Job Serves a Summons on God

"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." Job 1:1

"Perfect"?   No authorship is claimed or implied, including God or Job.  It’s the first indication that Job is a parable.  Then later, the author has Job getting frustrated:

"If only someone would listen to me! Look, I will sign my name to my defense. Let the Almighty answer me. Let my accuser write out the charges against me." Job 31:35

But there are no charges, leaving Job with his frustration and his unanswered question, Why?

 Job is perhaps the most enigmatic book in the Bible.  Some also claim that it's the most deistic book in the Bible, but I think it was written as an apologetic for revealed Judaism in answer to that very question religious leaders most often hear, Why?

Revealed religions, by that very act of revelation, are unable to consider the possibility that God must not interact; and it isn't that God can't, it's that God MUST not—in order to preserve our free will.  Consider The Book of Life.  If there were such a book where our names are written from the foundation of the world, then we were all either damned or saved from the beginning. What, then, would be the point or meaning of our mortal lives--for God or ourselves?  Why would a supernatural God go to all that trouble to create this 13 billion year old natural universe, and put us through all these trials and tribulations if our fates were pre-ordained?  The Book of Life can only be a human forgery.

To make a very long story short, Job refuses the advice of friends and his wife to curse God, choosing instead to sue God, forcing God to make an appearance. Job's evidence is many oaths as to his perfection as a human. God does make an appearance in a whirlwind, but instead of answering Job, God sarcastically asks:  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell [Me], if you have understanding."....Job 38:1 & 4  (The arrogance here can be nothing more than priestly intimidation in place of providing an answer.)

IOW, the author is having God say, “who are you, any of you, to ask that question of ME?”  The author, as anyone who’s advocating for the existence of an interactive, personal God, has no answer.  But there is an obvious answer—free will, so that the choices we make are truly our own, but that necessitates God’s non-intervention.  [i]That's the why of it.[/i]

This is clearly a human parable, which is further accentuated by the fact that not only is Job's wealth and status replaced, but he gets a new set of children, like so much chattel.  Although Job doesn't get the answer he was suing for, his being wronged is supposedly righted.  It's tantamount to a divine admission of guilt.

God?  Guilty???  What’s really going on here!

The author, attempting to answer Job’s question (actually accusation), fails miserably; and in an attempt to cover it up, he sweeps his non-answer under the rug by obscuring it under endless chapters of involved dialogue.  When one finally comes upon “God’s answer”, it’s very anti-climactic and intuitively unsatisfying.  But the author had to do something.  Like every other believer in a revealed, interactive God, he believed that God must interact with us and if nothing else tell us what is moral, but in fact, we already know (see below).  IOW, the whole assumption, the whole premise is wrong. God does not, cannot, and must not intervene....ever—not even to let us know that “He” exists.  Revealed religions over the millennia have felt the need to try to answer the Why?, because it is asked so often, but whatever answer they come up with, it always negates free will and rings hollow.

Even with the seemingly senseless death of an innocent child, God's non-interference is a monument to “It's” commitment to our free will, and a prime indication of its importance; the exercise of which is the purpose for the universe itself.  At least, when we grieve, it need not be compounded by that question.

God, therefore, must remain hidden.  We can never come close to knowing that “It” exists and that is insured by there being no actual evidence (other than human hearsay) whether God exists or doesn't.

What we have with Job is a priest or religious leader who continually has people coming to him asking Why? Why do bad things happen to those who are good, and good things to those who are bad.  I prayed but my faith that can move mountains did nothing. What is God doing?  Why doesn’t He do something? It's a very fair question, otherwise why should they be praying to and worshiping God, can they believe that God is good, or that "It" even exists? It's a question we're raising even more loudly today.

But suffering and injustice still happen with God watching.  Yes they do, and beyond explaining the reason for it, our free will, we must remember that this is but our threescore and ten against the backdrop of eternity.

So God, if He exists, must not even so much as answer Job's question. The answer is there and has been there imbedded in our psyches ever since the Garden of Eden parable where Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and became self-aware.  Thus, instead of Adam saying "Adam want Eve", he declared, "I want You."  Self-awareness also means that we inherently know what is moral because we can put ourselves in another’s situation.  And, unlike the animals, our awareness condemns us to possess the knowledge that we will eventually die.

Why?

Why?  That's the question we learn to pester our parents with, because they can never give an answer that doesn't draw another "Why?", until they resort to the "because I say so" be all, end all, this discussion of over answer.  It's the question that expresses the angst we all feel at times when bad things happen to good people and vice versa.  "Why her?", "Why him?", "Why me?", "Why now?"  I'm sure it was even asked when pristine victims were sacrificed to volcanoes.

The author of the biblical Book Of Job gives the divine equivalent of the parental "because I say so":  "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38:4,7  This passage was used as a prologue in the movie, The Tree of Life, about a family grappling with the death of one of their children.  So is that all we get, are we so insignificant and unimportant.   Or might there be an answer after all.

Revealed religion ultimately must resort to such an answer, because there can be no rational explanation for us, or Job, that could come from a revealed, personal, interactive God.   But, if God exists, there is an answer to the question, albeit a hard one that we must deduce for ourselves:  Free Will.  God must not interfere because to do so would undermine the gift of free will that God created the natural, rational universe to provide for us.  Can we make our hard moral choices and have them be our own if God is looking over our shoulder.  It appears that God has gone to a lot of trouble to put a barrier between us, a barrier of 13+ billion years and a Big Bang; and to place us (have us evolve naturally) on a natural, rational stage (the universe), in which to make rational moral choices.  God must not violate God' own laissez faire Prime Directive of non-interference without destroying our free will which is established for both God's and our benefit.

So when tragedy strikes or good fortune comes, we will still grieve or celebrate, but knowing the reason God won't interfere, we needn't be tortured with the question why.

A common question that usually comes up is, "Can an omnipotent God put something outside God's own control?"  Wouldn't that be a limitation on God's omnipotence if God couldn't?  There doesn't appear to be anything else God couldn't do in an instant.  God could create an infinite host of angels to sing God's praises, but they would ultimately be nothing but an extension of God, thus God singing praises to God's own self.  He could have created the universe 100 years ago or 6000 years ago with all indications that the universe had come to be13 billion years ago, and  with memories of our past, but that would have been a lie--the one thing that God cannot be or do.  God is Truth and Truth is God.  We, with our unfettered free will, are the only possible source of a lie in or out of the universe.  All other life is innocent.  We are the only ones with fully developed self-awareness, therefore capable of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We're the only ones who can put ourselves in the place or situation of another.

So if God is not personal or interactive, does that mean God doesn't want our love, or worship?  No, but  not even knowing if God exists we can't express it directly, and in fact we must use a proxy.  But what proxy would not be equivalent to idolatry?  Only one thing, Truth, the moral pursuit of which is what we should be about--whether God exists or not.

It's a hard thing to accept but the only difference between a deist, laissez-faire God and atheism, is hope--and, concerning the existence God, those are the only two reasonable choices.  All else is hearsay evidence for the irrational and supernatural in this totally natural universe, which has been so since its beginning.

Why is free will so important to us and God?  This profound quote has stood the test of  time:

"If you love something, set it free.  If it comes back to you, it's yours.  If it doesn't, it never was."--Richard Bach, Johnathan Livingston Seagull.