Thoughts and Encouragements for Wounded Helpers Joined to a Healing God

( Nederlandse versie)

2020-06-20

At the time I wrote the original Dutch version of this article, in March 2004, I had just heard a sermon on the radio about the advises that Job got from his friends when he was in deep trouble.¹ I considered that a superb illustration of something I had already wanted to write about for a long time.
That ‘something’ is modernism and post-modernism. But before I dig into that, let me first discuss what happened between Job and his friends.

The friends of Job

What is the situation? The adversary of God complains towards God. That is his nature. To complain and to accuse. About Job he says something like: “Yes, no wonder that he serves You, You make it very easy and comfortable: a fine family, a nice house, and in any other material way all that he could long for! No wonder he is content! But when some of those things would be taken from him, I bet he will surely leave You!”
God accepts the challenge, for He knows the nature of the heart of Job. God knows that Job is not going to forsake Him. The result is that the adversary takes everything from him, bit by bit. Finally Job is sitting under the open sky, his family dead, his house destroyed, his health severely deteriorated.
He then complains towards God – he feels it is not fair, all that happened to him. In the Chapters 4 & 5 of the book of Job one of his friends takes the word; The Temanite Eliphaz. He says something like: “Yes, Job, you can complain to God now, but God is God and He is love, so apparently you yourself must somehow have caused this all. Perhaps you are not conscious of it right now, but apparently you must have done something wrong, to be corrected by God in this way.”
In fact Eliphaz’ theology was very simple and straightforward: ‘When you do well, God will bless you and you will experience that in your family, in riches and in prosperity. When you act wrongly, God uses the absence of these blessings to correct you, such that you return to walk on the right paths.’ He observed that Job was no longer blessed, and concluded that -apparently- Job would have done something wrong. Simply and effectively he had analyzed the situation and could advise Job on what would help him find the right paths again, such that God would bless him again. At least, that’s what he thought.

And I recognize a lot in that. For, wouldn’t we all love the world around us to be explainable in simple terms? And, when we are facing a troublesome situation, don’t we all wish that we can easily reach a conclusion on what to do about it?

But, was the situation indeed as described by Eliphaz’ simple theology? From the background described in the first chapters of the book of Job, we know better. There were things going on of which neither Job, nor Eliphaz, nor one of Job’s other friends had any idea or suspicion.
That was the cause that the ‘big truths’ (‘God is love’, ‘God is righteous and does not punish without reason’, etc.) carried on by Eliphaz became rather cheap and not applicable.
Oh, certainly, each on its own, and apart from the situation, these assertions were ‘right’... Each assertion in itself was ‘true’. But ‘the truth’, in the sense of: giving a good and clear view on the situation of Job, they did not present at all. As it appears at the end of the story, God isn’t so fond of this kind of cheap way of lacing assertions or ‘truths’ (cf. Job 42:7-10). He then says: „you did not speak rightly of Me, as my servant Job has.”
The truth is not a simple collection of theological ‘rules’ that we can hold in our hands and apply simply.
The Truth is a Person! (cf. John 14:6) He is far beyond our comprehension! That is Job’s conclusion also, in Chapter 42, when God has confronted him with Who He is: “I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question You, and You declare to me.’ I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42: 1-5). Then Job understood, that his words had been too big for a simple creature towards the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Modernism and the reaction of Post-Modernism

Now to modernism and postmodernism. Is the above not a great illustration of what I sometimes call: ‘the bankruptcy of modernism’?

