 But when I was little, I used to fall out of the bed a lot, right? And my mother told me it's because you're sleeping too close to the getting in part. Right? So if you get in the bed at the edge and that's where you stay, then you're subject to fall out, right? You know, you scoot a little bit into the bed, meaning in the context of this conversation, come a little deeper into the waters of what you believe and why you believe it. The Odyssey simply raises the question, why do bad things happen to good people if God is fundamentally good and all powerful? Right? In your canon, that's what we call the Bible, as the 66 books we call it, we refer to that as a canon. The Old Testament, one of the oldest books in the Bible is not Genesis. One of the oldest books in the Bible is Job, right? People were reading, people were reading Job as they were writing Genesis. Job was a part of wisdom literature. And the basic theology of the book of Proverbs is if you do good, good will come your way. That's Proverbs in a sentence, right? Follow wisdom, be wise, you know. The basic theology of the Psalms is if you do good, sometimes good will come your way, right? The Psalms almost read like someone wrote it with schizophrenia. The psalm will start out talking about how good and how powerful and how mighty God is and how much they trust God. And then somewhere halfway through it's God. Where are you? I thought you were with me. Why is this happening? You know, don't let the evil overtake me. And then it ends with some form of praise, right? It's it vacillates. So Job is a narrative that puts those two theologies in tension with each other. How does Job start? There was a man named, you know, of us named Job, who's perfect in all his ways, upright before God, worshiped and praised God. And then a day came where Satan came in into heaven as God is doing roll call. And God says to Satan, where you been? And Satan says, I've been to and fro on the earth, seeking whom I may devour. And God says, what about Joe? Have you considered my servant, Joe? How he's faithful and upright and just. And Satan says, oh, he only he's only he's only worshipping you and upright because you give him all this stuff. He's protected. He's wealthy. He's rich, you know, but you take that from him. You know, he won't praise you like that. God gives him permission. And in one day, Joe loses all of his cattle, loses all of his oxen, loses all of his land, his children die. Right. All this happens in one day. Job still praising him, still believing, still still trusting God. Satan comes back. God asks the same question, where you been? To and fro on the earth, seeking whom I may destroy and devour. What about Joe? And I'm reading it like God, have you have have you lost your mind? Why are you why are you doing this to the man? All right. And Satan says. Well, he's still only praising you because you won't let me touch his body. But if you let me touch his body, he'll curse you to your face. All right. And God says, fine, touches body, leave his soul alone. Next thing you know, Job, body breaks out in sickness and disease. And his wife looks at him and she says something powerful. She says, Job, you should curse God and die. And the church wants to send Miss Job to hell. I actually like her because she's honest. She's getting to the heart of your question. Job, you're a good man. You worship God, you love God, you've raised your children right. You've done things the way it's supposed to be done and look at your life. All of our children are dead. All of your money is dead, gone. You know, all of your possessions gone. You're sick. Where's this God that you had all this hope in? You should just curse him and die, you know? And we we get all upset about her. But, you know, have you lost as much as she lost? Right. You know, are your children still alive? Do you still have a roof over your head? Do you still have health in your body? You still got a job to go to. You know, how would your perspective of God change? Is if the worst dream you ever dreamed became true? Right. So when we talk about. Uh, these attributes of God, omniscient, you know, omnipotent, you know, all powerful, all knowing, you know, in all places, benevolent, as you say it. And you look at the world and you see planes falling out of the sky. Mass shooting events, right? Children being abused. And then you wonder, well, where is this God? And to which many theologians and many philosophers have pontificated long about God and God's involvement in the world and where God is. And although and all of that ended up in various doctrinal statements depending on what branch of religion you seem to fall in. I'm reminded of John the Baptist, right? Jesus, his cousin, the same one who, when he baptized them, said, I see the heavens opening up, descending like a dove, right? You know, that takes. And John thought of himself as this forerunner for Jesus, making the path straight, you know, proclaiming repentance because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. John ends up in jail. They arrest John. And guess who doesn't come see him? Jesus. And John is sat in this jail for days. No pastoral visit from from the Messiah. Jesus ain't signed, putting no money on his books or anything. John sat down and wrote him a letter. And the letter raised an important question. Are you the one? Or should we look for another? And in other words, what John said to Jesus is did we put our hope in the wrong one? Because I live this life proclaiming you to be. And I'm in jail because of what I believe about you. And you can't even come see me. And Jesus gets the letter. Reads the letter and still doesn't go see him. You go tell John, this is what I'm doing. The lame walk, the blind can see, the deaf can hear, the mute can talk, go tell him that. In other words, Jesus seems to be too busy. Doing benevolent stuff. The stop and go see John and what happens? John ends up beheaded. And I wonder about Jesus's life after that. What did that do to Jesus? You know, and there are a lot of things that are happening in Jesus's life that I see pretty clear as he's wrestling with that tough time in his life. He finds out John is dead. What does Jesus do? He gets in a ship. Rose across the ship by see by himself. And this whole crowd of people runs across the lake, gets there before he can get out the ship. He's already there. They're already there. He preaches a menace this to him. They haven't eaten. He multiplies fish and bread for him, right? Puts the disciples, tells the disciples, you know, y'all go pick this stuff up. Y'all get in the ship. Y'all go on to the other side. I'm going to go pray. He's up in the mountain by himself praying. What happens? The disciples end up in the storm. He's got to come down the mountain, walk across the lake, tell the storm, you know, to calm down and quiet down. Gets Peter out of the water, gets on the boat. They get off the ship. You know, he meets with the man with the legion of demons. Then he ends up with this black sister who's got this demoniac child and he calls her a dog. What was wrong with Jesus? Could it be that he never really processed how we treated John? And every time he tried to get off by himself, some ministry need gotten away.