DocCathode and Zoe, your posts came while I was composing my last one. I wish I could see things as you do. My history would explain my feelings, but it involves names you might well know and family members still living who could be hurt by my speaking out. Maybe if I had had the guidance you have had at an earlier age my perceptions would have been different. I do envy you your sense of peace. But for me to accept it now would be akin to Winston Smith’s finally loving Big Brother.
Oh, and my birthdate is October 5, 1942. Guess I’m a little slow.
Actually, we don’t. Hebrew has no capital letters. We have the only mention of satan in the OT. There’s no indication it’s a proper noun. We have G-d chatting with satan. A word meaning roughly opponent. We don’t have The Devil, just somebody playing devil’s advocate.
The whole thing looks like a Socratic dialogue. Satan is simply the name of the role whose job it is to make objections and argue the opposite side. From The Book Of Bad Virtues
As I have said elsewhere, the satan of the Book of Job is not some grand Father Of Lies, Prince Of Darkness, and Lord Of The it. He’s just the host of an infomercial whose job is to say things like ‘There’s no way your detergent will get this clean!’ and ‘Such a remarkable product must cost at least one hundred dollars!’.
Does the fact that God was conversing with small s satan rather than large S Satan change the fact that Job’s test involved how well he responded to the deaths of others? Was he just conversing with himself? If so, it seems the forfeiture of their lives is even more heinous.
No, but it does change it from The Lord Of Hosts being suckered by Beelzebub to G-d does some seemingly cruel stuff for reasons that seem to make no sense.
If we accept the existence of G-d, their deaths are no big deal other than the suffering they cause Job. They’ve just moved from one world to another. An analogy I often use is, if a loved one told me that they were going to live in huge mansion, have unlimited wealth, and be incredibly happy, but that I would never see or hear from them in any way for the rest of my life, I’d be quite sad. Job’s family may be physically dead, and he won’t see them again until he dies. But, they aren’t simply gone. They aren’t suffering and have lost out on what, a few decades of earthly life? G-d is dealing with a timespan of eternity. Forty or so years is not even a blink of an eye compared to that.
OK let’s put it another way. Rather than calling them “deaths” let’s call them “endings of lives.” Are God’s followers not enjoined to live just and righteous lives that honor God? Was the purpose of their lives simply to be a pawn in a test of Job’s faith? And why would someone be sad knowing that a loved one has been reunited with his/her creator, especially if that person believes that that is the ultimate destination anyway? It seems that the mansion analogy breaks down in that a if person is on earth and you will never see him/her again, the sadness comes from knowing that what might be is being denied, whereas if a person is with God there is no “might be.”
There was a Rabbi in New York who made this comment on Frontline’s special on faith and 9/11 (which I highly recommend to anyone, even if they’re not religious). He said it rang hollow for him when he heard someone credit their survival to God, or their faith, or prayer. Because what, the other people weren’t loved by God, didn’t pray enough? Something like that. Didn’t sound as cold when he said it, just thought-provoking.
My take on God is that He is the creator of life, but not the controller of life. He doesn’t create puppets but rather creates creatures who can exercise free will. And free will is a double edged sword. We can choose our own destinies, but that means that we are also free to commit heinous acts. Hence the holocaust.
As far as childhood disease, I don’t think anyone has a perfect answer. But I will offer this: Gilda Radner said that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to her, aside from the death thing. We all know that death is a surety. But few of us know how long we’ve got and so we take it for granted. If science were able to guarantee everyone sixty or eighty or one hundred years of life, would we cease to appreciate it? I think so. I can think of few things that make me appreciate life more than the death of someone I love. I hope one day my death will cause people to cry and wail and want to hurl themselves into my grave. And after their grief subsides, I hope my death will give them occasion to go out and dance like no one’s looking.
I think the Book of Job is one of the most overrated pieces of sh*t.
From what I remember, God essentially makes a bet with Satan, then Job is destroyed, and when Job asks “Why?”, God says “It’s beyond your understanding”, when in fact THERE WAS AN EXPLANATION: “I MADE A BET”.
