An Evening with Job

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), January 9, 2005, by the Reverend Christine Brownlie.

My old friend Job came by for a few hours last week. I had invited him to come by after reading an e-mail from someone I hold in high esteem. This e-mail included a newspaper article from Reuters with the title,

“Why did you do this to us God?”

The author was recounting interviews with people who had survived the tsunami. Like Job, they were crying out in despair and anger, asking why God had done this to them. The sender wondered if I had an answer.

Well sure, I thought, I can come up with some quick and easy answers:

If you want to claim God caused this disaster, then maybe God is punishing people who had turned the birth of Jesus into a hedonistic, secular celebration of self-indulgence.
If you don’t like that one, then try this: God is punishing those who persecute Christians and all those Islamic unbelievers as well.
No? God just wanted to show that the world is an uncertain place and we’re all at the mercy of forces we can’t control, so we’d better get our lives in order!

I’ve read or heard all three of these answers — and many more. Are they helpful answers? They may be for some people, but I’m sure that my friend, like me, would find them unpersuasive.

As the days have passed and the body-count has risen, as the pictures of the devastation sink into the mind and soul, I couldn’t help but wonder what Job might say to my friend about the tsunami and the misery it caused. Job, to be sure, knows a thing or two about God and suffering.

I first met him when I was a teenager. I’d noticed that in all my years of Sunday school, the teachers had focused on the same stories and the same concepts over and over again: Adam and Eve, Moses and the Exodus, Jesus feeding the 5000, and “God is Love.” I decided to read some of the Biblical stories that had been omitted from the Sunday school curriculum and also from the sermons I’d heard. Most of these stories came from the Jewish scriptures, what we called the “Old Testament.” Some of them were shocking; full of bloody violence, the worst examples of human behavior, featuring a God who was often capricious, bloodthirsty and viciously punitive. The story of Job and his God-inflicted suffering fascinated me. I’ll give you a brief summary in case you don’t know it.

Job is a re-worked folktale that has its roots in similar texts from ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Sumer. The story begins with a brief description of Job as a righteous and pious man. He has wealth, a happy family, and good health. Yahweh has taken notice of him and finds that he is like no other. Yahweh brags about Job’s virtue to a character called the “the Satan” (or “the Adversary”). “Satan” is not a name, and this character is not the devil of the Christian scriptures, though you might see him as the villain in the story.

The Adversary suggests to Yahweh that Job would not be so pious if his circumstances were different. Yahweh stands by his faith in Job and he tells the Satan that he may test Job’s devotion. Yahweh will permit the Adversary to do whatever he wants with Job’s wealth and family as long as he leaves Job alone.

And so the Satan takes it all — house, livestock, slaves, sons and daughters. Everything is destroyed, except Job and his wife. Job behaves exactly as Yahweh predicts he will. Filled with grief, the man tears his clothing and pours ashes on head, and says stoically,

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“You see,” says Yahweh, “he’s all that I said he is.”

The Satan isn’t convinced and he ups the ante. “Skin for skin — touch his flesh and bones and he will curse you to your face.”

Yahweh, always the sport, accepts the dare. He tells the Satan that he can inflict suffering on Job body, as long as he doesn’t’ kill him.

Now Job is covered with oozing sores. He sits alone in the ashes, scraping his scabs with a piece of broken pottery. His wife mocks him, and he sends her away. Friends come to call, and after sitting in silence with him for seven days, they hold an intervention. “Enough of this pity party,” they tell Job. “You know that God is always just. Only those who have offended the Lord are made to suffer. So ’fess up Job — you must have done something really bad!”

Job will not give up his claim of innocence. He is so sure of his virtue that he says he would like to argue his case with God, face to face. Yahweh obliges, appearing in a whirlwind. He mocks Job for his impotence and ignorance saying

“Where were you when I laid out the foundations of the earth and created all of the wonders that exist?”

He challenges and intimidates this man who has suffered so terribly, and Job finally says,

“Enough! You know that you can do whatever you want. I have spoken of wonders that are beyond me and now I will repent and be silent.”

