The book of Job is not a parable of divine justice. It is a parable of resignation to a world-making force that has no justice as we understand justice. God comes off sounding like a metaphor for the universe: violent and chaotic yet bountiful and marvelous. The Job story is a story of doubt.
(Jennifer Hecht, Doubt: A History, p. 73)
It’s been a very long time since I read Job (and does anyone read it more than once?), but my recollection is that, after pages of argument about whether Job is truly righteous, or is getting his just desserts for his sins, God intervenes to say: I’m smarter than you, so STFU and stop asking questions. I’ve read somewhere that Job is best understood as a reply to the simplistic carrot-and-stick morality of Proverbs.
Now how fundamentalists manage to keep both books straight, I really don’t know (mostly by quote-mining Proverbs, and ignoring Job, I think).
Job’s God is pretty despicable. “Hey I’ll let you kill off Job’s kids just to make a point. No problem!”
An OT scholar once told me that the book of Job is completely misunderstood. At the end of the story Job gets “replacement kids” and twice as many sheep, goats, etc. The scholar told me that the moral to the story (and I’ve never heard this from anyone else) is that God treated Job like crap, Job called him on it and God said, “My bad!” and returned all his stuff and more.
Actually this relates to that last post about the Chapman family where the little girl was run over. Fundies love to point to the book of Job whever something bad happens to them, as if that helped explain anything.
I agree with Eamon. God’s only answer was to say, “where were you when I created the world? I can do whatever I want and you have no right to question me. Your suffering wasn’t for any reason or because of anything bad you had done, but simply because I felt like it”. It was only after Job bowed down and apologized for even daring to wonder why god was doing all these horrible things to him that the Lord went bippidty-boppidy-boo and put everything right again.
If I remember correctly, Bart Ehrman discusses Job is his latest book on the problem of evil. He points out that there are essentially two stories of Job: a long poetic section, and then prose at the beginning and end. The middle section of poetry is the more challenging section, where Job continues to argue that God owes him an explanation as his “friends” berate him. God appears as a whirlwind and answers Job – then we’re back to the prose section again, where all is made right.
The two sections don’t quite mesh – the Job of the prose section is whiny while the poetic Job is more stoic. It’s possible that the prose section was added later to soften things and provide more narrative structure.
Anyway, I think if we focus in on the (original?) poetic section, we see a very daring theodicy. God is NOT good, but something transcendent and elemental. God is more concerned with Behemoth and Leviathan than with piddling human concepts like “justice” and “righteousness.” This God is more like the God in Ecclesiastes, who does not always favor the righteous or defend the weak.
Job struck me as a long winded argument between two children. The playground mentality of Job and God is palpable.
Except Job is a nerd who’s getting beaten up by God, the douchebag playground bully, who made a bet with another douchebag named Satan.
Thank you, you are exactly right.
@ VorJack
“God is NOT good, but something transcendent and elemental. God is more concerned with Behemoth and Leviathan than with piddling human concepts like “justice” and “righteousness.””
Dunno if it’s fair to say God is more concerned with Behemoth and Leviathan than he is with Job. He’s talking directly to Job, after all. God seems incredibly interested in Job’s life, even before Satan’s ‘throwdown.’
@ Brian Larnder
“God’s only answer was to say, “where were you when I created the world? I can do whatever I want and you have no right to question me. Your suffering wasn’t for any reason or because of anything bad you had done, but simply because I felt like it”. It was only after Job bowed down and apologized for even daring to wonder why god was doing all these horrible things to him that the Lord went bippidty-boppidy-boo and put everything right again.”
What always struck me as the most interesting and important thing about Job (from my own, admittedly Christian, and perhaps you would say ‘biased,’ perspective) is the simple fact that God doesn’t just smite Job where he stands for being such a whiny, irritating dude. Job is literally screaming his doubt, his anguish, and his denial of God right in God’s face! God kills people for less.
The reason why I think this is essential to the story of Job, and one of the reasons why Christians cling to it (or at least why I cling to it) is that it reinforces the idea that doubt in God’s goodness, or his existence at all; that direct and confrontational anger with God himself does not lead to an immediate smiting. God can apparently deal with humanity being pissed off at him for unexplained tragedy, and will allow doubt and skepticism. Yes, God asks what right Job has to question him. But he also allows Job to question him. Asking questions, doubting your faith, anger directed at God, searching all the information you have to inform your beliefs– these are things that even those with ridiculously strong faith (like Job) go through. It’s actually an expected part of faith.
Which I think is pretty cool. :)
You’re grateful that your loving god dosen’t smite you?
That’s kind of… twisted.
Anyway, what Job is “whining” about is how God firsthand utterly destroys his life as well as his family. I think he is justified in questioning God’s intentions and doubting his benevolence!
Why is it twisted? Explain?
Say you are living in a relationship where your wife/girlfriend claims to love you while she may at the same time strike you dead if you in some way doubt her. She probably won’t, though, and you are grateful for that. In fact, it makes you love her even more that she doesn’t kill you.
I’d say that’s a twisted, unhealthy relationship. Yet it appears this is your relationship with God – or one aspect of it, anyway.
I’d also say it’s hard to characterize a partner in such a relationship as “all-loving”. Loving and smiting don’t mix.
Meh. Not a really good analogy…. Marriage is a partnership, or at least a relationship between two humans. Comparing God to a human person and expecting an analogy about a relationship to hold true is a little silly.
Try this one. You are deathly allergic to dogs. Your kid brings home a stray puppy, not even old enough to care for itself. Mommy dog hit by truck, etc.
You end up having to feed the little thing from a bottle, chest heaving and throat swelling from your severe allergic reaction. You keep the dog though… It’s kinda cute and you kinda like it.
The dog displays a severe penchant for getting into trouble. Obviously not housebroken, drooly and clumsy. Then it bites you, or your kid.
Do you kick it into a wall? Give it away? You have all the power. The dog’s fate is left to your discretion.
That’s a better picture of the kind of relationship we’re talking about here. Not that I enjoy comparing myself to a dog, but at least this way you get a more accurate sense of the power balance in this relationship.
Yeah, except that’s not a very fitting analogy either, as we know neither of us would hurt the dog. God has an extensive history of hurting and killing and even enjoying it (or so he claims). You said yourself that God kills people for lesser things than expressing displeasure with him. You sounded like you believed it too.
If I actually seriously hurt that dog, even out of some sense of love for it, you would probably say that the dog and I have an unhealthy relationship. I would say the same for God, were he to actually hurt the human beings which he supposedly loves so dearly. According to the Bible and according to a lot of Christians this is what he does.
Anyway, what struck me in your #8 comment was how you say it’s cool you can doubt God without him killing you immediately. You are allowed to question him. I still find a relationship where the weaker part consents to an implicit potential for violence or death to be deeply disturbing and a form of twisted love. It doesn’t matter what amount of inequality exists between you and God in that situation.
But I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. You have placed your life completely in God’s hands, which to you and other Christians represents extreme fulfillment (I guess). The kind of relationship described comes with that – a puny human subjecting willfully to an omnipotent God. To me, being an unbeliever, such a relationship is meaningless, even absurd. However, I can see its appeal from a Christian’s perspective.
wait… God is allergic to us?