JOB Then and JOB Now: Conclusion
part 3
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The End is in the Beginning.
JOB’s three so-called friends, later joined by a fourth, fanatically believed in the equivalent of the North American doctrine that God rewards strict religious observance. They were convinced that somehow Job had deviated from that. Before his suffering JOB too had adhered to this orthodox teaching which he had held as gospel truth. However, after his encounter with a series of unexpected mishaps, JOB changed his mind: “No”, he defiantly told God, ”No, I have not sinned. No, God, you are making a grave mistake.” Consequently the book of JOB eases us into a revolutionary prospect that we can argue with God against God, and that this is our God-given duty. The book does this both beautifully but also in a somewhat mysterious way.
The book is beautiful because it reads like an ancient heroic tale. It is mysterious because it is almost certain that JOB never lived. I think it is in the Bible because there is an intimate connection between JOB Then and JOB Now. Here’s why.
(1) I believe that JOB represents not the people of Israel, for the simple reason that there is no real Jewish connection evident in the book of JOB at all, but the entire world, both ancient and contemporary. In other words, God is saying that Israel, as a nation, is no longer an exclusive people, but that everybody in the world, past and present, is included in his plan for salvation.
That would be a drastic change. Thus the writer of the book of JOB points to a new relationship between humans and God then and now, one based not simply on obeying God’s laws as outlined in the books of Moses, the Torah, or faithfully going to church, but especially on a vibrant, all-inclusive lifestyle, expressing a deep appreciation for creation, and thus living so that its wellbeing is constantly considered.
God wants all people, not only Jews, to be saved, a thought that met with a lot of denial and resistance in the pre-Christian church, so much so that some 800 years later, when Jesus appeared on the scene, his disciples still had not fully absorbed these new emphases. I also believe that God looks with compassion on those who follow his creational laws, recognizing Him as the origin of life, something Romans 1: 20 points to.
(2) And then there are these disastrous happening and the matter of this Satan figure. Where do this creature and these calamities fit in? Here I have to fast forward some 800 years again, to the New Testament time of Jesus at the start of his ministry as related in Matthew 4. There the Satan showed Jesus all the glories of the world, the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek Parthenon, the splendor of Rome, the Inca institutions, the marvelous temples in Indonesia and Asia, and offered the entire world and its glories to Jesus, on the condition that Jesus bow down and worship the Satan.
Jesus does not dispute that Satan is the ruling power of the globe: on the contrary, he later calls him ‘The Prince of the World.’ Yes, the Satan, now more than ever, is controls the world, witness the Holocaust, Rwanda, AIDS, cancers, wars, Climate Change, the religious Right.
This explains also why this book is not popular with the theologians: it is simply too controversial. Is Satan in charge today? Yes.
(3) When finally God speaks to JOB, he opens JOB’s mind to some radical new thinking. The book tells us that we are never able to rest on past achievements, that there simply is no retirement for us ever.
Already the word “the land of Uz” gives an indication of this new meaning. Dr. David Wolfers, the author of Deep Things out of Darkness, a 550 page book dealing exclusively with JOB, translates the word “Uz”, (the physical location where JOB supposedly lived) as “the Land of Council.” He thinks that the book asks us to look at the Bible with a critical eye, to weigh its ideas carefully and consider them to see whether we express the right view. In other words, he recommends that churches, mosques and synagogues everywhere, must meet to discuss, probe, investigate and discover what the gospel means for us in this millennium. No longer are matters clear-cut: we have changed, circumstances have changed, the world has changed.
(4) And then there are the four friends. Dr. Wolfers, himself a Jew who devoted 20 years of his life to the study of JOB, thinks that they may stand for three or four ethnic minorities within the Jewish nation, with their different types of worship, all centering on a faulty view of God. Transposing the scene to the religious JOB Now, I believe it could well be that the first three friends, in our time, represent the three major orthodox religions: Judaism, based on the Old Testament only, orthodox Christianity, both the Protestant wing, mostly influenced by Gnosticism and hierarchical Roman Catholicism- still stuck on papal infallibility and male dominance- and Islam, later joined by the fourth in the form of the so-called Christian Right, all based on the false doctrine of either good works or a stagnant view of God.
