God Did Not Do It (A Different Perspective on Job)

You all know the story well. Job is a very rich man, so rich in fact that if his wealth would be transferred to today's standards, he would be wealthier than the wealthiest people on earth combined. He was worth more than many countries are today. In the Biblical narrative, Satan accuses Job of simply obeying God because God gives him good things and protects him from calamity. Satan tells God that if He will just remove his protection from Job and allow Satan to do what he will, then Job will curse God. So God basically tells satan he can do whatever he wants to Job except kill him. Satan goes out and kills all of Job's children, destroys all his livestock, steals every bit of his wealth and inflicts Job with the worst diseases he could think of that would not kill him. Job is left penniless, inflicted with a debilitating disease, and left to sit in the ashes of a camp fire scraping himself with a pice of broken pottery. 

The picture that is painted is horrifying to be certain. It's so terrible that it makes some people laugh to think of how low Job fell. From the richest man the world has ever recorded, rivaled only by Solomon, to the poorest of the poor, sitting in a pile of ash, mourning his misfortune. The implication the Bible gives to this story is clear. "In all this, Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." Job did not question, Job accepted the punishment of God and endured faithfully, knowing well that "The Lord gives and The Lord taketh away." And he blessed the name of The Lord. So we sit back and read this story and the subsequent interpretations of it and applaud Job. What a guy! We strive to be just like him. In affliction and tragedy we look to Job and from him we gain the strength never to question the actions of God. We write songs with lines like, "Teach me never to reason why, but to follow Jesus." We say things to each other such as, "I'm sure it was God's will." Or "God has a plan, we just need to trust Him." All very nice words, but ultimately, it misses the mark by a mile of what I believe God would like us to learn from the story of Job. 

There are many written accounts of the story of Job. The Muslims have one, the ancient Mesopotamia have parallel stories, as do stories originating in Egypt. All of them speak of how faithful this certain man was, and how steadfast he was in his belief and trust in God. But do you know what none of them mention except the one recorded in the Bible? None of them contain the argument between God and Satan, none of them mention that God was not the one giving the punishment, neither do they mention Job's theological debate with his friends, none of them contain the rebuke of God on Job and his 3 friends, and none of them record the fact that Job actually did question and reason why. Just like that, the Bible took a very popular story of ancient antiquity and transformed it into something no one had ever considered. It had not crossed the minds of those who wrote this story down in history that indeed it is ok to question, it is ok to reason, and in fact it was wrong of Job to place the blame on the hand of God and to believe blindly that God had done this for a purpose. The Bible tips it's hat to such "righteousness", however, that was not what Moses was seeking to convey. 

The book of Job is a part of the three Wisdom books of the Bible, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. These three books tackle subjects that are extremely hard to grasp. I will go in to a study of what Ecclesiastes is all about at some later date, but for now, Job is tackling the theological problem of theodicy, which is the study of divine justice. Theodicy asks the question, "Why do the righteous suffer?" The Bible, as a whole, takes a certain stance in this, it's stance is simple, God rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous. Not so in Job. All of a sudden we see a deep understanding of the issue and and it is revealed that God does not work that way at all. As I said in the very first post I ever wrote for this blog, "Moses was no fool!" And every time I read what we presume was written by Moses, I gain a deep appreciation for the understanding of Moses. He constructed a philosophy on God that rivals my own. He had such an understanding of the nature and character of God that it spurred thought for thousands of year and is still impacting my theology today. 

Here is what Moses understood, God did not do it. It's as simple as that! It seems so basic and obvious, but it is an understanding of the story that everyone else missed, and everyone is still missing today. Jesus knew, that is essentially what he said in Matthew 13:28, "An enemy has done this." And again when the disciples asked Jesus whose sins the blind man was paying for with his blindness, Jesus said, "neither has this man sinned, nor his parents..." (John 9:3). Solomon reveals something fantastic about the nature of God that relates strongly to the story of Job, "I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all." (ECC 9:11) You see, the stance that most people take, that God rewards those who are good and punishes those who are wicked is actually not specifically correct. Almost everything that happens in this life is the result of natural consequences, as Solomon puts it, chance happens to everyone alike. Solomon again says, "If the clouds are full of rain, they empty on the earth; and if the tree falls toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it shall be." (ECC 11:3) It sounds like a "duh" statement, but it is an important theological point.

