Book Of Job

First allow me to apologize for not posting for a few days, I have been quite busy as of late but still nevertheless managed to have a fantastic weekend! I go back home (and back to work) later this week so I'm trying to spend as much time with my family now as I can because I don't know when I'll see my uncle and my cousins again, soon, God willing.

Over the weekend I also had a discussion with one of my cousins (he is 15 and a very bright kid and DON'T GET ME WRONG! I love my uncle and am sure he is probably a great and well-meaning father but my cousin sometimes says things that...well let's just say if he said those sorts of things in my house my parents would probably have tanned him a new hide!) about what is actually one of my favorite Bible Stories, the Story of Job.

In the pseudophilosophical agnosto-atheist type of prose so popular with college students and newspapers these days he was saying that God looked like the "bad guy" in the Story of Job because when he tested Job's faith he did bad things to a good man just to prove his point to Satan. Like I said he's a good and smart boy but very misguided sometimes. Here is what I told him:

I said that there were several things wrong with his argument, first namely that reductionist thinking like that is something that God is way beyond and even if something on the surface seems bad to us, that's only because we are human and incapable of fully comprehending the Will of God. And the wonderful thing about Job is that it was clear that even though bad things were happening to him he still never questioned the Will of God even though others expected him to! "Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10) Even though Job knows he is good and that he is not being punished, he realizes that the works of God were simply above his ken.

And after this, my young cousin still was not convinced. He even said that Job was just being "stupid" for trusting God through all his adversity and misery and that God really didn't have any reason to let Satan harm Job the way he did, and so I told him that the reason was right before his eyes and that if he only let himself stop thinking about it so hard he would be able to see it: God did indeed test Job's faith in order to prove his point to Satan. Remember, God made Satan too which means that Satan is still his creation and the events of the Book of Job are meant to teach him a valuable lesson about faith! Sure, Job suffered, but Job is merely one man; getting through to Satan would improve the lives of many men, would it not? And let us not forget the very end of Job's tale: "And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." (Job 42: 10) God rewards Job for his faith, for sticking through all the hardships. Twice as much as he had before? Not a bad deal at all!

Hopefully I got through to my little cousin at least a little bit, I figure if God can even try to convince SATAN of something I can certainly try to set members of my own family along the right path as a good Christian and a good person. I hope everybody has a wonderful week!

-Dirk