Where is God?
by Debbonnaire Kovacs
The lectionary is particularly interesting this week—Job 23 and Psalm 22 side by side. In Job 23, Job wails, “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?” And Psalm 22 presages Jesus wailing the same question from the cross, the fulcrum of human, perhaps of universal history: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
There is no human who, at some point, has not been (or will not be) in this spot. I particularly remember one night some years ago, standing outside by the burn barrel, watching flames leap into the darkness. I said despairingly, “God, if a human being promised to take care of me, to be with me always, to never forsake me and to ‘make all that my hand does prosper,’ and then acted as invisible as you are acting right now, I would leave that person. I would refuse to be a friend or to trust that person ever again!”
Can you remember a time, perhaps many times, when you have wept over this seeming contradiction?
Job, in his desolation, having lost more than I ever have, from wealth to health to children (the worst loss possible to a human, I verily believe), takes a deep, wavering breath and continues with a faith that just can’t let go, “No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.” No matter how unbearable everything was, Job couldn’t not believe in the ultimate trustworthiness of his God, though the journey through darkness continued for a long time before being resolved—not by the answers to his questions, but by the reassurance that God really was there and listening.
Jesus, having lost more than any of us can even begin to imagine—
—-take a minute to try—-
—went straight to “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” Even less than Job could Jesus imagine a world in which his Father actively abandoned him, no matter what things looked and felt like.
So, with the weight of that history behind me, but not with so much dignity or poetry, or even so much faith and trust, I looked skyward beside my burn barrel and yelled, “You can’t make me not believe in you!!” And then whispered, “I’m with Peter. Where else would we go?”
I hold to that, still. Where else is there? No matter what.
I cannot subscribe to the book of Job in general, other than as an allegory or parable. To consider our God as one who is 'taking bets' with Satan as to whether Job will crack under this or that pressure would surely be a deal breaker for me. How does Satan even have that kind of 'access' anyway? Was he not 'cast down' by then? As ludicrous a story as Lazurus and the rich man.
The mistake too often made is to read the Bible stories as literal. Job is an allegory and raises the eternal questions: "Why"? And there are no answers. Maybe we should not stop asking, but cease expecting and answer.
"The mistake too often made is to read the Bible stories as literal."
Agreed.
"Job is an allegory and raises the eternal questions:"
Perhaps, no one quite knows, but certainly could be. Isn't one theory that it is in effect a large parable of Moses (or rather OT authors and redactors)? Not sure personally.
""Why"? And there are no answers. Maybe we should not stop asking, but cease expecting and answer."
True, to a point. Don't the 3 friends represent three common theodicies of the day? And isn't Eliphaz possibly a later redaction? That's the theory anyway.
A large point of the story though is that Job himself doesn't ever actually get to see the drama between God and Satan. Job complains and asks why, and God effectively says – who are you puny human to know the bigger picture? God doesn't actually enter a theological debate in justifying His actions – He simply says His actions are beyond Job's comprehension.
What I find most interesting is that Job’s own attempt to bargain with God is probably the most human of human responses – we all do it, which is what is really appealing. We can all feel pawns in some great cosmic game sometimes, and whilst we might not understand life, we should be careful about making moral accusations about whether people ultimately deserve or do not deserve good luck or not. Life really is a mystery, and always will be.
Does Elaine think the narratives of Jesus in the 4 gospels are also allegorical? Give me a break! Anything that someone doesn't like in Scripture is easily discounted by calling it allegorical, metaphorical, or simply an illustration. Scripture becomes useless if we play that game.
Even if it is allegorical, doesn't mean it isn't true either. Jesus' told parables, and they tell us some of the greatest and deepest truths of God human beings can know.
But Scriptural passages that were clearly meant to be taken as factual history are passed off as allegories so that they don't have to be believed as fact if they happen to disagree with current scientific or theological "truth." That leads to all kinds of strange theology, and makes it difficult separate truth from error. This plays right into the devil's hands.
We don't actually know if Job is intended as factual. I recall reading somewhere that some scholars believe it is a long parable about 'a far off country', something similar to Jesus' parable about the prodigal son. I can't remember all the details but the story appears to be set in a middle eastern society, but not Canaan. But ultimately I really don't think it matters that much.
