We talked about the book of Job in my graduate seminar at Baylor last week, and it certainly seemed like an appropriate time. Everywhere I look people are losing their livelihoods, wrestling with foreclosure, wondering how they are going to take care of their families. It’s something that Job speaks to today, even millennia after the fable first emerged.
People sometimes forget that the Book of Job details more than just boils and personal suffering; it is also about the loss of all the man’s personal possessions. Job is a man who goes from being one of the richest and most powerful men in the Middle East to an object of pity. Charity, even.
One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell on them and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, another came and said, “The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, another came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, another came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.”
Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong-doing (Job 1: 15, NRSV).
It’s a story of suffering on many levels—economic, emotional, physical, and spiritual.
We think of suffering as somehow aberrant; as I wrote in Stories from the Edge, we seem to have an idea that we are promised happiness (or as I said in class last week, we seem to believe that the cosmos has been arranged for our convenience). As people often talk about Job, he is patient in suffering (his worship and failure to accuse in the Prologue contrasts with those rabbis in Auschwitz, who put God on trial for negligence, convicted him, and only then went off to celebrate Shabat).
The Epistle of James talks about the patience of Job (“forebearance” or “endurance” is a better translation, I think, but the King James Version has poisoned the well), and certainly that is the spiritual lesson many people carry away—if they don’t read the entire book, that is, but simply the prologue, God’s response to Job, and the epilogue, which is all that most people read.
In those segments, Job is faithful, God is all-powerful, and the lesson is that people suffer. Deal with it.
But in the great majority of Job, a dialogue with his friends who wonder what Job has done wrong to deserve such suffering, we get a less patient job—if an enduring one. The easy lesson of Job is complicated by reading the entire book, but I think there are still some clear spiritual lessons to draw from it.
First, it becomes clear that Job is not being punished for sins of omission or commission—that is, Job’s suffering is not connected to his behavior, a traditional understanding of Hebrew Wisdom literature that has been carried over into contemporary Christian understandings of things like the Prosperity Gospel—if you are faithful, God will reward you. Job’s wrongheaded friends can’t let go of this notion, and finally Job swears an oath, appeals to God to vindicate his behavior—which God doesn’t, another indication that maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question or living in the wrong understanding of God. People are not punished or rewarded—but they are called to be faithful, nonetheless.
Another spiritual lesson that might be particularly appropriate now is that suffering can slow us down, get us to sit with ourselves and our faith, make us more aware—and more thankful. Martha and I are both still gainfully employed, but all the same, we have begun asking some hard questions about how we expend our resources. Is it better for us to go out to eat—or should we fix dinner at home together?
It puts me in mind of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, who understood the power of suffering to focus their minds and clear their thoughts of distraction. Moses of Scete said, “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” And once calamity has struck, Job and his friends sit for seven days in silence, thinking, praying, perhaps, wondering what to make of all this.
My own story tells me that horrible suffering can be borne if you believe—truly believe—that you are loved by God, and if you are part of a community.
For seven days, Job has both those things.
Too bad the friends had to spoil everything by talking.
We will get through all of this current trouble, and although it’s possible that we are being punished for greed, hubris, and sloth, transactional rewards and punishment are not the lesson of Job. Indeed, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and what ultimately matters in the midst of suffering is that God is there—a Voice out of the Whirlwind in Job, a quiet but still tangible presence in many of our lives today.
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