JOB then and JOB now.
Part One
The end is in the beginning.
We all know about JOB, that mythical figure, who is perhaps the Bible’s best known character, after Jesus. The book of JOB is a story with a purpose, which also is the definition of a myth or parable. The purpose of ‘JOB then’, written perhaps 3000 years ago, was to warn Israel about a wrong religion. The purpose of ‘JOB now’ is exactly the same: also a warning about the wrong way of worship.
We all know something about JOB. We know that he was famous for his afflictions and his supposed patience, a man fabulously rich, who suddenly lost all his wealth, his children and in a violent argument with his wife was told to curse God and die.
We also may vaguely remember how three men, come from afar, visited him in his misery, joined later by a younger visitor and how these fellows made long speeches, to which JOB replied. How finally God spoke up, vindicated JOB, rebuked the four friends, after which JOB received twice as much wealth back as well as his family.
The Satan scene
The book is famous for that strange encounter with a mysterious figure called the Satan, who, out of the blue, appears in heaven and when God asks him, “what are you doing here?” says, “Oh, I was going out for a stroll, saw the door open and decided to say hello.”
Strange business, this. Can just anybody enter heaven? To me it suggests that this entire tale is not a true story but is there to illustrate a certain truth. And what is that truth? That’s what this essay – which comes in three parts – is all about, so stay with me.
Back to the meeting of these two sworn enemies, who actually behave as if they were on a friendly footing. Listen to their casual chatter. The Lord says to the Satan almost as an afterthought: “Say, you get around. In your wanderings have you noticed JOB out there in the land of Uz? I tell you, no better person anywhere in the whole world.”
“No wonder,” replies the Satan: “look, you have given him special protection and have favoured him above everyone else. I bet you that if somebody were to ruin him financially and kill off his immediate family, he’ll curse you to the face.”
That set me thinking. Has this curious encounter between God and the Satan any significance for us today? After all, unless the Bible helps us here and now, it is merely an interesting book of great literary value. What then is the meaning of this meeting for 2014 and beyond? What does this amicable conversation, between two arch enemies – that’s how the rest of the Bible portrays God and Satan – tell us that is valuable for you and me now, at this moment, in our life-time?
So here’s how I see it. It seems to me that JOB then represented the human world in ‘the beginning’, living a ‘paradise-like’ life, where everything was just perfect. However, nothing is more dangerous than having everything.
The Satan is used by God to teach us all a lesson –because life is nothing else than one endless learning process: we never arrive, will never quit learning, not even in eternity. Part of our ‘lesson’ is that JOB was abandoned by God and left to the wiles of Satan, something that applies to us as well: at some point in history the world and we who live in it also were abandoned by God and released in the hands of the Satan. J. H. Bavinck, in his forth-coming book Between Beginning and End: a Radical Vision of the Kingdom makes this quite clear. That Satan now is in charge accounts for the wars, the cancer pandemics, the Holocaust, Capitalism, Global Warming, and the total world-wide destruction we are busy completing. Just like JOB we too need a lesson, many of us too have more than Job could ever dream.
That’s why God in his infinite wisdom says to the Satan, ”All-right. It’s a deal. He is in your power. Don’t touch his body, though.”
And so it happens. JOB loses everything and has no clue about the wager God made with the Accuser.
And JOB? He believed, with all people then and many today, that being rich in possessions was a sign of piety. The Osteen church with its Prosperity Gospel thrives on this: for them being wealthy is a sign of God’s blessings. And evidently the Satan is of that same opinion because he figures that, as soon as JOB would lose his personal and material treasures, he would deny God.
However, even though JOB is reduced to utter poverty, his faith remains steadfast, evident from his famous words: “Naked came I from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Quite the statement. Just imagine that we, you, I, in one day, see our immediate family killed in a car accident, a drunken driver being the cause; then lightning strikes, our house burns up and we have forgotten to renew the insurance; next, due to a market crash, our portfolio is wiped out, our JOB disappears, and all we have left are the clothes on our body. What would our reaction be? Like JOB? Not likely. But better be prepared: today all signs point to a horrendous future, to perils for which we are totally unprepared. For JOB the sudden downturn came unannounced. We do have warnings, even though we ignore them. All crucial measures of the health of the ecosphere in which we live—groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of biodiversity—suggest that our high-energy/high-technology society is unsustainable. Because we live in an oil-based society and are rapidly depleting the cheapest and most easily accessible oil reserves, we face a huge adjustment in the way of life on which our existence is based. We now have entered an era of “extreme energy” evident in such dangerous and destructive technologies as hydro-fracturing, deep-water drilling, mountaintop removal, tar sands extraction, all of which will hasten the coming calamities of climate change. Welcome to ‘JOB now.’
Back to ‘JOB then.’
Again a mysterious Satan visit. Again God gives him permission, this time to affect his health. So JOB becomes an AIDS sufferer, quarantined, placed in isolation, somewhere in nowhere. There his wife approaches him and angrily shouts, “Do you still cling to your pious ways? They are no use to you now. Curse God, if he exists and then die like a man!” But JOB remains unperturbed: “Shall we accept the good from associating with the God, and the evil not accept?”
