Book of Job -- Little help here

This isn't a "scientific question" as much as it is a general question about Christianity's teachings.I'm going to do my best to sum up the Book of Job as I understand it.There's this guy, Job, who is sinless and faithful to God. God and Satan gamble on whether or not Satan can break Job's will if God turns his back on him. God does just that and lets Satan destroy Job's family, home, business, friendships, health, etc. Job doesn't turn his back on God, and at the end of the day he's rewarded with a new family, new home, new business, etc.It seems the message is: Faith will get you through.But my question is this -- "what's the message for family members of those faithful to God?" Job's whole family was wiped out just to win a bet

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If the story of Job were true it would be a horrendous, hideous account. There could be no justification for killing off totally innocent folk just to demonstrate a point.That's why many Christians believe that like so many morality plays it's but exageration to make the story interesting and memorable.The literary devices used are not unique to Bible Stories, they played a significant place in all of the mythology of the age, and in fact, in modern films as well.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

First off, the idea that the Book of Job cannot be true because it is so horrendous, as offered by jar, is not a sound argument since horrendous things are part of reality, and if such horrendous things rule out God, then one would have to dismiss the idea of God, which may be where you are heading.I'd like to offer a more nuanced view. First off, Job is not sinless. He is righteous and "has not sinned" in the context of having a done a sin to warrant God's judgment against him.Next, Satan more tellingly is the destroyer. Keep that in mind, but God is involved in allowing Satan to attack Job and nearly destroy him, and indeed God instigates the process in a way by asking Satan to consider how godly Job is. There's a lot that can be drawn from that, but too much to get into now.The message though is not that faith will get you through. The message is that God has His own plans, that it's His world, and for His own reasons He allows misery and destruction but that faithfulness to God does pay off, and the message is that not only the ungodly suffer but the godly do to. Job and all of us belong to God, and it suited God's purpose for Job to be tested by Satan, and to show how through that suffering He could endure.The New Testament indicates it shows us the effects of patience as Job was rewarded more once his trial is over.Jesus takes the issue of reward further and tells us that we will be rewarded infinitely more with treasure in heaven.My answer for the ones that were killed is that they died in a way in service to the purposes of God, and part of a righteous man's family. Some say they may have sinned, banqueting so much, and since Job seems to have suspected that in continually offering up sacrifices for their sin "in case they have sinned." Read that way, perhaps the judgment was on them, but not Job, and there was sort of dual-purpose involved.But let's assume they were innocent.The message of the Bible is not that God rewards us eternally, and that some men that never recieved a just reward here will receive therefore an abundance of reward in heaven. If they were innocent, they gained more in death than they lost in life.

job has to be sinless for the book to make sense. it's a treatise against the wisdom movement. they basically said (portrayed by jobs two friends) that people get what they deserve. the people who do well in life and prosper economically are blessed because they are good. and the people who do badly must have sinned and deserved god's wrath.this is the position of MOST of the old testament. when judah is taken off to exile, it was because they had wronged god somehow and broken their covenant. the other tribes the hebrews were told to anihilate deserved it for being idolatrous and following other gods.the point of job is turn that argument on it's end. what happens when a good many is unjustly punished? this kind of argument predates christ's radical "blessed are the poor" beatitudes (and is probably the foundation of them). job has to be totally undeserving of god's wrath. job is perfect, according to the book, and without sin (ie: AT ALL).keep in mind that this of course an entirely hypothetical argument. and here i think you've hit the nail on the head.job whines for 40 some-odd chapters about how undeserving he is. and god shows up and basically says "see all this. i made it. who the hell are you to tell me what to do. sit down puny mortal."job then ADMITS to sin. which is the most baffling portion of the whole book. job is sinless and perfect -- but next to god he is tiny and flawed and full of sin. some might even point out that his whole tirade against god is, in fact, sin.another interesting suggestion i've heard is that job is actually taunting and testing god. job is questioning his faith; he's not sure he believes in an absentee god. so he TESTS god, and tricks him into showing up. job remits because his faith has been validated. i'm not sure whether or not i like that reading, but it seems to have some weight to it.anyways, as some may point out, job gets all his stuff back. this seems to be a case of two different stories than have been conglomerated. the first two chapters and the last chapter of job appear to be a different story with a different point than the middle of job. they are stylistically very different, and seem to get at different points. one is that we aren't to question god's will, and the other is that we should have faith in the bad times too. not totally compatible, but similar goals.

