Disciple Bible Study 10, Job Part 1 of 2

Why don't we start out as always with what the book is doing for you?

At least the first half of the book.

Several months ago.

I said to several months ago.

I I remember Joe was probably the first exercise in mind.

And I'm sorry, remind me why is this happening?

And somewhere in the New Testament says I think why is he allowing Joe?

Why is it allowing the same to maneuver him and to allow the devil?

I'm sorry.

Well, so so if it's okay, I'm I'm gonna if you have other comments, I want you to just hold for a second, write them down, because I think it's probably critical to give you a a stirring lecture at this moment, if that's okay.

Um and and the first thing is about the book, and the second thing is about the devil, and the third thing is about what the book's about, if that seems okay.

Um Carol, along with any other scholar in general that I've read of moderate um anyway, this is pretty much what scholarship says.

Um Job is actually written in multiple uh sittings, so uh it's pretty clear that chapters 1 through chapter 2.9 and then chapter 42, beginning in verse 8 until the end, is probably the oldest part of the book.

We can't read it.

Yeah, you know, I'm gonna have to go and get it from Chris Tall.

Is that okay?

Because I was naughty and I moved the mark.

Okay, so uh now this will be more visible.

Chapter 1, verse 1, beginning uh to 2, verse 9, and then 42 verse 8 until the end.

This is clearly the first oldest part of the book for a few reasons.

Uh it's prose, and um, why did I cut it off in chapter 2?

The rest of chapter 2 introduces the three friends.

Uh so most scholars would tell you the three friends come second.

So that would be um chapters 2, verse 10, all the way up until chapter 32.

Uh that would be the second part.

Um, there's definitely this guy named Elihu who shows up here, and he's definitely another different piece.

Probably the last part of the book, actually.

And hard to say whether when God shows up in the whirlwind and talks, whether or not that goes with this, or it's another layer, if that makes sense.

So we're reading it as one book, but it it wasn't written as a whole, it was added to, and an editor also revised it.

And again, part of the hint is this guy just shows up out of nowhere and he breaks a cycle of three friends each having three things to say with three responses.

It's like it it doesn't make it just makes no sense that he's there.

And when you read it, you'll say, like, well, I didn't even have anything good to say either.

Um God showing up is interesting too.

Part of the vocabulary here is very old stuff, and I'll tell you, particularly in chapter one, you'll notice Job doesn't have any money, he has commodities, that's part of the dating of the book.

This is a pre-monetary economy, so this is certainly old.

This part very old.

Um, the other thing that shows up that's very old is um this little phrase in chapter one, the bene Elohim, um, which means in Hebrew it means the sons of God.

Um the translator likes to put that as angels or heavenly beings, but that's not it.

In Hebrew it's bene Elohim, which sort of means, uh this is another reason to date that part of the book older, it sort of means like lesser deities.

So it actually reflects reflects a polytheistic heaven in which God is sort of the king, and then there's like these demigodish, lesser goddish figures, one of which is our good friend in Hebrew Hasatan, which we usually call Satan with a capital S, which is completely wrong.

This entity does not exist at the time of composition.

Instead, there's this entity, one of the sons of God, and I think there's actually eight of them.

One of the sons of God is called Ha Satan.

Ha in Hebrew means the, and this word in Hebrew means accuser.

So this entity is called the accuser.

It does not have a proper name.

Does not have a proper name.

The way you do a proper name in Hebrew is you drop the definite article.

So if this entity were called Satan, it would just be called Satan.

But it's not.

It's called the accuser, if that makes sense.

So, you know, if we're reading uh a book in Hebrew and it says something about the David, it means the beloved.

David means beloved, and that'd be with a small D, you see.

But if there's no article, it's talking about the person.

Same bit here.

So who is this thing and what does it do?

At the time of Job, it works for God.

This is one of, this is like a demigod.

And the job of the demigod is sort of like the attorney general, or perhaps the chief prosecuting attorney, or the DA.

The job of that demigod is ultimately justice.

And um making sure that uh, frankly, uh people get what they pay for, and examining people's character.

And you know, in general, that's a really good function.

We we accept that legally, like that's that's a critical job, you know.

When do you press charges?

When do you not?

Right?

That's that's that's kind of important.

Um maybe it's helpful to tell you how that turned into this.

Maybe.

If you're interested, it can, uh but I don't have to.

Um this has been something like a 3,000-year journey.

And in general, not much happened with this for a long, long, long time.

Like maybe we start to get some thoughts of change after the year 540 BCE.

And why that year?

Well, because when the uh Hebrew people went to Babylon in exile, which we we talked about, um, Babylonians didn't exactly have like a Loki figure or an evil figure.

They didn't have that kind of figure in their pantheon.

They had different gods who didn't get along, like Tiamat and Apsu and Marduk, but they didn't have, again, they didn't have Loki, they didn't have Satan.

But uh the Persians did.

And if you knew anything about Zoroastrianism, and you can't, I'm gonna tell you, you can't know much about it because Alexander the Great pretty much burned all the evidence up.

But this was a very compelling religion.

In fact, it was the religion of the biggest empire for 300 years.

I mean, this was Xerxes and Cyrus, etc.

And we have a little bit left of their scriptures, but just a little bit.

This is centered on the prophet Zoroaster or Zarathustra, depending really uh whether you speak uh which language you speak.

Um, Freddie Mercury from Um Queen was a Zoroastrian.

He's the most famous Zoroastrian in contemporary times.

Um kind of what they said is that there is a struggle now between, I know you're thinking that's a Taoist symbol, it's also somewhat a Zoroastrian.

There's a struggle between the good, which is a Hura Mazda, and the Persian uh king is the representative of Hura Mazda, and the evil one.

And in the in ultimately a huge going to win out.

However, in the meantime, we're living in this struggle.

This is a new idea, if you're Jewish.

Uh, the proof of it is when you read um when you read other parts of the Hebrew Bible, good and bad both come from God.

If you read the story about Saul and David, one day Saul decides to um go to a witch and bring up Samuel's ghost to ask for some advice.

And and the sort of the witch can do it, so she can conjure people up from the grave.

And uh, because of that, God torments Saul with an evil spirit.

