Book of Job

An odd story, much like many of the other stories from the Bible.  The Book of Job seems to be a story of God, with the help of Satan, testing Job's loyalty to Him.  As with other stories in the Old Testament, God seems to have a big ego who appears to take sadistic pleasure in testing people's faith in Him or to assert his power and authority over others.  As mentioned in my journal entries for LS 800, it is difficult to detach my bias over this kind of 'sick' God.  That said, I do understand that Job can be interpreted in many different ways.

It is also a tale about 'why do the righteous suffer?'  The Bible tries to explain the unexplainable, in my humble opinion by using God's omnipotence as the answer.  I feel that God does not provide an adequate response to Job's question - precisely because it is not something that we have answers to although this has not stopped mankind from posing this question for thousands of years.  I, too have caught myself asking the same questions, albeit in secular manner.  I think that we continue to ask this question partly to put our hearts and souls at ease as best as we can, in dealing with suffering and the imperfection of the world around us.  I have on some occasions driven myself crazy with this question, often leading to episodes of depression - a sense of despair that the world is not going to get better unless I help to do something, to help exact change.  But how?  I am not clear that I have found the right answers.  A clique perhaps but there is truth in the statement that life is a journey and we are all in a continually learning process, including how to deal with and reduce suffering.

Job's keen sense of duty/loyalty to God is commendable but misguided.  Job 'wins' in the end by having his fortunes doubled by God.  The fortunes appear to be material and/or status related only.  I didn't get the sense of true happiness of peace for Job.  If success depends upon such unjust suffering, what sort of 'win' is this?  What kind of sick God plays these cruel tricks on the people we reigns over?

Do we need to suffer in order to be able to experience happiness?  I am not convinced by this argument. I do think that the ability to fully experience happiness means also to be able to fully experience unhappiness/suffering - it is part of a continuum of emotions, rather than causal relationships.  You basically have to take the bad with the good (within reason) and learn to live with it.