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.
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