domingo, 17 de abril de 2011

Essay on Job


Nataly Arenas
Philosophy of Christianity

The book of Job is one that most Christians purposely avoid because of its tedious, long, and hard-to- understand speeches.  What sometimes we forget is that it makes part of the wisdom books, one who will broad your understanding of the character of God and is necessary for each Christian to read in order to uncover the heresy of the prosperity theology, learn about theodicy and therefore use apologetics to strengthen other’s and your own faith.  
The book of Job can be classified not only as a wisdom book but as a historical piece. The story of Job is simple to understand but hard to interiorize because it uncovers a reality that can change your entire vision of how Christianity works. The first two chapters explain the basic situation, where Job was a man who probably lived before God had established his covenant with Abraham.  Job was blameless before the people and upright before the Lord. He feared God and shunned evil. There is also a very impressive description regarding his wealth. He was the greatest man among all the people in the East and he was also the priest of his family. The Bible says that Job’s regular custom was to make sacrifices early in the morning for his children in case that they cursed God in their hearts.
One day, when the enemy presented himself before the Lord, God addressed Job’s piety. The enemy replied with a rhetorical question in which he implied that Job had a conditional righteousness upon God’s blessing, but if God would stretch out his hand and strike everything he had, Job would surely curse him to His face.  God accepted the wager and let the enemy take away Job’s wealth and family, but not his health.  The next time that the enemy went before the Lord, “the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason." (Job 2:3).
 One of the things that was the most complicated for me when studying the book of Job was theodicy, which is answering the problem of evil justifying God.  How do you demonstrate God’s justice in a book where he seems to be entirely the opposite? This book says that even though Job was pious before the Lord, God destituted him of every possession, his family and his health “for no reason”. And also, near the end, God also restituted everything to Job, which seemed like he was compensating him for some wrong he did to him. At a first glance, God’s justice seemed completely gone, but then, I was forced into looking deeper into the book, and only then I understood God’s greater justice and mercy throughout every situation. As it says in I Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” God’s justice is evident in this verse, God knew that Job could withstand this terrible trial and come out with a new and strengthened character.  
Apparently, Job suffered without any reason, but what this means is that he did not sin in order to deserve punishment. But God DID have a reason; God might have tested Job in order to see whether he had a conditional or unconditional faith, or perhaps to show His glory.                     But even if God did not have a reason, justice is not the only thing that matters. We don’t really want God to be just with us! If he were just we would all be dead because we are sinners. God doesn’t worry that much about being just, but about being merciful and compassionate.  Grace is breaking justice, and God is graceful. We will never understand some of these things due to our limited minds. The only thing that is required from us is faith, and trust in God’s perfect will for our lives. As Romans 8:28 says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” One last time, God is also just because at the end, he answers Job’s prayer by appearing to him; God confronts and comforts Job, and finally Job doesn’t need any more explanations, he just sees God and is satisfied. If God had explained everything that had happened to Job, we would all be waiting for God to explain our own suffering, which most of the times does not happen.
This leads us to another important point. God wants our righteousness, and this is evident because he had a fatherly pride on Job’s piety, (this proves that Eliphaz’s rhetorical question, “What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous?” was completely mistaken.) But not only this, God also wants our unconditional faith.  It doesn’t matter if we are suffering, we have to remain righteous, like Job did even though he was pressured by his wife to curse God and die. There are many people that think that we should only be pious in order to earn God’s grace and salvation, and this is a great falsehood, which again addresses the heresy of the prosperity theology. According to Zophar, Job was suffering because of his own wickedness; but now I understand that this theology was so wrong that it was sinful and Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar had to make sacrifices for their sin and only Job could pray for them in order for God to forgive them. God was furious at how these three friends insulted His just and holy character and how they failed to comfort Job. The truth is that even the most righteous people suffer, and we have great examples, starting with Jesus, then Paul, David, Daniel, Joseph, and many others.
Job’s problem was that he fixed his eyes upon his own little problem, forgetting God’s sovereignty. And Although Job 2:3 says that he did not sin by charging the Lord with wrong doing, we have to keep in mind that there were many things that Job said afterward that seemed to blaspheme against God (without cursing him or losing fellowship with him), and God’s appearance in anger at the end confirmed Job’s missteps.
We learn from this book that sometimes we have to step back and get out of our own individual problem in order to see God’s justice, which is not always evident, except on an universal scale. And like Job, our faith has to be unbought and unconditional; in order for it to be successful we do not necessarily have to ask God the reason of our suffering, but trust that His will is perfect and that our character will be perfected and purified by the trial. At the end, we should only want to see God’s face and feel satisfied by his presence; He Himself shall be the answer to all our problems. We should not serve God in order for him to like us, but in gratitude for what he has already done.


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