The Book of Job

[sandy whitelinger]

Satan?

If you want to see the source of all pain and suffering, look no further than your fellow man.

Its about time people took responsiblity for their own actions instead of pawning them off on a supernatural being.

This world is your mess, not Satan's.


x

I have to agree with this one. Satan get's a lot of credit for things we do all by ourselves. It also amuses me to think that some feel they are soooooo righteous and doing soooooo much good that Satan needs to interfere.

 

[gnostic]

One should remember that Job is the character in a morality play, perhaps the very first recorded morality play. He is "Everyman". Job may well be the first Book of the Bible ever to be written down.

A morality play, probably performed once a year or so in the community, we shouldn't take it for anything more.

Agreed.

However, this is the subject of this topic. So you have to look at the contents of this "play", as you've call it, and context of the message. You still have to approach this book in what it is saying.

The only morality I saw in this is Job's patience and fortitude. However, I saw no morality in what God had to say in the end, and no morality in why he allow Satan to kill Job's children. Despite, God rewarding Job at the very end, making him richer than before, and giving him more children, the fact that God had Job's children killed, showed that God is selfish and arrogance.

In my view, Job was seen as the good guy, Satan as bad guy, and God as the ultimate bad guy.

If I remember correctly Jesus said that all these little children are precious to God (I don't recall precisely where in the gospels), but this attitude seem very different to the OT God in the Book of Job.

 

[Popeyesays]

Satan is the antagonist, Job is the protagonist. God is nature arrayed against society.

One may curse God, one may praise Him, yet God will do as He pleases to do, and all our lamentation and praise is of no avail in thwarting that will.

Regards,
Scott

 

[Caina]

Didnt Job ask to go to hell

 

[gnostic]

Satan is the antagonist, Job is the protagonist. God is nature arrayed against society.

One may curse God, one may praise Him, yet God will do as He pleases to do, and all our lamentation and praise is of no avail in thwarting that will.

Even if that means God must do evil, himself?

 

[JayHawes]

God is beyond doing evil. He does that which is pure, and though our eyes, not having seen, percieve evil. His eyes, fully open, his understanding fully furnished knows well what is needed.

 

[JayHawes]

What many of us do is lower the nature of what we percieve as God. God is God he must not bend to our will, but we must bend to his. He must not serve us, but we must serve him, He must not answer to us, but we must answer Him.

Job made the mistake of questioning the wonder of God, instead of waiting and realising that GOd was going to bless him. God was not the ultimate bad guy, He blessed Job with greater riches than he had before his storm had come. The purpose was shown, there is a lesson for you and I to learn. That in the midst of our suffering, if we wait, God will see us through.

 

[doppelganger]

That in the midst of our suffering, if we wait, God will see us through.

That's not a very good lesson.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Book of Job is a polemic against the doctrine of divine retribution and, as such, a rather brilliant piece of apophatic (negative) theology.

 

[cardero]

Apophatic

Apophatic theology​

The name given to the theology based on the VIA NEGATIVA.​

Via negativa

Converse of the VIA AFFIRMATIVA. The way of God through negation, a commonplace of all mysticism, whether Eastern or Western. No predicates attach to God; no words may legitimately be used to describe him. He is "not this, not that". But in stripping from our mind its delusions about God we prepare it for the truth, and in eliminating all that is not God, we begin to penetrate to the heart of the mystery. A magnificent expression of the via negative will be found under DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE.​

Via affirmativa

The way of affirmation is an approach to God through positive assertion about His attributes. He is good, just, wise, loving, and so on. From that point we know it we have to expand our concept from goodness as we know it to infinite goodness. Many theologians claim that the via affirmativa is inadequate without the via negativa, because it, can speak only of the attributes of God, never of His eternal nature.​

​

 

[may]

So, you believe that Jesus was God 2.0? I think that Jesus makes a far better god than the God of the OT. Jesus taught love, compassion, forgiveness and righteousness. The God of the OT was at times egotistical, proud, angry, jealous and unforgiving. Hardly traits of a god that should be worshiped.

Jesus was taught By his father Jehovah who is the God in the OT .
Jesus often said that what he taught was precisely what he had learned from the Father, so his listeners were, in effect, being taught by Jehovah. (John 7:16; 8:28; 12:49; 14:9, 10)

 

[Popeyesays]

Even if that means God must do evil, himself?

God does as God wills, whether it appears good or evil to man is irrelevant.

