A/N:  Now this, I’m proud of.  It’s an essay I wrote for one of my classes, and which earned me my first ever A+ in university.  Go me!  LoL.  Anyways, it’s an interpretation of the biblical Book of Job that tries to answer the question of whether the world is moral, amoral or immoral.  Now, I’m more of an agnostic/atheist, so my presentation of God in this text is not based on personal beliefs, merely on what I understood from Job.  Obviously, my intention is not to offend anyone or denigrate anyone’s beliefs, merely put forth another viewpoint.

Morality and the Book of Job

Of all the questions that plague humanity, those of justice and morality are some of the most difficult to come to grips with.  Religion and the belief in a higher power regulating the universe according to a moral code provide a way to deal with these questions.  Sometimes, however, circumstances arise that can lead people to doubt these beliefs.  Innocent suffering is one of these.  How can a moral and just God allow innocent people to suffer?  Is the universe then immoral?  In a world where suffering is widespread – is indeed almost everywhere one looks – it is difficult to accept that maybe it is meaningless.  The idea that perhaps there is no justice, that the bad do indeed prosper while the innocent suffer, is one I have often grappled with and it is tremendously unsettling.  The belief that God does dole out retribution in kind to humans is a tempting one.  It is a comfortable thought.  When proof is thrown in one’s face that it is untrue, it is a logical reaction to deny the evidence.  Otherwise, how would this world be regulated?  What would keep people in check and prevent them from indulging in all manner of evil?   

  These are the questions dealt with in the Book of Job.  I believe that one of the lessons we can learn from this book is that the question is not whether the universe is moral, amoral or immoral, but whether or not we humans can impose our own view or what is moral and just on the universe.  I will demonstrate that the answer given to this question by the Book of Job is No, that what humans perceive as just and moral is not how the universe functions.

Before I go any further, I would like to clarify what I mean when I talk about human beings’ perception of what is moral and just.  I mean by that the notion that God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous, where both what is “wicked” and what is “righteous” are defined by a known moral code, such as the biblical Ten Commandments.  Those that disobey the rules set forth in this code are wicked, and those that follow them are righteous.  This perspective may not be representative of what people hold as just or moral in every culture, but for the purposes of this essay, it is the one I will use.

In Job, this is the belief held by Job’s friends – or comforters – Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.  To understand how this belief affects them, one has to look at their behaviour and reactions in Job.             

Upon hearing of Job’s suffering they feel sympathetic, they come to see Job and sit by him for a week to comfort him.  (Job 2: 12-13)  But then, frustrated with his situation, Job curses the day he was born, wishing he had never seen the light of day.  His friends are shocked, and they all launch into rounds of Socratic speeches.  Through all the back-and-forth conversation, one can discern that the main point the friends are attempting to prove is that God is just.  Consequently, Job must have done something wrong, thus deserving the punishment God has brought down upon him.  Such is the fate of all evildoers.  “Your sin prompts your mouth; you adopt the tongue of the crafty.  Your own mouth condemns you, not mine.”  (15: 5-6)    “Is it for your piety that he [God] rebukes you and brings charges against you?  Is not your wickedness great?  Are not your sins endless?”  (22: 4-5)  “All his days, the wicked man suffers torment, the ruthless through all the years stored up for him.”  (15: 20)  “The lamp of the wicked is snuffed out; the flame of his fire stops burning.”  (18: 5)

They firmly believe that the world is moral, that God is just and does not punish the good.  They trust that God rewards the righteous and punishes only the bad.  “Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished?  Where were the upright ever destroyed?  As I have observed, those who plough evil and those who sow trouble reap it.”  (4: 7-8)  “Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers.”  (8: 20-21)  So then, Job’s innocence would mean that divine justice the way they see it and have always seen it does not exist, or is flawed.  And they cannot accept the ramifications of such a realization.

But if their unswerving belief that God is just is leading them to the conclusion that Job must have sinned, to what conclusion is Job led?  He knows that he is innocent, and he maintains this position throughout the discussion.  “My face is red with weeping, deep shadows ring my eyes; yet my hands have been free of violence and my prayer is pure.”  (16: 16-17)  “My feet have closely followed his [God’s] steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside.  I have not departed from his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread.”  (23: 11-12)  Therefore, he believes he does not deserve the punishment he is receiving from God.  Logically, then, God cannot be just.

Both these perspectives have as a basis the idea, as previously mentioned, that the definition of “justice” and “morality” according to humans is the right one.  Stephen Mitchell sums up this problem very well in the introduction to his book The Book of Job in the form of syllogisms.  “The friends: Suffering comes from God.  God is just.  Therefore, Job is guilty.  Job: Suffering comes from God.  I am innocent.  Therefore, God is unjust” (Mitchell xiii).  This leads to an impasse.  Who is right?  We, the readers, know that Job is innocent.  The friends’ conclusion is then false.  But does that automatically mean that Job is right, and God is indeed unjust?  Mitchell proposes a third syllogism in response to this: “A third possibility is not even thinkable: Suffering comes from God.  God is just.  Job is innocent. (No therefore.)”.  At first glance, such statements seem contradictory, mutually exclusive.  I disagree.     

I believe we are dealing here with two different kinds of justice and morality.  There is the justice of Job and his friends – whereby the good are rewarded and the evil punished – and the justice of God.  There is the morality of human beings and that of the world, of the cosmic order, that established by God.  Humans would want God to be good according to their definition of goodness, good to the exclusion of all else, of what we consider evil or unrighteous. 

