Dr. John Young 9-28-08
Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville
Job’s Impatience
Job is likely the oldest book in the Bible. The general outline of the Job story was already a well-known tale in Egypt and Mesopotamia centuries before there were any Jews. People have always struggled with the reality that a good person can suffer tragedies out of all proportion to any perceived faults or errors. This seems unacceptable, if life is meaningful and fair, or if God is just. How do we explain and cope with absurd and excessive human suffering?
The book of Job is easily divided into five distinct parts, which were probably written by different individuals and groups over many years, and then spliced together to make the present Biblical book. The first part is made up of Chapters 1 and 2, describing a successful man who is so good that he offers daily sacrifices just in case his sons have sinned in their hearts [1:5]. This is the patient Job: “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” [1:21]
These first two chapters also have a troubling representation of God, who is presented as being challenged by his son Satan, because God brags about Job as “a perfect and upright man who fears God and eschews evil [1:8].” Satan says, in effect, ‘you have blessed him and protected him so naturally he is good. Why don’t you take away everything Job has, and Job will curse God.’ And God puts Job in Satan’s power, and Satan takes away all of Job’s family and possessions except his wife, and covers Job with sores and disease, and Job’s wife says to Job, “Why do you still retain your integrity, curse God and die.” Job tells her not “to speak foolishness. Shall we receive goodness at the hand of God, and not expect to also receive evil?”
The second section is chapters 3 through 31, Job’s dialogue with three friends [Eliphaz, Bildad & Zophar] and Job’s summary of the Old Testament wisdom tradition: “The fear of the Lord is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.” [28:28] Job’s friends repeatedly present three age-old and still much assumed responses to human tragedy. First, tragedy is punishment for hidden sins [remember the fundamentalists’ explanations for 9/11 or hurricane Katrina?] Second is that suffering is used by God to teach people integrity, to give them character. Third, is that tragedy is a path to heaven. Job readily admits that he is imperfect, but Job steadfastly refuses to admit that he has earned these tragedies, to accept that his suffering is a just requirement for character development, or that tragedy is an appropriate path to heaven. Job is patient with God or reality and patient with his wife and his friends, but he is impatient about untruth and injustice.
The third section is chapters 32-37 which is a dialogue with a newer and younger friend [Elihu]. It repeats the previous arguments, but concludes by saying that people cannot know the transcendent God but can intuit God through the worldly relational qualities of judgment, power, and justice. [37:22-24], this provides an appropriate segue into God speaking from the whirlwind to Job [chapters 38-41], the fourth section. God awes Job with the scope, power, and complexity of Creation, indicates God’s love for all of Creation, and Job is humbled.
The final chapter [42] and last section of the book of Job first has Job’s responses to God: ‘I know you can do everything and that no thought can be hidden from you. I understood not these things too wonderful for me. I had heard about you, now I have experienced you, and I am humbled, and my fear of God is confirmed.’ God then condemns Job’s friends, “you have not spoken the thing that is right about me, as my servant Job has” and requires the friends to ask Job to pray for them to God, which God says will be accepted. After Job prays for his friends, God turns the captivity of Job and Job soon has twice what he had before his tragedies. [42:10]
The book of Job is good Unitarian Universalist theology. The transcendent God or the realities of cosmic Creation cannot be fully known. They can be celebrated and revered; they are certainly awesome and mysterious. But we can come to understand reality or God through the natural and human powers of judgment, power, and justice.
Like Job, we need to learn patience with life; every human life has its tragedies, heartaches, failures, and foolishness. We also need to learn patience with our loved ones and our friends. However, while we need patience with life, with ourselves, and with others, it is equally important to remain impatient about untruth and about injustice. In order to maintain our integrity and to build our character we need to speak up in the face of falsehoods and to stand strong against injustice. We need to do this as individuals, and we need to do it as communities, as active citizens in our nation, and as world citizens facing global problems.
Some of us may be born with a genetic tendency toward patience, but modern cultures tend toward impatience; many of us, certainly including me, have had to work hard at every bit of patience we develop. I began to learn about patience by observing nature and by becoming an effective member of a family and a neighborhood, then by reading, listening to music, then by practicing the piano, distance running, yoga, and the disciplines of a student. I learned about leadership in school and Boy Scouts, how to become patiently persuasive and to help people work effectively together. I became an activist and learned how social change takes time, discipline, fortitude, and courage.
As an adult, I developed the patience of intimacy with friends and lovers and then with a wife and children. I became a minister, who is asked to live patiently with a group of people and to help them to grow, individually and as a community. I learned the tolerance of a professor and of a writer waiting for inspiration and toiling towards publication. As an aging person now, I am learning to be more patient with my increasing difficulty in memorizing new piano pieces, in doing things with the energy I took for granted for generations. Sometimes, my aging makes me more patient with people. Other times, I find it increasingly difficult to put up with selfishness, pomposity, hypocrisy, or self-satisfied insensitivity, to willingly attend the apparently useless meeting or meaningless ritual.
Like Job I want to try to keep my integrity even when I am faced with adversity or confronted by tragedy. Like Job I have been blessed by a repeated sense of experiencing Creation for myself, of staring ultimate reality in the face. I do not pretend to fully understand it and certainly do not have a corner on its wisdom, but I do feel blessed by it, even in the face of tragedy or heartache. I do revere it and am awed by its orders, beauties, and mysteries. I intend to be patient with myself and with other people, and with life, but I also intend to remain impatient about untruth and injustice. I embrace both the patience and the impatience of Job, and I recommend both to you.
We need to embrace others with a generous heart and a warm acceptance as worthy of our respect and attention. We need also to hold ourselves to high standards, to speak out in the face of falsehoods or injustice, whether these are perpetrated by others or ourselves. On the verge of the Jewish High Days, I recommend to you the Jewish standards for facing up to our own failures with other people, with nature, and with Creation itself. The Jewish process is first to admit to your mistakes, then to ask forgiveness from those you have wronged, to have a change of heart and to make amends, but also to change your future behavior. Others may not forgive you, but you can go ahead and do your part in this process. Life may not make every thing right, but if you do what you can to make things right, life will be amazingly better, even in the face of continuing pain, suffering, loss, and tragedy. We are not perfect, but we can be worthy. The world and life are not perfect, but they are amazingly beautiful and good, even in the midst of our worst days.