COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Collateral damage is the unintended damage caused by military operations. It happens all the time in movies and stories and also in real life where actions by major players can cause widespread damage to many who had no role in the initial action. Collateral damage always raises questions of justice being curtailed. One of the most troubling examples of collateral damage is seen in the life of job. His life unravels and he goes through unimaginable suffering, his children and servants die, all as collateral damage from a conversation between God and Satan. People often ask, how can that be fair?
One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” (Job 1:6-12)
Everything that follows in the life of Job stems from this conversation. Along with Job, we all ask the question, ‘how can God choose to unleash suffering on Job?’ We have the added information of the background conversation between God and Satan that Job did not have. There are very few references in the Bible to occurrences in the spiritual realm and this is one of them. It is important to note that while God does ask of Job, “would you discredit my justice?” (Job 40:6), he does not reference to this conversation in responding to him. God’s justice cannot be discredited and we can understand this in many ways.
First as God makes clear to Job, we are finite beings and have inadequate knowledge. We only know a tiny portion of all there is to know even in the physical realm. There is so much more in the spiritual realm that is hidden from us and our commission in this world is live our lives by faith and not by sight. As a finite being, we cannot arrive at conclusions of justice without adequate knowledge. The stories of those convicted wrongfully of crime and spending a lifetime in prison, only to be acquitted when DNA evidence in recent times exonerated them are poignant. We must concede that if God decides to do something in a particular way, there would be fair reasons for it that are hidden from us for now but might become evident later.
In God’s scheme of things, man has been created by God to live for Him, shun evil and honor God with his life. A creation’s job is to do the bidding of his creator. Anything else is not even worthy of discussion because a creation exists only because of the decision of the creator. For a creation to question the motive or rationale of the creator makes for an interesting talking point, but really is meaningless. Apple recently made a unique decision to release a cell phone that in contrast to past practice is inferior to prior models. The latest inferior I-phone model cannot complain to Apple, that they unjustly denied the new model of several features that exist in a superior prior model. Or if the maker of a rival company challenges Apple to prove the superiority of I-phone and Apple decides to expose one of their prized I-phones to malware, causing temporary damage to the phone, the phone cannot complain, for it is doing what its master wants it to do.
We also understand from the Bible that God is completely loving and cares for his creation on an individual basis. There is also the concept of an infinite soul-spirit in a human being that continues to exist after physical death. So even for those who are apparent victims of collateral damage as in the case of Job’s children, God in his wisdom directed their lives and their deaths and in perfect love has a plan in place for them that goes beyond the grave.
These arguments above make perfect sense with the Christian world-view and provide coherent arguments to explain the suffering that Job went through as collateral damage. However collateral damage is seen in real life and a skeptic or one who holds on to another faith also has the burden to explain within his world-view the reason for collateral damage. Try as hard as you would, an atheistic view point or a world-view provided by other religions comes up grossly short in explaining suffering in the form of collateral damage.