Although JOB replies to the first three speakers, he wisely does not enter into dialogue with the orthodox Christian Right, which, he thinks correctly, is a waste of breath.
The most liberating element about the entire book of JOB is that here is a human being who is not a good and patient and pious God-fearer, but a person who fights God with all the passion he can muster. The New Testament speaks of such a person as one who is blessed because he or she hungers and thirsts for righteousness and is willing to die for that ideal.
JOB is suffering because God wants to teach JOB something. God wants to teach JOB that he must let go of some of the ideas he has about God, taught by previous generations, true for them in their time, perhaps, but not true for JOB now.
Only when God had personally spoken to JOB, only then did he understand for the first time in his life- and his suffering was the turning point- that God was different than he first had imagined. He expressed this when he said: “I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you.” JOB’s idea of God was based on the oral traditions: what his ancestors had told him, what he had heard in numerous sermons. But now something different is forming in his mind, some new thoughts and new ideas. The eye of his mind is seeing a new God and also, looking inward, is seeing a new JOB.
And what is it that JOB starts to see?
The book’s Central Point.
Here I come to the central point of the book, which makes it one of the most profound sources of contemporary spirituality. The accusing Angel believed that JOB was only obedient to God because God had made him rich and prosperous, and so the Satan thinks that JOB will curse God if his blessings are taken away. However, there the Satan miscalculated. True, JOB was initially very much concerned about himself and his family. He figured that, because he was so rich and so blessed with possessions, he was the centre of the universe.
The sin of JOB Then, the sin of Israel and our sin, the sin of JOB Now, is Anthropocentrism, the arrogant and deluded belief that the earth and the universe were designed for our benefit and control, something the entire World, including all religions, believes with a passion. John 3: 16 is always wrongly interpreted as if it reads: “God so loved the human race….” When God talks to JOB He says: “JOB, I’ve got a few questions for you. Where were you when I planned the earth? Tell me if you are so wise. Were you there when I stopped the waters as they issued gushing from the womb?”
For verse after verse the voice in the whirlwind rages on, outlining all the interdependent elements of creation- the winds, clouds, thunderstorms, the lightning, lions, antelopes, oxen, ostriches, horses, hawks, vultures, bulls, serpents. The voice lashes out at JOB’s and our narrow self-centeredness, admonishing that he can never understand the complexity and the functioning of the planet and cosmos. “Have you been to the edge of the universe? Speak up, if you have such knowledge,” a remark very applicable today when the Hubble spacecraft probes ever deeper into the universe and the pictures become ever more baffling, or when Mars is being explored and the questions multiply.
What we see here is the very opposite of a universe built for us to manipulate as we will. Instead of being given dominion over plants and animals, or a license to subdue creation, JOB Then is told- and we, JOB Now, with him- to bow down and be humble and love ‘the cosmos’. He and we are required to understand absolute humility before the face of God and thus JOB says in the end: “I have heard of you with my ears (heard the Torah, heard hundreds of sermons) but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.”
The Hebrew word for ‘dust’ here is exactly the same word used in Genesis 2, out of which God fashioned Adam, whose name actually means ‘dust’. So the rebirth of JOB is akin to becoming Adam. He is the prototype of the New Humanity, in line with Jesus, God’s son.
As a parable JOB represents the New Adam, the New Humanity, fully at ease being human, being of the earth. Dust we are; ‘Adam’ we are and to dust, to ‘Adam’, the New Adam we shall return.
