Elihu has a lengthy discussion with Job. What caught my eyes is when Elihu seemed to imply that Job felt God owed him an explanation for the reason of his pain and suffering. In fact Job demanded it. Elihu seemed to imply God really doesn't owe us an explanation so we should not demand it. God's wisdom and understanding is beyond us.

This made me think of how easy it is to ask God WHY in given situations:

1. A death in the family causes us to ask God WHY? We try and make sense of it. Why death for this person God? He or she was a beautiful and upright person. I would understand you taking the drug addict but not my son.

2. Or if a loved one comes down with cancer, WHY GOD? I served you, I went to church, I witnessed to people. I would understand if you had cancer fall on the thief across the street.

Often there are circumstances or we ask the question WHY? To ask the question, to me is not rational. I'm not saying it's not okay to ask. Sometimes we need to vent to God AND need to honestly get emotions and feelings off our chest, even if it's words of anger and hate. God wants to hear how we really feel but he also wants to help us through life situations.

Having said that I still want to address why I think it is illogical to ask the question WHY when we have a good person suffering while the bad person is not.

1. Remember the scripture verse Matthew 5:45 that says the sun and rain falls on both the Good and evil. It's a part of life. It's the consequences of sin on Earth. The earth is cursed because of sin so evil will happen to everyone and it is not based upon how good or evil you are.

2. It's illogical to think that because I'm a good upright Christian that sickness or death should not capture me. It is only worthy to fall on evil people as if to imply God would love one person more than another. It's as if we're saying, God, I'm a good person so therefore you love me more than the bad person. Let them suffer with death or sickness and not me. We quickly forget that God loves all equally. If I had three children, and two were upright citizens and one was evil, my heart would hurt for the evil one because of my love for him or her.  I wouldn't wish harm on any of them because of my love for them all. I say this so that we understand sickness and death is not determined based upon one's godliness or lack thereof.

3. It's illogical to think God doesn't know what he is doing especially when we don't or can't make sense of it all. God's wisdom and ways go beyond what ever we could imagine or think. Isaiah 55:8-9. There are things he's doing that have great kingdom value and we never see it.

To hold on to illogical thinking is to set oneself up to conclude that God is not fair and therefore God is not worthy of our love or commitment. We also set ourselves up to conclude that God does not even exist because he does not function in the way we think He should.