It must be Job's fault

Ladies and gentlemen, Amanda Marcotte:

Ding. Yes. And this isn't a new story. It's literally the oldest one in the book, because this is exactly what's going on throughout the first half of the story of Job.

Job's loyal but dim friends aren't really struggling to make sense out of the sorrows that befell Job — or at best that's not their exclusive concern. They're mainly trying to figure out how to ensure that the same things don't happen to them.

Job lost his house, his wealth and his children. Bildad et. al. still have their houses, wealth and children, but none of those things seems quite as safe anymore. They're not in pain, covered with boils, but neither was Job just a short while ago. And now he is. Why? If they can figure out why this happened to him, they can take steps to make sure it never happens to them.

Job must have done something, they decide, even though they know as well as we do that this isn't the case. The narrator was very clear on this point. "This man was blameless and upright," the story says, "he feared God and shunned evil." Those are the rules of this story. But those rules are terrifying. If a "blameless" man can suddenly lose his home, wealth, health and family, then none of us is safe. So Job's friends spend the first half of the play blaming the blameless man.

Three thousand years of laughing at these fools hasn't really taught us anything. We still do exactly the same foolish thing. We still desperately want to blame the blameless because, like Job's friends, we're terrified by the prospect of inexplicable injustice, of capricious and undeserved suffering.

So when levies break and a city floods and no one with the authority to help comes to the aid of those trapped by the rising waters, we can't bear the idea that something just like that could happen just as suddenly to us. We decide that they, like Job, must have done something to bring this on themselves. We make up stories about violent looting mobs — opportunists who chose to stay behind and whose fearsome ruthlessness prevents the sending of aid.

We need it to be that simple, that understandable and that fair. Job should not have sinned the way he surely must have sinned. She shouldn't have been out alone, dressed like that, at that time of night. He shouldn't have gotten on the wrong side of the tribal warlord who conned the Americans into detaining him. He shouldn't have reached for his wallet. She shouldn't have fought City Hall. He should have exercised more. She should have eaten healthier. He shouldn't have been so naive. She should have realized that guy was no good. He shouldn't have demanded his rights in such a loud voice. …

Every inexplicable injustice can thus be traced back to some act on the part of the victim. And thus a world filled with and characterized by inexplicable injustices can be explained and made to seem wholly just. And we can tell ourselves we're safe.

Perfectly safe. As long as we don't think about it too much. And only until the same sort of thing happens to us, at which point our friends will come, like Job's friends, and insist that we must have done something to cause this to happen.

Oldest story in the book.