I've been asked to write a piece about the Book of Job -- a story which
has intrigued and defeated the greatest intellects of Western
Civilization for thousands of years now. It comes to us in the form of a
story because there are things people simply don't 'get' when one
states them baldly; but we know it possesses meaning; and generally we
try to extract that meaning into one bald statement or another; isn't
that just like us?
The story is particularly rough on great
intellects because it isn't susceptible to any purely intellectual mode
of understanding, except as a paradox.
It's said that "The
opposite of a great spiritual truth will often be another great
spiritual truth," so paradox -- the realization that Job triggers a
question in us with no satisfactory answer, so that it behooves us to confess
bewilderment and go home -- is one logical response.
There's more
to it than that. The question of God's justice (or injustice) is clearly
essential to any human being who knows we live under God's
jurisdiction. Can we trust God not to throw a whirlwind at us for no
apparent reason?
Job's real message is that it's the wrong question, an inappropriate question.
An
uppity question? -- That's one way to read God's huffing and puffing
towards the end; but that's not satisfactory either. ("Because I'm bigger
than you and I say so!" is an answer people are bound to outgrow, to
rebel against or use to draw all the wrong conclusions: ~"That's not
okay for us, but profound when God says it!" or, conversely: "If God
throws His weight around this way, it's okay for His Humble Servant Me
to behave like that!"
Okay, we're allowed to ask about Justice
and Injustice -- Job himself does so repeatedly -- but what we really
need to know is, "What is God like?"
God has formed us within a world where pious souls and atheists can both look around and find their beliefs confirmed.
But
God is implicitly real in the story of Job; and Job's neighbors not
only fail to answer his complaints with their pieties; God appears in
Person to refute them, rebuke them and tell Job he'd better pray for
them.
And the Devil? The Devil is also real within the story. He
is not the well-known Christian Devil, rebelling against God and doing
great harm to us in that endeavor -- nor is he God's absolutely-evil
counterpart from Zoroastrian theology -- but he is a personage drawn
from Persian influence all the same.
A 'satan', in the ancient
Persian Empire, is an undercover cop assigned to test and promote
loyalty to the regime. He'll buy you a drink or two, encourage you to
get silly, make a few witty remarks about 'that clown Cyrus' and wait
for you to respond in kind. If you aren't careful, you'll wake with a
hangover in the morning, inside a jail cell, while your drinking buddy
will
be outside in his judge's robes, heating the irons for a little
judicial inquiry. 'Satan', in this story, is God's agent for exposing
disloyalty. He's not acting on his own; his little bet with God (whether
he can corrupt Job) is the sort of friendly banter you might still find
today when public defenders and prosecutors go out to lunch together.
In
this story, it's also quite possible that 'Satan' embodies certain
doubts Job himself is trying to resolve. "Do I really love God? Or am I
just feeling that way because He's blessed me so much? Do I even know
He's real, or simply an illusion I can believe in because I've been so
lucky?" Job isn't just excruciatingly pious and conscientious; he wants
to Know!
Couldn't God simply tell him? "Hey, I'm real,"? Well,
yes, but why should Job believe him? -- "Aren't you just an
hallucination? A figment? Why should I believe what You say?" It
wouldn't be a satisfactory answer, because it isn't God who needs to
know, but Job.
"The Kingdom of God is spread out upon the world,
but men don't see it." People faintly intuit a spiritual foundation to
the world, to that juncture where their own consciousness and all the
stuff 'out there' meet; but this isn't a thing that operates within our
human notions of reason or goodness or anything else. It's everything we
truly are, yet it's alien to everything we think we are!
People
spend years, lifetimes under one or another spiritual discipline,
because they're seeking an answer that can't be grasped by themselves,
the way they are. They get frustrated, they sometimes crack (and
sometimes, as in the song, some light seeps in that way.)
So a
Zen teacher may have two sticks, one to shock people through the more
typical obstacles -- and a thicker, heavier stick for the most stubborn
blockheads. God does His best to clue Job in, but it takes the heavy
duty industrial whacker to get through.
And then Job gets it: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you!"
May we all find an easier path!