Let me elaborate and explain a bit of the background against which modernism arose. To begin with, it was founded on Greek thinking. It arose in reaction to a morbid growth of emotionally laden superstition, and was fertilized by the secularisation (leaving God) that started with Thomas of Aquino and culminated in the French revolution, the so called ‘renaissance’, the ‘enlightenment’ and the ‘God-is-dead’ -theory. This was the background of the modernism that has been so decisive for the developments in western culture of the nineteenth and twentieth century. What comes forward strongly in modernism, is the urge of man to control everything by his own mind and apart from God (cf. Descartes’ ‘Cogito ergo sum’ - ‘I think, so I am’²). That control requires the existence of simple explanation models, like the ‘theology’ of Eliphaz, discussed briefly above. Explanation models and reasonings of the one-dimensional type: ‘if A then B, and there is no more to it, so if not-B then also not-A’. The existence of God and His acting in the situation is denied then. We can illustrate this way of reasoning by comparison via the following example: ‘if you walk in the rain with an umbrella, you do not get wet; so, if someone is wet, he has not used an umbrella’ (that the umbrella let some water through after hours of very heavy rain, or that there were holes in it, or that by flares of strong wind the rain sometimes came under the umbrella, or that passing cars gushed up water from the road, all that is not considered). We also call this the reductionism, because it reduces reality to a few (easily controllable) formulas.
This is expressed in modern psychology e.g. in a strongly mechanistic view of man and his or her illnesses emphasizing a strongly intellectually driven diagnosis-formation with the aid of a limited collection of ‘recognized clinical pictures’, each described from a limited number of phenomena (and hence not so much from the causes). The role of listening is seen as important, but is also limited because there is no essential relationship between helping professional and the one seeking help (think of the notion of ‘professional distance’), or this is esteemed irrelevant or small. The helping psychologist or psychotherapist is the ‘expert’ - he has studied many years intensively for it (recognize the intellectual focus on the basis of Greek thinking).
Reductionism and modernism also led to the phenomenon that our entire lives seem to have been cut into small pieces. For every piece there are ‘specialists’. There is nobody anymore with oversight over the connections. As said: to be able to control a situation, it must be reduced, and made loose, isolated from its context or surroundings. It is a kind of ‘divide and conquer’. The relationships – of man with God, of man with him-/herself and with the fellow man and with nature – have been lost more and more. Alienation, individualism and loneliness are the sad result. That ‘specialists’ have come up for anything and everything, also exerted a strong influence on our perspective on mental health care and church life. For many centuries, the pastor and the brother and sister in the Christian Community played a central role in protecting mental health of the people in the full breadth of society. Modernism and the ‘division’ mentioned, strongly reduced the spiritual task of these people; psychotherapist, haptonomist, psychologist, psychiatrist and a varied group of other professionals each claim to possess ‘the truth’ at some small part of the ‘spiritual/mental’ terrain, at the exclusion of all others who did not enjoy that same highly intellectual education. The emphasis moved from ‘spiritual’ to ‘mental’. Modern ‘mental health care’ focuses on the mental powers and on processes in our brains.
In a last convulsion of the technocratic positivism they try to make everything controllable, even in health care and mental health care, by introducing large numbers of managers and rules. The result is uncontrollability, the atmosphere getting cold, everything becoming inhumane, while costs explode.

Over the last decades more and more people are becoming aware of what I call the bankruptcy of this modernism. Simple, reductionistic models obviously come short to really improve life – both worldwide and in the home. In particular the relational, the spiritual and the intuitive, and thereby enjoying and wonder have become severely undervalued. The connection between spirit, mind, feeling and body got lost. There is an ever-increasing exodus from God and church; and where God is no longer thanked, worshipped and honored, people get estranged not only from God, but also from themselves and each other (compare Romans 1).³
The consequences show: a society in which love and solidarity disappear, conflicts do not get solved with mutual respect, and where relationships do not seem to thrive anymore, where marriage is no longer for life, and where children grow up in distant children care centers instead of with their mother and father at home in a good family context with togetherness. We discover that modernist thinking was too rational; too one-sided and one-dimensional, too technical directed at function and not on being. The consequence is emptiness and love getting cold. For, where I am only appreciated for my performance and not for who and what I am, there I cannot be essentially ‘home’; there everything becomes cold.

