The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #50

[5/1998] “__________ has such a wonderful attitude.” It is common to hear such said about individuals within the ‘religious’ sphere who, in reaction to devastating circumstances, raise no hard or persistent questions toward or about ‘God’ as understood within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm. By not challenging/threatening the assumptions and expectations of the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm, such individuals are recognized/honored within the ‘religious’ sphere as exemplary. This approval in turn reinforces their attempt to see devastating experiences as interpreted by/within the ‘religious’ sphere.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #49

[4/1998] The ‘non-religious’ approach to spirituality and ethics I am following necessitates sorting out and relentlessly critiquing the various meanings proposed for the word ‘God’. ‘Relentlessly’ (L., unwilling to melt or to soften in temper/resolve or to become less severe) is an aggressive but not overstated description of the necessary critique.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #48

[6/1996] The story/play Job (specifically the dialogue sections and 42:7) and the essay of Ecclesiastes (minus the last paragraph) have become, for me, the windows into Jewish scripture and Christian scripture.

[Note: Without the series of exchanges between the prologue and epilogue, the 42:7 statement has no logical place in the story/play Job. So the statement is not part of the epilogue that -- together with the prologue -- forms the ‘happily ever after’ short version of the story/play Job. I think the composer surprises the audience with the implied task of searching back through the extended story asking, “What did Job say about ‘God’ that the composer thinks is right?”]

[Note: I started giving Ecclesiastes careful attention during my Louisville years (1976-79) when I saw the similarities with modern existential writings. I remember concluding that Ecclesiastes stands alone in Jewish scripture and Christian scripture in requiring so little commentary to be accessible. When I began offering a systematic theology graduate seminar (1981), the format I chose was to imagine a series of conversations between ‘Jesus’ and the author of Ecclesiastes. For many years, I read Ecclesiastes as the personal statement of Koheleth (the speaker in the text). More recently, I have come to regard Koheleth as a literary device created by the essay’s anonymous author. I see Koheleth as similar to a court fool – i.e., giving rather blunt analyses that those threatened can easily dismiss. Another analogy is Shostakovich’s precarious position before Stalin. Distinguishing Koheleth from the author aligns well with the tenuous place of the essay in the canon of Jewish scripture and accounts for the outlandish, even clownish, statements attributed to Koheleth in the essay (e.g., Koheleth’s excessive claims to know more than anyone else before him and to be the best student by far there had ever been).]

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #47

[9/2005] The senior physician and CEO for the Appalachia community health center where I work and I have volunteered to be deployed by the federal government’s Health and Human Services Department to assist with the recovery efforts in and around New Orleans. My physician friend’s broad training and experience in the practice of comprehensive primary care with a concentration on poor patients would make him a very valuable asset. The volunteer category nearest to how I might assist is ‘chaplain’. My physician friend feels that my special usefulness would be as a ‘chaplain’ to the medical professionals and other rescue personnel as they bear/process truly awful experiences. We both are anxious to help.

Looking closely at human experience -- without sifting or filtering out any events however severe -- makes me aware that my privileges (e.g., health, education, travel, economic liberties, . . . ) separate me from the vast majority of individuals in human history. Gazing at the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina has intensified this awareness.

‘Catastrophe’ . . . ‘disaster’ . . . ‘tsunami’ . . . ‘edge of the abyss’ . . . ‘nightmare’ . . . ‘tragedy’ . . . .

Where do you go in Jewish Scripture to find such raw expressions of trauma, agony, desperation? Several of the prophets lamented, groaned. Habakkuk ventured a protest. But they eventually returned to ‘God’ language within a theological paradigm that implicitly if not explicitly attributed devastating events directly or indirectly to “the Lord’s hands”. Only Ecclesiastes and the extended story/play Job – hardly weight bearing texts within the ‘religious’ sphere – persisted in questioning the intent/character behind “the Lord’s hands” and the underlying theological paradigm.

Where do you go in Christian Scripture for such raw expressions of trauma, agony, desperation? A slave army’s fight for freedom had been crushed. Rome had burned to the ground. Herculaneum and Pompeii had been buried. Jerusalem had been destroyed. What does it mean for there to be no trace of such events in Christian Scripture? no lament, groaning, protest? The theologians – Jewish or Christian – to whom one seeking a ‘face to face with the world’ spirituality and ethics can turn are the few for whom such raw expressions of trauma, agony, desperation keep the ‘God’ question open.

