The Book of Job

Posted on February 10, 2004 in Crosstalk Myths & Mysticism

Jeremy and I got to talking about the Book of Job which he declares to be “one of the most repulsive works of literature ever put to paper.” He calls it the Grand Cop-Out, where God looks the other way and does nothing about suffering. He goes on to insist that the God depicted in Job was “an insane creator deity, Yaldabaoth (aka Saklas) who only exists as long as he has control over his creations. “

I am reminded of a scene from the stage version of Voltaire’s Candide when the boat the optimist is sailing upon is overwhelmed by pirates. Candide cries to the narrative voice “But surely man who is made in the image of God –” And the narrator replies “Maybe this is His Image.”

Robert Frost wrote an Apology to Job in which, after several thousand years of neglect, God thanks the man for allowing Him to remove Himself from answering every cry, every grief, every call for rectifying injustice. As Robert Frost had God speak in A Masque of Reason:

Unless I liked to suffer loss of worship.

I had to prosper good and punish evil.

You changed all that. You set me free to reign.

You are the Emancipator of your God,

And as such I promote you to a saint.*

When you insist on personifying the Universe and giving it human emotions, cruelty, selfishness, and indifference are just a few of the qualities that you are going to get.

I find the Book of Job (sans the epiloque and, perhaps, the prologue) a very compelling metaphor for life’s griefs. It admits that the universe is fundamentally impersonal in nature, that there is no questioning the whirlwind why it happens: such phenomena are beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend.

Of all the books of the Old Testament, it is Job which best speaks to the condition of modern humanity. When an earthquake devastates a city in Iraq, it is not in punishment. It’s just an earthquake. Not only is God free to reign, but we are free to live without guilt for natural forces (aside from the effects of global warming and pollution).

Job led me away from theism to Buddhist atheism/agnosticism where all that you see is due to an impersonal process beyond your comprehension. People serve themselves best by accepting what befalls them and struggling amid human beings to create compassion and justice for all.

The Book of Job’s only fault is its insistence on personalizing God** and Satan (who is merely the setter of obstacles and a servant of God) as just another character in a novel. The voices of the three experts as they try to explain how Job came to deserve what happened to him continue to guide us away from primitive views of a God who made us in His Image/was made in our image. It leads us to see ourselves humbly, as creatures addicted to putting a beard on the cosmos.

What I have found to be most healthful is to accept my limits within this universe, do to good within those limits, and to not deceive myself into thinking that the Universe is controlled by a consciousness on an order of our own.

Within our bodies we are omnipresent. But we cannot by mere force of will wield our power on the cellular level nor can we know exactly what each cell is doing at every given moment. If God and the Universe are the same “organism”, perhaps we should not expect it to know all that is happening nor demand that it pay particular attention to our needs. Perhaps it cannot do so.

Does that make “God” good or evil? I say neither.

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*Reminds me of a cartoon I saw in the Funny Times. “What happens when God sits down to dinner” read the caption. An angel comes up to the Divine Supper and says “I am sorry to bother You, but the telemarketers are praying again.”

**Indian society assigned the credit for the creation of the world to Brahma. One of the Buddha’s revolutions — which is not dissimilar to the Gnostic view that Jeremy professes — was to declare even Brahma part of the process. Buddha explains that Brahma arose from the chaos asleep and when he woke, he observed the world taking form and creatures start to crawl upon it. Brahma said to himself “This happened because of me!” like a child believes that the moon is following him down a dark road at night. What happened, argues the Buddha, just happened. Job touches on a similar theme. I read the “mysterious ways of God” as a metaphor for the realities — both painful and good — of our life.