TILL HE COMES Blog

I have a job update for you. No, this is not another post about the book of Job, but instead about a place of employment. I know a lot of you have been following my job pilgrimage, so I wanted to let you know…

I got a job working for Obama!

Not really…it’s actually a job with the Federal Government…so it’s kind of for Obama (or Bush until Jan 20). I’m pretty excited about the job in a lot of ways, and interestingly enough, all that I’ve gone through during the past 3 years (and especially the last year) has actually prepared me pretty well for the requirements of this job. In some ways, it is only because of what I’ve gone through that I was able to get this job.

I can’t tell you what the job is, because if I did, I’d have to kill you. Ha ha! No, it’s nothing so serious as that, but it is somewhat sensitive, and so I can’t post it on a public blog. I can tell you that the job is in New York state, and I start on Monday! If any of you live in the New York area, please let me know, because I have never been there, and I have no idea what to expect. Also, I need some tips on how to survive the New York economy. (From what I can tell, things are EXPENSIVE up there).

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In the first several posts of this series I raised the question about how God deals with Job in the book of Job, why I am asking the question in the first place, and some of my preliminary thoughts on a possible solution. In this final post, I will state the tentative solution itself. Of course, some of the recent comments on the previous posts have been making me rethink even this tentative solution. You all are awesome!

Tentative Solution

The primary problem we seem to have with how God treats Job is that Job doesn’t know what is going on. It would be one thing if Job were in on the divine wager: “Psst…Hey Job! God here. I’m gonna teach that pesky Satan a lesson, and I need to use you. You’ll probably lose everything, including your kids, get real sick, and everyone will tell you just to curse me, but hang in there, and I’ll reward you. What do you think? Shhh! Here comes Satan! Wink once for yes, twice for no!”

If that had been the case, and Job had agreed, we might view Job as more of a hero than a victim. (Of course, there would then be the issue of Job being willing to let his kids die…but we’ll leave that alone). People all the time are asked to do hard things for the family, or their country, sometimes at great personal cost. If they agree, they are rightfully viewed and treated as heroes.

So if Job was really God’s champion as I suggested in the previous post, then why didn’t God let Job know what was going on?

The reason, I believe, is that He couldn’t! To tell Job what was going to happen to him would be cheating. Satan, if he found out about it (which he probably would have - he’s a crafty creature), would have cried “foul!” He could have accused God of stacking the deck. (Bullet pointed out that God’s foreknowledge kind of does this too. It’s an interesting point. However, notice that Satan didn’t seem to think that God knew what Job was going to choose. Hmmmm…).

So the problem is that to truly be a champion for the challenge that Satan proposes, Job must necessarily be ignorant of what is going on behind the scenes. God cannot tell Job what is going on, because that would ruin the terms of the challenge.

Here is one possible solution: Since the Bible clearly reveals that we are in a war, anyone who chooses to follow God knows that he or she may be called up to the front lines. When one chooses to follow God, they are, in a sense, enlisting in God’s army, or at the bare minimum, signing up for the Army Reserves. And just like in the Army, those who serve in the hardest areas move up in rank and responsibility. The higher you go, the harder your assignments get.

All of us who follow God need to have this sort of mentality. I think Job had this mentality. I doubt he became “the most righteous man on the face of the earth” through a life of ease and comfort. He (like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, and the Prophets) probably became the man he was through many toils, trials, and troubles.

So when it came time for God to choose a champion, He had a good man for the job (pun intended). Job didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I believe He knew that whatever God was doing, it was part of the ongoing war, and the best thing Job could do was remain loyal. So Job is truly a hero after all.

Some Final Thoughts

I know this answer is not fully satisfactory. That’s why it’s tentative.

However, with this perspective on the book of Job, I am now viewing the book as a paradigm for human history. In some sense, we could be a grand “experiment” to answer some Satanic challenge to God. Maybe God created humans just to prove something to Satan (I’m not sure what), and be a lesson to angels (fallen and unfallen). If so, then we are God’s champions, and part of the fight is that God cannot let us in on the terms of the wager lest it affect our behavior and thus, the outcome.

In a similar way, Job is also the Bible in summary. In the Garden, all things were at peace, and Adam and Eve enjoyed life. Then Satan shows up and destroys everything. At the end of the book (both Job and the Bible), everything is restored - even better than it was before! In the meantime, there are tests, trials, and people coming around to tell us to just curse God and die.

