Lying (?) About The Book of Job

Last night I told my youth that it is not true that Job praises God despite the horrors God laid upon him. Oh, Job does this at first (and I made this clear) but after the second chapter we see very quickly a shift to a Job who rejects the idea that God is 'good' or 'just' in the moral sense. In fact, most of the Book of Job is a complaint sent up by Job to God and to Job's friends, who stand around accusing Job of being guilty of some secret crime. Job proclaims that God is not fair in His judgments, and that the world just doesn't have the mark of being run by a God that is morally 'good'. He insists that the innocent suffer, and that all attempts to reconcile this idea of innocent suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God fail. He proclaims his goodness, or at least relative goodness before God. He says over and over again that what happened to him does not make sense, that he is suffering undeservedly, and that God is to blame.

His friends constantly insist that God is just, and so that the world must therefore conform to some clear moral order. They try to get Job to confess whatever crime he has committed, so that God will relent in His judgment and forgive. Job protests that his friends are poor counselors and poor analyzers of the conditions of the world.

None of the virtues ever attributed to Job are expressed throughout Job's many speeches. Job is not really patient, as he constantly demands a hearing from God, right there, right then. He commands God to come to him and prove to him the rightness of what God has done to him, to convict him of whatever crime God might be punishing him for, to prove Job wrong so that Job can repent. He demands entry into God's heavenly court, and a chance to have his case heard. Nor does Job praise God despite what has happened to him. Oh, Job speaks of God's 'greatness', in the way one would speak of the greatness of a hurricane. Job looks at God as omnipotent but not all-good. Job equally speaks of God's indifference to suffering and His cruelty. Job does not curse God, that is true, but Job does openly question God and the ways of God. The Book of Job is not primarily the story of a man who praises God and waits patiently in the face of terrible suffering, but the story of a man who calls God out for His indifference to the suffering of the innocent.

These are not hard truths to tease out of the book. Any reading of Job's speeches makes it fairly clear that this is the main thrust of the book. To be sure, the first and second chapter are all about praising God, and the speeches have some words that can be looked at as hymns of praise here and there, but this pales in comparison to the long swaths of poetry dedicated to the unjustness of God and the goodness of Job. Nobody needs to be a Biblical scholar to see this. Anyone who can read can understand it by just reading the freaking book. It is right there in black and white.

The appalling thing is that this young man, who goes to a religious school, was taught none of this by his Bible teacher. Rather, this person taught him all the old platitudes that are a part of the lexicon, like "the patience of Job". The teacher taught only the first two chapters, and none of the 30+ chapters that follow dealing with Job's argument with his friends. How could any self-respecting religious teacher do this? There are only three options I can see:

1) The teacher didn't really know the text himself, and so was teaching without knowing. This is a terrible situation, and it is the school's fault. Their teachers should actually have read the text they teach.

2) The teacher didn't really understand the text. This is even worse. If a person can read something this straightforward and misunderstand it, then that is scary. The only explanation is that the teacher is so enthralled by ideology and dogma that the plain meanings of words are changed in his or her mind. That a person can be so brainwashed that a text is made to say the opposite of what it says is frightening indeed.

3) The teacher lied to the youth. I don't need to tell you why this is a terrible thought.

I think #2 is the most likely answer, but it is also the most frightening, to my mind. The point of all this is simple: read the Bible for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Take up the text. See what it says. Most of the Bible is fairly straightforward. I'd say 75% is. Just read the books. They don't call it scripture for nothing.