God Gives Us The Choice To Love Him

2 October 2026  Job 38:1,12-21; 40:3-5

“Have you commanded the morning since your days began…that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it?” 

(Job 38:12-13)  

A close reading of Job 38-42 (and for that matter the rest of the Old Testament) shows that God is deeply, personally, and emotionally engaged with what is going on between Himself and Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God asks (38:4). Some have interpreted this, and all the other questions God asks Job, as irony, mocking and sarcasm – as if to say, “Oh Job, you pathetic idiot.” But that is a shallow misinterpretation that misses the point of pretty much the whole Bible.

The questions God asks in the final chapters of Job describe a universe that is not just a knick-knack in heaven’s bookcase that only needs dusting off from time to time. It is a universe so deep, rich, and complex that it takes all of God’s power to care for it. The witness of the Bible is that God did not need to create.

God will not violate our freedom to reform us, for then He would have to stop loving us.  Instead God beckons, sometimes across a wasteland, for us to choose Him because He is good, because He is The Good, because He is finally the Only Good.

It is not as if there was a lacking in God that was somehow filled up by creating the universe. Rather, the Bible shows that God, in an act of sovereign freedom, created a universe simply to pour his love into. But to be such a universe, all the conscious members of it have to be free. God cannot make people love Him, for love is only love when it is chosen – it is an act of giving, not coercing; of acceptance, not obligation. A universe made this way cannot have people in it who are unable to say no. The effort it takes to sustain such a universe in love stretches even the muscles of God to their limits. “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tonge with a cord? Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook?” (41:1-2). “Have you commanded the morning since your days began…that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it?” (38:12-13). The implied answer to these questions is that God can’t either. God has to contend with evil, with people saying no, and accomplish His purposes without violating our freedom. It isn’t easy, not even for God. The witness of the New Testament is that God finally came in person to proclaim love, resist evil, and invite the world to come to Him. When we see it is God stretched out on the cross, we see that God really has committed His whole life and power to this universe and its people. Then, paradoxically, we see that such a world, so full of divine love, can never finally die, and the Resurrection makes perfect sense.

God is totally committed, pouring Himself into us all, offering us His own life, everything that makes Him who He is, at every Mass, everywhere, every day, pleading and hoping that we will all choose and receive Him. Some days that choice seems so easy – everything is alive with love and hope, our prayers are quick and full, and the words of scripture leap off the page, wrapping themselves around us in ways that go beyond just words. Other days are bleak, sorry, and mean. Every face is turned away, every hand raised against us, and the words of scripture just lie there on the page. God will not violate our freedom to reform us, for then He would have to stop loving us.  Instead God beckons, sometimes across a wasteland, for us to choose Him because He is good, because He is The Good, because He is finally the Only Good.

In the end, Job understood that. Hopefully we will, too.