It's just a story
Job. Just the man for the job.
Another tale of Biblical ethics today, this time the Man of Patience – Job. Job is a decent sort of chap, but one day God and the Devil decide to make a wager. (At this point I have to wonder how God and the Devil happened to meet at all and why such a meeting would apparently be so amicable. See The Book of Job for further details.) The Devil bets that Job is only good because things are easy for him. But if things became difficult, he’d lose his faith and turn evil.
§ Obs. 1 The first part is rather like one of the questions in our recent speaking exams about an easy life being a good life. The second part is that old chestnut that morality comes from religion and that in the absence of religion, people lack morality. I think it was Dostoevsky who claimed that without God anything is permissible, which is clearly not true. Gods or no gods, clearly much which we would consider impermissible still happens anyway. Morality, which is inconstant in many respects, stems from society and not make-believe.
Satan sends down a plague of spiders to eat Job’s crops, but he greets this little disaster stoically.
§ Obs. 2 Hold on. Spiders?! Spiders aren’t noted vegetarians. Locusts maybe, but spiders would weave webs and wait for lunch to come to them. “And so Job’s crops flourished because the spiders ate all the insects.”
Next, Job loses all his children, but also bears that stoically and goes into mourning.
Lastly, Job is covered in boils, at which point he does lose his faith.
§ Obs. 3 The Biblical story after this is a dialogue between Job and three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad and Sophar) who assume he must’ve done something to offend God to have been punished in this way. Job, knowing that he was a decent sort of person, wonders how it could be that he’s being punished at all. Elihu, who has remained silent to this point, gets angry at all of them: at Job for justifying himself and not God, and at the other three for condemning Job without finding an answer. He then sets out the position as it ought to have been, which is for Job to submit to the will of God and leave the whole business in his hands. Eventually, God turns up and tells them all off before having them perform some sacrifices after which Job is restored to health and prosperity.
Job is, I suppose, really wondering why bad things happen to good people. His three friends make the assumption that he’s being punished for something. Although I may not agree with Elihu exactly, the others are making an erroneous connection between cause and effect. Job assumes that by being a decent person, only good should befall him, but there’s plenty of evidence to show that, depending on their moral compass, a person’s morality brings them neither more good nor more bad.
I get migraines from time to time. Although I can’t always identify a reason for them, they often happen as a result of being asked to do something I don’t want to do or, it seems, as a consequence of pressure from doing something when I feel that I absolutely must deal with this thing. I don’t at any time think of these things as divine retribution because, well, I’m an atheist for one thing and, for another, there have been long periods of time when I haven’t had one followed by occasions when I’ve had several. But when I’m not getting them, I’m not being any more virtuous than I am when I do get them. My morality remains constant throughout.
Life is a capricious chain of cause and effect. The religious will attribute apparently causeless random events to some god and assume, as Job’s friends did, that they’re being rewarded or punished for something they did. The rational, because we can be a bit lazy at times, will say, C’est la vie.
Nonetheless, when things do go wrong when otherwise they’ve been going well, it’s a natural human response to wonder why they’re happening to us. Some schools of philosophy (e.g. the Stoics and the Epicureans) would have people bear their lot with indifference. Such perserverance might be all well and good, but not everyone is so tolerant and retribution can be most satisfying.
§ Obs. 1 The first part is rather like one of the questions in our recent speaking exams about an easy life being a good life. The second part is that old chestnut that morality comes from religion and that in the absence of religion, people lack morality. I think it was Dostoevsky who claimed that without God anything is permissible, which is clearly not true. Gods or no gods, clearly much which we would consider impermissible still happens anyway. Morality, which is inconstant in many respects, stems from society and not make-believe.
Satan sends down a plague of spiders to eat Job’s crops, but he greets this little disaster stoically.
§ Obs. 2 Hold on. Spiders?! Spiders aren’t noted vegetarians. Locusts maybe, but spiders would weave webs and wait for lunch to come to them. “And so Job’s crops flourished because the spiders ate all the insects.”
Next, Job loses all his children, but also bears that stoically and goes into mourning.
Lastly, Job is covered in boils, at which point he does lose his faith.
§ Obs. 3 The Biblical story after this is a dialogue between Job and three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad and Sophar) who assume he must’ve done something to offend God to have been punished in this way. Job, knowing that he was a decent sort of person, wonders how it could be that he’s being punished at all. Elihu, who has remained silent to this point, gets angry at all of them: at Job for justifying himself and not God, and at the other three for condemning Job without finding an answer. He then sets out the position as it ought to have been, which is for Job to submit to the will of God and leave the whole business in his hands. Eventually, God turns up and tells them all off before having them perform some sacrifices after which Job is restored to health and prosperity.
Job is, I suppose, really wondering why bad things happen to good people. His three friends make the assumption that he’s being punished for something. Although I may not agree with Elihu exactly, the others are making an erroneous connection between cause and effect. Job assumes that by being a decent person, only good should befall him, but there’s plenty of evidence to show that, depending on their moral compass, a person’s morality brings them neither more good nor more bad.
I get migraines from time to time. Although I can’t always identify a reason for them, they often happen as a result of being asked to do something I don’t want to do or, it seems, as a consequence of pressure from doing something when I feel that I absolutely must deal with this thing. I don’t at any time think of these things as divine retribution because, well, I’m an atheist for one thing and, for another, there have been long periods of time when I haven’t had one followed by occasions when I’ve had several. But when I’m not getting them, I’m not being any more virtuous than I am when I do get them. My morality remains constant throughout.
Life is a capricious chain of cause and effect. The religious will attribute apparently causeless random events to some god and assume, as Job’s friends did, that they’re being rewarded or punished for something they did. The rational, because we can be a bit lazy at times, will say, C’est la vie.
Nonetheless, when things do go wrong when otherwise they’ve been going well, it’s a natural human response to wonder why they’re happening to us. Some schools of philosophy (e.g. the Stoics and the Epicureans) would have people bear their lot with indifference. Such perserverance might be all well and good, but not everyone is so tolerant and retribution can be most satisfying.
Tomorrow it’s the tale of Abraham and Isaac in which the psychological abuse of the son by the father is all right because God told him to do it.
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