Perhaps one of the more questionable decisions I’ve made in my new career as bereaved Dad was the one to read the Book of Job.
Let me explain, I’m not the best Christian in the world. I’m far from the worst, I like to think, but I’m not a front-row-of-church kind of guy, if you know what I mean. I have questions about practice. I have questions about theory. I have a certain level of discomfort with contemporary Christian culture which does clash with the set of beliefs I hold. What can I say? I also read comic books but tend not to get along so well with others who read comic books. I’m difficult.
But a long time ago I did decide that, if I’m a Christian, I can read the Bible. The goal is 1-2 pages a day. I don’t always manage. My success rate is heavily dependent on how much alcohol was consumed the night before and how early the children got up.
But I keep reading. And every time I get to the end, I turn the book over and start again. I know this is not the way many advocate reading the book. You get a lot of chaff in with the wheat this way. Some stories raise a lot of questions. What to make of the story in Judges where – to summarize radically – a man mad at his treatment in town cuts his dead concubine into 12 pieces and starts a war? But it’s what I do.
And now I’ve reached Job and … oof. I knew it was coming. I knew how the story goes. But, I have to admit, in the past, I’ve let the more poetry/verse parts of the Bible wash over me. Now I come to passages like:
Why give light to a man of grief?
Why give life to the bitter of heart,
who long for a death that never comes,
and hunt for it more than for a buried treasure?
And there’s no way to pretend that’s not a bit difficult to get through. I’m not comparing my life to Job’s. I have not lost all my possessions. I have not lost all my children. I do not believe Satan is personally testing me (though, I guess, Job didn’t know that either). It just rhymes a bit too much with my life and feels more familiar than I ever imagined this book would ever feel.
Back when we were in the hospice, Christina’s sister and husband came to visit us. Florian is – and I do not mean this in any mean way – far more invested in Catholic culture than I am and asked me “Are you mad at our dear God?”
I don’t know what answer he expected, but my answer is no. God sat out the Holocaust. Pol Pot got to live to old age. Children die every day. I don’t see God intervening in life on a daily basis, otherwise I’d have to believe things would look a lot better. So, if God is letting us sort it all out, there’s no real sense in raging against him or the universe. Which is not to say I don’t from time to time. I spend too much time listening to XTC’s “Dear God” and Tori Amos’ “God” right now than is probably healthy for me, strictly spiritually.
But this is not me pretending to have any answers. It’s just another way of showing that what should be everyday life is that much more complicated now and, if you’re like me and choose to believe in God, it throws in a lot of questions about theology into the mix.
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