{"id":1019,"date":"2009-10-04T13:57:14","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T18:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2009-10-27T14:44:03","modified_gmt":"2009-10-27T19:44:03","slug":"god-isnt-fair-job-11-to-210","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/2009\/10\/god-isnt-fair-job-11-to-210\/","title":{"rendered":"God Isn’t Fair (Job 1:1 to 2:10)"},"content":{"rendered":"

God is Unfair<\/span><\/p>\n

Job 1:1 to 2:10<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

More than 3,000 years ago, the writer of the Book of Job wrestled with a question which is still just as troublesome today as it was then. It is this:<\/span><\/p>\n

If God is all-powerful, good, and just (and sometimes merciful), why do innocent people, sometimes very good people, suffer terribly from wars, natural disasters, sickness, and crime? Pick up a newspaper and read that the victim of a random and brutal murder was a kind and good person who was just finishing her training as a pediatrician and planned to devote her life to underprivileged children. In the obituaries in the same paper, read that a mafia crime boss, who allegedly ordered dozens of murders, has just died at 90, rich, unrepentant, and in the bosom of his family.<\/span><\/p>\n

You get the idea. Luck, both good and bad, is not distributed evenly in the world, and not always, as one might hope, on the basis of merit. Job is treated unjustly by God, but the writer of the Book of Job is complaining for <\/span>all<\/em><\/span> of us about undeserved bad luck. God, it seems, is sometimes unfair.<\/span><\/p>\n

In earliest times, pagans thought bad things happened because the gods made them happen. The gods, the priests said, demanded sacrifice, usually an animal, but in very dire times even human sacrifice. When the volcano smokes and rumbles ominously, it might be necessary to dress a young woman in flowers and toss her in the caldera as a gift to Pelee, the volcano goddess. For the Mayans, the way to make a severe drought go away was to throw a child into the sacrificial well for Chac, the rain god. Archeologists found the skeletons of two dozen individuals in the cenote at Chichen Itza, most of them children. And it always worked \u2014 the drought went away . . . unless it didn\u2019t, in which case another sacrifice was unfortunately necessary. The primal gods must have seemed like all-powerful, dangerous adolescents. There really wasn\u2019t much question that they were unstable. People expected that.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ancient Greeks also had no trouble understanding why bad things happen. Their Gods were immortal beings with supernatural powers <\/span>and human emotions<\/em><\/span>. The gods fell in love (sometimes even with humans), they fought, they were sneaky and treacherous, they got angry, they even played practical jokes. They were very jealous \u2014 of each other and sometimes of humans. To be a superlatively strong or powerful or beautiful mortal was very, very dangerous, because it was almost certain to make some god or other jealous of you. In the long run, it was not even such a good thing to have a god or goddess <\/span>favor<\/em><\/span> you, because it was sure to make at least one other god angry. \tThe Greek gods did bad things for the same kinds of reasons humans did. Like the earlier polytheist religions, the Greeks knew that the gods were capricious and treacherous and acted at cross-purposes to one another. The Greeks had a saying, \u201cCount no man happy until he has reached the <\/span>end<\/em><\/span> of his life.\u201d No matter how well things were going, something bad could come at any instant, maybe just <\/span>because<\/em><\/span> things had been going too well. It that regard, the first chapter of the Book of Job starts out like a Greek tragedy. Hmmm, Job is \u201cthe greatest of all the men of the east\u201d? \u2014 watch out, Job!<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Well, we are not polytheists. We do not believe in many childish gods, or in gods with human foibles. We believe in one creator God, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. God is wise and just and merciful . . . except that sometimes it seems that He isn\u2019t. Expecting God to be fair is a problem we monotheists have that polytheists didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

When John Milton wrote <\/span>Paradise Lost<\/em><\/span> (1667), he didn\u2019t take on just individual miscarriages of justice, like Job\u2019s, but the big picture, the whole enchilada. He said in Book I that he was writing to \u201cjustify the ways of God to men.\u201d Why did God allow Adam and Eve to fall and lose the Garden of Eden, bringing sin and death into the world? When God gave them free will, He surely knew they would sin (God knows everything). It was a set-up from the start! Milton\u2019s answer is that obedience to God without free will would be meaningless. Free will requires the possibility of bad choices as well as good ones. So God gave humans free will, knowing they would fail, at least in the short run.<\/span><\/p>\n

Writing half a century later, Alexander Pope took a little different twist. He concluded that everything God does is good \u2014 we just don\u2019t always understand <\/span>how<\/em><\/span> it\u2019s good. <\/span><\/p>\n

