[Since writing this essay in 1995, I have come to see/interpret Job as unprepared throughout the story to argue that ‘righteousness is to be pursued because it is right’. Instead, his complaints reveal he has not yet turned loose the expectation that his righteousness would be blessed. I do see him at a decision point whether or not to embark on the radical (i.e., into the roots) rethinking and reconstructing re spirituality, ethics, theology prerequisite to his being able to make the argument. The epilogue does not encourage imagining his doing so.]
A Parable: Before the introduction of double/thermal-paned windows, homeowners could use storm windows for protection from the chilling effects of winter. Late one fall, new homeowners decide to put storm windows on their home’s fourteen windows before winter arrives. They check at every hardware store in their small town, but can find only eleven storm windows in stock. They purchase the eleven. Once home, they have to decide which windows have to be covered and which will be left to leak the cold winter air. Their one child -- a four-year-old daughter -- suffers with asthma.
I grew up with protected windows -- literally and metaphorically speaking. None of my close friends or neighbors had too few resources to be insulated from life-threatening chill. I would have told the parable’s couple they could still find the remaining three storm windows. I did not yet know their crisis, their fear.
Education -- especially in the history of ideas -- raised new questions for me. Experience with tragedy -- especially chronic, humiliating disease -- reduced my answers. Life became a series of decisions about which windows to cover and which windows to leave exposed. In time, the ‘scrapheap Job’ and Ecclesiastes’ Koheleth became the canonical voices with whom I sit as I reconsider Jesus of Nazareth. I imagine all three meeting beyond the reach and control of organized religion. I imagine listening closely to their exchanges because I see all three as knowing the force of being face to face with the full range of life experiences.
One way to experience Job is to assess the story’s ‘storm window’ options. The narrative by itself – i.e., the abbreviated form in which the story circulated initially and which is most familiar in religious circles down to today -- seems to fit the ‘God is just and the righteous are blessed’ theological paradigm. However, that paradigm breaks down when pressed hard by day-to-day realities. ‘God’ seems too human -- e.g., proud, petty, discriminating, exasperated, indulgent. The fairy-tale ending – i.e., the climax to the abbreviated form of the story -- cannot completely erase memories of the devastation borne by the animals, the hired help, the children, their mother, and the ‘scrapheap Job’.
And so the characters in the simple narrative were at some point developed. As the dialogues unfold, it becomes apparent that Job and his special friends -- Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar -- do not see the hand of the Accuser in human affairs. Their working hypothesis is that ‘God’ -- who has immediate and intentional control of the natural order -- dispenses blessing to the righteous and curses the unrighteous. The ‘scrapheap Job’ claims to have had his doubts even before the tragedies that befell him and his family. Travelers’ testimony and his own observations had left him uncomfortable with traditional wisdom. As his devastation drags on for months, the ‘scrapheap Job’ maintains his integrity against charges that he had collapsed into unrighteousness, leaving him at times to picture ‘God’ as a ruthless enemy and at other times to picture ‘God’ as distracted for some reason from his situation.
Elihu attempts to explain human suffering as a prospective warning from ‘God’. Then the whirlwind section challenges the anthropocentric perspective otherwise assumed in the story – e.g., it is tough even for ‘God’ to maintain order in the cosmos . . . in some quarters chaos reigns . . . still order in the natural realm argues for order in the moral realm.
Most of my considerations -- except for human will, the earth’s evolutionary age, randomness, and scientific causality -- get attention in the story of Job. I find the ‘scrapheap Job’ believable and compelling. Even after Copernicus, anthropocentrism is hard to shake. Prolonged suffering intensifies this struggle against taking ourselves too seriously. Human suffering is, for me, an uncovered window during cold winter months. Every attempt to explain why so many suffer so much requires sacrifices that are too costly to make, that severely damage one’s integrity. This judgment does not make integrity easier to maintain. It does sharpen the focus on the sufferer in the midst of the suffering.