Postmodernism is the natural reaction to this. The name already denotes it: it is not something new, but something that follows after modernism. Thereby it is a bit as the reaction of an -often justified- revolting adolescent, who observes the shortcomings of the system of his parents and says: “so this is not the way!” For example: ‘authority and power of those who claimed to have knowledge (‘THE truth’), played a strange role in modernism, so we don’t want any authority and power anymore, and certainly no people who claim to have the truth!’ Or: ‘in modern reductionism, connections were neglected, so we should strive more for a holistic vision (i.e. a vision that does right to the connections that are there, e.g. between health on the spiritual, bodily, mental, intuitive and emotional plane)’. Often in these cases I can agree with the critiques of the postmoderns. However, it is a pity that they - just like the adolescent - often go too far, and thus remain locked in the same antithesis, and thus in the same system. A healthy, mature lifestyle and philosophy is characterized by not just being a reaction to something else, but be able to form an opinion of its own, feel one’s own emotions and live by oneself and - above all - acknowledge and honor God, Who created us.
Here and there I happily see the emergence of such more mature forms, as in social constructionism (/constructivism) and the influence of those on psychology, psychotherapy and pastoral care. And I have regard for postmoderns who grow beyond the reaction of the adolescent and e.g. dare to give relationships a more central place, in a way that looks much like how the Bible puts relationships in the center. An example of this I consider narrative therapy, as taught by such scholars as David Epston and Michael White. In an article on listening I pay more attention to that (see ‘Listening to Multithreaded Life Stories’).

„ ... the whole debate between the modern and postmodern world views is a great example of a false dichotomy, which is another way of distorting the truth, since neither view is able to explain the meaning of life or establish the criteria for finding God.” David Takle The Truth About Lies And Lies About Truth - A fresh new look at the cunning of Evil and the means for our Trans­formation, Shepherd's House, Pasadena CA, USA, 2008; ISBN 0 9674357 9 4, p.10.

Above I already spoke briefly about the shortcomings of the postmodern view (such as: not allowing a purely rational authority anymore). Often I met Christians and others who had difficulty with this because they felt at home in rational thought, not in feelings or intuition. Therefore, they opposed postmodernism fiercely.⁴ Personally, I often do not agree with them. Many of the shortcomings of the postmodern view actually are no more than logical reactions to shortcomings of modernism. To take again that example of authority and truth: in a deeply Christian view the truth notion plays an important role (e.g. the truth of God’s existence), but also humman modesty and humility: as fallible creatures we know truth only in part – see Job’s later words (Job 42; compare also 1 Corinthians 13:8-10). Under the influence of modernism many - even Christians - often spoke too big words where ‘the truth’ was involved, and they lifted ‘the truth’ above love. What followed was: broken relationships, sorrow, love getting cold, and partiality – all developments seriously hated by God. That postmodernism over-reacts to this by disliking human claims of absolute truth, is no more than an understandable and predictable reaction to this modernist pride that had such nasty consequences.⁵ In that sense I see a parallel between Job’s refusal of Eliphaz’ simplistic reasoning and the refusal of failing (!) ‘truths’ of modernism by postmodernists. And the remarkable thing is that in the end God had more sympathy with a grumbling Job, than an Eliphaz who with a too simplistic ‘theology’ seemed to defend God. Job’s story gives me the courage to continue with a certain measure of resistance towards reductionism and modernism. Sometimes I am gladly surprised to encounter temporal allies in that process, in some postmodern scientists.

Footnotes:

