Job in a nutshell
Job is the very oldest book of the bible, and addresses the biggest questions (indeed the one superquestion!)
Scene is set with Job, a bigshot guy, enjoying both goodness, big family, contentment and riches.
He is a “victim” of an argument in the spiritual realm he never sees, and there is no indication he ever even knew of, about whether his loyalty to God was based on self interest. Satan said “nothing about your people is substantive” and God says “ok, do your worst” And he did.
Job is stripped of everything of value. God kills (allows to be killed, interesting explanation of the events there) all his kids, wipes out his wealth impoverishes him strips everthing, except a shriveled complaining wife who is embittered and faithless in the end. He is covered in infections, dripping pus, extremely painful, feverish, horrible to look at, scorned and mocked by everyone, and worse, he cannot sleep… when he DOES sleep, he has terrifying nightmares.
His Christian friends come to visit and “support” him
Job says “I wish I were never born. God has done this for NO REASON. He seems mean, arbitary and capricious. I would like to be able to speak to Him and present my case for why He is acting so unjustly. I have not been a bad person.”
This is where the book really starts. It is a series of dialogues between the pious and the honest. Job’s friends remind me of the sugary, surface, vapid face of evangelicalism, and the brutally and dangerous honesty of people willing to face life AS IT IS, rather than relying on religious platitudes and truisms (things that are true about God and us, but become lies when we misuse them). It is my favorite book in the entire bible. It is fearless in dealing with the most searing questions, and ruthless in swatting away froth that goes for piety. It is also very deep in the profundity of the questions and reasoning, and often takes time to mull over what is being said… but the “EUREKA” that comes from that is an utter delight.
Job’s friends:
1) YOU SHOULD NOT TALK ABOUT GOD THIS WAY!!!
2) Your venom and bile shows something really bad at the core of your being. Maybe this is why God is punishing you…. You ever think of THAT?
3) God is good, and you should just quit complaining.
4) Your recalcitrance and anger at us make us suspect you have done a bunch of secret stuff that is really bad. This probably IS why you are suffering. Admit it and God will make it all better
5) You are really a negative and angry person, you know that? Besides, you are a heretic. No wonder God is doing this to you!
6) We have lots of good theology on our side. God has shown me this or that truth (which truths were in fact accurate!!!), so this anger and accusation at God is bad. The fact that you have them is bad. You are bad. Stop it.
This sequence goes back and forth in three sequences of Job speaking and his friends responding, with the intensity increasing each round (part of the last round is missing)
Job responds:
1) you have NO IDEA what this is like. I am suffering horribly. I want to talk to God, not you.
2) kindly stfu. You are stupid and worthless
3) This is SO UNFAIR, because God can “pull rank” on me and simply terrify me with his bigness and I have to shut up because he is majestic and powerful…. But is he good? It does not appear so.
4) More than that, GOD IS THE VERY STANDARD FOR GOODNESS. How can I “appeal” to goodness when there is not even an idea of goodness that does not flow from him. I am stuck. This sucks. I want someone who can judge me AND God, and there ain’t nobody who can do that. (this infuriates his friends btw)
5) Maybe life is not just or righteous, maybe there is an “afterlife” or something where all this justice stuff gets worked out (fascinating thought progression where Job “thinks through” how concepts of justice, suffering etc demand another tier of existence after this one to have substance. This is very deep philosophical reasoning on display here.
6) Lots of appeals for pity that border on being cloying.
7) His friends are so concerned with “defending” God that they make up crap that sounds religious but is nonsense and false. If that is not the evangelical church today, I don’t know what is. Job is absolutely frothing with scorn for that, and tells them God does not need you to lie for him. Wow
I absolutely ADORE this book. It is so brutally honest and scathing in its flaying of religious flotsam and determined to actually address the terrifying question of “is God really GOOD?”
The book ends on a most interesting note. God never answers any of Job’s questions. Not one of them. He does, however “show up” and introduce himself. Job responds, in essence, “now that I know you, I cannot possibly have those opinions of you. You ARE good, and great, and trustworthy and magnificent, and my puny brain cannot possibly judge you. I will sit down and shut up…. And worship”
This says what any backwoods Christian who has never read the first academic book about God and can barely read knows…. That the truth of the gospel is found… at its core, by experiencing God. Our minds are little things and the idea that we can even begin to categorize, analyze and enumerate reasons why God should submit to our reason is ridiculous… but it take a personal encounter with Him to know this. You either have this encounter with Him (the new testament makes it clear that this comes through Jesus… whom Job “sees” in a vague and elliptical and shadowy set of reasoned statements, but we know much more clearly), or you don’t.
WHEN you do, your reason seems “reborn” With me and I read what turned out to be lists and lists and lists of clear, logical, cogent and sensible proofs for the truth of God, I embraced them greedily.
You will do the same, whether you have a bright, clear, sharp mind or are a dullard who has never read the first book on apologetics and understood nothing of it when you tried to. The root of your intellectual conviction is that “GOD IS, AND I KNOW HIM” and that is enough.
It is a book that is so overwhelmingly beautiful to me that I am excited every year when February rolls around (that is the month when my bible reading plan takes me there).
Hope this make you happy on a Sunday morning.