Well, that’s all for now. It is 11:55pm, so although this post needs lots of polishing and editing (and probably lots of clarification), I’m headed for bed.

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Many people have difficulties with how God treats Job in the opening chapters of the book of Job. I raised some of these questions is my opening post of of this series, and then last time, explained why I was asking these questions in the first place. Now I want to begin to propose a solution to this dilemma. This post contains some background premises that form the basis to my tentative solution. I will post the conclusion tomorrow.

The Background Premises

First, I do believe that the events described in the book of Job truly did happen in history. However, if you believe Job is simply a parable, a story of fiction to make a point, I won’t argue with you. However, since I also believe the Bible is inspired by God, even if Job is just a story, I still have to ask why God inspired the author to write the story in the first place. We still have to ask ourselves what the story says about how God deals with humans, and what is going on behind the scenes in some (but not all) of the tragedies and difficulties of human life. In a way, the author is trying to answer the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Second, I do believe (as some of the comments noted) that the book of Job is the earliest book of the Bible. It was probably written during the reign of King David or King Solomon, but had an oral tradition that went way back to before the time of Abraham. This is important because I believe (as I think Flo pointed out), that in a way, the entire rest of the Bible was written to provide an answer for the questions raised by the book of Job. This means that if you have problems with how God treats Job, you are reading the book correctly! If you don’t have problems with how God treats Job, let me suggest you have a poor view of what kind of a God we worship! I believe the book is supposed raise questions about God and His dealings with His creation. And the answers to these questions are found in the rest of Scripture.

Third, one my favorite things to study is the historical/cultural background of the books of the Bible.  Reading Job from this perspective, it seems that the opening chapters of Job are like a call for champions from two warring tribes. In the Ancient Near East (ANE), sometimes battles could be fought and won simply by sending out a single champion from each opposing side to engage in mortal combat (remember David and Goliath?). Satan chooses the circumstances of life as his champion, and God chooses Job. The goal is to get Job to curse God. However, unlike such contests in the ANE, the victor of this battle does not gain mastery over the other (that contest comes later during the Satan vs. Jesus battle).

This battle theme permeates the entire Bible (e.g., see Eph 6:10-20). God is a God at War. This earth is the war zone. We are not here on planet earth as part of a vacation cruise through a cosmic wonderland, but instead find ourselves in the middle of a battle between two powerful enemies: God, the Creator of all, and Satan, who wants to be God. This is part of the reason we find so much wrong with our world.

Fourth, this war is not about us. Too much of our theology is man-centered. I sometimes hear it taught that since God is love, and He is a relational God, He created us because He wanted to have a relationship with part of His creation. How egotistical and self-centered of us! I’m not saying God doesn’t want to have a relationship with us, but that is not the primary reason He created us. I’m sure I’ll get some people calling me a heretic for saying such a thing, but the fact of the matter is that as humans, we always want to put ourselves at the center of everything. Remember when the church taught that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun, moon and stars all orbited around us? Guess what? God does not orbit around us either.

I do not think God created us so that He could battle Satan for our souls. That just seems foolish and petty. This battle is not about our souls, as if whoever gathers the most souls wins. Instead, I believe this war is about God trying to teach something to Satan and his angels. Satan, of course, is trying to prove God wrong. (By the way, isn’t it interesting that the created being in the universe who knows the most about God believes that God can be wrong and that God can be defeated? What does that say about Satan’s theology? What does it say about ours?) There are hints throughout Scripture that God created us to teach the angels (cf. 1 Pet 1:12). What are we teaching them? I have some speculative ideas, but I’m not getting into them here.

These four things are some preliminary ideas that helped form my tentative solution to the Job Problem, which I will post for your consideration tomorrow.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion from the previous post. These comments, along with several email comments I received, have helped form my tentative solution over the next few days. This first post will simply provide some personal background for why I am asking these questions in the first place.

Autobiography

As you have probably guessed, my questions about the book of Job are not purely academic. Many times during the past year, my wife and I have literally yelled to God, saying “We are not Job!” I dread waking up in the morning, because it seems the first question that pops into my mind is “How is my life going to get shredded today?”

