My recent re-examination of the Book of Job has brought to light just how relevant the book is to Christology. Job feels like God's transcendence makes genuine relationship with Him all but impossible. He cries out in horror at the evils of the world, and is confident that innocent suffering is a genuine problem for those who believe in and worship Yahweh. Yet the existence of God is not something Job can give up on. He says repeatedly that he is not throwing his lot in with 'those sinners' who give up the idea that there is a God or that God pays attention to them. Quite the contrary, Job is incapable of giving this up. He openly complains that he still feels God's watchful eye upon him. He would give anything to be ABLE to sin with impunity, to be free of the burden of God's presence.
In the end it is God's transcendence which is the problem for Job. Job agrees with his friends that God is 'wholly other', so transcendent that next to him we are but nothing and all of our moral accomplishments are 'but filthy rags.' This is, however, exactly the problem. For God then seems all but indifferent to the relative moral problems of life in this world. The weak man still has to deal with the fact that he is preyed upon by the strong man. The sinner whose life is so difficult has to deal with the fact that other sinners, many of whom are by comparison far worse, seem to prosper so completely. All Job really wants is to be near God, for God to show that He cares for His people. So here's God, who puts this supreme moral demand upon each person. Some people try to reach, some don't, but all fall short. Yet, there is no gradation of suffering relative to the evil of each person. God exists, then, simply AS moral demand, without the hope that in the end justice will prevail, that the quest will really be worth it.
If God at least gave His presence in a special way to Job, then this at least would show the world that indeed God cares about the struggle to do better. In the end Job gets his wish, but when he is making his complaint, he does not know this. Throughout the book Job frames his vision in the language of the courtroom. He imagines God giving him a hearing, so that Job can 'make his case' for his own innocence. As for Job's sinfulness, he wishes for an advocate, a person that God respects or considers an equal, that can make the case that in spite of Job's weaknesses he is worthy of God's love. Job talks about the need for an intermediary between God and man, for a redeemer in the legal sense of someone who can 'buy back what was lost.' In the end Job cannot see how God could make a sinful human race and leave us with no way to find meaning and love in our sinfulness. It is this desperate desire for a defending attorney, or a redeemer, which forms the backdrop for most of Job's speech.
Certainly any Christian can see just how relevant Jesus is to all of this. For no being could act as an equal to God other than God Himself. Yet it is just God with whom Job needs reconciliation. In the end, God redeemed Job by becoming Job. God showed the world for all time, just how deeply involved He really is, and how much He cares about those who struggle for the good. Jesus with His sacrifice buys back and redeems our sinful lives. Jesus is the imminence of God, His presence with and next to us. We need a God who is, in part, beyond change and yet who is also vulnerable to it. Without both sides, the picture is incomplete. What pained Job most, I think, was that on some level he realized his picture of God was incomplete. The Revelation he receives at the end of the book gives some hint to the real answer to his complaint. Indeed only God can act as redeemer. But how God can reconcile His redemptive role with His justice was never clear to Job. For Christians, it should be.
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