The Tragedy and Farce of Job

by A Former Believer Reads 

I have just finished rereading the Book of Job and reviewing again Carl Jung’s fine essay, ‘Answer to Job,’ a work I used in part for my master’s thesis. Here I will produce some (I think) authentic ideas, and still borrow from Jung’s work as his insights from the 1950s are still relevant in reading Job’s story today. I highly suggest reading Jung here; not so much because his ideas in psychology are still relevant to the field (they may be; I am not a psychologist), but because his reading of Job and of Christian history is provocative and offers a strong alternative to more classical readings of this text.

When I was young, I was taught that the story of Job was about how humans must trust in God even as the mysteries of suffering become real. And that the character of Job was the ultimate example of this trust. That Job, despite losing everything, was a hero because, even as he felt unjustly punished by his Lord, he still trusted that God (being all-loving, -powerful, and -knowing) had a plan for him, and never stooped to ‘curse God and die,’ as his wife urged him.

Remember, Job lost all his wealth, his children, his servants – lost all except for his wife and health. All destroyed in various ways; his sons and daughters killed by a strong wind – a whirlwind. Also, his three (really four) friends come to condemn him and correct his mistaken theology. Then, out of a new whirlwind, comes the booming voice of God to basically tell him that, I, God, am all powerful and all-knowing and that you, Job, can’t really understand my ways because you’re a finite creature and know nothing. Then, in the final act of this drama, the Lord blesses his suffering servant with a new house, children, wealth, and health. Nice job, God.

What I want to say about this story is the length of a book. What I can say here in this short space, though, are just the opening notes to that longer work. 

The true lesson of Job’s story is not that humans suffer but must trust in God’s plan for that suffering to make sense, if at all possible, for our understanding of God’s ways is finite. The real lesson of Job is both tragedy and farce. For about 34 chapters, Job and his friends trade theological jabs with each other, trying to represent the correct ways to think about God – His justice, His righteousness, His power. Job knows that he’s being unjustly punished and has done no wrong that could account for his misfortunes. He begs for a hearing before God, who, even as He appears unjustly mysterious, must (Job hopes) be also just and righteous. Job’s pals probe for any possible flaws and sins and evil thoughts that reside in Job, because they know that, because God is perfect, He – God – couldn’t possibly be to blame for this morass.

I wondered, as I read Job this time through, what Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu (who enters the scene late in the act), Job’s wife, and Job himself would think about God if they’d been privy to the opening two chapters of this tragic farce.

God’s heavenly court – ‘the sons of God,’ along with Satan, who is one of them – convenes one day and it is the Lord who draws Satan’s attention to ‘my servant Job.’ It is the Lord who, when Satan wonders about Job’s loyalty, suggests testing Job from an God-ego need, by taking everything but his life, to see if Job is who God already thinks he is.

This act happens twice in the first two chapters. The first time, God gives permission for Satan to take Job’s children and all his possessions. The second time Satan appears, God says that Job holds fast, even though ‘you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause’ (Revised Standard Version). And the Lord – the all-loving Lord – allows Satan to take even more away from this victim of a heavenly ego war he’s had nothing to do with and no knowledge of.

The textual fact that God ‘makes it up’ to Job in the end by giving him more stuff can in no way mitigate the needless suffering Job endured. Job almost curses God in the middle movement and the reader can hear that, even as Job weakly and finally repents (of what?) to God, he does so more out of fear of this immature creator than from any love he can muster. How can he trust a God who’s violent without reason? 

To better understand this tragedy, let’s shift focus from the protagonist for a minute. What was the purpose in killing the innocent servants (by the swords of an attacking clan, even as the field animals were stolen), Job’s sheep and shepherds (by a God-sent fire from Heaven, consuming them in horrible pain), and his children (when a house collapses upon them from God’s holy tornado)? Imagine the cries of human pain and anguish created, all from a bet between God and His Heavenly consigliere. Can God ever really make it up to this man whom He's tortured; Who will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his days wondering if this ‘loving’ God won’t do this again, and never knowing why in the first place?

What Jung helps the reader see is an alternative to the more traditional readings. He looks at the Hebrew Bible, at the Christian traditions around this work, and at historical and apocryphal books, then blends this with his own psychological understandings. What we learn from Jung is that this picture of God is one of a character who does not yet have the capacity yet to understand, because He does not consult His own omnipotence, His horrific actions against the creation. Satan is part of God in this reading. Satan is a son of God who represents God’s dark side.  

Jung goes on in his essay to dig deep into Christian theology around the effort of the Creator to make things right via Christ – His second son – in the Christian era. I won’t get into this here, but it is a reading that pays off, even if one does not buy all the elements Jung offers.

I will end here by saying that I don’t consider my interpretation offered here as definitive or the only way to see the story of Job. But I do think it is consistent with the books of the bible that come before it and in the spirit of so much of what is in the scripture overall. But these are topics for other essays in the future, I think. In so much of what transpires in the Christian Old Testament one can hear the desperate cries of finite creatures as they reach up to a God who acts from His egoistic need to be loved and feared at the same time. Poor Job and his innocent children were just one group of victims out of many.

 

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