Session 1 - There was a Man Named Job....

-----Why do bad things happen to good people? This is at the heart of the entire book of Job. This is a question that is asked in culture after culture, from the dawn of time. We noted that there are pre-Job stories which come from the ancient Sumarians, Babylonians, Egyptians and on and on. Samuel Balentine notes in his comprehensive commentary: “For as long as men and women have walked this earth, they have shared the journey with someone, somewhere, named Job.” (pg. 5). Frost notes that “this is my story, your story, every person’s story.”
-----There have been a variety of ways to explain this. One very common explanation – which we find throughout the bible – is what we would call “Retributive Justice.” As one of us noted – this is the “Santa Claus” theology of “if you are good you will get good things; if you are bad you will be punished.” Unfortunately life doesn’t seem to work like that. Retributive Justice is well represented in the Book of Job by the three friends, but ultimately the book of Job rejects this understanding.
-----It is a very common understanding however. In my own life and ministry, especially during my time as a hospital chaplain, I was often confronted with this understanding. I shared that when I was about 13/14 I was working in a lumber yard and the foreman (and my boss) told me a story about a young man who was killed in a horrific car accident. This young man had become a “born-again” Christian a few months earlier but this had not changed his life-style. Johnny suggested that God did this to him as punishment. This terrified me at the time, but now almost 50 years later I look back in disgust at the way this story was told to a child. It was manipulative and it is also simply untrue. I do not believe that God causes horrific things to happen on purpose in order to punish. I do not believe in retributive justice.
-----I also used an illustration from my days as a hospital chaplain in a sermon I preached on April 27, 2008. It is posted online if you are interested - http://www.stmatthewsbloomington.org/sermons/index.php
-----Retributive justice is well represented in the book of Job. The bulk of the body of the text are the three dialogues (and there is the Elihu speech as well) during which the three friends strongly and uncompromisingly maintain their belief in this theology. “You must have done something wrong, Job!” Job maintains his innocence and the dialog becomes more heated and rather nasty by the end. Ultimately the book of Job rejects retributive justice. We will examine this and what other alternatives (if any) are presented.
-----We also talked about authorship. The book of Job is a parable. It is not a historical event. It emerged from a long oral history of like stories and was most probably assembled by a variety of writers over a long period of time. I provided a list of the possible versions of the story and how it came to be formed in its final form. I can provide the list to you if you did not get one.
-----Next week – the title of the session is “Upstairs/Downstairs.” Please read through Job (skim) and focus on chapters 1 and 2. Also read in the Frost pages 12 to 24 and look at the questions on page 104. The next session is Wed., Oct. 15 at 6:00. We will start right on time. Feel free to post thoughts and comments here on this blog. Be sure to make sure you are responding to the right entry. Also, if possible please join the blog.....
Thanks and blessings…..