Now there is a surprising turn in the story. Yahweh demands that Jobs friends, who were Yahweh’s defenders, make a blood sacrifice to Him because they have spoken falsely of God. Yahweh declares that Job is the one who has spoken the truth and the story ends happily. All that has been taken from Job is restored. He receives wealth, new children (as if children are interchangeable parts) and a beautiful home, all is returned to Job. At the end of he story he is comforted by his relatives who have great sympathy for

“The evil that the Lord had brought upon him.”

Those are the exact words from scripture. God brought evil upon Job. So I wondered, did God bring evil upon Southeast Asia — and if so, why?

Job sat down in the rocking chair, a mug of tea in his hand.

“Hey,” I said, “for a three thousand-year old guy, you look great!”

“Botox.” he replied, “You should think about it.”

That’s the Job I know: feisty and just a little sarcastic.

I gathered up my courage and launched into the reason for our evening together.

“What do you think about this tsunami, Job? What do you say to the people who ask why God let this happen, or if God actually made this happen to punish people or show his power?”

“It all depends on who’s asking the question.” replied Job.

I showed the e-mail I’d received from my friend.

‘So he’s an atheist — one of those people who doesn’t believe in a supernatural being who can defy the laws of nature and work miracles?

“Exactly!”

Job looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face. “I don’t get it! Why does someone who denies the existence of a Creator — who scoffs at the idea of miracles — waste his time by wondering where God is? No Creator — no Destroyer. No such thing as a miracle? Then natural law rules and stuff happens. End of discussion, unless the question is rhetorical and meant to shake the faith of believers. And in that case, my answer is that God is where God has always been.”

“And where is that?” I wondered.

“God is everywhere!” declared Job. “You, of all people, should know that. You Unitarian Universalists claim that you draw from the wisdom of the world’s great religions. Well, that is what the world’s great religions say: God is everywhere!”

“So God was in the Tsunami? “

“ Yes, if you believe that God created this world, imperfect and violent as it is, then God was in the tsunami.”

“I don’t like to think of God like that!’

“Maybe not, but so what? Again, look at the religions of the world. Islam teaches that the One who is the ‘Giver of Life’ is also the ‘Bringer of Death,’ the ‘Torturer,’ the ‘Tormenter.’ Hinduism celebrates Shiva, and Kali — both destroyers. The Jewish Scriptures show God as both creator and destroyer and Jews and Christians both believe that a day will come when God will destroy the world.”

“True.” I said, “But that’s not the image of God that I hold. I can’t find comfort in a God who kills innocent people and puts the lives of millions of other at risk for no apparent reason.”

“Again, so what? You might not believe in a deity with arms and legs who makes wagers on how much suffering it takes to break the spirit of a human being, but I would suggest that the god you believe in is incomplete and inadequate. I think one of your modern playwrights said it well.”

I heard it said in a golden wood,
If God is God he is not Good
If God is Good, he is not God
Take the even, take the odd.

“Yes, I know that one. It’s from J.B. by Archibald MacLeish.”

“Right. So look around you! Consider the findings of science as it allows humanity to peer into the universe. Life and death, emergence and destruction are found everywhere. From the dead bird in the gutter, to the white dwarf stars in the sky, it’s all simply a part of what is. If you believe that in some mysterious way, God was the creator of all that is, then you must accept that all that is an expression of God in some way. If you look at the beauty of creation and claim to see God’s love, why do you reject the idea that God is also in what you call natural disasters?”

I was shaken “So, just to go along with your line of thinking here, God created an imperfect world that includes death and destruction for everything. The result is that human beings are doomed to suffer terrible tragedies?”

“That’s how I see it, I think the Buddhists have the best take on this, And, speaking of the Buddhists, Why are you so focused on human beings, as if we are all that matters on this planet? Other sentient beings were destroyed by the tsunami. Do you grieve for them? And as for this being an imperfect planet, I prefer to call it dynamic. The Earth is dynamic, just as the universe is dynamic. Life itself is dynamic, ever changing. If this world were perfect, then everything on it would be static, frozen. There would be no birth, no decay, and so no life.”

“You’re saying that these terrible natural events: tornados and earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis, and all the suffering they cause, these horrors are the price of living on this Earth?”

“Yes kiddo, that’s the deal. But now I want to ask you a question. Why are people so upset that the tsunami killed 160,000? It’s a tiny number of deaths when you look at what happens in this world every day. Just recently I heard that the United Nations issued a report that said 29,000 children die on this planet every day from treatable diseases and malnutrition. That’s over ten million children a year, and most of these deaths are preventable. I don’t notice any hue and cry about that announcement. So you see, this tsunami is just a drop in the bucket of human misery. What’s the fuss?”

