The Book of Job is one of the most beautiful books in the entire Bible and a favorite of existentialists the world over, even people who don't believe strongly in the supernatural. For the Book of Job is just about the one most puzzling question that anyone that has ever lived is bound to have wondered: Why is life unfair?
Job, according to the parable, was a holy servant of God who was perfect in his obedience of divine laws. Yet one day he starts experiencing a series of increasingly catastrophic events, from the loss of his property to the loss of his family to the loss of his health. He's puzzled, for in a just world with an all-powerful all-loving God who is both just and merciful, none of it makes any sense whatsoever .
And so his friends and neighbours try to console him, till they also can only imagine that Job must have done some terrible evil, to which he's not admitting, for which he is being so ruthlessly punished.
Finally in his frustration Job can stand it no longer and instead of simply trusting in God cries out to God, almost accusing Him of bad faith. Job is at his wits' end and nearly at the end of his faith, it might appear, when God finally answers not Job's questions over why God has permitted all this anguish, but answers rhetorically with challenge after challenge along the lines of where-were-you-when-I-created-the-world, fundamentally pronouncing, Who are you to judge me?
In this story we will be able to see the futility of inquiring after life's fundamental unfairness. For what appears unfair to us is just a part of a larger natural activity that just happens to inconvenience us, oftentimes seriously, even fatally.
But it's not private and maybe that is the most bitter moral of all, that such things happen without any reference in the slightest to our individual selves, which is to assert, our egos.
Job, according to the parable, was a holy servant of God who was perfect in his obedience of divine laws. Yet one day he starts experiencing a series of increasingly catastrophic events, from the loss of his property to the loss of his family to the loss of his health. He's puzzled, for in a just world with an all-powerful all-loving God who is both just and merciful, none of it makes any sense whatsoever .
And so his friends and neighbours try to console him, till they also can only imagine that Job must have done some terrible evil, to which he's not admitting, for which he is being so ruthlessly punished.
Finally in his frustration Job can stand it no longer and instead of simply trusting in God cries out to God, almost accusing Him of bad faith. Job is at his wits' end and nearly at the end of his faith, it might appear, when God finally answers not Job's questions over why God has permitted all this anguish, but answers rhetorically with challenge after challenge along the lines of where-were-you-when-I-created-the-world, fundamentally pronouncing, Who are you to judge me?
In this story we will be able to see the futility of inquiring after life's fundamental unfairness. For what appears unfair to us is just a part of a larger natural activity that just happens to inconvenience us, oftentimes seriously, even fatally.
But it's not private and maybe that is the most bitter moral of all, that such things happen without any reference in the slightest to our individual selves, which is to assert, our egos.
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