This stance is very different than almost all religions in the world teach, and in fact is very different than most Christians believe. Most people believe that if something happens, God has a hand in it, and it happened for a reason. You hear it often, something terrible happens to bad people and the reaction of Christians is, "God did it to punish their wickedness!" Or, "God did it to wake up his people!" Etc etc. When good things happen to good people Christians do the exact same thing, "Praise The Lord he is rewarding those who diligently seek him!" When Good things happen to bad people, Christians often have a different stance, "just wait till God vindicates his people." Or something similar. When bad things happen to good people, many Christians have no idea what to say, and there are a verity of answers depending on personality and belief. Jesus says, "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matt 5:44,45) 

You see, God has built this universe to operate on absolute free will. Almost everything to ever happen is the direct result of this free will acted upon. When the wicked and righteous thrive, it is because God has given the gift of free will to both of them, and that wicked person chose to make the most of it and was able to make use of the gifts of God, the same as the righteous, whether or not he knew it at the time. When bad things happen to good and evil alike, it is because free will was acted upon without wisdom, either on the part of the person that calamity has fallen, or perhaps someone else acted poorly in a way that effected the other person. God is absolute love, and absolute love cannot exist without giving everyone the ability to make their own choices. You cannot love if you cannot choose.

Job is a story turned into an allegory on how to deal with suffering. At the end, Job is rebuked by God for his shallow understanding. Why was this? Why would God rebuke such a faithful servant? Because the attitude Job had, although considered "righteous" was actually incorrect. God did not do it! God did not plan for it to strengthen Job's character, God did not give and God did not take away. Job gained because he exercised his ability to make great decisions and he followed the wisdom laid down for him by those who came before who had interactions with God and had been led toward wisdom. Job lost it all, not because of the actions of God, but because other men saw their opportunity and they took it and they stole Job's wealth, killed his servants and left him destitute. Yet again, as Solomon wrote, chance happened to Job and all his children died in a tragic accident. 

The story is tragic, but Job placed the guilt on God and it was revealed after over 30 chapters of dialog between job and his three friends that none of them understood God correctly. His friends who thought Job was being punished for his wickedness, were wrong, Job, who thought God was simply taking back what he had given, was wrong. GOD DID NOT DO IT. It was all the result of chance and the acting upon of free will by Job's enemies. When tragedy strikes, let's not forget that it is not for a desire of a perfect life that we worship God, as I have said many times, the atheist down the street from you may indeed have a much happier life than you. We worship God because of the revelation of His character, because He is good. God is LOVE, and it is that reason that I worship. Terrible things have happened in my life, things that only a few of you can relate to, and many great things have happened in my life as can be seen in my engagement pictures with my lovely fiancé, but none of those things that have happened in my life, or the lack of those things, has any impact in my love and devotion to God, except as it furthers my understanding of his character, because I recognize the main point of the entire book of Job, God, did, not, do it. 

The Nonexistence of Evil

Chapter 16

The Nonexistence of Evil

What Is Sin?

A great cosmic conflict, the dark one versus the Light, two equal and opposite forces, there is good and there is evil, darkness and light, sin and righteousness. The opposite of God is Satan, Gods antagonist. There are inherently good, and inherently evil actions. Really the struggle is very simple, it is your classic hero versus villain story. This is the view that almost all the worlds’ inhabitants hold to be truth. It is easy to understand and seemingly easy to define.

Now take all of that and throw it out of your mind. I have found that if the majority holds it to be truth, than it is probably false. In physical terms, when describing the properties of light, we say that it is a wave of particles called photons that travel at 2.998 x 10^8 m/s. So then what is the absence of light? Most people will say, darkness, but as we think about it a little bit deeper we find that that is not the truth of matter at all. Lets do an quick exercise, try and describe darkness for one moment… Darkness is not an entity, it has no intrinsic existence, in the universe, darkness does not exist, there is only light, and not light. Light has existence, it moves, it has energy, it has a speed, it can be detected. Darkness? Darkness is simply non-existence. There is no such thing as darkness. Nothing exists in darkness.