It’s like a father gambling away all of the family’s money, and when little Johnny asks “Daddy, why do we have to live on food stamps?”, he says “Cough You can’t possibly understand why, so I won’t tell you”, when the truth is closer to “Because I was an idiot and lost all my money in Vegas”
I disagree. In the story of Job readers see hope. I think some people are looking at the story backwards- its not about a viscious cosmic bully, its about a diety that rewards patience and faith. The whole point of getting Job to suffer was to test him at his very worst. It would not have worked if God had sat down and asked Job a hypothetical question- because Job would be thinking from the prespective of his current state.
In the absense of passion, nothing gets done. People succeed through determination, not apathy. People learn to cope through hard times and it makes them stronger in the long run. In order for us to enjoy good things, we need to be able to weather the very worst there is.
Even if this were true, God should have said “Because I wanted to test you at your very worst”, and not “Where were you when I made the world?”.
The book presensts a very understandable reason why God made Job suffer (he made a bet and/or he wanted to test Job at his very worst), but then makes it seem as if the reason is not understandable (implying that there was no reason for Job to ask “why?”). So which is it, understandable or not understandable?
So how does God choose between two christian families, both praying for the survival of their children. One praying their child lives through the injuries caused by a car crash, another praying for a heart donor for their child (with compatibility with the first child)?
If at least one family is christian, does this make God’s choice easier?
I find any prayers that presume to change the will of God to be arrogant and offensive. Pray for strength, wisdom or guidance; but praying for God to change His will regarding who shall live and who shall die is the height of impudence.
So, only Christian families have any right to expect help from God? It’s nice to know that your version of God doesn’t give a shit about two thirds of the human race, all of whom he is supposed by believers to have created.
Even if you believe in miraculous intervention (for Christians only), why should any innocent child have to die without having even the chance to make the wrong choices they might justly suffer for? Why couldn’t the “loving” God be asked for healing for both babies? Or, being omnicient and omnipotent, why couldn’t he have just protected both of them in the first place?
Believers want to invest their god with all knowledge and all power, as well as presence everywhere at once, yet they think he has no responsibility to his sentient creations. A human father who permitted his child to suffer an injury he could have prevented, or allowed someone else to injure the child to settle a bet would be charged with a crime.
I’ve heard the argument about free will, but in my mind it doesn’t apply to innocent children. To make children suffer for the negligible wrongs of which they are capable is just stupid. And to hurt children in order to punish their parents for whatever wrong they did is utterly outrageous. Killing a man’s entire family (as in Job) to settle a bet is beyond evil.
I do not accept the existence of God. As I said, he’s a superstition to me, still in my subconscious like the bogey man and the tooth fairy, but not accepted as objective reality. To me the death of anyone is a big deal. And the killing of anyone to punish or make some kind of lesson to another is the very type of injustice.
My post was referring to the Book Of Job. Other posters had mentioned the seeming injuctice in G-d killing Job’s family. But for Him to kill Job’s family, He would have to exist.
The best expression of a religious answer to this dilemma I’ve ever seen was in the TV series MAS*H. Two soldiers are brought in wounded, both critical. One of them almost certainly won’t make it, no matter what they do. The other they might be able to save if they could transplant a part of the large artery near the heart(aorta graft). They don’t have the right part of the artery on hand, but the patient who is nearly dead could serve as a donor. The ethical dilemma is that they can’t pull the plug on him or take the tissue they need as long as he is still alive, and they have an obligation to make that as long as possible. At one point the priest, Father Mulcahy, says something very much like “Lord, if you’re going to take him anyway, please do it soon so we can save the other boy.”
This statement recognized that, in the religious view, both life and death are part of the higher plan. It left the final decision to the higher authority and showed humble acceptance of either outcome although it did plead for a certain outcome. The priest in the television show happened to have a specific donor in mind when he made his prayer, but it is no different from the prayer of the father in the OP. “If it is within your plan for someone with the right characteristics to donate the needed tissue to save the life of this person then please let it happen before it is too late.”
