The Book of Job: "The Riddles of God Are More Satisfying Than the Solutions of Man"

That was some July, huh?

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The purpose of July was to reinvigorate my writing and hopefully renew a more regular habit, but as soon as the pressure wore off, a few days' break turned into a few more, and a few more, and a few more, and then a full-on holiday. Sorry about that. I really will try to be better.

In the meantime, lots of things have happened (maybe subjects for future blog posts?). Some of you may remember that I began writing a series on the Book of Job (post 1, post 2) two years ago, but I dropped off before getting to the hard bit. Well, yesterday the hard bit was the lectionary reading for the week, and I attempted to deal with it. Here's the audio of the sermon on Job 42 if you're interested.

The Book of Job: Job's Wife and Friends

Bible scholars think that the book of Job is the first book of the Bible that was written (though much of Genesis covers events earlier in chronology). This is fascinating to me since the book of Job acts as an early corrective to an idea that's prevalent among the people in the Bible, but which the Bible itself speaks against: external blessing is always a sign of God's favor; suffering is always a sign of God's judgment.

We see this idea advocated most of all in the book of Job by Job's friends. But before I talk about them, let me say a few things about Job's wife. Job's wife is the one who encourages Job, after the rest of his family dies, his possessions are destroyed, and his body is covered in boils, to "curse God and die." Job responds with one of the greatest examples of faith and fortitude I've seen: "Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?" (Job 2:10, NLT). Job's wife, I think, represents the typical response that we (or maybe just I) would normally have when suffering anywhere near the magnitude of Job's affects us. "Life is hard now? It must be that God has rejected you. Since he's already done that, you might as well cut your losses." To place her in Jesus' parable, she might be the seed that fell among thorns. She grows up fine while all is well, but when the time of testing comes, her faith is choked out by the thorns.

The Book of Job: It's Not as Bad as You Think

I read an article the other day titled "Job Suffered Alone--and So Must We." I don't know why the article bothered me so much--I read lots of articles on the Internet I disagree with (what? how can you disagree with FACTS?)--but it did.

So I decided to blog my thoughts on Job in response to that author's.

However, to avoid taking on the huge task of examining Job all at once, I think I will talk about it bit by bit, starting with an introduction here. I will also forewarn you that I am not a biblical scholar; these will be simply my impressions, how I might talk about Job if the author on the Guardian blog and I were discussing it over coffee. But please, if you have any input, let me know.