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אָרַח

The end of the book, as you state, shows that Job recognizes he is not sinless.The "without sin" comment then I take to reference, in context, without any sin as to anger God or incur God's judgment. The idea that the Old Testament, Job, or any part of the Bible concludes men, other than Jesus, are sinless is just wrong.But he is "without sin" in the sense of any sin being held against him. That's how I read it, and believe it's the way the text was written.On the part of Job testing God, I don't see that as Job did not and would not originate that level of suffering on Himself. You are right that the message is God is saying, hey, you are just a creation so how can you dare claim I am wrong, or something like that.God's response to Job is just to point out He is God, and never really explains it to Job.I love that personally because God doesn't always explain Himself, or maybe rarely does, to us. The message of Job is great as it fits with reality. Bad stuff is going to happen, even to those pleasing to God and without sin. Moreover, and this is a beautiful but painful point, the suffering of the righteous is for God's glory, and since our lives are for Him, we are to expect it, recognize that, and when we don't understand it, still understand God is God; He cannot ever be wrong, and there is a purpose in it, and we will be rewarded in the end.It's not that I want to overemphasize the reward. It does go deeper than that, and we serve the Lord because He is the Lord, period, not just for the reward, but God is just, and things do even out in our favor at the end, more than we deserve if we were judged without grace and mercy.That's faith, but it's not unreasonable imo.

I the last few posts, I seem to keep hearing the same message over and over again.God is vengful and petty, he's gonna do mean things to you and you better not question it, because he's God and that's that.Umm, that doesn't sound like a very happy corner stone of a religeon.It seems like people are saying: "Bad things happen to bad people because they are bad. Bad things happen to good people because God wants them to suffer too."Yikes.Seems like both those sentences start with "Bad things happen..."Couldn't it be that bad things happen. That God isn't micromanaging every minute of everyone's life?I mean, doesn't God have more important things to do, like personally determine which team is going to win the Superbowl, or which violent hate spewing rapper is going to take home the MTV award?When we look at Job as a literary exercise, we need to take into account the level of philisophical sophistication of the writers.I don't think anyone here would argue against the idea that the God of the OT and the God of the NT are psychologically very different entities.But how is that possible? How can God change over time? If he's all knowing and everything is a part of his plan, why would that plan change?I'm not saying don't have faith, I'm just questioning this belief that every little thing that happens is part of some incredibly intricate plan.Do we have free will or not?

not exactly. he admits that compared to god he is sinful. he repents of his testing god, i think. (a sin he did not start the book with) except that for the book og job to make sense at all, job needs to be COMPLETELY sinless. it doesn't work otherwise. like paul says, the wages of sin are death -- job's getting off easy. if he's sinned at all, ever, in any magnitude, he deserves god's wrath.he deserves god wrath, the book doesn't make sense. if he had sinned, and atoned for that sin, it would in essence be taken off his record. but you can't be both "without sin" and sinful. doesn't work that way. not exactly what i was getting at. ignore the first two chapter of job for a second. what is job doing? he's basically taunting god to show up by making all kind of accusations. it's like a kid jumping up and down and saying "oh yeah?!? well if god's real, let him strike me down with a bolt of lightning right now! *pause* see? just like i said, there is no god."job's mentality seems to be that god would not allow suffering of the just -- so there must not be a god. instead of having faith, he wants to god to prove himself. the book ends when god does. no, he really doesn't. but then: a. i don't think job's looking for an explanation, just a validation, and b. why should god have to explain his reasons? let alone show up in the first place? all faith is unreasonable, by definition. except for job's, of course, who knows god exists.

