Interesting....you've read the Bible, yet you're the one who believes Yahweh/Jehovah was cruel in dealing with Job. But James says the account about Job proves that God is "very tender in affection, and merciful." (James 5:11). So one of you isn't just wrong, but totally wrong! I'd say it is you.
Besides, a person needs Jehovah's ( = the Father's) approval to understand His Word, not Jesus'. (Luke 10:21, a point Christendom fails to recognize.) But I can see from your attitude that, without a doubt, you have neither.
Only you can change that.
An unbeliever can read the Bible more objectively than a believer. A believer is continually having to modify apparent meanings so that the words seem more kind or reasonable.
A poster on this thread gave us a fine example of that when she converted "meek" as in "Blessed are the meek" to "humble." I was commenting on how meekness is not a quality to extol, and she wrote, "A humble person cannot be humiliated. Humiliation comes from pride....a trait God hates."
I noted that meekness is not humility. Meekness is, "being submissive and easily imposed upon. The meek are used by others because they don't stand up for themselves. They're fearful and weak in spirit."
That was a typical example of how believers modify the meanings of the words in the Bible to scrub them of the moral and intellectual errors, self-contradictions, errors of science and history, etc.. The unbeliever has no need to do that, and simply interprets the words at their face value. He has no agenda to sanitize them.
The story of Job is a fine example. We had been discussing exactly that in another thread. I had said that what I saw was a capricious god cruelly toying with the life of a good man for a trivial reason - to demonstrate to a demon that no matter what was done to Job, he would not curse that god.
Other unbelievers posting had a similar understanding of the story similar to the one you were answering above. We weren't trying to be disrespectful. That's what happened in the story if taken at face value. That is what is reported.
I was told by believers that we did not understand the story. They each proceeded to tell the thread what the story actually meant. Unfortunately, they couldn't agree.They offered three different interpretations.
One said that the point of the story is to be a person of integrity and faith no matter the circumstance in life, and no matter what well meaning but judgmental friends tell you.
Another said that Job was being tested the way a soldier would be to make him a better man - some kind of training.
A third said that Job was being punished because he was only behaving well to force God's blessings rather than for the sake of goodness itself, for which reason God allowed, and even convinced Satan to take away his blessings.
Notice that all three added an element to the story that wasn't there, and each added a different element.
It's not surprising that the interpretation of the unbelievers was disqualified by people who assume that their god would never do such a thing. Nor was it surprising that the believers added elements to justify the actions of Job's god to restore the story to something more worthy of a god.
The point is that the unbelievers all saw more or less the same thing, and each believer that weighed in disagreed and modified the story in a different way. That's the difference between reading the scripture impartially, and reading it through a faith based confirmation bias. In the former case, one simply reads the words and reports what they say however immoral, vague, or confused they appear. In the latter case, if the apparent meaning of the words needs to be rectified, it is.
And of course, we were are often told that we aren't qualified to comment to comment on the meaning of scripture with a comment similar to yours about needing Jehovah's approval to understand His word.
Actually, I've been collecting those comments that try to disqualify the opinions of unbelievers. Here are a few that I've saved:
[44] Your lack of belief in God coupled with your lack of experience with God means you are not qualified to comment on God.
[45] He believes he is qualified on the basis that he has been inside a church and picked up a bible.
[46] The word of God can not be understood no matter how many times it is read without the help of the Holy Spirit.
[47] Out of context arguments are presented by narrow minds that refuse to take in the bigger perspectives and the greater all encompassing truths.
[48] You are a heretic with little if any understanding of Scripture. If you did study the Bible it was in a Laurel and Hardy College in Tijuana
[49] You can't just read the Bible to understand it, you need to study the scriptures.
[50] Your ignorance of the Bible, its laws and customs and what applies to Christians today is embarrassing. You should be red faced for making this comment in public.
[51] If you are going to quote Scripture for support for your claims then you need to tell me what the context is.
[52] Like I say there are no errors in the bible only skeptics that can't read and comprehend.
[53] You have no biblical expertise, your word on the Bible is strictly a layman's opinion.
[54] You want to convince me you have knowledge of the Bible. 1) Provide 5 examples of slave liberation in the Old Testament. 2) King Saul was merciful to the merciless and subsequently merciless to the merciful. Explain.