1	The sermon was by Rev. Henk Fonteyn, chaplin at the Dutch Royal Army, and treated Job 4:1-9 and 17-21; 5:17-18. It was a broadcast in the series Job, a friend of God and man of all times, of NCRV's Word on Sunday. 2007-07-29 See also: Keith R. Anderson, Friendships that run deep - 7 ways to build lasting relationships, Inter Varsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill, 1997; ISBN 0 8308 1966 5. In Ch. 4 - ‘Somebody nobody knows’ Keith Anderson gives a similar analysis of the meeting of Job with his friends as I give here. He emphasizes the fact that Job’s friends did keep silent at first, but later failed in really listening to Job.
2	See also: Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ error - emotion, reason and the human brain, Putnam / AVON Books, New York, 1994. In this book Damasio demonstrates on the basis of neurological research, that emotions and thoughts cannot be mutually separated and that both can be recognized in the brain. Emotions are essential for taking good decisions. Hereby he very clearly disproves the old premises of Descartes and modernism. 2008-10-16 Eugen Rosenstock-Hüssy, ‘Farewell to Descartes’, Ch.1 in: Eugen Rosenstock-Hüssy, I Am an Impure Thinker , Argo, 2001; ISBN: 0-912148-56-X; p.1-19. I find it remarkable how the pure scientific observations of Damasio (and Rosenstock) coincide with the Biblical view on man. In Romans 11:33 - 12:3 Paul pinpoints that in reaction to God’s greatness and His great goodness, it is most fitting for us to surrender ourselves with our body to Him. That though stood perpendicular to the Greek philosophy of those days (en the later modernist (Cartesian) one) where the mind and the thinking was emphasized more and the body was seen as ‘lower’. Paul says that from that bodily surrender follow the renewal of thinking and life, yes, he puts the renewal of our thinking in the context of the surrendered body. Damasio says that our brains (body!) determine in the first place our emotions and how we treat them. And tht those emotions determine to a large extent our thinking and living. Thereby, he affirms the order the Bible gives us. About this, see also my article: Life Renewal – by a renewal of our mind, or...?, web-article at www.12accede.org, Jan. 2007 (NL) / Sept. 2009 (EN). 2008-10-17 My criticism towards modernism is not new. The renowned Abraham Kuyper said of religious modernism: Well, in that sense I then consider, that also the battle against Modernism, in which the combat against Christianity today created her most solid system, is something we cannot avoid anymore. ... Modernism and Morgana both / fascinating and handsome, / appeared after fixed law, / but, bare of any reality. Source: Lecture by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, ‘Het Modernisme - een Fata morgana op Christelijk gebied’ (Modernism, a Fata morgana in Christian respect; in Dutch), H. de Hoogh & Co., Amsterdam, 1871. Further on he said, coupling religious modernism to the general modernism already in longer existence: And what is still more lamentable, till in Christ’s church, that poisonous bacillus [i.e. of Modernism with its God-is-dead-theory; ed.] has penetrated, to slowly attack, under the cloak of a pious mysticism or in the cloth of historical clarity, first the Church’s Confession, then the Word of God, and finally the holy person of the Christ Himself. No doubt about it that Christianity is in danger. Two worldviews wrestle each other is a match of life or death. Modernism wants a world out of the natural man en to build that man from nature, and on the other hand all who kneels humbly for Christ as the Son of God, wants to preserve the Christian inheritance for the world, to let her, thanks to that inheritance, go up to an even higher state of development. That is the battle in Europ, the battle in America as well, and it is that fundamental battle, that in the small Netherlands will soon have exhausted fourty years of my life that inclines towards the evening... Then we have to face how in Modernism the unmeasurable energy of an all-encompassing principle besieges us, en on our side a similarly penetrating, similarly broad extending, and as far reaching principle has to be placed up against it. And that principle must not be conceived by us, not be formulated by us, but that principle must be found and pointed out in life itself, ... Source: Lectures by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, ‘Het calvinisme - I. Het calvinisme in de historie’, Höveker & Wormser, Amsterdam / Pretoria, 1899 [English: Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, The Stone Lectures, Princeton University, 1898 (was available as well at the site of the American Kuyper foundation]. Kuyper saw Calvinism as the principle in life itself that had to stand up against modernism. Now - more than a century later - I add to that: did not post-modernism demonstrate in life itself, i.e. in reality, the bankruptcy of modernism, and defeated it and declared it dead? 2009-10-11 See also: Joost Hengstmengel, ‘Voor de Grieken een dwaasheid’ (Foolishness for the Greeks; in Dutch), web-article, 18 July 2008.   2010-01-26 The fact that the overly rational modernism itself was a reaction on the strongly emotionally laden superstition of the in some respects somewhat ‘irrational’ time before it (think of witch hunts etc.!) is in my opinion briefly but well clarified at p.61-72 of Wim Rietkerk’s book (under ed. of Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker): Die ver is, is nabij – In de relatie met God komt de mens tot zijn recht (He Who is far, is close – In the relationship with God man comes to his destiny), Kok, Kampen, 2005; ISBN 90 435 1095 5.
3	2010-01-27 In the book mentioned in the previous note by Wim Rietkerk he expressed very aptly (p.69; my translation): „As thinkers we get cut of from what we analyse.” (Note that to ‘analyse’ is literally something like ‘to cut into pieces’ - that is what modernism is good at. The connections do get lost then...)