Now it's really important that you that you heard what I said.

God does it, not the devil.

Because everything comes from God.

Women who are infertile, it's because God closed their womb, God opens wombs.

You may say, I don't believe that.

That's fine, but they did.

So thoughts have evolved.

And of course, you understand that this is actually a really interesting way of thinking about reality.

Good stuff comes from God, and bad stuff comes from a bad guy.

So, I mean, that's that that helps.

When good and bad come from the same entity, that's very confusing.

Is God good or not?

So uh this is part of where this sort of idea starts to come from, and and then this figure, and and and when does this figure really, really emerge as sort of the incarnation of wickedness, quite honestly, that's not totally clear.

A few other contributing factors come a little bit later, and I'm gonna put like it's a hard range here.

I'm gonna put uh a kind of a wide swath.

Some of the things that start to happen is that there's these group of people called the Essenes that live in Qumran, and maybe you've heard of them before.

Uh, they're the ones who ultimately we think are responsible for the Dead Sea Scroll Library that we found.

Um, those those people were like radical apocalyptic Jewish food.

I mean, they're really religious extremists.

And part of what they decided was that um this strong, this very strong division existed between us and them.

You're either one of us, the right Jews, or you're one of them, the bad ones.

And actually, they were, in the documents they produced, they were sort of more hateful to fellow Jews who weren't living the way they were than they were toward Romans.

Strong differentiator between us and them, in and out, good and evil.

And ultimately, what the Essenes started to do, but if you want to read about this, you can read it in Elaine Pagel's book, The Origin of the Satan.

What they start to do is use this language that actually there's like sons of God, sons of light, that's us, and sons of the accuser who becomes a diametrically opposed entity to God.

So it starts with dark, but then that goes to evil, and then that gets this sort of personification.

So it's not clear in the New Testament when when you know the letter to Peter says Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, if Peter's talking about the devil or he's talking about the accuser.

Because the ultimate guidance is resist the accuser and he will flee from you.

That's actually very Jewish.

In modern Judaism, there's still not a Satan.

There's something called the Yetzerhara, which is sort of the spirit of evil, which has a really good function.

The spirit of evil comes and tempts you so you can resist.

And actually, because of the temptation, people excel and do wonderful things because they resist, not necessarily sin, but things like mediocrity.

So this isn't like the red-horned spade-tailed thing with the pitchfork.

This is like an opportunity to be more or less.

That's sort of how it's viewed in most of Judaism today.

Um, so this sort of gets started by the Essenes, and then the early Christian community actually picks it up some more and says, well, no, it's not just about the Essenes and the Jews, it's about Christians and Jews.

And later that gets picked up between it's between Christians in the East and Christians in the West.

People who believe in icons and people who don't.

People who don't believe what we believe, instead of being orthodox or heterodox, they're heretics.

They're children of the devil.

And you really get the description, of course, in two of the most influential authors that there are.

They don't just represent what people were thinking, they push it forward.

Dante Alghari, and probably the most influential one, John Milton.

If you want to know why we think about, like why it is we think of hell the way we do, read Paradise Lost.

Don't read the Bible, read Paradise Lost.

There's just no, there's no strong resonance in the Bible with this figure that we now think of as evil in opposition to God.

It doesn't, it's not there.

We have to project it into the Bible.

I'm not telling you the devil isn't real.

You can believe what you want.

I'm just telling you the devil's not biblical.

And quite honestly, biblically, why do you need a devil anyway?

Does the devil make you do it?

Or do we follow our own vices?

Well, this is a good that's a good good question.

Yes, I'm sorry, uh along that line.

Um I remember I forgot I read it, but I read a really good quote.

Uh that um regardless of if there is a devil or not, um would would not the first act of an evil entity like that be to convince everybody that it was its fault for the evils of the world rather than our own fault.

And that really made me think.

I was like, well, yeah, you know, is because then if you blame this entity, then it takes it off your own shoulders, and you don't have to be critical of yourself.

So that was kind of interesting.

And I want to say that's an interesting thought that you'll find in the screw tape letters by C.S.

Lewis, and also the other thought is that that forces of evil don't exist.

Now I want to be clear.

Forces of evil exist biblically, and what the Apostle Paul calls them is not satanic.

Paul calls them in your um in these words in your translation, powers and principalities.

And what I want you to know is this is ultimately what Paul cares about.

That Paul actually doesn't care much about that.

The difference is these are things that have sort of an extra human existence, and these don't.

You can do this or not, that's up to you.

You don't actually need God to save you from the fact that you tell lies.

You have within your power not to tell lies.

You actually can do that.

You cannot, on the other hand, eliminate racism from the world.

You cannot.

And the truth is, no matter how hard you try, every single one of us has racial bias imprinted in us.

That's what Paul is talking about, these superhuman entities, powers greater than ourselves.

They're not as great as God, mind you.

They sort of are between us and God, you know.

Um, and and they're not all bad.

I mean, there's things like faith, hope, and love, which are not God, but are greater than humanity, right?

And then there's things like, well, as I already said, racism, but there's sexism and ageism, denominationalism, all of these things that we often think we're above.

But friends, we're just fooling ourselves.

We're not above those things.

Um, I want to tell you again, the Bible is much more worried about those things than that one.

And all of this really comes down to an approach we could take to Job, which is that Job is about theodicy.

Theodicy, that's just a big old word that says the justice of God.

So you you recognize that as God, like in theology, um, and then this is the word for justice.

And really this is the question of is God just?

Do bad things happen to good people?

We know the answer is yes.

And then why?

And and there's sort of like a threefold thing that has to exist for this to be a problem.

Like God is good.

If God's not good, then it's not a problem.

Like if God's neutral or God's, you know, arbitrary, then human suffering is no problem.

Right?

Because God's not good.

The second one that has to be true is that God is powerful, and we could probably put the emphasis on the all-powerful.

Because, you know, if God's not all-powerful, then God can't stop evil.

I mean, that's it.

But if God's good and all-powerful, and now we're getting closer to the problem, the last one that has to be the case is that evil is real.

Because evil, if evil is just an illusion, it's not a problem.

Ultimately, if you're if you're Buddhist, that's sort of the point, is that evil's a false reality.