I could feel my face flush. “Job, I think you’re being very harsh. I never heard or read anything about this report, but I’m appalled by what it tells us. And you need to understand that getting help to people who need it isn’t all that easy in many parts of the world. You can’t lay all of this suffering at the feet of those of us who were born into fortunate circumstances. It’s not fair!”

“There you go again, thinking it’s all about you. My point is that for most people in your ‘first world’ the lives of the poor matter very little on a day-to-day basis. Does anyone ask why God allows children to die of diseases like malaria and measles? No, it’s just a fact of life, and so are disasters like the tsunami. So let’s not make God the fall guy every time the Earth shakes and the winds blow hard enough to flatten houses and uproot trees.”

“So God didn’t cause the earthquake and the tsunami for a reason?”

“ That’s right, it was a natural disaster of terrible proportions and nothing more. God didn’t push a button because he was angry with humanity or bored.”

“OK, that makes feel a little better, but I want to go back to something you said earlier. You said before that God is everywhere. So where is God in this natural disaster?”

“That depends on what you mean when you use the word ‘God.’ You know, it’s always struck me as odd that some people hold on to those ancient, unworkable ideas of God, all-powerful, all knowing, and perfect, and refuse to consider modern thinking like Process Theology and Open Theism. Why can’t you refine your thinking about God? It seems to me that if ideas about human nature, ethics, the role of women, the way to care for those afflicted with diseases of the body and mind can evolve and change, then our ideas about God should also be permitted to evolve and change.”

“I won’t argue with you there, my friend. So tell me how has your thinking about God changed over the past millennium or two?”

“I like what Rabbi Michael Lerner said on his website, (pretty amazing, that internet thing you’ve got now). He said it’s time to grow up and let go of the old idea that God is up there in the sky, directing everything that happens on this Earth. He points out that the God of Jewish scriptures isn’t like that. The God of Jewish scriptures grieves when things go wrong — and sometimes it is God’s fault when something does go wrong! As you read the Bible, you see that God is evolving, learning, and changing and suffering. Rabbi Learner claims that in your time, God has become the emerging voice of compassion and love in the midst of a world not totally under God’s control. The good rabbi sees evidence of God in the sorrow that people all over the world are expressing over this calamity. He finds God in the hearts that are broken with grief, as well as in the hearts that are opening in compassion, looking for ways to help those who are suffering.”

“Hmm. If I think of God in that way, then this disaster is an opportunity to increase God’s presence in the world.”

Job nodded his head. “I think that’s possible. And maybe if the world would start looking at suffering as something that goes on everyday on this planet, and not just when there’s an event that kills thousands of people at once, then maybe those compassionate hearts would remain open and minds would become aware of the suffering that people endure on this planet. Maybe the efforts to help those who need food and shelter every day of every week would also be supported. Maybe the suffering of other beings — the fish, the animals, the trees and all that lives — would become important. Maybe people would open their eyes and begin to make different choices based on concern for something larger than themselves!”

“Whoa! That’s a pretty optimistic notion, old man. Dare we hope?”

His dark eyes flashed. “Hope? You can do more than hope! What’s that little phrase you like to use at the end of your sermons?”

“‘May it be so’?”

“Right! Well this time I’d like you to say, ‘Make it be so!’”

Amen Job. Make it be so!

Closing Reading

There may be a plan, but we will never be able to stand back far enough to appreciate it. Somewhere life may make sense to a great cosmic someone, but not to us here; not to us, splintered in a struggle to do what is right in a world that presents us with complex, competing options. We may never see the larger picture, creation's perfected whole; we may be forever flickering fragments, fractured by the raw reality of immediacy from which there is no escape while we are alive…Well then, let us dance in the flame that we see. Let the arc of our creativity embrace our moments of time, and let us add our light to the kaleidoscope, trusting in the unity of the whole even as we seek symmetry with the part.

from Kaleidoscope by Elizabeth Tarbox

See Jack Miles’s, God: A Biography chpt. 10 for more on this conversation between God and Job and who won the debate.

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