4	Such over-simplified critiques I encountered e.g. in the Dutch magazine Tijdschrift of the Centre for Pastoral Counseling; in editions Nr. 43 en 44 (Vol. 10), where Gene Edward Veith wrote on: ‘Postmodernisme - Geen ruimte voor de waarheid’ (Postmodernism - no room for the truth) (deel 1: Nr. 43 p.28-31, deel 2: Nr. 44 p.42-45). A somewhat more balanced picture I encountered in some articles by Jef DeVriese in other editions of the same Tijdschrift (voor Theologie en Pastorale Counseling): ‘Modernisme, Postmodernisme en Hulpverlening’ (Modernism, Postmodernism and Counseling) (8th Vol, 4th Q 1997, Nr. 36, p. 23-30.), ‘Christelijke counseling, modernisme en postmodernisme. Deel 1: Gezag.’ (Christian counseling, modernism and postmodernism. Part 1: Authority) (Vol 11, Nr.49, p.10-14); ‘Deel 2: Waarheid.’ (Part 2: Truth) (Vol. 11, Nr.50, May-July 2001, p.4-8); See also: Jef DeVriese, ‘Wij hebben de waarheid... geloof ik’ (We have the truth... I believe), Lecture at the third Lustrum day of Foundation Promise, Saturday 28 November 1998, Gouda NL. P. Lenaerts, ‘De invloed van postmodernisme op psychotherapie, Tijdschrift voor Familietherapie jrg.8, nr.3, p.21-39. ‘What is postmodernism and what does it have to do with therapy, anyway?’ - An interview with Lois Shawver, New Therapist, 6. 2008-07-31 Joseph Bottum, ‘Christians and Postmoderns’, First Things, February 1994. Here, Joseph Bottum gives a clear analysis of the three main periods: premodernism, modernism and postmodernism, and which possibilities they offered or still offer for Christians. Let me ad that in his analysis he idealizes pre-modern times while not considering it social-historical; this period knew socially seen enormous evils where a.o. the Roman Catholic church leadership took a very paternalistic stance towards the lay people (‘ordinary believers’), and by a kind of ‘acceptance of fate’ many died of illnesses that could have been prevented relatively easily. Rogier Bos, ‘The most Postmodern person in the Bible’, Next Wave, March 1999.
5	Concerning the notion of truth in postmodernism, there is a lot of polarisation going on. At Postmodern Therapies NEWS, the website of Lois Sawver, an advocate of postmodernism, I read that someone had posed a question about this notion of truth. This was illustrated with the example of the moonlanding. Postmodern man does not doubt the actual truth of this happening, but does say that many of the stories about is have been and are being told from a particular point of view; from a particular -subjective- vision, and so, they are never THE (full, entire) truth. There is truth in those stories, but they are also colored by the one who tells them. For me this strongly resembles the Apostle Paul’s (non-Greek and so non-modern) observation that our human knowing has its limits (1 Cor.13:8-10). It is not a contrast: a story is either THE truth, or total fiction, but often it is both: some truth and some fiction. It is in particular modern man who has difficulty with this, because this ‘indistinction’ or ‘unclarity’ limit his control. During my time in college, decades ago, I heard Tony Lane, then Bible teacher at London Bible College, formulate it this way in a discussion on the notion of truth with respect to the Bible: “The Bible is God’s absolute truth, told in the language of fallible man.” Theologies are a human effort and so: limited and fallible, even when they are about the unfallible God - about THE Truth. When we as mortal men want to go beyond that - as in modernism - we do not make it. We were created to humbly ackowledge God as God and to thank and honor Him accordingly. If we do not do that, when we want ‘to be as God’ ourselves and have control fully in our own hands, and there is no place anymore for wonder and awe and for acknowledging our limitations, then we go in the wrong direction (see Romans 1:17-2:1; cf. also Eccl.11:1-12:1, where the writer in almost postmodern way advocates a lifestyle of acknowledging that we do not have control fully in our own hands). Everybody who sees that, I can affirm in that acknowledgement. In the sequel of the story at Lois Shawver’s website it also appears the postmodern resistance against authority actually is resistance against glorification of the people who had ‘knowledge’ in modernism. We only need to go back half a century to arrive in a time where the Reverend or Pastor, the family Doctor and the Mayor had a status of being highly looked up to by the ‘simple workman’, because they had ‘studied’. Leanne Payne would probably cal this that the ‘workman’ in those times had been taught to be ‘bent’ towards his learned fellow creature. (By the way: authority based on knowledge isn’t a Biblical notion of authority either.) Postmodern man shakes off, one might say, this ‘bentness’, this naivety of that proverbial ‘simple workman’ from himself. The postmodern therapist likewise doesn’t want to be the ‘all-knowing’ expert anymore, like his modern colleague did; on the contrary, he wants to empower his counselee and strengthen the faith of the counselee in God and in him-/herself. And that happens more by standing as fallible man next to each other than by exclaiming as an ‘expert’ that the other is ‘seriously mentally ill’... But even that is, of course, not a matter of polarized either or. When postmodernism is going to create more balance in those things, then, as a Christian I can rejoice in that. Then I take the good - also of postmodernism - and just forget the rest of it again (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:21). For an analysis of modern psychiatry, in which the personal aspect seemed to be lost, I also refer to: Osborne P. Wiggins & Michael Alan Schwartz, ‘The Crisis of Present-Day Psychiatry: The Loss of the Personal’, Psychiatric Times, Vol. XVI, Issue 8, August 1999. See also: Philip Troost, ‘Verwondering’ (Wonder and awe, in Dutch), Quarterly magazine Groei.

