Job And The Mystery Of Suffering
Unjust Suffering Continues
Thursday, August 6, 2026
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembrance Day
Studying the book of Job with Christians in Central Africa, the theologian Jason Carter witnessed their deep solidarity with the text. In this excerpt, a theology student, part of the indigenous Fang community in Equatorial Guinea, writes a letter to Job, sharing his own experiences of suffering:
Brother Job,
Each time that I read the Scriptures and meditate on your afflictions and the complaints and accusations that your friends made against you, I ask myself if you have been reincarnated in me….
The truth is that the world is unjust. Just like you, I passed through three horrible years in which I lost two of my children. One died through an illness. After his death, people from the outside, including my own relatives, said that it was through the witchcraft of my wife’s family. We almost separated. The other child (six years old) died in a fire in which there was not a chance to remove even one single belonging from the house…. The people attributed the fire to my wife being irresponsible, others affirmed that it was a punishment of God against us because we had done something bad—that God had paid us back with … just judgment…. My own heart told me: “Where is the God that you serve and how is it that [God] allowed you to pass through all of this?”
My country is being devastated with all types of epidemics, sicknesses whose origins are still undiscovered, and horrible deaths. But every time that a person suffers from these things, the idea of others is always that the victims have to confess what they have done…. I can almost say that the reasoning of your three friends is typical in my culture. All suffering here is linked to witchcraft or to a sin for which God is judging the person or all the family…. I have listened to people lament and cry, saying: “If God exists, why has [God] permitted this? I don’t deserve it, it’s not fair!” Others have even taken their lives to prevent further suffering.
In short, this is what we live with every day. With the death of innocent children, … people who have studied but live poor without jobs, people that suffer sicknesses without knowing where it comes from. Nevertheless many criminals appear increasingly successful in life.
Job, I admire your courage and your mature attitude in responding to your wife and your integrity. Despite everything, you didn’t blaspheme against God in all of that (2:9–10). I admire your humble response to God. It’s true that the way in which many can demonstrate wisdom is to be silent when the cause is unknown—and not open one’s mouth to speak foolishness or falsely accuse the victims….
Your story truly gives me hope. It gives me the feeling that while man lives on the earth, there is no guarantee that he will not suffer, however innocent or righteous he may be.
I wish that everyone could learn from you.
Sincerely,
Your brother Gregorio Nsomboro
Reference:
Jason A. Carter, Inside the Whirlwind: The Book of Job Through African Eyes (Pickwick Publications, 2017), 166–167.
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Bradley Jersak
“Living Presence”
Ancient Wisdom for Modern Anxiety
AUG 01, 2026
In his profoundly helpful forthcoming book, Ancient Wisdom for Modern Anxiety: Finding Relief through Curiosity and Wonder (Whitaker House, 2027 – preorders available now), Paul E. Ralph (hereafter PER or Paul) uses the personified language of “Living Presence” as a divine name or title. I like that for reasons I’ll mention below.
Paul isn’t the first to use the phrase—a few earlier examples are notable:
J.A. Motyer (OT scholar and former Principal of Trinity College, Bristol) once wrote,
Over and over again in the Old Testament you come across the familiar phrase, “The word of the LORD came to …” Now in Hebrew that is: ‘The word of the LORD was to …’ The verb used is the verb ‘to be’, not a verb of motion but a verb of realistic experience. ‘The word of God became a living reality to …’ The verb ‘to be’ in Hebrew means living reality, living presence, not just some bare abstract idea of existence as compared with non-existence. When God focusses attention upon this divine name, ‘I am Yahweh’, he is saying, ‘I am the God of living presence with my people…’
J.A. Motyer, “The Normative Covenant,” Evangel (April, 1983), 4.
A decade later, Kabir Edmund Helminski wrote a book that draws on the wisdom of Sufism to address contemporary life. He titled it Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self (Tarcher, 1992).
Rounding out the Abrahamic religions, PER cites Nahum Ward-Lev’s book on the Hebrew prophets as one of his sources to using the phrase as a proper name:
Seeking an alternative to “the Lord,” I have chosen to translate God’s Name as “the Living Presence.” … The four letters of God’s Name seem to refer to “being” itself, to “Being” or “Being-ness” that transcends time. My use of “the Living Presence” is also guided by God’s interaction with Moses at the burning bush. When Moses asks for God’s Name, God replies, “I will be what I will be” (Exodus 3:14). With this response, God both informs Moses that God’s nature cannot be defined by any limiting quality, such as a name, and God assures Moses that God will be with him throughout time. Looking for a term that reflects this sense of “Being” or “Being-ness” accompanying human beings and creation throughout time, I chose the term “the Living Presence.”
Nahum Ward-Lev. The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets Then and Now (Orbis Books, 2019).
All of these uses of “living presence” are descriptions or translations, but in Paul’s book and in our prayers together, he often uses that term as a proper name:
“Living Presence, help me stay curious.”
I find this especially helpful on several fronts. To begin with, it is inclusive. Paul’s intentional use of the phrase welcomes all. It allows space for those who are suspicious of terms like “God”—a placeholder both too vague and too narrow to those who don’t identify with a faith tradition.
Unlike “Ground of Being,” “Ultimate Reality,” or “Sacred Presence,” Living Presence is deeply biblical in resonance (“the living God,” but so far, unburdened by centuries of doctrinal or philosophical baggage.
For me personally, as I work in interfaith spaces, terms like “universe” or “the divine” seem too impersonal. I have no objection to those who use them (as I do if it helps them), but “Living Presence” includes the immanence (radical nearness) and intimacy that pairs well with our experiences of infinite Love.
In that sense, Living Presence is a descriptor vast enough for anyone whose concept of a “higher power” is also open to the Mystery of Something or Someone that is at least as relational, responsive, and caring as the mother archetype.
Further, even religious notions of “God” can become a non-experience of “dead absence.” “Living Presence” acknowledges an immersion (“in whom we live and move and have our being”) and an indwelling (infinite Love encountered within us). Yet even the agnostic is welcome to experience and experiment with the transforming aspects of a more impersonal living presence apart from the imaginary “old man in the sky” imagery of God. Paul’s meditations on the Living Presence require no prior faith commitment—all he asks for is openness to be met and held in our anxiety.
I love Paul and I love this book. Well worth the pre-order while you remember.