Suffering's a false reality.

It's sort of like living in a shadow that's not real.

And it's probably helpful to say that there's two kinds of evil.

Um, in case you're wondering, this is what philosophers do.

There's things called natural evil.

Those are like natural disasters, right?

Like hurricanes and people die.

Is that actually evil?

Uh I mean, it could be.

You could say hurricanes are the act of the devil, or you could say, um, actually, like the planet is taking care of itself or the planets responding to different conditions.

Stinks for people, but it's not inherently bad.

You could say God should have made a world without tectonic plates, because earthquakes are bad for people.

Fine, but God didn't make that world.

So earthquakes actually aren't evil, they just happen, and humans suffer from earthquakes completely unwarranted.

Right?

So I think sometimes we say, oh, this is it's a tragedy, but it's not wrong.

Does that make sense?

And then you also get into the thing about what about predation?

Is it like bad that wolves eat bunnies?

Well, it's bad for the bunny, you know, but ultimately it's good for bunnies that the population gets cold, you know, and why did God make the world that way?

Who knows?

But God did.

So that stuff really isn't evil, it's just natural.

You know, I mean, it's important to differentiate between these things, you know.

And the same is true, like, you start to pick through this a little bit like I got a speeding ticket, what did I do wrong?

You were speeding.

You know, I mean, well, that evil cop or God's punishment.

Punishing me, no, like you were speeding.

So that's not actually like God cursing you, you just were speeding, and that day at that time there was an officer there.

I mean, it's actually helpful to sift through that because, quite honestly, part of the approach we've got today still is if you got a speeding ticket, it's because you didn't say hello to your husband yesterday.

Or it's because you didn't say thank you at the grocery.

That way the universe is riding itself.

Because as we know, there's many times you were speeding and you didn't get a ticket.

So why did it happen now?

You earned it some other way.

I mean, this is just corrective thinking to us, and I want to sort of lay it out.

The real problem with all of this is not that.

The real problem is that, which is when human beings consciously choose to do things to others.

You can decide which the worst crimes are.

They range obviously from things like lying and stealing to things like rape and murder.

Why does God let that happen?

A lot of times I think we approach the book thinking it's about that.

Job's innocent.

God colludes.

It's not quite natural evil because God allows the whirlwind to destroy the home Job's children are living in and kill them all.

So God's involved in it.

It's not just the gravity of the moon.

If you didn't have that chapter, if you didn't have that bit about in heaven between the Bene Elohim and God, actually Job would have no case whatsoever.

He just, bad stuff happened to him.

Do you get what I'm saying?

If you took all the things that happened to Job and removed that figure in God, so what?

You know?

I know lots of people that have had very tragic things happen to them, not once, not twice, but thrice, and even beyond that.

Cancer, aneurysm, rebellious children, etc.

Right?

That stuff happens.

What's hard about this book with this question is that God seems to be well colluding about it.

So sometimes, and by the way, we can choose to treat the book that way, but what's interesting that Carol said is that this book might not actually be about that.

We just might want it to be.

This book might actually instead be asking why believe.

Why does Job keep piety?

I actually have my own thought.

It's very different from that one.

I think the book also could be about the question, how do you know someone loves you?

Or put a different way, what is the nature of love?

I just make a case for that reading really shortly.

The accuser says, God, Job is only loyal to you because you give him everything he wants.

I think the underlying question is, would he love you if you didn't give him what he wants?

And maybe put it a different way, would he love you if he was injured by you?

You might say that's a really silly question.

I actually think that's probably a bigger question than about evil in the world.

Because the truth is, if you think about your intimate relationships that you've had with kids, parents, um, spouses, loved ones, how do you know they love you?

I would tell you you don't know that.

You choose to believe it.

And at what point would you stop choosing to believe that?

I think we have different thresholds with different people.

My spouse can tell me things about myself that my friends cannot.

Because I've decided when she tells me those things, she's coming from a point of love, not competition.

Maybe there's more evidence that she loves me.

Maybe.

But you know how much evidence it takes to prove a rule.

Infinite! And how much evidence it takes to disprove a rule?

One point.

So love is not linear or logical.

It's a choice that we make.

This book could be about that.

You could also put it into the piety category.

Particularly because, notice Job is very clear, there is no heaven when you die.

Everyone goes to the grave.

So take away eternal reward and eternal punishment.

Well, I believe.

This is wisdom material.

I mean, this is consonant with what we've been talking about, I think.

I I don't want to tell you that all that stuff about justice is wrong.

I just I want to tell you, I don't think you'll be satisfied with Job if that's the primary way you read it.

I don't think you will.

Because the story is fundamentally unjust.

There is a uh a rabbi also at Emory, where Carol teaches.

Um what is his name?

Is it David Blumenthal?

He he's come up with a theory about what God is like post-Holocaust, and he's decided that God is actually an abusive parent.

So loving and abusive.

And he writes this book, sort of justifying that and how Jewish people should respond to God, which is similar to how they should respond to abusive parents.

Because, and you see, if you take this primary view about theodicy as your lens for reading the book, well, he's pretty much right.

In the book of Job, God is actually kind of an abusive power figure.

Father or boss or dictator, what what what whatever you you you you want to map.

Good sometimes, contrary other times.

I hope I didn't ruin the book with my lecture.

I'm afraid I overlectured.

But I think hopefully that sets the scene for what we do, because I haven't actually told you what the book means.

I just I think there's lots of different lenses we could wear when we go back and reread and filter the material out, you know.

And and there's some funny bits here too, if you don't mind me saying, I'll just throw them in, write it up front, um, and then I'll just totally shush.

Um I've mentioned this in a sermon before, uh, but a few sort of big code words in here.

Um, first, uh Job is not a Jewish name, and ooz is like nowhere.

It's like utopia, and it's definitely not in Israel.

And if you try to find it, like that's the fool's errand because the story happens nowhere, and the story therefore happens everywhere.

Um the other thing that's quite interesting is um we don't actually know what Job says in chapter one because Hebrew doesn't have a word for curse.

Hebrew has a word for blessed that can be interpreted either as curse or blessed.

That word's barak.