JOB’s Surrender
His ultimate surrender is not the sort of mindless obedience often required by orthodox religion. It is the kind of surrender that is “the whole-hearted giving of oneself,” a surrender to God’s creation, His Universe, arising from a humility that leads to wisdom instead of self-centered pride. JOB is born again, converted from an ego-centered person to an eco-centered consciousness based on awe for God and His great creation. That is the basic message of the book of JOB. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German Theologian killed by the Hitler crowd in April 1945, just before the end of World War II, says in Schoepfung und Fall (Creation and Fall): “God, brother and sister, and the earth belong together.” That is the coming new Trinity, to be implemented now. We are not here to maximize personal consumption and to glorify individual greed, the basic message of the gods of our age. As citizens of the world we must, following JOB’s message, progress from being ego-centered to becoming eco-centered.
We know what happened to JOB. The story is well-known how he received double his capital as well as his family back.
Here is another reason why the Book of JOB is so curiously contemporary. Consider the following: the most up-to-date detail in the epilogue is the mention of JOB’s daughters. In this new world where JOB Then and JOB Now merge, which is humanity’s future, these fair women are not inferior to the brothers and do not have to go to their brothers’ houses for the annual celebration. Indeed, they are given the same honour by receiving a share of JOB’s wealth as their inheritance, totally new for that age. Each is named, while the seven sons of JOB remain anonymous. The names themselves- Dove, Cinnamon and Eye-shadow- symbolize peace, abundance and a specifically female kind of grace. The story’s centre of gravity has shifted from righteousness to beauty and the focus is now the manifestation of inner peace.
Female Beauty
And something else: “And in all the world there were no women as beautiful as JOB’s daughters.” There is something enormously satisfying about the prominence of women at the end of JOB. Here they are especially included. The lesson here is that JOB, and in JOB all people, have learned to surrender not only their erroneous ideas about God but also their male compulsion to control. The daughters have almost the last word. I think that even though now women are still secondary in many cultures, especially in religious institutions, in the new world they will be more than equal.
And in the entire world there were no women as beautiful as JOB’s daughters. What JOB also tells us is that in the world to come there will be great appreciation for beauty, including female beauty.
We see more and more how organized Religion has lost the Gospel of the Earth. No wonder it has stagnated. Those who want to find this ‘gospel of the earth’ need look no further than the Book of JOB.
In short the book of JOB depicts the history of the world: first the ideal situation, then the Satan episode, spoiling the perfection, followed by hardship, questions, wrong theology, God’s answer and the final restoration with double the blessings.
The End is in the Beginning
Everything has a beginning and an end. Now, at the edge of the End-time, our world will descend to the state it was before, when everything will revert back to what existed in the time before the Beginning, the Primeval Time. Just as death is close to birth, so the downturn is not far from the upswing. Just as all that has been neatly ordered stems from chaotic disorder, emanating from the fog of the Primeval, so the cosmos too will revert back to that same undefined state. The End?time is nothing else but the return to the Beginning before history. Not only do we ourselves need a re-birth: all of creation will be re-born, allowing us a New Beginning. It is for this newness that we live, building on Christ’s promise in Revelation 21: 5: “I am making everything new!”
Yes, The End is in the Beginning.
Bibliography
The Book of JOB, Stephen Mitchel, North Point Press
The Comforting Whirlwind, God, JOB and the scale of Creation,
Bill McKibben, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Deep Things out of Darkness, David Wolfers, Pharos & Eerdmans
The Lost Gospel of the Earth, Tom Hayden, Sierra Book Club
A Testament to Freedom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harper San Francisco
The End of Science, John Horgan, Helix Books
Antwoord uit he Onweer ( A ‘Thunder’ Reply ) Dr K.H. Miscotte
JOB, Challenging a silent God, Nick Overduin, CRC Publications.
The Hidden Face of God, Richard Elliott Friedman, Harpers
Time Magazine, August 4 1997
Between Beginning and End: a Radical Kingdom Vision, J. H. Bavinck, Eerdmans (Forthcoming)
Approaching the End, Stanley Hauerwas, Eerdmans
Creation and Fall, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fortress Press.
Next week:
The first part of a series on WHERE ARE WE?