"I want to believe so bad but why God do this?"

Someone wrote in, nineteen years old, and the title of the post is a question. I want to believe so bad, but why did God do this. Then he lists what he means by this. He's five foot three. He says he's underdeveloped. He's neurodivergent, and he has social anxiety he calls crippling. And then the line the rest of the post hangs on. "It's like He nerfed me to oblivion just for the fun of it."

He says he understands now that his purpose isn't to reproduce. He talks about being short as a man, and what he's experienced of how people treat him for it. He says he looks fifteen at nineteen, and he's sick of people telling him how young he looks. He mentions being mixed, and that it makes finding a donor match harder if anything ever happens to him, so he's pretty much screwed. He says he's lonely, that he simply cannot approach people no matter how badly he wants to, and that he hasn't done anything with his friends in over a year.

And then the charge, which is the reason this post is worth an episode.

"I'm convinced that God made me just to suffer. Maybe it was an inside joke with the angels, who knows."

The post looks like a why question. It isn't one. He isn't asking for an explanation of suffering in general, or why bad things happen to people. He's making an accusation, and it's specific. He says the one who made him did it deliberately, and did it against him, and possibly found it funny. That's not a doubt about whether God exists. You can't be nerfed by nobody. He believes there's someone there. He thinks that someone is not on his side.

And there's a second thing underneath the anger, and it's the more painful one. He writes: he better have one heck of a plan for me, because it's pretty ridiculous. Read that again. He's still assuming there has to be a payoff — that a life like this can only be justified if something big is coming to make the arithmetic work. He's furious at God, and he's still arguing on God's terms. If you did this to me on purpose, you owe me a reason.

So the real question is this. If God made me like this, deliberately, is he against me. And is he going to tell me why.

Scripture answers one of those, and it isn't the one he wants. Because there is a man in the Bible who made the identical accusation, in almost identical words — that the hands which made him have turned on him — and he made it to God's face. And he never got the reason. Not once. Not at the end. Not ever.

Job. Most people know the frame. He loses everything, his friends come and explain it to him, and God shows up at the end. What gets skipped is what Job actually says in the middle, because it is not patient, it is not pious, and it sounds a great deal like this post.

Chapter three, he opens his mouth and curses the day he was born. Let the day perish wherein I was born. Why died I not from the womb. Chapter seven. So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.

And then chapter ten, which is the one. Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay. Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews. That is the same charge. You built this thing on purpose, with your hands, and then you turned on it. And a few lines later, wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb. He isn't asking about suffering as a topic. He's asking his maker why he bothered making him.

Now here's what the reader of Job knows and Job does not. We were shown the first two chapters. We know there was a conversation about him that he was never in the room for, that his life became the subject of an exchange he never heard. Job never finds out. God speaks to him for four chapters at the end and never mentions it. Not one word of explanation. No reason given. What Job gets instead is God, present, speaking to him directly, asking him about wild goats and the sea and the morning stars.

And then at the very end there's a line most people miss. God turns to Job's friends — the ones who defended him, who explained the suffering, who told Job to stop talking like that — and says: ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. The friends said the correct-sounding things, and God says they were wrong. The man who accused God to his face is the one God says spoke rightly.

And don't rush to the end of that book. The middle is thirty-five chapters long. Thirty-five chapters of a man in the ash heap while people who love him explain that this is his own fault. Nineteen is early. But months of vanity, and wearisome nights appointed — a year without seeing your friends is a real number of nights.

Psalm 88. It's the one psalm in the book that never turns. There's no but, no yet, no nevertheless. It ends where it starts.

O LORD God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; for my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them. But unto thee have I cried, O LORD; and in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee. LORD, why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me? Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.

Notice who he blames. Thou hast laid me. Thou hast afflicted me. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance. Thou hast put lover and friend far from me. Every complaint in that psalm is pointed at God — not at circumstances, not at other people, not at bad luck. At him, personally, on purpose. That is the same accusation the post makes. And it's in the hymn book. Someone wrote it, and it was kept, and it was sung, and nobody edited a hopeful ending onto it.

Now notice the other thing, which is easy to miss because it's structural rather than stated. Every one of those lines is the word thou. He is not describing God. He is talking to him. The whole psalm is a complaint against God delivered to God, and it never once stops being a prayer. Compare that with the post, which says: I'm convinced God made me just to suffer. That's a sentence about him, said to a forum, with God as the third party being discussed. The psalm says: why castest thou off my soul. Same charge. Different room.

And it doesn't get answered. The last word of that psalm in Hebrew is darkness. The man is still in it when the music stops. So Scripture will not tell this nineteen year old why. Job asked and didn't get it. Psalm 88 asked and didn't get it. What Scripture does say is that the accusation itself is not the sin he might think it is. God did not rebuke Job for making it. He rebuked the people who told Job to stop.

So if you're in this, here's the one thing to do.

Say the charge to him. Not about him. Not to a comment section, not to a friend, not in your head at two in the morning. Out loud, second person. You made me like this. You knew what you were doing. It looks to me like you are against me. If that's what you actually think, then that's the thing to say, in those words.

If your own words won't come, Job's are available. Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. Or the psalm's. Why castest thou off my soul? why hidest thou thy face from me?

Nothing is promised for doing that. Job said it and got thirty-five more chapters. The man in Psalm 88 said it and the psalm ends in the dark. But both of them were talking to him when it happened, and that is the only difference between those two prayers and the post.

"He better have one heck of a plan for me."

Job never found out what the plan was. He was never told about the first two chapters. He died old and full of days without ever learning why any of it happened. What he got was God, speaking to him, out of the whirlwind, in the second person. And of the man who had accused him to his face, God said: he hath spoken of me the thing that is right.