It is I think fair to comment that the book of Job presents a fundamental problem to those who would seek to espouse the Right-wing view with all its trimmings: here is a man, Job, who is clearly declared to be righteous in God’s sight and yet is allowed to go through the most appalling suffering and disasters in his personal life; not only that, but all of this happens with God’s express permission. I have heard some on the Right attempt to wriggle out of this thorny problem by suggesting that Job had actually sinned, his misdemeanour being his fear of the calamities that eventually overtook him (Job 3:25); by entertaining this fear he sowed a lack of faith, even a curse into his life, and hence he was punished. I find this ‘negative confession’ argument rather spurious; it is to read something into his book that simply is not there: scripture does not say that he suffered because of his fear or sin; indeed (and I reiterate) it makes it quite clear that he was regarded as righteous, free from sin, by God. Whilst it is true that Job does express repentance at the end in Chapter 40, this is for speaking out of turn after his disasters; no mention is made here of any conduct before calamity struck. All that the first few chapters of the book tell us is that his predicament seems to be the result of an arbitrary decision borne out of a perverse and capricious conspiracy between God and Satan (please read on before burning me as a heretic!). Job supplies an apparently sick answer to the question: “What do you give the man who has everything?” Answer: “Disaster, devastation and disease.”
I therefore believe it is fair to conclude that Job’s experience destroys the “if you’re righteous then you don’t suffer” argument of the Right. Indeed, there is much in what Job’s comforters say to him as to the purported reason for his suffering that resembles reasons put forward by the Right for calamity striking individuals, and Job (eventually) makes it clear that they are in error. Take, for example, Eliphaz’ reasoning beginning in Chapter 4. In many ways, his monologue encapsulates some of the classic aspects of Right-wingers’ thinking; it has to be said also that this was a stream of thinking that ran within Judaism, that the righteous do not suffer and therefore those that do suffer must do so as a result of unrighteousness. As before, it is useful to see what New Testament gloss can be put on Old Testament passages, and I believe that Jesus’ statement in Luke 13:1-5 refutes the ‘Eliphaz argument’. It is also interesting that Eliphaz received his ‘truth’, in part at least, in a dream or vision (cf. Hagin and Yongghi-cho??).
Having started with this negative comment as far as the Right-wing is concerned, can we learn anything useful from his apparently meaningless suffering? I think that the difficulty in looking for answers in Job is that it is hard to find ‘Truth’ in the account. This is because Job, in common with much of the other Wisdom literature is poetic in style rather than containing absolutised truth and has much in common with the saga or epic – or even the kind of testimonies touched upon in Chapter 3; it is less of a theological treatise and more a story of one man’s experience of bereavement and calamity, and the reactions of him and his friends to this. In that sense, Job is a very human tale, with all the frailties and errors this entails. Both Job and his three comforters have something to say on the subject of Job’s condition; their commentaries are very understandable but this is very far from saying that they are correct theologically. The nearest we get to any kind of theological ‘Truth’ prior to God showing up in Ch 38 is Elihu’s speech. So, although there may be some points to draw out of Job that help us with our search, Job’s primary thrust is as a narrative rather than theological text. That does not mean that it is useless to us; far from it. Narrative can in some respects be more helpful than doctrine; so let’s look at Job as story and poetry and not just as bare theology.
The Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft sees the book of Job as akin to the sort of fairy-tale with which many of us were brought up: the hero of the tale undergoes many trials and tribulations, frequently involving monsters, extremes of climate, physical injury, imprisonment etc. before he finally gains his prize at the end (usually a beautiful princess, a kingdom, fabulous wealth, or a combination of all three). Kreeft’s contention is that the hero’s ultimate reward cannot be fully appreciated and could be said to be meaningless without the backdrop of hardship and testing that precedes it; in short, the story is not worth telling if there is no suffering. He sees Job’s story as being in the same genre of epic literature with his reward at the end lacking meaning if we know nothing of his previous suffering: “One of the best-known principles of fairy tales is that the two ingredients necessary for a good story are monsters and mystery” ; then, having given an example of one such tale, Kreeft goes on to say, “Silly escapist fantasy, you say? Would you call the book of Job that? No? Well, then, the same clue to the mystery and suffering is there: the reasons for the monsters and the mystery…You’re Job at the end of the story…God finally appears to Job and he is satisfied. He’s happy because he’s got his God back. His life has meaning…Job is glad to have been in his story. He’s the character, not the author. In fact, God’s whole point when he finally shows up is that Job is not the author, only the character. And Job accepts that and accepts his story. He’s glad to have been in the book of Job, the world’s greatest classic of suffering.” He finishes his contention, that happiness and blessing can only be truly appreciated against the backdrop of suffering, thus: “Only now do we get bored and jaded with happiness and need the contrast with suffering…So the happy ending is joyful now only if there’s unhappiness before it…Of course I can’t justify atrocities. Or explain them. Only eternity will totally solve the problem. That’s the solution the Bible offers – that most realistic of books – and the one Aquinas gives in the Summa, quoting Augustine: ‘As Augustine says, “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.” This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist and out of it produce good.’” In quoting this rather breathtaking statement, I accept that I am jumping ahead to the concluding chapter, but I hope this helps to give some explanation as to why apparently a capricious God conspires with Satan to bring devastating suffering into Job’s life.
Kreeft can of course be accused of reducing Job’s experience to a kind of simplistic “no pain, no gain” formula. However, I do not believe that that this kind of crude reductionism is his intention; indeed, earlier in his book, Kreeft warns against easy theological answers, particularly I would say those advanced by the Right: “Am I about to prattle on about trusting God, like Job’s three friends? They came to Job on his dung heap with nothing but correct theology. Job could not fault their logic a single time. His only criticism was that their words were empty and dead, ‘words of ashes, maxims of clay’.” That said, another overarching principle that comes to the fore at the end of Job is the utter sovereignty of God, that God can do what he likes because He is God, and He does not have to justify Himself or offer a reason for His actions to us, nor is He obligated, as some on the Right might say, to ‘do right by us of we do right by Him’ (having said that, I do accept that there is a degree of correlation between our actions and those of God: quite clearly, if one is walking in blatant unrepentant disobedience towards God, then that exposes one to God’s wrath and judgment). This brings me back to my speculative ‘capricious God’ referred to and contextualised to a degree above, and to which I would like to make one further comment: I guess that we should be thankful that He is a good God and knows what He is doing and why, because if that was not the case, there would be nothing we could do about it!
Citations:- Gamblin, The Irrelevant Church., p.82
Job 1:1
Kreeft, ‘Making Sense out of Suffering”, p. 86.
Ibid., pp.89-92.
Ibid. , p. 98.
Elihu, if as I have suggested we are to accept his speech as sound theology, gives the lie to this notion in Job 34:
Kreeft, op. cit. p. 25.
Job 38ff
See Job 34: for example.