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אָרַח

to be fair: you asked.if you wanna skip forward a bit and talk about christ's take (blessed are the poor, etc, and about how god takes care of everything) it's a much nicer way of wording the same thing. well, no, you've got the argument confused. one side says "bad things happen to bad people; good things happen to good people."the other side is saying: "that's not realistic, is it?"frankly, bad things do sometimes happen to good people and vice versa. what explanation is a semi-religios jew more than 2000 years ago to provide? job ends on kind of a question mark. job doesn't know why god does what he does. we the reader never find out. the author is writing fundamentally about reality. and nobody knows why good people suffer and bad people prosper some times. yes, and job is basically a philosophy essay at its core. actually, i would. people like to argue this because they read the first few books and god is petty and child-like. not to mention angry, vengeful, and often murderous. but by the later and lesser prophets, god is much more nt than most people realize. it's not a big jump between exilic judaism and early christianity. i think i (and most others here) would argue that it's not god who's done the changing, but the societies that wrote about him. i take the bible with an incredible grain of salt, realizing the potential of religion to manipulate the masses. the percieved change in deity is actually the change in the perception of deity. i don't think that's what job is saying.

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אָרַח

I agree that the God of Job appears to be more in line with the multiple capricious Greek and Roman gods than the singular Hebrew God. God seems to be playing a chess game with Satan and Job and his family are the pawns. I don't see much redeeming about the story except that "all things work together for good" turned out better for Job than it did in "Candide". And maybe that there is redemption in suffering.

You bring up some important points. Certainly. We also have to consider the particular era, the customs and mores, and the goals. This is true throughout the Bible. The depiction of God changes even within the OT. There are two different Gods shown in Genesis and the other Genesis literature. The God of the Exodus is quite different than the God of the Garden. God doesn't change. The depiction and understanding of the writers changes. Remember, the Bible is but a human construct. God, as depicted in the Bible is not GOD. The Map is not the Territory.Any plan, if there is some detailed plan, would be beyond anyones knowledge. If it's there, it closer to Improv than Shakespeare. We don't get to see it and we have to try and figure out why someone did what they did after the fact.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I would tend to agree with the two recent posts that our view has changed rather than God changing, but...In other strings people have made it quite clear that the Bible was written flawlessly word for word by the will of God. Why couldn't God control the pen of his earlier transcribers?Also, on the topic of bad things happening to good people etc, isn't it possible that things just happen?I mean, the words "good" and "bad" are moral constructs, they don't really apply to events. It's our opinion of an event that makes it "good" or "bad". Likewise, it's our opinion of a person to whom the event is happening.Seemly like we are assigning value to multiple variables in an equation and then complaining that it doesn't balance out.Lotter numbers are drawn twice a week. That is neither good nor bad.
Sometimes someone has those numbers. That is neither good nor bad.
Sally is poor, and she just won. Is that "good"?
Sally plays because she is poor, poor people make up the majority of lottery players, and therefore the majority of lottery winners.
Sally happens to be a drug user. Is it now "bad" that she won?Psychologically, it seems like this whole things basically comes down to this --Person X doesn't think it's fair that person Y got something good, or that some unlucky thing happened to person X. Rather than just be upset at it all, person x takes solice in the notion that an unseen force will balance everything out in the end.Seems like a crutch. Things often don't balance out. Simply saying, "oh didn't work out here, then it'll balance out after you die."Seems like someone is selling a bridge and people are lining up to buy it.

I don't want to waste time. The comment "without sin" is in a specific context. No one is absolutely sinless. You even admit that is the case "compared to God" so you hold a contradictory stance here.The book works, and of course, all of us deserve far worse than we receive. That's why God is a God of grace.You can try to blur the complexities if you want with simplistic reasoning, but it makes sense only if Job is not absolutely sinless, compared to God, not the other way around.He is relatively "without sin" meaning the terrible things happening to him did not occur due to sin in his life or rejecting God, and comparitively he is faultless, but he is not faultless nor sinless in an absolute sense.