Some people say, “Well, God must be disciplining you for something. Fix it, and life will get better.” Such people need to read the book of Job a little closer and see what God had to say about Job’s friends. Furthermore, people who believe that if you just “get right with God” then everything will be “peachy keen” are living in a fairytale land. In fact, if someones life is full of ease and comfort, I’d suggest that they are the ones who might need to “get right with God.” But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Not everyone is like Job’s friends. Many people have been telling us to “just focus on the positive things.” We tried that, but it seemed that just when we started focusing on something positive in our lives, it got taken away from us too. I also noticed that whenever I prayed for something, exactly the opposite happened. If I didn’t pray for something, but just hoped, things turned out as I hoped. It seemed that praying for something or focusing on something positive caused these things to become targets for God’s heavenly pea-shooter.

I know that lots of people have gone through far worse than I have. And lots of well-meaning individuals tried to remind me of that not-so-encouraging fact. To the contrary, becoming aware of how terrible some people’s lives have turned only tends to surface the question, “What in the world is God doing?”

This question brought me back to the book of Job. As stated in my previous post, I have always had issues with God’s treatment of Job in the book. The opening chapters of the book of Job remind me of the movie Trading Spaces where two rich, old men, in an attempt to answer the ”nature vs. nurture” debate, decide to gamble with the lives of two hapless victims for $1.

So in an attempt to figure out what God might be trying to do in my own life, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the book of Job, and the events it describes. In my last post, I raised the issue. I want to propose a possible solution, but as I wrote it, it became too long to publish in one blog post, so I will spread it out over the next couple days.

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A Story

I was at the park over the weekend with my three daughters and we were playing on the swings. I noticed a man watching us play, and after a while, he came up to me and said, “It sure is obvious your girls love you.”

Thinking it was an odd thing for a stranger to say, I cautiously replied, “Thanks?”

He continued, “Aside from giving them fun things to do here at the park, I bet in this economy, you work hard to give them food, clothes, and a roof over their heads.”

“Yep.” Now I was getting suspicious. “I try to provide for them the best I can.”

“Well, it’s obvious it is working. They adore you…”

I was starting to get a little upset. “I don’t give them that stuff to earn their love, but because I already love them. What are you trying to say?”

“Well, I’m just saying that I bet the only reason they love you is because you have provided so much for them. I bet they wouldn’t love you as much if you took some of that stuff away,” he said in a rather haughty tone. “I dare you to take some of that good stuff away and see if they still love you.”

Now I understood. And I was actually somewhat intrigued by the idea.”Okay,” I said. “Let’s try it. First, I’m going to not give them dinner tonight, and then tomorrow, when they wake up, all their clothes will be gone. When they come downstairs to ask my wife for clothes and food, we will be gone. When they come outside to see if we are working in the yard, I will have the house rigged so it burns to the ground. I’ll have some food sitting out there, but I’ll put something in so that when they eat it, they will get very, very sick. Then, I’ll send some neighbors over to tell them that their mommy and daddy did all this to them because they did something bad and we are angry with them. I am so sure they love me, that even through all this, I bet they will continue to love me.” 

“I bet they won’t,” he retorted.

“We’ll just have to see then, won’t we?”

Job Problems

Clearly, this story is fictional. I made it up, so don’t turn me in to CPS. Any parent who agrees to do these sorts of things to their children should have their children taken away from them. It’s monstrous, and it made me cringe just to write it. I cannot imagine doing anything so cruel to my three girls.

Which brings me to my Job problems. No, it is not problems with my job, but problems with the premise of the Book of Job in the Bible. Have you ever read the opening chapters of the Book of Job? The opening chapters have God and Satan deciding to test Job’s love for God by taking away everything Job loves and all he owns, and then have Job’s friends come and tell Job it is because God is punishing him. 

I’m not surprised that Satan suggests such a scheme. What surprises me is that God so readily agrees to it! And furthermore, God never tells Job why all this bad stuff happened to him. Job never finds out about this divine wager! God never tells Job that he was a pawn in a cosmic game of “chicken.” At the end of the book, when Job finally gets to ask God “Why?” God basically says, “I’m God and you’re not, so don’t question me.”

I understand that sometimes parents have to tell their children “Because I said so, that’s why!” or “Because I’m the parent!” but such answers are not adequate explanations when the parent is abusing the child.

People say, “Yeah, but God gave it all back!” But would any court in the country allow me to keep my daughters if I treated them as described above, and then at the end of it all, say, “Just kidding! Here’s more clothes and food and a bigger house! Now let’s get back to being a happy family!” I don’t think so.

I am not trying to be irreverent or blasphemous, but I just have problems with how God treats Job. What am I not seeing? What am I not understanding? 

(I am working on a possible solution to this Job Problem, which I will post later, but I want to see what you come up with first.)

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