I am very hesitant about the ‘God’ language used -- especially toward the evangelical and fundamentalist end of the theological spectrum -- in reacting to or interpreting utter disasters. I wonder, “Is such ‘God’ language used to relieve the one/s speaking? to capitalize on the survivors’ plight? to defend or ‘clean up’ after ‘God’?”

The attempt to exclude events of immeasurable suffering (e.g., in modern times the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, American slavery, the carnage of World War I, the Nazi Holocaust, Hiroshima, Cambodia, the 2004 Tsunami, . . . Hurricane Katrina) from the reality within which each day is lived can seem worth the effort/cost to those experientially detached from such events. A ‘face to face with the world’ approach to spirituality and ethics fights against this temptation, determined instead to seek deeper consciousness of such events. The liberty (even instruction) in the ‘religious’ sphere -- especially toward the evangelical and fundamentalist end of the theological spectrum -- to keep faith/theology disconnected from and untested by events of immeasurable suffering results in such clashing statements as “The Lord had his reasons” (for permitting/causing Hurricane Katrina) and “We are caring for the evacuees because God expects us to”. A ‘face to face with the world’ approach to spirituality and ethics disagrees with this insulating method, being anchored instead by the resolve to hold only to ideas that are not overwhelmed by such events. The noble and generous expressions of compassion toward survivors when immeasurable suffering is compressed into specific events tend in time to wane as the initial burden of the harmed/displaced is met and as attention returns to less disturbing matters. A ‘face to face with the world’ approach to spirituality and ethics finds in such acute events of immeasurable suffering a reminder that similarly immeasurable suffering is encountered in all directions (diffused throughout) every day.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #46

[7/1995] I want to live consistently with a human-affirming vision that does not require ultimate loyalty to any particular sphere (i.e., the missing character in the story/play Job). Freedom from all spheres (including ‘religion’) is necessary to be this sort of person.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #45

[1994] The Congregational Church in Norwich, VT, where we lived invited me to guide a discussion about ‘remembering’. I prepared the following thoughts based on the story/play Job –

Prior to a devastating series of tragedies, Job held an exemplary and defining position within his various ‘communities’ (i.e., religious, family, economic, political, social). The meta-narrative within his ‘communities’ presumed that upright (merciful, fair, respectful) living resulted in blessed circumstances and that sinful (callused, manipulative, selfish, base) living resulted in cursed circumstances. Gathering with and around Job increased their sense of security. After a devastating series of tragedies, Job lost his exemplary and defining position within his ‘communities’. To them he was obviously cursed. He no longer confirmed the meta-narrative. To remain in ‘community’ with him would have threatened confidence in the meta-narrative. Those with shallow and quite conditional loyalty to Job ridiculed him, ignored him, gawked at him, spit on him, expected him to ‘repent’. Those more invested in Job – his wife, his family, and his closest friends – eventually failed him. ‘Communities’ must cross a critical and radical threshold in order to remain in community with a ‘scrapheap’ Job. That threshold entails the ability and courage to permit presumptions about the meta-narrative to be challenged. The ‘scrapheap’ Job refused to take this pressure off his ‘communities’. He maintained his innocence . . . and his integrity. When his closest friends began to speak, they knew only the language and responses characteristic of the meta-narrative. They did not know how to be with their friend. The story/play Job is so composed in its canonical form that the ‘communities’ receiving the story can remember without rethinking what it would mean to remain in community with a ‘scrapheap’ Job. The story ends with Job’s ‘communities’ gathering again around him. No doubt they had heard report that he had said, “I repent”. The socio-economic indicators of favor had returned to him. They interpreted this reversal to mean that the meta-narrative had been proven true and dependable. They are not forced to see that, for ‘communities’ to be able to risk remaining with a ‘scrapheap’ Job (and, thereby, to remember him with humility and gratitude), they must be modest in their presumptions about life’s meaning, grasp the place doubt, be penitent, be gathered by a cause/identity that makes holding together as ‘communities’ a significant but secondary goal, appreciate the art of silence.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #44

[1994] What did Job have left – his integrity. And his closest friends were pressuring him to compromise his integrity.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #43

[1994] Does the Job 6:14 vision of friendship relate to every relationship? to one relationship? to what number of relationships?

[Note: Translators/commentators have debated the proper translation of Job 6:14. My work with this text with the guidance of a Hebrew language and Wisdom Literature specialist has led to this translation – “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friend even if he (i.e., the despairing man) forsakes the fear of the almighty”.]