Objection: God Gives and Takes Away
The words of Job are truly recorded, but they are not true:
Job 1:21:
And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
It is clear from the book of Job that Satan, not God, was responsible for taking away what Job had (Job 2:4-7). For lengthy discussions of many things pertaining to Job, see Job Explained and Objection: Job Was a Godly Man, But God Let Him Get Sick; I won’t repeat those whole write-ups here.
The fact that words are recorded in the Bible does not make them the truth. I suppose you could write a song with a nice rocking beat about how David’s flesh would be fed to the birds and beasts, because Goliath did speak those words, so they are in Scripture. However, those words are not the truth even though they were truly recorded in Scripture, as Goliath is the one who died in that encounter, not David. Peter said that Jesus would not die and be raised again the third day, and those words are truly recorded, but they were not the truth either. I would hope that a song based on Peter’s words would not be popular no matter how catchy the tune; don’t look for “Jesus, You Shall Not Die and Rise Again” on a list of the hottest 100 Christian songs anytime soon. Israel’s enemies talked about how they would demolish Jerusalem, but those words were also proved false. One said that if even a fox went up on the wall that Nehemiah’s people were building, the wall would break, but there was never such a fox news event, so no one should want to write a Christian tune “No More Bricks in the Wall” about Israel’s enemies who wanted to tear down the wall. If we wouldn’t do that in these other cases, we shouldn’t do it in Job’s case either. The Bible does truly record some untrue words that were uttered by men, but that doesn’t mean we should repeat or sing those untrue words as if they were so.
The reason Job was not charged with sin for making his statement was that Job had no way to know there was a devil who takes away. Consider that Paul never says, “By one woman sin entered into the world (see Romans 5:12 for what he DID say). We all refer to Adam’s sin, not Eve’s sin, even though Eve ate the forbidden fruit first. Eve was deceived and was not charged with sin. Adam was told not to eat from the tree before Eve was created. He knew better, so he was charged with sin. Job couldn’t have known better, so he was not charged with sin even though he was wrong, just as Eve was wrong but was not charged with sin.
Job walked uprightly, but his knowledge of spiritual matters was next to nothing. Then again, he lived before the Old Covenant let alone the New Covenant, so it would be unfair to expect him to be the Wizard of Uz in spiritual matters. God did not charge him with sin at that time, because he had not (yet) started railing on God. Later, he “multiplied words without knowledge” and God had to set him straight. If his other statements were “words without knowledge,” why would we think that this particular statement was correct? Obviously, it wasn’t, because at no time did Job return naked to his mother’s womb.
Some argue, “The fact that God ALLOWED Satan to take things away makes God complicit in what happened. Therefore, the LORD took away what Job had.” (This whole “God allowed it” argument is handled under Objection: If God ALLOWS Sickness, He Must Have a Purpose for It.) If that is true, God is complicit in EVERYTHING that the devil does on the earth today – because He ALLOWS the devil to do it. He ALLOWS the devil to steal, kill and destroy. So based on the “God gives and takes away” logic, God is going around stealing, killing and destroying everywhere today using the devil as His intermediary.
Fortunately, God made a way out for us through Jesus so that we can be turned from the power of Satan to God (Acts 26:18). We can dominate the works of the devil in our lives (Luke 10:17-20) rather than putting up with them. We have a much better covenant than anyone in the Old Testament ever had!
Scripture is clear that every good and perfect gift, not every calamity, comes from God (James 1:17) to His children. God’s plans are for your good, not for evil (Jeremiah 29:11). God’s reason for “allowing” the devil to do things is NOT because He wants those things done in your life. He allows the devil to do things for legal reasons. God gave Adam dominion over the earth, and man is still in charge of the earth, not God (Psalm 115:16). Man gave Satan an “in” to the earth in the Garden of Eden, and God has had to legally permit Satan access to the earth ever since then. Satan is allowed to go around seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8-9). As a Christian, you have the privilege of learning your rights in Christ so that you will be one of the ones whom Satan can’t devour. And finally, thank God, there is coming a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13) to which Satan will have no access because he will be occupied with being tormented day and night in the lake of fire forever.