The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

Which begins: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” How many of those do you know?

This is a terrible, terrible story, as any parent who has lost a child will tell you. But of course it is just a story, told and written more for the art of telling than in any sort of reality. Imagine, if you can, a God who would let Satan take from a blameless man everything he has in the world, including his ten children, just to prove to the devil how good and steadfast the man is.

Someone once said the story of Job is one of the most important in the bible,  because it shows us that God is not responsible for evil. That statement’s so full of contradictions it makes no sense at all. So God lets Satan play games with his creations? Just to settle a bet? What In heaven does that make God?

Toward the end of the long, long poem, God and Job have an extended conversation, after which God arranges for Job to accumulate far more riches and goods than he had before, and gives him ten more children. Job, I assume, is supposed to be happy again; that’s one of the points of the story. But as a father who has lost a child, I know nothing could ever replace that child, and a parent who loses a child can never be one hundred percent happy again; there will always be that hole in his or her heart. So to me, the only worth of the story of Job – as, probably, the originator intended – is in the telling. The language. The similes, analogies, descriptions, and power. If there’s a more serious message than God hates and smites the wicked, and blesses the good, and that you shouldn’t blame God or lose faith in Him when things go bad, I’m missing it.

It does, however, take the heat off of God by presenting an answer to the age old question about why bad things happen to good people. The devil did it.