And that's the word used.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away Barak, the name of the Lord.

Well, blessed or cursed?

I would tell you, if you read the rest of the book, I think Job says cursed.

I don't think he says blessed.

Think about what we read this week.

Is Job blessing God when he loses all his stuff or cursing God?

Not clear.

Not clear.

The wife says, why do you persevere in your integrity?

Barack God and die.

Is she saying, curse God and die, or is she saying stop trying to persevere in your innocence?

Go ahead and bless God, that's what you should do, even in calamity, and just die.

Don't keep fighting to maintain your innocence.

Just bless God and die.

So what uh what was like the plus to the having just one word for a person?

I don't know that there's a plus.

I mean, we just have to think this is a language poor people.

And I think what's interesting is quite honestly, um you know that word, uh this is silly.

I don't know anything about Chinese.

I don't, but supposedly the word for crisis also means opportunity.

Yeah.

Um, because all crises are opportunities.

And that's like cute, although sometimes it sucks.

Let's just be honest about it.

But I think that's probably the true that curses actually have opportunities and blessings have opportunities.

It's to me, uh when I first read this, a priest recommended it because I was going through some really bad times, and he said to me, uh, besides, he said, lay in your bed at night and read this and curse.

And he didn't say curse, be angry at God.

Shake your fist at him and tell him, How dare you do this to me.

He said, The ancients did that, and it's a way to relieve and allow yourself to just breathe and and and rest.

But he was not cursing.

He said, be angry.

Uh and that that, you know, yesterday I was thinking about that.

I thought, that's what JJ meant.

I went in the preaching.

There's a difference, I think, but what you said.

No, and I think there's a fundamental question wrapped up in that.

Is God behind the stuff that's happening to you that you don't appreciate or not?

Yeah.

And that's a hard question to answer.

And I don't think he was answering that.

I I think, I think.

He was simply saying there's almost nothing else I could do, really, other than push my way through it, get an attorney or decide what I was gonna do, or just wait it out.

I mean, there's all this other human stuff you have to do.

So there's no one to blame, or no one to I'm not about blame.

I'm not sure if I'm using the right vocabulary for it.

You're doing fine.

I mean, I again, these are different ways to relate to the book.

I want to let you know part of the reason I think we have trouble with this book, and part of the, I think our trouble with the Odyssey comes from this idea that was put forward by a Jewish philosopher named Moses Maimonides.

I don't know if you've heard of him before.

He's kind of a big deal.

In Hebrew, he's called the rambam.

I mean, he's a big deal.

And he's he's writing around like the 1100s, and he says, when God created the world, God did it ex nihilo, that's in Latin, from nothing.

God made the world out of nothing.

There was zilch, and God spoke stuff into being.

But other rabbis have said, actually, when God made the world, God didn't start from scratch, God started from water.

That's how Genesis 1 reads.

When God began creating the heavens, the earth, the earth was formless and void, and the spirit of the dove hovered over the waters.

Waters in the Bible are a symbol of chaos.

So a lot of rabbis say God started with chaos.

Who knows why?

Just God did that, and God's creative act is to pull order out of chaos.

If you start ex nihilo, God created chaos too.

If you start with the other version, chaos was there when God started, and what God does in the world is pull order out of it.

Not every time.

Not in ways that are satisfying for us.

But it's how it goes.

Very different ways of thinking about justice.

If God starts with chaos, can God still be good and all powerful and evil be real?

Yeah, you'd probably wonder why did God start with chaos?

The Bible doesn't care, it would tell you.

If God starts at nihilo, the first thing God does is makes chaos.

And can God be all those things and do it?

I don't know the answer to that.

That's a tough question.

Of course, then you gotta wonder where'd the chaos in the first reading come from?

Did God make it?

Maybe.

Is it entropy?

Maybe.

I'm I'm not a scientist, I don't know how all that works, but maybe.

I mean, these are the really tough questions.

And I'm giving you the reader's digest version, but I tell you, you won't really read a book that does anything different from what I'm telling you here.

There'll be much longer and excruciating to read, but this is about all you're gonna get.

As far as I know.

I'm sorry, I don't know your name.

Graciela.

Cassiola.

Cassiana.

Yeah, Graciela.

Well, um, I can't remember if it was our tattoos on the heart, but um I think there's a quote in there where he says, uh, yeah, it's normal to get angry at God, you know, like like you were saying.

Like he's like he's like, he's like our best friend, you know, you you don't, it's never just a one-track relationship, you know.

It's something where you can get upset, you can get, you know, there are things that you might not understand or might not, you know.

So I think that's kind of a contemporary belief, too.

Yeah, I'm okay with it now, I think initially.

It was just a different different thought, and it took time, and it still comes back and actually happened 30 years ago or something, it's been a while.

Yeah.

I I wanna I want to say something about human relationships here, too, from my experience.

Uh I've got some broken relationships in my life, I'm suspicious many of you do.

And part of the break that's made it very sharp and excruciating has when has been when there's a transgression that I've perceived to be against me or against life with a capital L.

I've always wanted to know why they did it.

Why did you do that?

And I've got to tell you, there's no answer those people could give me that would satisfy that question.

I have never been satisfied with the response I get to why.

Because they will, I mean each of us, one of us I think don't really know why either.

I think it's just a human thing.

As an elementary school teacher, and and I would say to myself, why are you asking this question?

But you know, a kid will do something outrageous, and your first thing is, well, why did you do that?

Why?

What were you thinking?

And and then they had this blank stare.

Because they don't even know.

And you could have a kid in elementary school pick their nose and eat it in front of the class every day.

And you could say, listen, we don't do that, we don't do that, we don't do that.

You do that in the bathroom, you do that at home, or you don't do it, right?

You could do that a bunch.

You could say, if you do that, you're losing recess time.

They'll do it, and you'll say, Why did you do that?

And they have no answer for you.

And so, in relationships in general, I've found that why questions only lead to despair.

I I mean it.

And we're so interested in being able to get an explanation of why from God, even though I think, upon reflection, the whys don't really work.

Now, I will tell you a question that's worked.

What was what was going on in your head, do you think, when you did that?

But I think why starts with what you did was wrong, there's no reason you can convince me you should do it.

