The Sage Forge

It is hard to know if the writer(s) of Job fully understand(s) what has been set to text.  Indeed it is difficult to tell if MacLeish has more insight himself.  Job, the character, thinks the story is about justice.  Many biblical scholars, in fact, think they detect, in the redemption of Job at the story's end, meddling hands attempting to insert what men would recognise as justice where there may once have been none.

In Job God has permitted the devil to take all that this good man has after having been told the loss of his wealth and health would turn the man against God.  The uncomprehending Job endures all and refuses to "curse God and die", though all his wealth has been destroyed and even his children have been killed.  He does, however, fail to understand how this is just.  He believes, as many do today, that what has been done to him must reflect on some sin in his life.  The book, at least up to the suspected meddling, shows God not to think this to be the case.

Stop here for a moment and think about what this really means.  What Job has had he has thought to be his.  He felt he had a right to an expectation of the continuity of his possession- a kind of economic relationship with the Almighty.  His children were somehow "his".  His things were somehow "his".  Where, he wonders, is the economic reciprocity in the loss of what is "his"?  what "cost" (sin) did he inflict on God?  Search though he might he can't find it.

God sets Job straight (at least up to the meddling).  There is no economic relationship.  In an (all too) roundabout way God lets Job know he is, in effect, a guest.  It's all God's from the foundations of the Earth to the fixing of the lights in the sky.  The kids were God's.  The wealth was God's.

If you think about it most of the problems we have with faith stem from this misunderstanding of Job's.  God has us live where we are now, whether we were in sackcloth or in splendor yesterday.  Your kids?  They are God's.  Your stuff?  It is God's.  The things you can't bear to imagine living through?  They happen all around you.  Your faith means nothing until the moment you are swept up in the unthinkable.  How do you live then?  What do you do then?

Job, though he misunderstood, lived his faith,  In the midst of uncomprehension, with the wise and his beloved jeering at him and giving him up for dead, Job stood up for the faith that seemed to have abandoned him.  Even before the meddling he wins the victory- he sees God face to face.

In a book full of unfathomable wisdom for being so old, a book that never makes a promise of heaven, or even an afterlife, Job sees the fruit of his pain in the presence of God.  At the heart of what may be the oldest monotheistic text on Earth there is a man who understood something very few of us understand today.

If you really believe in God it all belongs to God.  It is His story.  He makes the rules.  Ultimately, it's all between Him and You. 

In the midst of the Unthinkable what will You do.