Job? Wisdom Literature?

             One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. ^“Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.  But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” (Job 1:6-12)

 

The story of Job is the last of the “wisdom books” of the Old Testament. I’ve generally thought that an odd notion. After all, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes  are discourses, discussions, and even arguments. Job is a story. That doesn’t mean it’s fiction, but that it’s told as a narrative. How can a narrative be wisdom literature? However, recently, I read a book called Live Not By Lies, by Rod Dreher. While I expected a list of steps, he told stories. He also suggested that it stories were the key. I thought back to when I started writing again, and the non-fiction I wrote. Peoples’ eyes glazed over. I switched to writing stories with the idea in mind that the stories could explore ideas people connect with better than if I wrote expositions about the ideas. So it does make sense, at least to me.

I skipped the first 5 verses, though I’ll go back to them tomorrow, because today’s passage holds one of the keys to wisdom. We sometimes hear, “How can a good and powerful God allow bad things to happen to good  people?” And what today’s passage says is that one (not the only, but one) reason is because there’s more going on that we see. That is a first bit of wisdom from the book of Job. It is wise to recognize and understand that our perception of the universe and what happens therein is limited. We aren’t omniscient. When something we think is bad happens to someone we think is good, it can be because there is something going on that we don’t understand – and that we may not understand for as long as we live.

The second bit of wisdom dovetails with something that happens too often today. Satan shows up at the throne of God. Oddly, and in contradiction to the depiction many have of God, God doesn’t thunderbolt, obliterate, remove, cancel, or otherwise hate him. What He says, instead, and in what appears to be a conversational tone, is the equivalent of “Hey, Satan, where’ve you been?”

In response to Satan’s vague answer, God asks if Satan had noticed Job, and praised Job to Satan.

Satan accuses God of being too stupid to notice that Job is brown-nosing. If God were to stop treating Job like a Disney princess who must be granted her every desire, God would find Job to be less than the paragon God supposed him to be.

God gives permission for Satan to test Job. Why? Because He didn’t trust Job? I don’t find that a convincing answer. The discussion is between God and Satan, so I think it is reasonable to believe that the reason has something to do with Satan. Exactly what lesson God is trying to teach him eludes me, but I’m convinced that the goal is to give Satan the opportunity to change his mind, to rejoin the legions of angels. I don’t think God expected him to, but for God to be love, He couldn’t withhold the opportunity. And creating the opportunity required that Job suffer.

That brings me to the incident today. Someone posted – as people do now and then – a comment which they followed with a warning that if anyone disagrees, their comments would be removed.  Of course, the people who so threaten have the right to do so. But it seems to me that they are taking the perspective that some expect God to take toward Satan – to thunderbolt, obliterate, remove, cancel, and otherwise hate him. 

Again, I’m not saying that there is never a time in which one should place clear limits on what sort of response is acceptable. But the ruling that disagreement is not permitted demonstrates hatred. It’s an example of what hatred is (rejection, withdrawal, attack, judgment). God doesn’t even set that standard in the throne room of Heaven, according to Scripture. It demonstrates a rejection of the wisdom presented in the passage above.