So explain why you purposefully disrespected me when the person actually probably wasn't thinking about that at all.

And that's why I think why questions only make things worse.

Yeah, I think that's very true, and not to get too far off track, but I think that the broken relationships that I've had, that I've fixed in my past, um, has been that the my forgiveness of them, or their forgiveness of me, has not come from an understanding of that why question.

It was more of a uh, you know, how can we move forward?

And yeah, it was never there was never a perfect understanding.

Like my dad and I didn't talk for like years, and the end of that basically came from just both of us wanting to talk again.

I still don't understand why we got upset.

Like we certainly understand each other as far as like why we got upset at each other, but uh you know, it was um forgiving each other was why was not the point of that.

Yeah, and in that sense, forgiveness was about a choice to move forward regardless of what had happened in the past, right?

That's what we do with our spouses.

I mean, ultimately, we choose to move forward to believe we have a future together, regardless of the injury that was done to us in the moment of the past.

Like we choose that.

I I had what happened to me one time was I was in church and after going through that, bad stuff was after mass early in the morning, and I was sitting there behind the cage.

I don't know where she came from, she came up to me and she said, She put armor on me and was just trying to eyes and help me.

And I told her what I was going through, and she said, I have a grandson who was at college station, and yesterday he was driving from college station home and he was killed.

And I thought, oh my.

And and she walked away, and I never saw this woman again.

But I don't know who she was, but sometimes I think it was an angel or something because it put my suffering in perspective, and that was another thing.

Because I had grandchildren that were young.

And that was another thing that you're not gonna make.

But yeah, you can look at that and say no, actually, it's a human being.

And also we know that there are those fires and the cloudy bad and so forth is because we human beings are not paying attention, we're not trying to do what it takes to address the issue of climate.

And so to me, it it looks like yes, there are times I'm sure we've got you know whether or not God causes all these other things.

I don't know.

But I do know that there seems to be a difference uh from what is happening in this job story with what is happening with us today, which speaks of a different aspect of how sin affects us because we're doing it.

I mean, we're doing some of that.

I I appreciate what you're saying.

I think that's what I wanted to put natural evil up there.

You know, I think what's hard for us, like in Hurricane Harvey, is we had friends who we thought were good people.

They were trying hard, you know, they were caring people, and their house flooded, and actually maybe their neighbor's house didn't, and we knew those neighbors to be jerks.

So, I mean, I think part of it is like it is really hard that natural evil doesn't discriminate along lines of like moral character.

It'd be nice if it did.

In some ways, that would be nice if people got rewarded physically for trying hard and being good folks.

And um, pessimistically, I don't think they do.

I mean, actually, Jesus sort of says the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

And Harvey it did.

Yeah.

And the flooding fell on the just and the unjust, but not equally.

I mean, we know that.

Uh but that's but that's a hard condition.

And I don't think it's one that we solve mentally, because again, I think part of it is all of this stuff is so imprinted in us when we're when we're kids that you know A causes B and B causes C.

So we're we're looking at the stuff like, why did this happen to me?

And nobody says, Well, because you built your house in a hurricane zone.

You know.

I mean, I don't ever hear people in New Orleans say, like, we just should really reconsider rebuilding New Orleans.

Because in general, it's going to flood every 20 years.

Why did this happen?

Because you built in a flood zone.

Like, this is really bizarre.

And ultimately, like we don't choose to accept, like, geez, like that's inherent risk.

I mean, I have friends who, you know, like their kids play football and they get hurt and they're like, but he was such a good kid.

Yeah, and it's like such a dangerous sport.

Like, what did you think?

Like, God was going to give him a that only happen God only protects Tim Tebow, apparently.

Like, nobody else gets protected by God.

Um so just a few other uh code words, if I can, and then let's dive back into the tech.

Is that okay?

I can't really resist mixed up.

I already told you about the sea.

The sea is chaos, and you know, who knows what the Leviathan really is.

Job is clearly talking about a sea monster, and it could be the Loch Ness monster, but it's really like the agent of chaos.

And you need to know later God says, I made that for the fun of it.

You may think, why would God do that?

And the answer is for the fun of it.

Um just what happens is this old Jewish practice in the chapter two, Job sits down in silence for a week.

That's called a sh the sitting Shiva.

This is still true when it uh when a Jewish uh in a Jewish family should be.

When a loved person dies, like in your family, you sit and you mourn for a week, and your neighbors come and take care of you, and at the end of the week you get up and you function again, but you you don't go back to functioning, you sit.

You bury the dead within 24 hours, you must do that, and then you just sit and mourn.

And again, your neighbors feed you, they might talk to you, but you don't deal with insurance and what about work arrangements, you sit.

We as Americans are terrible at this.

It's actually a pretty interesting thing.

So notice they just they choose to sit in silence, which is probably the one good choice the friends make is to just sit with him.

They sort of break that later.

Um, a couple other things in Eliphaz's first speech, he talks about the lion, and you should know, like, hey, uh, there did in fact used to be lions in Syria, Palestine, but the lion is like a code speak for the strongest thing.

There is nothing, biblically speaking, stronger than a lion.

Even though we know that a Bengal tiger is in fact bigger and stronger than a lion, um, and so is a polar bear.

Never mind that.

Lion in the Bible is the strongest thing, whether it's actually a lion or not.

Um the other one is that Job does this interesting thing where he sort of asks kind of to put God on trial.

I don't know if you've noticed that.

Um that's a theme that he carries throughout.

And in Hebrew, that word is wreath.

Job has a wreath that's like a fundamental legal complaint that he wants to take sort of legal action.

Now keep in mind at the time, um, all courts were happened at the gate of the city.

They weren't official, they were like kangaroo courts, and the oldest people in town were the ones who adjudicated, not legally trained folk, because it just wasn't that.

So Job is saying basically, like what's happened is not fair, and I'm going to bring God to the elders.

I wish I could, because they would know this is not right.

You can't really think about the American legal system.

You can't think about um, yeah, you really can't think about that at all.

And the last bit that happens, and it's interesting we say this at general, um, last big code word is Job says, I know my Redeemer lives, and he's not talking about God.

