TO QUOTE THE BEATLES’ enigmatic lyric about the young lady selling flowers from a shelter in the middle of the roundabout, “though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway” (Penny Lane, Lennon-McCartney, 1967). Sometimes we also forget we are in a play.
But, to quote another, somewhat earlier British poet, each of us is not just “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more … full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, William Shakespeare)
On the contrary, we’re in a performance to display and praise the glory of God. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647) sums it up this way: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”
Author! Author!
In the Book of Job, it was God who first challenged Satan when he said—not once but twice, “Have you considered my servant Job … blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (1:8, 2:3). His creator—though it sounds like braggadocio to our cynical ears—was actually taking pleasure in his child and servant Job. But Satan, the eternal pessimist, challenges God to strip Job of all his props to see if he would still stand on his own, or rather, on his faith in God’s character alone.
The Actors’ Guild Objects!
Modern, western readers react strongly to this scenario. They (and perhaps you) will say that God has no right to treat us this way, to put us on display just to prove something, just to promote this own glory.
Yes, this is admittedly a very hard concept to accept, and this will not be the last post to deal with it. But there is one thing we should know right off. We may be actors, but we are not puppets, We have no strings controlling our actions. We are free to work out our own part, to write our own lines. And—in contrast to live theater—the players can neither see the playwright standing in the wings nor can they see the audience seated beyond the stage lights. The actors must continue living out the day-to-day drama in front of the set and scenery in which they are placed. We will see that perfectly illustrated in the book of Job.
An Audience of One?
There is a common phrase among Christians, apparently coined to remind us of whom we exist to please. The phrase goes, “We play to an audience of one,” that is, to God alone.
This saying, however well-meaning, is not totally accurate. We play to a myriad of beings. The apostle Peter says that the angels long to watch the things that happen in our day (1 Peter 1:12). The heroes of the faith were only complete because of us (Hebrews 11:40) and now surround us as “a great cloud of witnesses” (12:1). And finally, the demons themselves tremble at what God does through us (Luke 10:18). That is quite a packed audience!
We will see as we go through the book that God never revealed to Job who he was performing for or why. God was not obligated to Job. The hard thing we must learn is that God is not obligated to any one of his creatures, including us. In future posts, we will also see that God is also not obliged to act in a certain way, according to our preconceived notions. “His ways are not our ways, says the Lord.”
His ways are for his glory. And his ways are best.