"Nonsense!" you might say, after all, many of us have walked through a dark room and run into that table or chair that was “existing” in darkness. Yes, but what made you be able to feel that? It was the fact that you exist, and you do in fact put out a wave of energy that can be detected and measured. Just because you cannot observe it with the naked eye, does not mean there is no light. Look through night vision goggles, or an infrared camera, and the world again comes to life. You could say that your existence, or your ability to put out energy makes you exist. The table also has stored energy and its electrons interact with yours giving you the feeling of resistance, it is called the electromagnetic force. Without that force, it would not exist. True darkness, is not actually a physical thing at all. True darkness is simply to not existence.

So how does this relate to our chapter about sin? What is sin? Let me first start how I often do, by making a bold statement. There is no such thing as innate sin. Taking our physics lesson, there is only life, and not life. Likewise, there is not such thing as good and evil. There is only good and non-existence. You see, most people see there being two forces at work in the universe, good and evil. God and Satan. If you asked people what the opposite of God is, they would tell you, "Satan" without missing a beat. I am suggesting here that if God is as great as I have made Him out to be, then there is no such thing as God's opposite. There is only God, and nothing. There is no such thing as self existent evil, for if there were evil that existed outside of the creation of God, then that would mean that there is another god in the universe besides Jehovah, which on actuality would mean, there is no such thing as god.

How do I explain Satan then? Satan is no different than you or I. Over the millennia since Satan fell from heaven, mankind have made him greater and greater, until we see him as a force nearly equal in power to that of God, but in reality, Satan is like you, or me. He was created, he exists inside this universe, he has a form, he is made of energy that proceeded from the limitless source of energy that crafted the cosmos and was the originator of the Big Bang, the designer of our world, God. Satan is no different than you or I, except for one thing, that is that he exists in a different dimension than we do, and he likes to use that fact as a means to frighten children and unknowing adults.

Why then would there be all this talk in the bible about good actions and bad actions? If there is nothing bad, than why isn't everyone saved? Here comes the real important thought that sets the stage for this entire chapter, and indeed the ending of this whole book. God did not create sin, nor did he just decide what was good and what was bad arbitrarily. Neither is there something existent outside of God. Sin is not an action that is innately bad in and of itself. Sin is anything that leads us toward non-existence. You see, God is love. Love is the essence that drives the universe. It is Love that crafted us, and formed our cosmos. Love permeates the very fabric of existence. When we stray from what love is, we drift toward non-existence, because we quickly fall out of the harmony that sings through all ages past and ages to come, the vibration of the strings of creation. 

We have a free will, we can choose how those strings vibrate, just as an electron can "decide" to be a wave, or particle, or both in quantum physics. Our free will dictates our existence. If we choose to exist outside of existence, we cease to exist because to desire to not love, is to desire something that has never been, and will never be created. That is how good is determined. That which separates us from God, from existence, is sin. God has laid it out for us to see. He has very clearly designed for us a template to compare actions to, and we call it good and evil, I choose to call it, that which leads to eternal existence, and that which leads to non-existence. Our free will.

The Law

The law has many connotations associated with it. Most Christians say it was done away with at the cross and no longer important for moral guidance. I say that is ridiculous. That would mean that killing is now ok, and committing adultery is fine too. No, the law was not done away with. So what is its purpose then?  To understand the purpose of the law, we have to go back to when the law was given and understand the people the law was given to.

Israel, the people of God, had just been led out of captivity from Egypt. They had spent over 400 years in submission to the Egyptian rule. 400 years as slaves, beaten down, told what to do and when to do it. The people no longer knew how to exist on their own. They had forgotten how to worship God, or even why they did so. When in Egypt they had simple rituals to follow, bow to pharaoh, acknowledge him as God, give an offering to Ra, and all would be well. It was a simple religion of dos and don’ts, ruled by consequences. When the Jewish people came to the wilderness after leaving Egypt they had no idea how to live. No longer did they have rulers commanding them when to worship, and when not to. They did not understand the worship of God. They lost sight of the fact that the worship of the true God is worship from the heart, not a series of rules to follow. They wanted an easy religion. Moses kept on telling them they were doing wrong, so they desired to have the list. Just like in kindergarten, you are given a list, 1. Keep your hands to yourself, 2. Be kind to your classmates, 3. No yelling inside. Etc etc... This is the religion the people of God desired. It is easier to keep a set of rules, than to actually figure out for yourself what God means to you. So what did God do? He gave them the Ten Commandments.