Therein lays the potential contradiction in monotheistic religions.  If there is only one god, one Supreme Being ruling the universe, and this god is benevolent and good, where does evil come from?  What generates it?  In dualistic religions such as Zoroastrianism, this same problem does not present itself.  In this particular belief system, the benevolent deity is locked in an eternal battle with his malevolent counterpart, whose existence explains that of evil in the world.

Here, some might argue that God has a counterpart in the Devil, usually called Satan.  I do not believe that is so.  Common consensus within the Judeo-Christian tradition has it that the universe was created by God alone, because God was indeed alone.  For example, the first lines of the Bible are as follows: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis, 1: 1-2).  There is no mention of any other entity participating in the creation, or even being present.  Therefore, one must assume that Satan – and the evil Satan supposedly embodies – was also a creation of God.  Consequently, God remains the original source of evil whether or not Satan is seen as having taken over that role in time.  I say in time because the image of Satan as the fearsome, horned Devil, paradigm of wickedness, came more recently and became more developed in the Middle-Ages.  The word “Satan” itself means no more than “questioner” or “accuser” and was used as a title (i.e. the Satan).  It didn’t have the same frightening connotations it came to adopt.  

And so if there is just one god, just one entity who created the universe and all it contains, just one entity who watches over everything, it would seem logical to conclude that this god also generated evil, which, whether we want it to be or not, is an undeniable presence in the world.  If such is the case, then, God is both good and evil.  God creates both good and evil.  Therefore, God cannot be virtuous the way humans perceive virtue.  God operates on a whole other plane, and to impose our own view of what is just or what constitutes virtue onto that plane would lead to warped or false conclusions.

But what is this other plane, what is this other form of justice?  One can only hazard guesses.  God works in mysterious ways, after all.  Even Job at first does not understand the rules under which God is operating, only that the rules are different, far beyond anything he ever imagined, surpassing the limits of his understanding.  What he does seem to understand is that his own idea of justice and that of his friends is not the way that things really work, and it seems suddenly self-serving and self-deceiving.  “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’  Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”  (42: 3) 

Mitchell himself puts forth a proposition as to what God’s form of justice is.  He bases his example on Job 38: 39-41, in which God asks Job if it is he who feeds the lions or the ravens.  Mitchell says that when a person watches a lioness hunt an antelope, some might feel sad for the antelope and think the world would be better off and a more peaceful place if all animals were vegetarians and didn’t kill other animals – as in First Isaiah.  Logically though, this would never work – if the lionesses stopped killing the antelopes, the antelope population would grow beyond what the world could support, and it would cause a break in the chain of life.  But eventually, the antelopes would run out of food and would starve to death until enough had died that a balance would be restored.  Such is the way God orders the universe.  God feeds the lion at the expense of the antelope because otherwise there would be unbalance.  God is just in that God creates a balance in the world – a balance between killing and giving life, between weal and woe.  It is a balance that may seem harsh sometimes, but it is inherently good because it keeps the universe from slipping into chaos.

In the quotation I gave earlier, Mitchell states that this idea, this theory as to how the world works, is unthinkable.  Indeed, it is not without its critics.  Wesley Morriston, in his article entitled God’s Answer to Job, responds to Mitchell’s idea.  He clearly states his opinion of Mitchell’s interpretation in the section of his essay entitled Contra Mitchell:  “As I see it, Mitchell’s way of looking at things simply doesn’t take evil seriously enough.  […]The horror and outrage we experience in the face of unfair and pointless suffering cannot – or at least should not – be so easily set aside.”  He gives the example of Hitler and the infamous extermination camp, Auschwitz, stating that, according to Mitchell, such acts would be considered just in keeping with God’s form of justice, and not abominations.  Morriston explains that Mitchell’s answer to innocent suffering is not satisfactory to humans, and that it renders God unapproachable to humans.  A god who is beyond good and evil would become “an inhuman tyrant whom it is impossible to love or worship.”  He adds that he himself would love to see some form of divine retribution in accordance with human morality and human ideas of right and wrong in cases like what happened at Auschwitz.

The fact remains, however, that innocents did suffer and die at Auschwitz without the “palpable, humanly understandable justice” called for by Morriston.  I think Mitchell’s interpretation of Job can provide an answer to why this happened, harsh as it may be – that it is part of a larger scheme incomprehensible to humans. 

Job’s torment is Auschwitz on a smaller scale, and the answer stays the same.  Yes, suffering comes from God.  Yes, Job is innocent.  Yes, God is just.  Job’s innocence has no bearing on the question of whether or not God is just, because in the end Job’s suffering is a part of a larger picture that is beyond human understanding and human morality.

On the other hand, I agree with Morriston when he claims that humans should not become complacent or indifferent in the face of innocent suffering.  I simply believe that Job is teaching us that we cannot expect God to alleviate this pain the way most humans would want God to.  Divine justice simply does not work that way, so rather than spend time wondering why God is allowing blameless people to endure hardships and praying for intervention from on high, we should focus our energies on assuaging this suffering ourselves. 

What can we learn from Job?  The universe according to Job is not moral, amoral or immoral according to the traditional belief that the wicked are punished and the good rewarded, not inherently.  God operates to ensure that a balance is kept in the universe and so if we want the wicked to be punished and the righteous to be rewarded, we must do it ourselves.