Job is the very oldest book of the bible, and addresses the biggest questions (indeed the one superquestion!)
Scene is set with Job, a bigshot guy, enjoying both goodness, big family, contentment and riches.
He is a “victim” of an argument in the spiritual realm he never sees, and there is no indication he ever even knew of, about whether his loyalty to God was based on self interest. Satan said “nothing about your people is substantive” and God says “ok, do your worst” And he did.
Job is stripped of everything of value. God kills (allows to be killed, interesting explanation of the events there) all his kids, wipes out his wealth impoverishes him strips everthing, except a shriveled complaining wife who is embittered and faithless in the end. He is covered in infections, dripping pus, extremely painful, feverish, horrible to look at, scorned and mocked by everyone, and worse, he cannot sleep… when he DOES sleep, he has terrifying nightmares.
His Christian friends come to visit and “support” him
Job says “I wish I were never born. God has done this for NO REASON. He seems mean, arbitary and capricious. I would like to be able to speak to Him and present my case for why He is acting so unjustly. I have not been a bad person.”
This is where the book really starts. It is a series of dialogues between the pious and the honest. Job’s friends remind me of the sugary, surface, vapid face of evangelicalism, and the brutally and dangerous honesty of people willing to face life AS IT IS, rather than relying on religious platitudes and truisms (things that are true about God and us, but become lies when we misuse them). It is my favorite book in the entire bible. It is fearless in dealing with the most searing questions, and ruthless in swatting away froth that goes for piety. It is also very deep in the profundity of the questions and reasoning, and often takes time to mull over what is being said… but the “EUREKA” that comes from that is an utter delight.
Job’s friends:
1) YOU SHOULD NOT TALK ABOUT GOD THIS WAY!!!
2) Your venom and bile shows something really bad at the core of your being. Maybe this is why God is punishing you…. You ever think of THAT?
3) God is good, and you should just quit complaining.
4) Your recalcitrance and anger at us make us suspect you have done a bunch of secret stuff that is really bad. This probably IS why you are suffering. Admit it and God will make it all better
5) You are really a negative and angry person, you know that? Besides, you are a heretic. No wonder God is doing this to you!
6) We have lots of good theology on our side. God has shown me this or that truth (which truths were in fact accurate!!!), so this anger and accusation at God is bad. The fact that you have them is bad. You are bad. Stop it.
This sequence goes back and forth in three sequences of Job speaking and his friends responding, with the intensity increasing each round (part of the last round is missing)
Job responds:
1) you have NO IDEA what this is like. I am suffering horribly. I want to talk to God, not you.
2) kindly stfu. You are stupid and worthless
3) This is SO UNFAIR, because God can “pull rank” on me and simply terrify me with his bigness and I have to shut up because he is majestic and powerful…. But is he good? It does not appear so.
4) More than that, GOD IS THE VERY STANDARD FOR GOODNESS. How can I “appeal” to goodness when there is not even an idea of goodness that does not flow from him. I am stuck. This sucks. I want someone who can judge me AND God, and there ain’t nobody who can do that. (this infuriates his friends btw)
5) Maybe life is not just or righteous, maybe there is an “afterlife” or something where all this justice stuff gets worked out (fascinating thought progression where Job “thinks through” how concepts of justice, suffering etc demand another tier of existence after this one to have substance. This is very deep philosophical reasoning on display here.
6) Lots of appeals for pity that border on being cloying.
7) His friends are so concerned with “defending” God that they make up crap that sounds religious but is nonsense and false. If that is not the evangelical church today, I don’t know what is. Job is absolutely frothing with scorn for that, and tells them God does not need you to lie for him. Wow
I absolutely ADORE this book. It is so brutally honest and scathing in its flaying of religious flotsam and determined to actually address the terrifying question of “is God really GOOD?”
The book ends on a most interesting note. God never answers any of Job’s questions. Not one of them. He does, however “show up” and introduce himself. Job responds, in essence, “now that I know you, I cannot possibly have those opinions of you. You ARE good, and great, and trustworthy and magnificent, and my puny brain cannot possibly judge you. I will sit down and shut up…. And worship”
This says what any backwoods Christian who has never read the first academic book about God and can barely read knows…. That the truth of the gospel is found… at its core, by experiencing God. Our minds are little things and the idea that we can even begin to categorize, analyze and enumerate reasons why God should submit to our reason is ridiculous… but it take a personal encounter with Him to know this. You either have this encounter with Him (the new testament makes it clear that this comes through Jesus… whom Job “sees” in a vague and elliptical and shadowy set of reasoned statements, but we know much more clearly), or you don’t.
WHEN you do, your reason seems “reborn” With me and I read what turned out to be lists and lists and lists of clear, logical, cogent and sensible proofs for the truth of God, I embraced them greedily.
You will do the same, whether you have a bright, clear, sharp mind or are a dullard who has never read the first book on apologetics and understood nothing of it when you tried to. The root of your intellectual conviction is that “GOD IS, AND I KNOW HIM” and that is enough.
It is a book that is so overwhelmingly beautiful to me that I am excited every year when February rolls around (that is the month when my bible reading plan takes me there).
Hope this make you happy on a Sunday morning.