10 simple "rules" to follow. If you think about it, it's rather simplistic. I could keep 10 rules no problem. In fact, I keep much more than that everyday in work, school, society as a whole. Lets take a look at the law of God and see for ourselves.

“I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, our of the house of bondage.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

3.  Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8. Thou shalt not steal.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.”[1]

            At first glance, the Ten Commandments do appear to be very simplistic. I mean, according to this law, I think I’m practically perfect. This kind of thinking stems from a complete misunderstanding of what the law of God is. The law of God is a revelation of His character. It reveals who He is as the God who is Love. First it starts by a declaration, there is none else besides God. God isn’t just saying that He is the only one deserving of your worship; He is saying that besides Him, there is nothing else to worship. God did not say, “Serve me or Satan” serving Satan isn’t even an option because Satan is a created being. To worship Him is to worship another creation; He is not on any level close to that of God.

            This also explains why God is so against making images of Him, and bowing down to them. No creation of man can represent God. God is not of a form that can be replicated. In this commandment God is seeking to lift the mind of men from the world to the heavenly realm. God is eternal, existing forever and ever outside of space and time, to worship human representations of Him is to make God human and created. It quenches our ability to imagine the infinite God and leads us to belittle God and reduce Him in our minds. This mind set is what led Satan to reject God. He belittled God until he allowed himself to envy the very position of God.

            Yet again when we come to the 3^rd commandment, it is more than just using the name of God as a cuss word, in fact, I do not believe that had anything to do with it at all. God could care less about names, they are meaningless, using God’s name as a cuss word is only disrespectful because it would be so of any person. If I took your name and started using it as a cuss word, you would probably be very offended. That is not however what God meant at all. The commandment goes much beyond a petty insistence on keeping his “name” holy. Taking the name of God in vain is to claim you are a Christian while misrepresenting the character of God to the world. In that case, all most all Christians I know are breaking the 3^rd commandment.

            The 4^th commandment is my favorite, and not just because I am a Seventh-day Adventist. The 4^th commandment reveals something about the character of God that is beautiful. So many people focus on the day argument, while missing what the whole thing was about in the first place. God is revealing to the world that He is a God that desires to be with His creation. He has set aside a whole day, just to commune with His creation. God longs for companionship, that is the whole reason He created in the first place, and He has set time aside for you.

            Jesus said,

“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”[2]

            The Jews had lost sight of this so badly that they had made the Sabbath something to be dreaded. So often in the history of the Jewish people had God spoken out against their Sabbath breaking that they decided they had finally had enough. They guarded the Sabbath day with the strictest laws possible. You even had to count your steps on the Sabbath to make sure you did not work too hard. Traveling any great distance on the Sabbath was against the law. They did not learn from their past mistakes, only added to their failure.

It was not the day that God was so worried about, it was what the Sabbath represented. There is nothing innately holy about the Sabbath, it is just like any other day of the week, what is holy about it is what it represents; it is Love communing with humanity. In rejecting the Sabbath, the Jews had not defiled a day; they had rejected a relationship with God. Sabbath breaking was only an outward show of their unconverted heart. They did not desire to know God.

The rest of the commandments deal with protecting the rights of others. You see, it is not that these are rules that we HAVE to follow, they are a way of life that any heart that has learned of God will do automatically. We will respect others as God respects us if we know God and understand His character. The main point I am trying to make is that the law was not set up to be a series of rules to follow, the law was given to show a template of what a true believer in God looks like. As we learn of the character of the almighty and eternal God, we are changed, not by the works that we do, but because we see something beautiful and lovely.

The Israelites did not see this. They took the law and turned it into a burden. They were very careful to do their checklist at the end of the day. It was very childish, it is like checking of the chores to get a sticker. They provoked God and insulted His character. So what did God do? God gave them Leviticus. Try reading through Leviticus. It gives such a showing of purity that it will discourage you for life. Any one who seeks to be holy and tries to follow the laws of God WILL fail. There are over eight hundred laws covering purity and holiness.

