The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
October 22, 2006
Vol. 9 no. 41

Everything But...
           The Gospel of Mark has been rough on all of us the last few weeks. If we try to sneak away and seek refuge in Job’s tale, will it be any easier? If you’re looking for patience, Job is not the model.
           Job is a long book, 42 chapters, most of it a poetic dialogue between Job and his erstwhile friends who have now become his accusers. Why bad things happen to good people is the book’s transparent theme, and the original author never quite ties up the loose ends. Precisely because he was a very good person Job was victimized by the collusion of God and the Adversary (not quite Satan yet). This injustice doesn’t calculate in Judeo-Christian spiritual calculus - the only possible answer is that Job must have committed some act of commission or omission. God and the moral order cannot be wrong; only human beings are meant to be wrong.
           There is much more of the impatience of Job afoot than his patience. Job was not happy with the way his theological understanding of the way the world worked had been destroyed. It has never been easy for good church folk to comprehend that evil, violence, tragedy, natural disaster afflict them with the same random ferocity as the godless and profligates of the world. Since we assume God knows everything, does everything, has all power, the logical and brave conclusion is that God is either not just or not really loving.
           That unloving injustice attacking our righteous dignity makes it awfully hard to be a person of religious faith. To be religious normally requires one to love the Ultimate Concern of your life, by whatever name. Because we know so much of what is happening in this beautiful, yet troubled and violent world, we keep asking, “Where does love matter?”