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;<\/span><\/p>\n

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;<\/span><\/p>\n

All discord, harmony not understood;<\/span><\/p>\n

All partial evil, universal good.<\/span><\/p>\n

And spite of pride, in erring reason\u2019s spite,<\/span><\/p>\n

One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.<\/span><\/p>\n

Essay on Man (1734)<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This is a reasonable position to take. Some days, this is what I think.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>However, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German contemporary with Pope, took the idea one step further. If God is perfect, His creations must also be perfect. So Leibniz concluded, \u201cT<\/span><\/span>his is the best of all possible worlds.\u201d The concept is called philosophical optimism, and it was savagely satirized by Voltaire in his comic novel \u201cCandide,\u201d in which the na\u00efve hero, Candide, experiences all kinds of disasters (like the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, a real event which killed as many as 100,000 people). Candide watches from a ship at sea and scratches his head while his teacher, Pangloss, explains why \u201cthis is the best of all possible worlds.\u201d Candide eventually concludes, \u201cOptimism is a mania for maintaining that all is well when things are going badly.\u201d \tI\u2019m afraid I agree with na\u00efve Candide. I find it hard to read the newspaper and think this is the best of all possible worlds, but Pope and Leibniz would say that I don\u2019t understand God\u2019s purposes, and of course they would be correct.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Let\u2019s get back to the book of Job.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The sixth verse says, \u201cThere was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. . . .\u201d Right away there\u2019s something different about this story. I can\u2019t think of another place in the Bible where there is a dialogue set in heaven between God and an angel. Olympian debates happen all the time in Homer, and Milton imagines conversations in both heaven and hell, but in the Bible I think Job may be unique. I\u2019m not a scholar, but it has occurred to me that the story of Job, which comes from the second millennium BC, older than Homer, may have been adapted from an even older, pagan story.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

God asks Satan where he\u2019s been, and Satan says he\u2019s been \u201cgoing to and fro in the earth.\u201d God asks if Satan has noticed Job<\/span><\/span>. Satan says, \u201cSure, he\u2019s a good man, but that\u2019s because you\u2019ve made him prosperous.\u201d So God says, \u201cOkay, Satan, take all his stuff away, but don\u2019t hurt him.\u201d So Satan does that. You heard all the disasters that happened. Marauders steal Job\u2019s oxen, his camels, and his cattle, fire burns all his sheep, most of his servants are killed, and a great whirlwind destroys the tent where his seven sons and three daughers were feasting, killing them all. Job remains faithful to God. Satan comes back again and says, \u201cOkay, Job took all that pretty well, but \u2018touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.\u2019\u201d God says, \u201cOkay, Satan, go ahead and wreck his body, but don\u2019t kill him.\u201d And Satan covers Job with boils.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the point. <\/span><\/span>Job hasn\u2019t done anything wrong!<\/em><\/span><\/span> He\u2019s not just a good man, he\u2019s the <\/span><\/span>model<\/em><\/span><\/span> of a good man, one God boasts about to Satan. <\/span><\/span>Job\u2019s sons and daughters were sacrificed, not because God was <\/span>dis<\/em><\/span>pleased with Job, but <\/span>because God was pleased with him<\/em><\/span>. God says to Satan, \u201cYou moved me against him, to destroy him <\/span>without cause<\/em><\/span>.\u201d (Job 2:3) <\/span>This is the quintessential bad-things-happen-to-a-good-person story.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Job<\/span><\/span>\u2019s wife\u2019s advice is not very helpful. \u201cCurse God and die,\u201d she says, but he doesn\u2019t. Job\u2019s \u201ccomforters\u201d tell him at enormous length (35 chapters) that God doesn\u2019t make mistakes. Therefore Job must have done something to displease God. But over and over Job answers that he hasn\u2019t done anything wrong, and we know, because we saw the conversation in heaven, that Job is correct. That\u2019s the point of the story the writer is telling.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>Toward the end of the story, Job goes to God to demand an explanation. A scholar once told me that under Jewish law, this was Job\u2019s right, just as a servant is entitled to complain to his master, or a subject, to his king.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>When we finally get to the punch line, God\u2019s answer to Job, it is pretty disappointing to me, although it satisfies Job. It begins in Chapter 38, \u201cWhere wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth?\u201d And for all of Chapters 38, 39, 40, and 41 \u2014 129 verses! \u2014, God thunders on and on to show Job how puny and insignificant he is, listing all the things that God can do and Job can\u2019t. So as <\/span><\/span>I<\/em><\/span><\/span> read the story, the answer turns out to be, in effect, \u201cI\u2019m God. I can do anything I want.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, Job gets seven more sons and three more daughters, more cattle and sheep and camels, and he lives to be 140 years old. So there is a happy ending. . . maybe, if you forget about the grief of losing ten children.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But g<\/span><\/span>o back to the beginning. Why does God let Satan torture Job? He\u2019s proud of Job\u2019s loyalty to Him, and a little stung by Satan\u2019s suggestion that Job is good only because God takes care of him. Clever Satan. But it seems a little unlike an all-knowing God to be taken in by such an appeal to His pride. Was God sacrificing Job to impress Satan? Did the writer of the Book of Job think that maybe God is a little bit vain, a little bit like those Greek gods?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>Job is a pretty pessimistic book, whether you\u2019re an agnostic like me or a complete believer. The writer of the Book of Job was not a philosophical optimist. Furthermore, I think the writer would be turned off by Milton\u2019s attempt to \u201cjustify the ways of God to men.\u201d In Job, the point is that you don\u2019t <\/span><\/span>have<\/em><\/span><\/span> to justify the ways of God. God is God. He can be unfair, by our lights, if He wants to. Whatever God decides, is what happens, whether it seems right to us or not. We don\u2019t get to judge God.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God is Unfair Job 1:1 to 2:10 More than 3,000 years ago, the writer of the Book of Job wrestled with a question which is still just as troublesome today as it was then. It is this: If God is all-powerful, good, and just (and sometimes merciful), why do innocent people, sometimes very good people, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worship-and-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1078,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/1078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chilmarkchurch.org\/service\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}