A very clear quote on the theme of this article, I encountered on the blog But i want easy answers!:
"The role of Job serves as paradigm for a righteous man faced with the human condition. As often noted, Job protests against easy answers, but the power of these protests derives from the many ways in which Job makes his point by challenging accepted wisdom and traditional teachings. In a very real way, Job takes on religious orthodoxy as an insufficient means to express the complexity of life. Job protests against the reduction of tradition into simplistic cause and effect theology."

— James D. Nogalski, “Job and Joel: Divergent Voices on a Common Theme,” in: Katharine J. Dell and Will Kynes (Eds.), Reading Job Intertextually, LHBOTS 574, T&T Clark, London, 2013, p.137.

For further contemplation

‘A video-registration of images and poetry on Job and the visit by his friends’, text: John Piper, video: Bryan Turner, at Bryan Turner’s website. See also ‘the text of part 3. of this series of poems’, by John Piper, at John Piper’s ministry website: www.desiringGod.org.

2020-06-20

See also: John Piper, Which Characters in Job Can We Trust - can we put any stock in what Job or his friends are saying?, also at www.desiringGod.org.

2008-07-26

And:

Joseph Bottum, ‘Christians and Postmoderns’, First Things, February 1994.

2009-07-28

Dallas Willard, ‘What Significance Has ‘Postmodernism’ for Christian Faith?’, webdocument at his own site, not dated.