He's talking about the entity that will represent him in his reeve, like his defense attorney, who is ultimately big and powerful enough to make God listen.

We read this at funerals.

I know my Redeemer lives, and at last I shall see God, and none of the stranger I'll see God face to face.

In the book of Job, though, that's not like a good thing exactly.

It's that I've got somebody powerful enough to make God listen to my complaint that God's unjust.

I didn't understand that.

Who are you thinking about?

We don't know.

Like a spiritual entity, perhaps another one of the sons of God.

Okay.

Don't know.

As Christians, we might say, oh, that's the Holy Spirit.

You know, we might say that.

And quite honestly, that wouldn't be bad.

I mean, if you think about if this is really helpful theology, if you think about the accuser is the chief prosecuting attorney who works for God, created being, the court-appointed defense attorney, the Holy Spirit, your advocate, is part of God.

So unlike in the court system where court-appointed defense attorneys stuck, and that's true, because the wages are terrible and the caseload's huge, you know, not that they're bad people, it's just hard to do.

Um, you get a really good court-appointed defense attorney.

Actually, part of who God is is defending you against accusations.

Sort of cool Trinitarian theology.

Well, I I thought that was pretty interesting thinking on his part.

That's just not really part of the but God was always in the other scriptures, he was the judge, and suddenly he says, No, I'm gonna judge him.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Or I wish there was someone who could because I'm too small to judge God.

God would just rub me into Sheol.

So I need somebody who God can't rub just straight into Sheol to represent me.

Okay.

Sir, how did this come to be in the Bible?

I mean, this is a book, it's a reason for being, but uh at what point, just at the point that you said at 300 CE, that it would have been written?

No, no, this was certainly written.

Um final composition of the book definitely happened before 500 BCE.

Okay.

So it's an old book.

Parts of it are much older than that.

And Linus sort of asked this before we started, which was naughty ever.

But I mean the question is like, why did they put this in the Bible?

What was the author's intent?

Who knows?

Whoever knows what the author's intent is.

And it was it's obvious that there was a strong intent that was applicable to most people or wouldn't have stayed.

You know, it's quite interesting about authorial intent.

You know that that poem by Robert Frost, The Road Less Traveled?

Yes.

Everybody reads it and thinks he's talking about ways of life.

And he said himself, no, I was just telling that two roads in one.

So sometimes authorial intent, frankly, doesn't matter to us.

Who knows what they intended?

But of course, they kept it because they found this meaningful as they tried to live this out.

And quite honestly, their meaning might be different from ours.

Um, did do people find this meaningful in struggling with theodysy?

Some do.

I find it really dissatisfying when that's the only thing I try to approach it with.

Um, so could there be other meanings that are meaningful to me?

Maybe.

Well, I think to me, every so often I'm really touched by the way the Bible speaks the real life for everybody.

And for me, uh, Job's reaction to all this horrible stuff that was happening to him is so human and so much like we often are that that's why it's important.

So righteous, don't you think?

And then who are you that do this to me?

Yeah, and it is an interesting thought to say does Job blame the wrong person for what happens?

And do we often blame God for cataclysms and tragedies and suffering when frankly God had nothing to do with it?

In I you know, I in general, like the stuff we get mad at God at is I was training for a marathon and my knee blew out.

As if God blew your knee out.

I mean, there is a way of life where we can think that, and to be honest, I think that's very appealing to us who want to make the world very, very logical.

In fact, our brain has evolved to try to make the most coherent story, true or not, out of the details in front of us.

Think about how gossip works.

Or somebody didn't answer you when you said good morning.

You immediately say, What does that mean?

Well, it might mean they didn't hear you.

But usually we don't think that.

Usually we think they are trying to snub me.

Because that's a coherent story in our brain.

True or not, it's very convincing.

Um, and and again, that's part of our evolution is to try to make a coherent story out of incongruous data.

But I think we all know that there is, in fact, some randomness to life.

Look at college applications.

Who gets in and who doesn't in any given year, right?

It may not be based on your merit.

It may be last year they let in a lot of women.

That was too many.

You never know that.

I mean, that's secret stuff or promotions at work or hires.

You never really know what's going on in the minds of people who are hiring.

Even if you're a hirer, you sort of get that sometimes you've got ulterior motives that you can't even communicate.

There I hope this doesn't sound bad, but it I I worked in Pasadena for a long time.

I was a principal, and and um Pasadena's a kind of I don't know if any of you heard Pasadena, but it's kind of a different place.

And for a long time, or for a short time, they had these bumper stickers that said shit happens.

And I read this, I I thought, oh my gosh, this is like Pasadena's old bumper sticker.

Just stuff happens.

Sort of does explain Pasadena.

I mean, that story's in the Bible.

I would tell you that's the Cain and Abel story.

And God says, yeah, that happens.

What are you gonna do about it?

You're gonna do evil with it or you're going to do good.

I mean, I that's I think that is part of the question.

Um without me being so evaluative though, let's go back into the the chapters we read, and please you draw out.

If you say, like, Mike, I know you just said it's not really about theodicy for you.

If it is for you, let's talk about that.

Okay.

Because there's not, again, when we read the Bible, there's not a right way.

I think there are some wrong ways.

I think it's wrong when it ended up something life-taking for other people.

When people lose life, I think we've read it wrong.

Or reacted to it wrong, either way, you know.

Um, but I think there's probably lots of okay ways.

To me, and um I agree with Sandra on a lot of points.

I think the parts of the Bible, or maybe all of the Bible, and Joe, this is a it's a personal thing.

I think we we glean the result and the answers for what works with us and what gives us peace.

And um even if things happen, but then other times when bad things happen, not really bad things, but say disappointments happen.

That if it's a comfort to us, we don't know then why, down the line, way down the line, if something good results because of that can be even better.

Some of us choose to believe whatever that was the we choose to believe that that's the answer to our why.

And I think whatever works for the individual that can provide peace and and devotion to God, and and that might be very elementary and not very theological, but um if it works for someone and if it provides comfort and peace.

I mean it never should, but it's sure that Casadina reminds me of that because when we came back to the US when Casadina wasn't all the time casual stuff when I was drinking one night and I had taken somebody somewhere, and then I got ready to go home and I looked and I had no gas.