That is a good question to address to them. It comes up often and the responses are usually interesting to say the least.The next part, the issue of good and bad is a subject worthy of discussion in yet another thread itself. The answer seems to depend on the outcome and the point of view of the observer. I would tend to agree that is but a con if that was what I thought Christianity (or any religion for that matter) was really about. But from my reading of the Bible, other such works and observing the world itself, I believe the message of Christianity is about how to live now, not so much on the future. The future, that part post death, is something beyond any living person knowledge. We can have hopes or wishes, ideas or dreams, but no one living knows what comes after.The story of Job was an early attempt to address the question of "Why bad things happen to good folk." Like the Creation stories or any other mythology, it was written by people within the limits of their era and culture.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

If I may take a stab at this. I will begin by saying that Job was a real man and is buried in the modern day country of Oman. I've been to his grave. I think it is important to note how Job's life ended. Job 42Job could be looked at like you describe; God letting bad things happen to good people to test their faith. But that's now what the story is about IMO. The first thing the story tells us is that God is in control. Job 1Notice God had a hedge of protection around Job so that Satan couldn't touch him. God doesn't cause pain, he protects us from it; that pain being sin in a fallen world caused by Adam's decision. After Job is found to be faithful, even though he questions God and God puts him in place, Job's life is restored at the end. Now this story can be read by all down through the ages as an example of God's love.Why does God cause suffering? It is a difficult question for sure, and there are no easy answers. Let me tell you my story.I was adopted when I was 2 years old, and every now and then we would go to church with my uncle. I would say we went 3 or 4 times a year. One Sunday when I was 6, my mom, dad, and I were visiting the church and sitting in the foyer listening to the sermon because I was sick. The message of the sermon was that today is the day of salvation. Nobody is promised tomorrow, so on and so forth. My dad decided it was time to go when the invitation started. So he went to open the doors, but they didn't open. He pushed on them again, and they still didn't open. Finally he slammed his shoulder into the door, the doors open, and we left. Not much was said on the way home.My dad was shot and killed 2 days later in a robery.Natrually this devestated my mother. I was just old enough to understand what happened, but not old enough to understand or question why. I just new my dad was gone. My mother, who believed in God before hand, now questioned Him much like Job did. If God was so loving and all powerful, why would He take her husband away from her that she loved so much?Good question. So my mom spent that next summer asking God that and reading the bible to see if He had an answer for her. One day God told her. By that, I mean she read something in the bible that jumped out at her that seemed to perfectly fit her situation. I'll never know what it was because she threw the bible across the room and screamed at the top of her lungs, "THERE IS NO GOD!" Then she ran by my room and out of the house.She took a long 2 hour walk around the neighood and eventually made her way back to the house. She walked into her room and started cleaning things up. She noticed the bible lying face up and open. As she bent down to pick it up her eyes happen to fall onto Psalms 14:1, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God."It was as if the God of the universe, in all His awesome glory, came down to her room and berated her on the spot, telling her, "Who are you to tell me I don't exist?"And she has been a christain ever since. I followed a couple of years later. Did my dad die so that my mom and I could know Him? I think so. Is he burning in hell right now because of his decision not to walk down that aisle. Yep. But that was his decision, and one we are all faced with at some point.But because of that suffering, my mom and I, not to mention the other lives we have touched, will be in heaven for eternity with the Father. And I think 1,343,654,038,374 years from now, this earth will be a distant memory and the pain will not be there. God's grace for fallen man is the story, and remember that Jesus suffered more than anyone, so He knows.I think the message of Job is not why do bad things happen to good people; but rather why do good things happen to bad people.<This message has been edited by Tal, 08-15-2005 03:44 PM

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'Now isn't it amazing. I tell you that nobody made a simple toy like that (solar system model) and you don't believe me. Yet you gaze out into the solar System - the intricate marvelous machine that is around you - and you dare say to me that no one made that. I don't believe it'. -Sir Isaac Newton