his wife he asked, “Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10). To Bildad, he affirmed, “I know my Redeemer lives,” and expressed confidence that God would yet declare his innocence (Job 19:25).
Job’s service and obedience to God was based on a loving relationship that not even suffering could shake. His was not a pragmatic relationship. His was a personal relationship.
On this side of the cross on which Jesus died, one sees the love of God more clearly than Job could ever have envisioned. One reads that “God so loved the world” (John 3:16). One hears the voice of the apostles proclaiming that “in all things we are more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37).
The One who created us, the One who saved us, the One who “sticks closer than a brother” will never leave us. No amount of suffering, no amount of misfortune, no amount of failure or betrayal can separate us from the love of God made known in Christ Jesus.
That reality allows us to love, worship and praise God even in the midst of pain and suffering because we have a personal relationship with the One who deserves our praise and worship.
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