"There is no human who, at some point, has not been (or will not be) in this spot."
Especially true since the spot you stand on is the centre of the universe.
And perhaps of course unless you are somewhere deep in the Antarctic, or are currently on a ship in the ocean. Sorry, I am just being silly.
"“God, if a human being promised to take care of me, to be with me always, to never forsake me and to ‘make all that my hand does prosper,’ and then acted as invisible as you are acting right now, I would leave that person. I would refuse to be a friend or to trust that person ever again!”"
Going on what I said earlier, we all try to bargain with God. We all try to control God, which in many ways is the essence of magic or pagan religion. In pagan religion, who make a statue of the deity, who perform certain prescribed rituals, and that in effect forces the deity to give you what you want.
The Hebrew transcendant God I AM is different. He can't be controlled. When you try to bend Him to your will, He says, 'Who are youn puny human, who thinks he is so great, but really just another little animal on this little world.' Yahweh doesn't bend; we bend to Him. When the Jews were taken into Babylon, it wasn't because Yahweh was weak or inferior to other gods; rather, it was the people who were weak.
This is the hard lesson Job had to learn. We can always pray to God, and we should do so, but prayer isn't pagan magic.
The thing that concerns me is the growing rise of 'magic prayer' within Christianity. Sure, there is always an element to it in our petitions to God, as bargaining with God is a very human thing to do. But Christians today, especially those who practice Prosperity Gospel and Deliverance Ministries, have made prayer into an elaborate, highly liturgical magical ritual.
It is perhaps for this reason that Christ's teachings on prayer were so raddically simple, short and informal. We can truly move a mountain, but not because in prayer we force God to obey our will, but rather because in prayer, we become conduits for His Will.
Both allegories and myths have a greater truth to tell than actual literal stories.
Aesop's Fables tell truths that are timeless. Some of the children's fairy tales convey good morals. Whether Jesus' parables actually occured, there were truths and that is why he told them–it relays facts in a way that literality often is unable to project.
Was the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in hell an allegorical tale to convey a truth? Why are all the other parables literal and this one is not?
No arguments from me.
All the other parables are not literal. For example when Jesus was telling about if your eye offends you, pluck it out………. It would simply be absurd if this was literal.
A question, is the Bible in its original writ inerrant?
How can we who don't know the original be sure?
What's the most trusted and understood translation today?
People many years ago told and relished stories: there were no books and their learning was based on oral communication. The story of the Garden of Eden was a story, often told, which is why it is recorded in the Bible and why each day's activities parallels the Babylonian creation story. The Sumerian story of the flood predates the biblical story by many centuries, with only a few minor differences but one that they had heard about that happened in the distant past and kept alive by retelling the story.
This is the reason Jesus used parables: just as Aesop's Fables were also parables, they express universal situations in allegorical format. It is unimportant whether they ever actually happened (is Aesop's story of the rabbit and the turtle literally true?) because the intent was not the details of the story but the message it conveyed. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus corresponded to beliefs of hell that were common at that time, so they understood it's true meaning: care for the poor; and that riches did not mean blessings from God.
Thanks, Elaine. Are you saying then, that as some scientists believe (Steven Novella, Yale School of Medicine), that our perception, memory, and sense of reality is an utterly flawed construct? That sometimes, philosophies regarding fables, parables and allegories can be more reliable than historical evidence, albeit not scientific?
songbird,
Never heard of Novella, but humans are not flawless creatures. But it is very true that myths, fables and allegories have been told since the world began because they convey truths that everyone can grasp: the illiterate, the child, the intellectual, IOW, they are understood universally. This is why they are used.
For literal and historical facts, that is a different world. When history is studied we want to know the facts if they can be ascertained. But even history is biased and becomes more reliable if there are several sources that can be substantiated among them. The older the accounts that are written, the less they can be verified. The title of earliest historian is bestowed on Herodotus and his writings have been revered for many centuries, but many of the accounts we now know were not at all accurate but quite imaginative. This is the same as ancient map makers who drew the world as best they knew, leaving out the entire north and south american continents and Australia! Their "world" was much smaller than ours today.