And my first thought was, no, and I'm not feeling good.

I think that's how we're formed.

I mean again, I think that's part of it, is we as much as we say I don't believe that, like I think we may not know how deeply we've been we've been formed.

You know, you use the word peace, which I think is really helpful to think about.

Um, because we're doing that for Advent this Sunday, we're thinking about peace.

Yeah.

Normally we think about peace as quiet and stillness.

But um, you know, there's a different way to think about it.

The opposite of war is peace, right?

And war is about destruction.

And peace then must be about creation.

Um creating things is usually not very still and quiet.

Um the most peaceful thing I've seen is the birth of my daughter.

It was not quiet.

It was not still.

In fact, it was extremely violent.

But it was peaceful.

So, what kind of peace do we want with God?

I think that's an interesting question.

Something constructive or something that's still something that we're doing.

Um, maybe we can walk through each little s little talker just real fast.

Does that seem okay?

I mean, with our remaining time?

Because again, we read it.

I don't necessarily want to give you my summary, but you know, like as a as a summary.

You know, the first thing that Eliphaz seems to say is this rule that's sort of deductive reasoning.

Innocent don't suffer, therefore you did something bad.

That's the rule.

So if you're suffering, you did something bad.

And he sort of says, hey, listen, um, God disciplines.

So look, just repent.

Notice he doesn't say that God punishes you to get even.

God doesn't do, this is a key word, he doesn't say that God's justice is retributive.

He says God's justice is corrective.

So think about when you had kids, sometimes, or if you've been around little kids, think about the ways we discipline children, right?

Sometimes we choose spanking, and the question is, does that get even with an offense or is it corrective?

Now, sometimes you have to say, if you touch that stove, it's gonna burn you.

Whatever, right?

I mean, I'm not, I don't have an answer.

I'm not an anti-spanker.

I just mean sometimes we send our kids to timeouts, but we do it to punish them instead of to give them time to reset.

Which is why sometimes as adults, we don't want to take a timeout because that's punishment instead of, no, actually, I need time to catch my breath.

If we reframed it, we'd say timeouts are a really good thing for people who are all worked up.

I'll take one, not as a punishment, but so I can function better.

And if we approach our kids that way, then they learn timeouts are actually good things in moments of nutsity, right?

So I don't think LF has is saying God gives spankings to get even.

I think he's saying, listen, when we make a mistake, we get some consequences so we can grow.

And of course, Job's reply is can you he says a couple interesting things, right?

Um You're a bad friend, for one.

Um do do words, do your words trump mine?

Like, can can you actually he says, can you reprove words with words?

Trying to negate what I've said means you didn't listen to me.

That's an interesting thought, right?

In some ways, this book also tells us how to be a good friend.

And ultimately, what Job says, none of his friends are good because they're all trying to tell him what his suffering means instead of listening to him.

You know this instinctually, that when people tell you what to do without your asking, they didn't listen to you.

Most of us bristle at that.

The other thing I think that's helpful corollary, and I just read this article, so I can't resist it.

This is called um, this is called narcissistic conversation.

Where somebody's dad dies and you say something like, Yeah, my dad died, you know, when I was 15.

Why did you make it about you?

Well, we want to relate, but in fact, what we did was we just sort of said, Well, that happened to you, but let's talk about me.

His friends do that, you see.

They're bad friends, and we're all bad friends.

Not all the time.

You know, but this is an interesting model for pastoral care.

Uh Job says stuff like, I wish God would kill me.

Here, right.

Um, wow, that's really despair.

I've had that thought before.

Because then I could die with some sense of justice instead of having to live in this other bit.

Micah can't believe you just said that.

Be a good friend and listen.

I mean, this is part of the deal, right?

You're not supposed to feel like that.

Says who?

Right?

I mean, this is again, I think, another way to read the book about what love is about among friends.

How do we listen to each other and respond?

And he says something really, really interesting.

Job says, What are human beings that you care about us?

We live so short, we're like a breath.

You know, in the Psalms, Job's quoting a psalm.

What is human, what are humans that you're mindful of us?

You made us a little bit lower than the angels.

In the Psalms, that's a good thing.

We're low and you still care about us.

How precious to me are your thoughts to God, how vast is it.

Some of them, if I were to count them, they were down under the grains of sand.

Very positive.

Job says, we should leave me alone.

Why do you care about us?

And we should care less.

I want you to know, interestingly enough, as a Christian fundamentalist, where every decision I made was tipping me closer to hell.

God loved me but pretty much hated me.

Um I found some real resonance with that.

Like, God, why are you always watching me?

Can I just go to the bathroom?

Like alone.

I like some privacy.

Why are you there with a because I I thought God had a checklist, you know, like a naughty nice book, and God was writing all the naughty things.

I mean, we actually learned that in church.

So it was like, God, I mean, I saw so much pressure all the time.

Can I have a break?

Was God judging my dreams?

I mean, I even thought God was judging me for what I dreamt, which I had like, as far as I know, no control about.

So, like, there's some interesting thought there, you know?

If you were Catholic, you went to confession every Friday and then you curious.

Yeah.

If you were Catholic, you went to confession every Friday as a kid, and then you didn't have to live, and then you got over it.

You know, all of this that he says that he wished had not been born, and uh how he describes you wishes that had never come from the woman, and uh that God would leave him alone.

There was no mention ever that he ever thought about taking his online because she was dead.

But uh he just wished he didn't have to suffer anymore.

Uh-huh, but he never once troubled care of it myself.

Yeah, I don't know about you.

I mean, I do think it's not an abnormal thought to just sort of I wish it could just be over now.

Um, Bill Bed says, uh, hey, maybe you didn't do anything wrong, maybe your kids did.

So you're just getting collateral damage.

I mean, after all, you know, they're the ones that died, not you.

So look like it's possible.

We know that's a little tough because Job's been offering sacrifices on behalf of his kids from the beginning.

And you know, think about how well that would work if your child died from um, I don't know, lymphoma at the age of five, and someone said, Well, maybe your kid sinned.

How would that work for you?

I'd have to restrain myself from violence.

