God’s answer to the endless questioning of Job, and to his friends’ theorising, is pertinent for our time. We live in an age dominated by scientific inquiry. And while science wields many wonderful results, many scientists have, because of this, claimed ‘universal competency’ for the scientific method. They claim that the scientific method is the only method for discovering what is true. This view is called ‘scientism’. The problem with this view is that, without justification, it reduces reality to what science can potentially deal with. The other problem is that it makes every aspect of reality into an object for scientific investigation. It places the scientist in a godlike position outside reality as the arbiter of what is and isn’t true. One of founders of the scientific method, the philosopher Francis Bacon, famously declared: “Knowledge is power.” He saw the scientific method as enabling us to master the natural world. When atheists today demand that we give evidence for the existence of God, they are demanding to know God on their terms; they want to reduce God to a tangible object or conceivable theory so that they can look upon it and master it. But God will not be known in that way. He will not become less than God. This is the essence of the challenge that God brings before Job: we cannot know God and his purposes as we know objects in the world and equations in the mind. We can only know him as we entrust ourselves to him and as he masters us.
Reflect on the greatness of God who controls the whole universe and who loves you.
Read Job 39