"XCVIII. Say: O leaders of religion! Weigh not the Book of God with such standards and sciences as are current amongst you, for the Book itself is the unerring balance established amongst men. In this most perfect balance whatsoever the peoples and kindreds of the earth possess must be weighed, while the measure of its weight should be tested according to its own standard, did ye but know it."
(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 198)

"Lauded be Thy name, O my God! Aid Thou by Thy strengthening grace Thy servants and Thy handmaidens to recount Thy virtues and to be steadfast in their love towards Thee. How many the leaves which the tempests of trials have caused to fall, and how many, too, are those which, clinging tenaciously to the tree of Thy Cause, have remained unshaken by the tests that have assailed them, O Thou Who art our Lord, the Most Merciful!"
(Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah, p. 77)

"Reflect upon his holiness Job: What trials, calamities and perplexities did he not endure! But these tests were like unto the fire and his holiness Job was like unto pure gold. Assuredly gold is purified by being submitted to the fire and if it contain any alloy or imperfection, it will disappear. That is the reason why violent tests become the cause of the everlasting glory of the righteous and are conducive to the destruction and disappearance of the unrighteous."
(Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha v3, p. 654)

Regards,
Scott

 

[gnostic]

What many of us do is lower the nature of what we percieve as God. God is God he must not bend to our will, but we must bend to his. He must not serve us, but we must serve him, He must not answer to us, but we must answer Him.

Isn't that precisely depriving a person's free will? Where does free will or slavery come in?

God still sounds like a tyrant.

 

[gnostic]

God does as God wills, whether it appears good or evil to man is irrelevant.

It matters very much to me.

Is he a loving father? Or is he megalomaniac tyrant?

If he is the latter, then he doesn't want people to have free will.

 

[Popeyesays]

It matters very much to me.

Is he a loving father? Or is he megalomaniac tyrant?

If he is the latter, then he doesn't want people to have free will.

God is God. God's will is never thwarted. God's will is that you have free will to decide for yourself whether or not to willingly follow that will during your life.
A daily prayer of my faith starts:' . . Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. . . ."

Without your free will or mine the stars will continue to burn, the planets will continue to circle those stars, life and death will go around us, we will procreate, all the world will renew itself arpound us.

We have no recourse to affect that. It is because God wills it so.

Regards,
Scott

 

[Muffled]

In the book of Job, Satan has to be granted permission from God before he is able to inflict pain and suffering on Job. It appears from this story that Satan can only do to us what God allows. If this is the case, why does God let Satan inflict pain and suffering upon people instead of letting us lead happy, pain free lives?

It is a matter of free choice. Once a choice is made for God, Satan no longer has power over you. Satan has power over the world but not over believers. That doesn't mean Satan has given up because he can rest on his laurels of having dragged angels down with him. By asking, why, Job is questioning the wisdom of God. God has turned that around to ask Job whether he thinks his wisdom is superior to God's wisdom. By the time God finishes asking all those questions that Job can't answer, he ought to have seen the point.

 

[Darkness]

God does as God wills, whether it appears good or evil to man is irrelevant.

Might makes right, eh?

God is God. God's will is never thwarted.

I prefer to fight for what is right at all costs.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same..." -- Satan, Paradise Lost

 

[Popeyesays]

Might makes right, eh?



I prefer to fight for what is right at all costs.

"The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same..." -- Satan, Paradise Lost

And Canute told the tide to halt. Did it?

Regards,
Scott

 

[gnostic]

By asking, why, Job is questioning the wisdom of God. God has turned that around to ask Job whether he thinks his wisdom is superior to God's wisdom.

If God is so superior in his wisdom to Job, then he should have no problem answering Job's questions, then. He just arrogantly boasted his superiority, He didn't answer at all. By not answering, he has shown his arrogance, not his wisdom.

By the time God finishes asking all those questions that Job can't answer, he ought to have seen the point.

It make me wonder if God even have a single answer. From what I can see in the Book of Job, God doesn't know the answer himself, which in my mind, is downright pathetic attempt at dodging Job's valid questions, by puffing his divine chest.

God is God. God's will is never thwarted. God's will is that you have free will to decide for yourself whether or not to willingly follow that will during your life.
A daily prayer of my faith starts:' . . Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. . . ."

Then, God is not better than Satan; he would be considered to be worse tyrant than the Devil, because he is ultimately the Devil, since he is the testing and playing with Job's life, because of his failure to justify his action, with his supposedly greater wisdom, when Job questioned him.

 

[Popeyesays]

"Then, God is not better than Satan; he would be considered to be worse tyrant than the Devil, because he is ultimately the Devil, since he is the testing and playing with Job's life, because of his failure to justify his action, with his supposedly greater wisdom, when Job questioned him." I asume you're all tied up in the neo-gnostic idea that the God of the Old Testament is a tyrant and there is a different God in the New Teswtament Who is all sweetness and light?

That seems a silly notion to me. God is ONE. The God of Abraham is the God of Jesus, Muhammad, Baha`u'llah, etc..

Regards,
Scott