The Judeo-Christian tradition is not one to brush its issues under the rug. It airs its dirty laundry in full view, the books of Job and Ecclesiastes being notable examples but not the only ones. The Psalms also extensively question God on this very point.

After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition calls listeners to a concern for the well-being of others. It calls them to challenge oppression of the weak, to rebuke the oppressors and to call upon those standing idly by to help. It is consistent with the Judeo-Christian belief system that a believer should then use God’s own demands for loving one’s neighbor to challenge God’s actions. This is not some novel doctrine that I have come up with. It is the practice of Abraham, Moses, and David; all among God’s favorites. Any believer who sees the on-going use of the Psalms as central to his religious experience will join these saints in pointing out the injustices of the world to a God who could stop them.

There are two basic responses to the problem of evil. The one is to brush it under the rug, to attack those who sincerely express their puzzlement at the suffering they undergo as weak of faith, or as false believers. Job was one such man, calling out in anger to the God who let him lose everything over a bet with the Satan. Some of his friends, undoubtedly thinking themselves more religious men than he, argued that Job must surely only be getting what’s coming to him, and that God was surely just. Job chose the second option, the riskier option, the sincere option: he kept at God day and night about his pain.

When all was said and done, God announced that it was Job, and not his pious friends, who had spoken sincerely about him. He had some things to say to Job, to be sure, but he responded favorably to him. He had nothing but angry threats for the other three, threats which he turned back on when Job intervened.

The fact that a believer is unsatisfied with God’s justice as he sees it does not make him less of a believer. At least in Job’s case and that of the Psalmist, it makes him more of a believer. This, again, is solidly Christian teaching — Jesus cried out Psalm 22 to God as he was being crucified. Another sort of believer looks about and announces that all’s well in the world, that as far as he can tell, God’s justice is working just fine as whiners must be brought to heel. This does not make him more of a believer. If anything, it makes him less. It shows that he does not take God’s claims of justice seriously.

So, one might ask, why do those who complain to God about injustice continue to believe in a God who would act in ways apparently contradictory to his nature? There are probably a great many possible answers. I will give one. For many believers, the fact is that they critique the evil in the world, and therefore God’s allowing it, in terms of God’s own standards of good. For someone who locates his standards for good in terms of God, throwing God overboard would not make the problem of evil go away, but would rather make it worse by taking away the very point of reference which allowed them to criticize evil. Their own awareness of evil testifies to them that there is a very real standard for good and evil out there, and it is this awareness that causes them to cling to the good even when the world is clearly broken.

Better a problematic starting-point from which one may assault the evil in the world than no starting point at all. That, at least, is how this Christian Theist sees the matter. It is also, more or less, the approach taken by many believers who have not had the incredibly easy life that I have.

(PS: On the question of theodicy, I owe a great deal to a pastor named John Hobbins, who first articulated for me in a manner I found clear a number of truths about suffering which I had already seen expertly put into practice in the ministry of another pastor, my father. An example of this articulation, useing Job 42 as a starting-point, is here.)

Psalms introduces the problem of how to interpret the success and failure of the righteous and wicked. Proverbs and Job develop those themes further. The way all these books stand next to each other in the Hebrew canon might be the basis for an argument that we should try adopting the Hebrew order ourselves.

I do not know when it was in my life, nor whether I was in the Venezuela and the US or that time. Almost all my memories have locations. This is no exception. My location in this memory in my mind’s eye, standing away off and watching Job, sitting and talking with friends, minding his own business. A happy and prosperous man.

And then a messenger comes, and speaks details of disaster. And before he is finished, another comes, telling a different tale. And another. I alone have escaped to tell you. I alone have escaped to tell you. I alone have escaped to tell you. I don’t remember how many messengers came to Job, but their cumulative effect still disturbs me.

One layer at a time, disaster is piled up on top of Job, with no time in between speakers for reflection, for trying to get at the facts, for trying to harmonize their accounts. The world simply caves in on Job.

Orally recited, the text does that superbly. What you’re reading in print is a dim reflection of what it looks like when read in a grave, steady, almost slow but never pausing voice. Try reading it out loud that way to yourself, and suddenly Job sitting in complete shock and silence for a week afterward won’t seem on all that far-fetched.

According to E. W. Bullinger (see his Companion Bible, Genesis 46:13), Job may well have been the son of Issachar.  As it says in Genesis 46:13 (Masoretic Text),

And the sons of Issachar [were] Tola and Puah and Job and Shimron.

If we turn to our NIV’s however, we find that there is no Job:

The sons of Issachar:  Tola, Puah, Jashub, and Shimron.

The difference is that the Samaritan Pentateuch and some Septuagint mss. read “Jashub,” which better agrees with some other passages.  So even if the correct reading for Genesis is “Job,” and this is uncertain, the Job/Jashub referred to could well be different from the Job of the Book of Job.