Sometimes you hear people say it, at times with a reference to 1 Corinthians 10:13, that God will not let you be tempted beyond your ability—as if God first measures the shoulders before giving people hardship to endure. The reasoning is that broad shoulders can handle more.

Perhaps this is meant as an encouragement for people dealing with difficulties, but I do not find it very encouraging. Incidentally, it is not very Biblical either.

Someone wrote about this under the title “Is God measuring our shoulders?” He agrees that, though it is meant well, there is a lot wrong with the statement that God measures shoulders before he gives hardship to endure. The writer blogs (among other things) about Paul, who writes in Romans 8 that creation, albeit in hope, yet is prey to meaninglessness. And what about Bartimaeus, the only person with a handicap who is mentioned by name in the gospels.

Jesus teaches Bartimaeus to seek his salvation with him. The suffering here is instrumental: It brings people, even bystanders, to Jesus.

The writer quotes Lewis, who writes that God “whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks to our conscience, but shouts to us in our hardships.” From Lewis is also the expression that suffering is God’s megaphone to shake up a world which has become deaf to him.

Incomprehensible⤒🔗

I find that more encouraging and closer to the message of the Bible than the thought that God measures shoulders before he gives people hardship to endure. The latter thought focuses  yet again on  people who endure suffering, and not on God. According to Lewis, God is both the acting Person in suffering and the goal.

God demands worship. For this, he uses blessings as well as shortcomings: not as a reward for good behaviour or as a compliment for broad shoulders, but as whispering and as a megaphone to move people towards worshipping God above everything, and under all circumstances to expect everything from him.

This train of thought is also more in line with the book of Job. Job “was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). Yet, the message in the book of Job is certainly not that God gave Job suffering to endure because Job could handle more than other people in his time. Job’s righteousness makes his suffering only harder to understand—actually, hard to bear, both for Job himself, of course, and for his wife, his friends, and for the readers of the book of Job. Job’s suffering is difficult to watch!

To say that Job had to suffer because he was more just than others does not solve important questions. It makes them worse. Would it not be better for God to reward people with broad shoulders, rather than punish them? For those who read it, Job’s complaint still remains unbearable.

Job bends←⤒🔗

What is important is that Job did not get a response. Well, he did, but not to his question as to the why: no declaration from God, no clarification. Job had to make do with this answer from God:

“Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?” (Job 40:8-9)

This is not about Job with his broad shoulders, or about Job who suffers so much and yet does not curse God. No, the book of Job is not about Job, but about God who justifies himself against Satan in the life of his servant.

God proves to be bigger than Satan. Nothing escapes God’s providence. That is the message in the megaphone in Job’s suffering. In the end, Job himself also learns this lesson and bows before the Almighty:

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted… Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:2, 6)

When Job says this, Satan has already left the stage. And this is not about him either. Satan shows up in chapters 1 and 2, but not thereafter.

Temptations do not come from God, James writes. We also learn this from the history of Job.

It was Satan’s evil setup. And yet, Job says from his perspective: “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). And in the next chapter: “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” The writer adds to it meaningfully in the same verse: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips’” (Job 2:10).

Why?←⤒🔗

What Job says there in chapter 2, is, in a subtle way, just a little different from what he said earlier.

In Job 1:21, Job brings the good and the bad in exactly the same way in relation to God. But in his second call (Job 2:10), Job does that somewhat less directly. Job’s second call makes me think of Jesus’ prayer: “And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

The question which forces itself upon people again and again with all its force is this: Why must people suffer? In the book of Job, this question is further focused on believers, on the righteous ones: If indeed God is the almighty One, how can he then allow his righteous ones to suffer? Job’s answer was that that is not possible. Job walks along the edge by holding God accountable. But the friends did something that in God’s eyes is even worse.

By their actions, they aroused God’s anger (Job 42:7). Job had to pray for his friends to prevent God’s anger from burning against them.

Whoever says that God somehow “fairly” divides suffering, according to what someone can bear, looks like Job’s friends.

Looking at the ending of the book of Job, we must be careful with such a thought, however well intended it may be, for two reasons. First, many people will think, based on this expression, that they wish that they had been given shoulders that are a little less strong. More importantly, such a remark may come from the need to justify God, as Job’s friends tried to do.

His friends had in the end a greater problem with God than Job had. Their logic was incorrect.

Job’s friends were silent for a long time, but not long enough. They had not learned the most important lesson: that God justifies himself. He does not need people to do that: neither people with broad shoulders, for people with nice words.

Providence←⤒🔗

Believers can therefore rightly say with Job that good comes straight from God, but evil is also within God’s providence. He works with that. It is his fatherly hand, which leads everything (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 10, q/a 27 and  28).

That, in the end, became evident also in the life of Job, but even more so in the life of Jesus Christ. And I believe that this will also be the solution in the lives of those who are connected to Christ. I find that encouraging.

Paul writes to the believers in Corinth that God, with the suffering, also gives the solution, which is Jesus Christ, the Righteous One in whom God justifies himself and in whom there is a future for everyone who believes, no matter how broad their shoulders are.