It’s bad enough when our spouse accuses us. However, JOB’s real agony starts when his close friends arrive.
The Three Friends
Of course the big news about his misfortune has spread rapidly through the land (imagine Bill Gates gone broke!), and three friends from far away heard it too and made ready to pay him a visit. Weeks must have passed for this to happen. They often had been JOB’s guests at his lavish banquets where they had enjoyed vigorous but agreeable discussions ranging far afield. When they see JOB in the distance, sitting on a small hill, they stop, sit down and look at him for 7 days and 7 nights, without saying a single word.
JOB too remains quiet, even though his mind is in overdrive. Somehow their body language reveals to him their thinking before they even utter one word. And as they sit there and he sits there, he gets madder and madder, because he is utterly at a loss. JOB tries to fathom why he is suffering so much. Somehow he could bear it as long as nobody sees him. But now he has become a public spectacle. Continuously his mind revolves around the basic question: “God is doing this to me. No, God can’t do this to me. Yes, it is God. No, it isn’t.” He is going crazy. His mind, already weakened by his sickness, cannot think straight anymore.
For JOB one thing is sure: he already knows what these three are going to tell him. A long time ago – at least it seemed a long time ago – when they talked, often till deep in the night, they agreed, God’s favour is reflected in a multitude of offspring and material blessings. And, of course, the opposite is true as well: personal calamity spells sin: the greater the punishment, the more serious the crime against God.
Then he had thought like them. Not anymore. What is happening to him has not happened because he has sinned. No. No. With all his power in his weakened body he now denies this theory. And yet, he still does not know the alternative, he just can’t grasp why God is treating him this way.
As his friends sit there for what seemed like an eternity, silently and disapprovingly staring at him, it dawns on JOB that they are his friends no longer, because people who do not understand your deep-seated anguish, are friends no more.
Suddenly his mind snaps, his patience gone. Who ever said that JOB was long-suffering, had it all wrong. He burst out in a fit of total anger: anger at himself, anger at his own uncertainty, anger at his friends for their cold orthodoxy, their Calvinistic certainty, anger at God for whatever. And he burst out: “God curse the day I was born and the night that forced me from the womb”.
The entire third chapter is one long condemnation. JOB: “Why couldn’t I have died as they pulled me out of the dark. Now I would be at rest, I would be sound asleep.” Hey, no heaven talk there!
Speaker One
His outburst opens a flood. First Eliphaz. Not a word of pity. Only more hammer-blows: “These words will perhaps upset you” so he starts optimistically. “Once you brought relief to the comfortless, but now, when disaster comes to you, you rebel. Tell me, have you ever known anybody who underwent this, being innocent?”
That’s how the first friend starts: Pious words. Cruel words. Conventional words. This fellow knows exactly what God thinks or does. Today we call that ‘gnosticism’, the most prevalent Christian heresy.
But JOB does not buy his line. No longer. In Chapter 7 he challenges God and demands an impartial judgment. JOB knows that in his particular case, even though God has caused him all this misery, only God can be the true judge. So it is no wonder that JOB screams at God, “Why have you made me your target? How come that I am in this miserable condition?” Here JOB plays a dangerous game. He thinks, correctly in my opinion, that he can honour God only through fighting with God. That’s a new angle: Praise God through battling with him. Arguing with God about what has happened to us. Not just meekly say: “OK God, I take what you give me.” No, JOB is different.
Speaker Two
Enter the next speaker: Bildad, of the same stripe as Eliphaz, only more so, even less honourable. He makes a snotty remark how JOB’s kids were spoiled brats. Says he “Your children must have been evil: he punished them for their crimes.” In his further remarks he shows that he actually is afraid that whatever happened to JOB might happen to him as well. His insecurity is best portrayed by his vision of God. He tells JOB: “listen, this is what God wants, because God never betrays the innocent.” To Bildad too God is an open book, for him there’s no reserve, no real fear of the hidden God. To JOB God is a mystery. God is THE mystery. That is God’s essence. After all, a god we can understand is no god.
An essential point of the book of JOB is the relationship between God’s revelation on the one hand and God’s hiddenness on the other. The paradox Christians and agnostics alike face is how God can reveal Himself when He is Hidden, when He is the Totally Incomprehensible One, Mystery Incorporated. JOB, before his ordeal, had a clear picture of God: if he behaved properly, God would bless him. Simple. An article in TIME on the Mormons said unashamedly that “material achievement in the USA remains the earthly manifestation of virtue.” To JOB that idea has been shattered. His earlier notions about God have been found wanting. With Bildad and his companions their concepts about God have become their God. For them there are no divine secrets and no sudden surprises, no mysteries. They know exactly what God has in mind for JOB and so their awe for God has disappeared and their so-called piety has become a form of godlessness.
To be continued next week.