Thoughts on the story of Job

Some of last week's Bible readings were in the book of Job. This story is frequently interpreted and seen as one where:

• Job is the hero of the story. He is the one who shows patience amidst all the calamities and suffering. He is the one who defends God against the accusations made by the friends.
• Job's wife is the faithless one. She gives up too easily.
• Job's three friends (though there were actually four) say all the wrong things. They don't know what they're talking about. They're useless as friends.
• The fourth friend (Elihu) is often overlooked. Or he gets lumped in with the other three. What he says is usually seen as not very different from the first three friends.

While reading through Job again, the usual interpretations were challenged. Here are some observations that I made:

• None of the human actors in the story, including Job, had a very clear picture of God. They were all under the impression that blessings are always the result of good behavior and calamities always the result of bad behavior. The difference between Job and the first three friends is that Job began to question this impression and assumption, whereas the three friends held rigidly and adamantly to how they thought God acted.
• Much of what the friends said about God were correct -- some of it most of the time, some of it some of the time. The problem as I see it is that they held to the view that God must always act in ways that they (humans) thought God should act, because that's how God acted in the past (their experience taught them).
• Elihu, the fourth friend and it appears the youngest of all of them, came closest to understanding God's ways. Even though Elihu, too, does not understand fully (who does?), he leaves open the possibility that God acts in ways that run contrary to human thinking and understanding. Perhaps that is why Job does not respond, nor does God condemn Elihu.
• It seems that the three friends, in their zeal to defend God, ended up slandering Job and accusing him falsely. They also, in their desire to be "right" about God, ended up slandering God. They seemed to have a problem with pride in self-knowledge (about God, even). They could not accept that they could be wrong. It seems that this was the core reason why God spoke out against them at the end.

There are several lessons for us today that I hadn't seen during previous readings of Job. These are:

• When we speak about God, his character, and how he works, we should be very careful to speak about what we really know to be true, rather than what we assume to be true.
• We should leave open the possibility that our view and understanding of God's ways are, in fact, quite different from what we believe. Just because in our experience God works in certain ways does not mean that he always works that way.
• God does not need us to defend him. Our compassion and love for one another is a far greater defense of God's character than any word, argument, or logic that we could bring to the table. It may even be that in our zeal in attempting to defend God, we become so rigid in what we view as "right" that we stop defending God and rather end up slandering both the person we took offense from initially and God, because our "right" view of God allows no room for God to be otherwise.
• It is okay to question God. It is not okay to demand that God respond.
• Our theologies, doctrines, and beliefs can become a source of self-pride; i.e., idols. Part of true humility is to acknowledge and admit that we really don't know much, that others, possibly younger and less educated (and perhaps even of a completely different religion), might actually have a better understanding of God's ways than we do.