So you might wonder, why would God give such an impossible task to the people? I wondered the same thing, until I realized something, God was revealing to the entire world how futile it is to win your own salvation. Salvation is a gift; it is absolutely impossible to do anything good to save yourself! It has never been about being “good enough”. Through all those dos and don’ts of the Old Testament God was revealing to humanity His infinite love for us, that though we deserve nothing, yet everything has He promised us. We did not do anything to deserve existence, yet He created us. Likewise, we do not deserve eternity, yet He has promised us just that.

            Jesus again brought this up in the Sermon and the Mount. He told the people, “You have heard it said” then he would quote the law they knew well, but He would add, “But I saw unto you!” And He would give them something so deep that they realized purity is something that goes much deeper than outward show. “You shall not kill” Jesus turned into, “if you are even angry in your heart it is as though you committed murder.” “You shall not commit adultery” became if you even looked at a women and lusted, you were guilty of adultery. Jesus revealed that it is not the actions that defile a person. There is no such thing as innately evil actions. Innately evil actions are myths of culture. Evil actions in your culture may not be evil in another. Evil is not something that can be done or a task that can be performed; evil is anything that leads you away from existence. If it breaks the harmony of the universe, it is wrong. Not because it is bad in and of itself, but because it destroys the chorus of reality. Love for one another, Love for God, Love for yourself should be the driving force of all actions, because Love is the essence of existence.

            Jesus made this clear when speaking to a lawyer one day. The Bible reads:

“Then one of them, an expert in the Law of Moses, asked Jesus a question to test him. He said, "Teacher, which command in the law is the most important?" Jesus answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. 'This is the first and most important command. And the second command is like the first: 'Love your neighbor the same as you love yourself.' All of the law and the writings of the prophets take their meaning from these two commands."[3]

         Jesus does something very sneaky here, He adverts the question. The lawyer expects Jesus to answer one of the Ten Commandments as the most important, but Jesus seeks to reveal the true nature of the law. They are not rules to follow. As we behold the character of the almighty God, the nonexistent one, the essence of the universe itself, we cannot help be fall in love with that Love. As we behold that which empowers existence we are changed to be like that. We were created to Love like that and naturally as we behold the character of a God who is himself Love we in turn become loving, and our feelings toward other people will become love. Love is the greatest commandment because Love is of God.

         I have an older brother who at the time when I wrote this chapter claimed not to believe in God. He said that a belief in God was not necessary. He had found that love is the only thing that anyone need have. We don’t need God to show us what that love is because it is in everybody around us, if we would just open up our hearts and see the needs of others over our own. I chuckled to myself as I listened to his thoughts written on facebook etc. Not because I was jesting at his understanding, but because he just described my God. It makes me laugh as I type. The God my brother did not believe in is the God he unknowingly served by his lifestyle of love for other people. My brother will find himself a believer in the kingdom of heaven one day not because He served a God that most Christians still believe exists, but because His life was aligned with the essence of eternity. The Bible says,

“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”[4]

        

Prolog

         I hope that as you journeyed with me through this book, that your mind was at least opened to new possibilities. It has not been my goal to convert you, or to make you a believer in my religion, only to broaden the horizon of what it means to believe in God. The God I have constructed in this book is a God I have no fear of. I could serve a God like this. Whether or not He truly exists, may never be proven completely in my lifetime, but at the end of my life, I know I will not say, “Man I wasted years of my life in service to an imaginary God.” No, because my God is the God of my imagination, and the God of my imagination is a wonderful God to serve. Who wouldn’t want to believe in a God who is himself Love, and desires only good for every single living being?

         Whether it is the God of science that most intrigues you, or the God of the heart, the God of Love, and a pure character, if God can be said to have such a thing as character; I hope that you continue to learn, to study, and to discover the possibilities of what is out there. Not that you make God into your own image, but that you take the evidence we have around us and construct it into a complete picture of God. I have not covered everything in this book, there is much to learn. I believe that for all eternity to come I will be scientifically studying who God is and what His plan is for us, forever studying, but never coming to a full understanding because that is how big my God is. What I know now is that God is love, and Love is greater than all I know.

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[1] Exodus 20:2-17

[2] Mark 2:27

[3] Matthew 22:35-40

[4] 1 John 4:7-8