THE CHURCH IN FLUX
Chapter 17
More on Job.
Earlier we saw how Job underwent a drastic conversion. The word conversion in the New Testament is metanoia, which really means that he had a change of mind, had a new paradigm to work with, a new model for life, a totally different view on God and his creation. Conversion is much more than claiming to be born again. Yes, it means that too, but then in a literal sense of not only thinking differently, but also living differently and acting differently. Suddenly a ‘born again’ Christian also become a Greenpeace supporter, and an environmentalist, and very concerned about poverty and discrimination.
That’s what happened to Job. Basically he had changed from an ego-centered man to an eco-oriented creature. The word ‘eco’ also is a Greek word, indicating ‘oikos’ the world we live in, the ‘house’ of creation, God’s Kingdom. What Job really discovered was that to have the sole emphasis on ‘personal’ salvation was not enough: his life, our lives, have to have as focus the “Coming of the Kingdom.” That’s why Jesus told us something we seldom hear in church: “Seek first, foremost, before anything else, the welfare, the betterment of Creation, in line with John 3:16, which commands us to love the Cosmos as God loved the Cosmos.” That’s the sort of conversion Job underwent. That’s the sort of conversion we have to undergo, and the church as well.
Today the North American Church resembles Job’s three so-called friends, later joined by a fourth. They fanatically believe in the North American dogma that being rich, enjoying prosperity is a sign of God’s favor, and that all we have to do is abide by the books of Moses, and all will be well: obedience to the Law will get us there. Their reasoning was that, when we don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t sleep with another woman than your wife, then they will prosper, and poverty and sickness will be avoided, which, when they do occur, are a punishment for sin. Throughout the book of Job these orthodox friends stubbornly stick to this party line, and are later soundly chastised for this line of thinking.
Before his suffering Job too had adhered to this conventional teaching which he too had held as the gospel truth. However, after his bout with unexpected mishaps, Job changed his mind: “No”, he defiantly tells God, “No, I have not sinned. No, God, you are making a grave mistake.”
In this way the book of Job eases us into the revolutionary prospect that we can argue with God against God, that this is our god-given duty. The book does this in both a beautifully written but also in a somewhat mysterious manner.
Not convinced? Suppose this book – and here I come to my second option – is interpreted allegorically, as a sort of parable? It is quite well possible, almost certain, that Job never lived, so why is this book in the Bible?
As I have argued in the previous chapter, the reason is that Job represents not only the people of Israel, but the entire world. There is no real Jewish connection evident in the book of Job at all. In other words, God is saying that Israel, as a nation, is no longer an exclusive people, but that everybody in the world 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, one based not simply on obeying God’s laws as outlined in the books of Moses, the Torah, but much more on a living, all-inclusive lifestyle, expressing a deep appreciation for creation, and thus acting in such a manner that the care for creation is constantly considered.
Thus 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 700 years later, when Jesus appeared on the scene, his disciples still had not fully absorbed these new emphases and still thought that he would make Israel a world power again.
I have already dealt with that Satan figure, how, in the New Testament Satan showed Jesus all the glories of the world, 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, how this foreshadows the power of Satan today, as evident in the Holocaust, Rwanda, AIDS, and Global warming, just to name a few Satanic acts. That Satan is in charge today also explains why this book is not popular with the theologians: it is simply too controversial. Increasingly organized religion is in trouble. Where it still flourishes, it has become stagnant, judgmental and uncaring, condemning rather than exploring and adverse to any innovation.
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 it expresses the right view. In other words, he recommends that churches, mosques and synagogues everywhere, 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.
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 world-wide spectrum today 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, hierarchical Roman Catholicism- insisting on papal infallibility and male dominance- and Islam, later joined by the fourth in the form of conservative orthodox Protestantism, 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. But now something different is forming in his mind, some new thoughts and some 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?
Well here we 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.
Job’s sin, the sin of Israel and our sin, is Anthropocentrism, the arrogant and deluded belief that the earth and the universe were designed for our benefit and control.
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.” Such scolding is 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 is told- and we with him- to bow down and be humble. 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. 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.
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 real Trinity. 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.
Consider, especially the following – and I address this to all denominations, especially the Roman Catholic Church: the most curious detail in the epilogue is the mention of Job’s daughters. In his new world in which Job now lives and 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 honor by receiving a share of Job’s wealth as their inheritance. 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. Virgina, you with your mental problems, would have liked that! 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 this parable also tells us is that in the world to come there will be great appreciation for beauty, including female beauty.
The real message for the church here is that organized Religion has lost the Gospel of the Earth. No wonder it is stagnating and losing its youth. Those who want to find this ‘gospel of the earth’ need look no further than the Book of Job.