We have known Dorita since 2007. She is a documentary filmmaker. We used her services when making a few movies for Jonathan and Ariel’s Bar Mitzvah, for the ICB graduation, and for some ministry projects. While we were working on those, we had many great conversations about our faith. She is from South America originally. Did this make you think about Eli? Me too… interesting that God brings to our path many Jews from that area… She calls herself an “open-minded” person. She does not have any problem with us believing in God, as she does also. She does not mind us believing in Jesus, as she also believes he lived and was a real character. She even assumes that He could be a Messiah. BUT when we call Him God… oh, that’s is “crossing the red-line border” for Dorita. That’s too much, that’s heresy, she says. She says her Jewishness revolts against this belief!One interesting fact from working closely with her on a Ministry project. This project had a lot of Scripture passages about Israel, and God’s plan for Israel. While working on the project, her hard drive crashed several times and she had to re-print those passages,
One interesting fact from working closely with her on a Ministry project. This project had a lot of Scripture passages about Israel, and God’s plan for Israel. While working on the project, her hard drive crashed several times and she had to re-print those passages, prophecies, promises, and parts of the covenant three times. When we came to see the final product, she shared that due to this technical obstacle she had memorized ALL of it. Doesn’t our God have a sense of humor? And His ways are not our ways… It’s easy to see that when it is not your computer that crashed!
Anyway, back to today. Now Lilian is working with her on the movie for Liel’s Bat Mitzvah. That will be a Song of Praise to God for Liel. That movie will be a witness of God’s merciful redeeming plan for a situation that at first seemed to be an unbearable tragedy. It will be a documentary film of His fingerprints in our life. Part two of that film will be the story about Jonathan and the Master Piece from that Desert University course…While working through material that Lilian had composed (as director of the movie), Dorita mentioned
While working through material that Lilian had composed (as director of the movie), Dorita mentioned the book of Job. That’s how the conversation turned a corner:
Dorita: “I love reading the Tanach. But you know, I struggle with the book of Job. I just start reading the scene where God talks to Satan and I can’t read any further. I am so shocked when I try to visualize it. It’s kind of like gambling! How come they can operate with us, real people, with our lives, just to see who is right among them? You know I just put it aside and choose not to add this kind of God to my image of Him, which I bear in my heart. I don’t know how to deal with this, so I just put it aside…”
Lilian: “Dorita, you can’t get it, as you did not read it through the end. You struggle with the beginning because you did not read the end.”
D.: “What’s in the end then?”
L.: “Every person that lives long enough asks the same questions that Job (or his friends) asked. Especially when they experience suffering. The part you read and struggle with provides a back story —why God allowed Satan to afflict Job with such pain and turmoil. Your human wisdom tries to explain the unexplainable, that’s what Job and his friends did until finally God Himself spoke. The end of that book gives us a record God’s defense of His Majesty. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? / Tell Me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4). Does His answer to Job help to answer your question of “how could He?”.
D.: “H-m-m… But!.. Well… and yet…”
L.: “The answer given to Job may or may not satisfy you. God allows pain for good reason, but He may never reveal those reasons.”
D.: “ Do God and Satan get together like this a lot? Do they chat and decide what to do with us? Those two characters cannot be on one side…”
L.: “They are not. Did you notice that God allowed Satan to touch Job’s flesh? It means that Satan had to ask God’s permission to do that.”
D.: “That’s a mystery… How strange is it that God permits this “deal”! He gives one His best to become the victim of Satan? So strange…Why?”
L.: “ This question “Why” is not a good question…Especially in the context of this book. Job never got an answer to his “why?” Listen to what Job says: “He is not a man as I am that I may answer Him, that we may go to court together. There is no umpire between us, who may lay his hand upon us both” (9:32-33).”
D.: “What did he need?What is “an umpire”?
L.: “Someone who could represent him, a suffering sinner, before God, the Holy One. A kind of advocate. Someone who has authority, someone who will be heard and respected. Someone who understands the issues and is able to articulate it. You remember, at the beginning, Satan came to God to ask to be allowed to afflict Job. Job, not knowing this fact, wished that some One else would come to the throne of the Holy God to protect him, to ask for him, to submit a pledge on his behalf…”
D.: “As you know the end and I do not, did he get one?
L.: “There is one Advocate we all need—one who represents sinners like us in the highest of all places —the presence of God: “And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Yeshua the Messiah the righteous” (1 John 2:1). What a great promise! We have an advocate. He is there and, like a good “umpire,” He is not silent.”
D.: “Is he stronger than Satan? Does he always wins “the case”? Who is God, the Judge, I guess if we continue the same allegory, more in favor with?”
L.: “Read the book of Job this weekend, Dorita. The whole book. Especially, Job 38–42. Spend time with the Almighty. Pray and ask for a faith in the powerful Creator, which you will meet and get to know in those chapters. Pray and ask for a right perspective of Him so that you might see the scene that used to bother you through His eyes.
The book of Job is to proclaim that God is in control. Pain inevitably afflicts each one of us. Suffering is unavoidable in this life. Can we trust our Creator, even though we cannot understand our circumstances?”