2010-01-29

Arno Gruen, ‘Reductionistic Biological Thinking and the Denial of Experience and Pain in Developmental Theories’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Volume 38, No. 2, Spring 1998, pp. 84-102.

2010-03-03

Kalman J. Kaplan, Matthew B. Schwartz, A Psychology of Hope – A Biblical Response to Tragedy and Suicide, W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids MI (USA) / Cambridge (UK), 1993, 1998 (Revised & Expanded Edn.); ISBN 978 0 8028 3271 9.
This book aptly shows a great difference between the Greek thinking and the Jewish-Christian worldview: the root of acceptation of suicide, as a dignified way away from the contradictions and antitheses of this life, lies in Greek thinking, while the Judaeo-Christian world view always seeks life.
In that, the authors draw heavily from Biblical stories and Rabbinical literature. They also included the wonderful Rabbinical parable (p.39-40) that sharply demonstrates the failure of modernist rationalism. It is a parable of the Eastern-European Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman from the period between the two world wars. Facing imminent death at the hands of the Nazi’s, this Rabbi described:

“Once a man who knew nothing at all about agriculture came to a farmer and asked to be taught about farming. The farmer took him to his field and asked him what he saw. “I see a beautiful piece of land, lush with grass, and pleasing to the eye.” Then the visitor stood aghast while the farmer plowed under the grass and turned the beautiful green field into a mass of shallow brown ditches. “Why did you ruin the field?” he demanded.
“Be patient. You will see,” said the farmer. Then the farmer showed his guest a sackful of plump kernels of wheat and said, “Tell me what you see.” The visitor described the nutritious, inviting grain – and then once more watched in shock as the farmer ruined something beautiful. This time, he walked up and down the furrows and dropped kernels into the open ground wherever he went. Then he covered the kernels with clods of soil.
“Are you insane?” the man demanded. “First you destroyed the field and then you ruined the grain!”
“Be patient. You will see.” Time went by and once more the farmer took his guest out to the field. Now they saw endless, straight rows of green stalks sprouting up from all the furrows. The visitor smiled broadly. “I apologize. Now I understand what you were doing. You made the field more beautiful than ever. The art of farming is truly marvelous.”
“No,” said the farmer. “We are not done. You must still be patient.” More time went by and the stalks were fully grown. Then the farmer came with his sickle and chopped them down as his visitor watched open-mouthed, seeing how the orderly field became an ugly scene of destruction. The farmer bound the fallen stalks into bundies and decorated the field with them. Later, he took the bundles to another area where he beat and crushed them until they became a mass of straw and loose kernels. Then he separated the kernels from the chaff and piled them up in a huge hill. Always, he told his protesting visitor, “We are not done, you must be more patient.”
Then the farmer came with his wagon and piled it high with grain which he took to a mill. There, the beautiful grain was ground into formless, choking dust. The visitor complained again. “You have taken grain and transformed it into dirt!” Again, he was told to be patient. The farmer put the dust into sacks and took it back home. He took some dust and mixed it with water while his guest marveled at the foolishness of making “whitish mud.” Then the farmer fashioned the “mud” into the shape of a loaf. The visitor saw the perfectly formed loaf and smiled broadly, but his happiness did not last. The farmer kindled a fire in an oven and put the loaf into it.
“Now I know you are insane. After all that work, you burn what you have made.”
The farmer looked at him and laughed. “Have I not told you to be patient?” Finally the farmer opened the oven and took out a freshly baked bread – crisp and brown, with an aroma that made the visitor’s mouth water.
“Come,” the farmer said. He led his guest to the kitchen table where he cut the bread and offered his now pleased visitor a liberally buttered slice. “Now,” the farmer said, “now, you understand.”
God is the Farmer and we are the fools who do not begin to understand His ways or the outcome of His plan. Only when the process is complete will we all know why all this had to be. Until then, we must be patient and have faith that everything – even when it seems destructive and painful – is part of the process that will produce goodness and beauty.

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