You know, I mean I think.

Then Job's reply, right, is that I mean, God's just too big to respond to.

And on that point, right?

Does God know what it's like to be a human?

I mean, does God understand that this cataclysm that God could probably easily weather because God's immortal and strong and etc., is not weatherable by human beings?

Does God have empathy?

Of course, you know the Christian answer to this is that's the incarnation.

But, but, sometimes in calamity, I do think we wonder, does God know how much this hurts?

And if so, why is God doing it to me?

And just come to back here, right?

Oh.

Zophar kind of says, you're right.

God is big.

Your point of view is limited.

Like you just don't have all the facts and evidence.

Maybe you did something by accident.

Or maybe you're just seeing this wrong because you're only looking at the trees and God has a view of the forest.

I mean, there's truth to that, don't we think?

Would you want someone telling you that when your child died from cancer?

I suspect not.

Even if there is truth in it, it doesn't solve your crisis.

This is where Job introduces that word reveal against God.

I'm going to bring a case against God and says this really interesting thing to his friends.

You speak proverbs of ashes.

He also says, you know, if you cut a tree down, it can regrow, but people don't do that.

And God has cut me down.

This phrase is quite interesting.

It's actually the phrase of a book written by two feminist theologians about how we misunderstand the death of Jesus and what it means.

Because in general, we tend to understand that Jesus died, took a spanking in our place.

That's called penal substitutionary atonement.

This is the title of the book.

They say that's a proverb of ashes because it justifies violence against other people and says suffering is redemptive, and sometimes suffering is just suffering.

So it's a really interesting phrase.

And I think it's a great phrase to think about again in the love category, if we choose to think about that, how often we speak proverbs of ashes to other people.

I'm sure none of you would say, God wanted your child to be a rose in the garden of heaven, but people do say that.

Proverb of ash.

I'm sure none of you would say, when a woman is beat by her husband, go back and bring them to the Lord with your long suffering.

Pastors, in fact, say that shit.

So it's an interesting thing.

We can really see it distinctively, but do we see it on the small scale?

Sometimes when we listen, instead of going to that dangerous place of suffering with our friend, we want to control it so it doesn't affect us.

That's called narcissistic conversation.

It's when we take control so that we don't have to go into that place of uncertainty and pain.

Lots of proverbs of bashes.

I think the church history is pretty full of them.

I just want to be honest, right?

And that's our biggest problem as preachers do we get up and proclaim things that are life-giving, or frankly, things that are full of death?

That are full of death.

Hey, listen, Job, you're undermining religion.

Which is bad.

Although he might be right.

And Job might offer to undermine some of our religion so that something healthier could grow in its place.

I mean, again, that's the interesting thing about Job might be offering a different kind of peace that takes massive reconstruction, you know, and is loud and crazy.

But in the end, but in the end, has grown something new.

No, God's not your enemy.

God's good all the time.

It's just because you're wrong.

Proverbs of Ashes.

This is an interesting thing.

You may not agree with it.

You may not agree with it, but it's an interesting thing that Jeremy responds with, right?

I think he's right.

Bildad says, listen, man, wickedness is temporal.

It doesn't last long.

I mean, in the end, righteousness lives longer than wickedness.

So buck up, it's gonna turn out okay in the end.

Not something you want to tell somebody when their five-year-old died of lymphoma.

I mean, again, you just have to sort of read through that.

Um this is when Job says, I know my Redeemer lives, and God's made me a laughing stock.

Continuing on the theme, obviously God's the adversary, right?

Um reveling in wickedness leads to death, and you're reveling in your quote unquote innocence, which is really you reveling in your wickedness because you're not innocent.

That's his response, and Job says, Well, in fact, the wicked live and prosper.

And prosper.

Yeah.

It's like, hey, no, you're you're wrong about that rule because there's some really evil people who steal money and they sleep on the bed of money until they die at a ripe old age.

By the way, this is you see why in Jewish Christian tradition we decided we needed heaven and hell because the world isn't just.

So justice must happen later.

That's what we decided.

You understand why that makes sense?

Because that way it does, in fact, all come out in the wash.

But when they don't have that mindset, you see, then the world is fundamentally a fun unjust place, as is the universe.

We tend to say the world's unjust, but the universe is.

In Judeo-Christian tradition.

I talked way too much.

I won't talk so much next week, I promise.

Well, no, yeah, no, it's interesting.

I think I think he's clarified and aligned and but I can tell you, and I want to make sure I, since I talk so much, I'll just say one last bit here.

Um I think this book is more about less about theodicy than the other stuff.

But you know, I at the end of the day, I didn't really always know what to do with it myself because as I told you up front, I've got really broken relationships in my life, and I'm not really sure what this book is telling me about that.

Hang on.

It's not your fault, or it is your fault?

Listen to people who are abusive to you, like be a good friend to them when they're abusing you, and what does that look like?

Does forgiveness mean there's no accountability?

At what point do we have to sever a relationship, even if we're forgiving them?

At what point do we have to cut ties so that we have life?

I think when God sometimes takes people out of our lives, we don't need to be chasing after them.

But you have to convince yourself that that was the point that was meant to be.

Well, and I and I think even one step further, when do we know to push them out of our lives?

Instead of being passive, when do we need to be active and say uh I actively am stopping this relationship?

And it looks like this, and accountability seems harsh.

It's not coming out of a place of harshness, it's coming out of a place for life for me.

That's I mean, those are really hard questions, you know, and I'm suspicious everyone's dealt with that with a sorry with a family member, whether it was one of your parents or your siblings or even your kids or one of your brothers or sisters or aunts or uncles, you know?

And we manage that differently because some aunts and uncles, we don't see them much and we just don't see them.

But when it's somebody you're intimately related to, like if your father or your mother abused you, what do you do?

What do you do?

Well, Christians forgive.

Well, that's fine, but what does forgiveness look like?

Does it mean you allow yourself to be continued to be abused, or does it mean you say, I'm gonna let that go, but I'm also not gonna see you anymore?

And I this see the thing is the book doesn't answer any of those questions.

But I think it probably starts the conversation in which we're invited to say, How do we answer those questions?

Uh we'll we'll talk more next week.