Job - the introduction
This is - owing to time constraints - no more than partial introduction to our topic: "Considering the Book of Job". I have looked at the words written by the poet in order to attempt to understand his intention in writing the story and the meaning underlying it, and also at its possible significance in a developing historical and psychological perception of the nature of God as this is interpreted by those of Christian background who cannot resist asking questions.
A story almost always has a metaphorical level, and Biblical stories are no exception. In fact, Biblical stories are often heavily metaphorical because those who flouted conventional religious dogmas put themselves at risk.
Influenced by the Greeks and by Eastern thought (the Buddha was born in 562 BC), a change was occurring in the way men were perceiving Yahweh. They were losing faith in the violent, jealous, judgemental God of the Hebrews, a God who did not always manifest the qualities he demanded of believers and who could not be relied upon to keep his word. It was the prophet, Ezekiel, who - during the first half of the sixth century BC - grasped symbolically that Yahweh was changing in that he was moving closer to man rather than remaining as an aloof and dissociated Godhead. This is also prefigured in Job's reactions to God's treatment of him.
God never attempts to give an answer to Job's questions nor does He attempt to explain to Job why he took such savage action against a man whom He himself describes as "perfect, upright", fearing God and "eschewing evil". Job knows nothing of Satan's tempting God to subject Job to the severest tests in order to prove his faith. Had he known this, it would have puzzled and pained him even more because of its unworthiness. If there were one thing that sustained Job in his agony and his confusion at what was happening to him, it was his unshakeable belief that God was righteous and perfect. His questions to God are not a questioning of this, but an attempt to understand what is happening to him despite his goodness and deep love of God..
A conventional question over the ages has been: If God is a God of love and mercy, why do the righteous suffer?" (See Romans 8:28) And a conventional way of looking at Job's story would be something like this: Satan believes that Job can be corrupted and induced to curse God if he is sufficiently tormented. Because He is sure of Job's constancy and goodness, God agrees to let Satan inflict all possible tragedies upon Job, except the final one of taking his life. In this way, he will prove his point that Job is too truly good a man to give up what appears to be his infinite faith in God. (A major paradox, but let's move on.)
The Book of Job is an account of Job's search for answers - although finally none is forthcoming… at least none from God. Three friends debate the issue with Job and unfairly and cruelly decide that Job's problems must stem from unforgiven sin. A fourth friend adds his piece, pointing out that our reality is not God's reality and that we have to learn to accept this.
God speaks to Job at last and only then does Job realise that his righteousness was in his own eyes, not God's, and that he cannot hope to understand the full picture. He therefore cannot assess what has happened to him in terms of the limited view available to a mere human creature. Having `understood' the issue and learned a lesson about God, Job is rewarded by recovering double what he lost in material terms… although nothing is said about the lives lost in God's pretty despicable exercise in powerplay. Nor is any attempt made to answer the questions that the traditional accepting view (close to that of Job's three cowardly friends) leaves unanswered… and are afraid even to pose.
What we are looking at today is a small attempt to provide "AN ANSWER TO JOB".
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Job - the storyline
We need to have at least the storyline of the Book of Job in place before we can discuss God's role. Here it is for those who would like to refresh their minds with some detail:
Chapter 1: God praises Job for his devotion to God, his uprightness and his great goodness as a human being. Satan questions Job's motives. God replies that Job's goodness is as complete as one could find in a man. Satan retorts that Job is so exceptional a man because God has blessed him in every way, but if God withdrew his favour, Job would "curse thee to thy face". (Verses 6-11)
God permits Satan to destroy Job's wealth, but not his health: "Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand…" (Verse 12)
The result is that Job suffers a series of disasters in which his flocks and herds are stolen and his servants put to the sword. The messengers who bring the news to him are the sole survivors. A great wind attacks the house of his eldest son where his sons and daughters are dining. All the men are killed. (Note that nothing is said about the daughters… see verse 19. Can it be that daughters are less valuable than herds, flocks and sons in Satan's eyes? Yet nothing is said later of Job's being comforted by his daughters. Were they annihilated but not worth mentioning?)
Chapter 2: Meeting with the Sons of God (the archangels, one assumes) again, among whom is Satan (whom God appears to allow to be close beside Him), God again praises Job: "And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdest fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause." (One notes that God does not take responsibility for His own choice here, but blames Satan for `moving' Him against Job.)
Satan replies: "Put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." So God gives Satan permission to destroy Job's health, but not his life. (In His omniscience, would He not have known that Job would remain his faithful servant?) So God gives Satan permission to destroy Job's health but not take his life.
Job is covered in boils from head to foot. His wife says: "Curse God, and die!" But Job replies that we receive both good and evil at the hand of God. His integrity remains unimpaired. Three of his friends arrive to comfort him and weep and tear off their clothes when they see him.
Chapter 3: Job wishes that he had died at birth.
Chapter 4: His friend, Eliphaz, advises him to confess his sins to God. His advice amounts virtually to accusation: "You have upheld others - why now can you not uphold yourself?"… "… whoever perished, being innocent?" Eliphaz seems to resent Job's uprightness: "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his master?" (verse 17)
Chapter 5: His other homilies include: "Affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground" (verse 6) and "… happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore despise not then the chastening of the Almighty". (verse 17)
Chapter 6: Job asks what he has done wrong. It would be a comfort were God to destroy him. Pity should be shown to one so afflicted, he points out to his friends: "Now, ye are nothing; ye see my casting down, and are afraid." (verse 21) (They are afraid because they know they are far less worthy than Job. It is therefore important to them that there should be some hidden flaw in Job which God is punishing.)
Chapter 7: Job reviews his desperate state and asks questions to which there appear to be no answers.
Chapter 8 Job's friend, Bildad, asks: "Does God pervert judgement? or doth the Almighty pervert justice?" He suggests that Job make supplication to the Almighty: "If thou wert pure and upright, surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous." (verse 6)
Chapter 9: Job asks whether innocence or evil is all the same to God because he destroys both. "… He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked." (verse 22). "If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent." (verse 23)
Chapter 10: Weary of life, Job speaks out of the bitterness of his soul. He begs God to reveal why he is dealing with him in this way. "Thou knowest that I am not wicked…" (verse 7). "If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine affliction…" (verse 15) "Thou hurtest me as a fierce lion…" (verse 16) "Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb?"
Chapter 11: Zophar's contribution is that God is punishing Job far less than he deserves.
"If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles." (verse 14)
Chapter 12: Job tells Zophar to stop speaking on God's behalf. "I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you; yea, who knoweth not such things as these?" (verse 3)
Chapter 13: "Will ye speak wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him?" (verse 7)
"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain my own ways before him." (verse 15) "He shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him" (verse 16) "How many are my iniquities and sins? Make me to know my transgression and my sin." (verse 23)
Chapter 14: "O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me in secret until thy wrath is past…" (verse 13)
Chapter 15: Eliphaz: God doesn't trust even the angels.
Chapter 16: Job tells his friends what miserable comforters they are - and describes the onslaught on him. "I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you." (verse 4) "But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips, assuage your grief." (verse 5)
Of God: "He breaketh me with breach upon breach, he runneth upon me like a giant." (verse 14) "My face is foul with weeping, and my eyelids is the shadow of death; Not for any injustice in mine hands; also my prayer is pure"… (verses 16-17) "… behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high. My friends scorn me: but mine eye poureth out tears unto God. (verses 19-20)
Chapter 17: "And where is now my hope?"
Chapter 18: In a terrifying attack on Job's humanity, Bildad (his friend) tells him that if he does not prosper, it is because he is wicked.
Chapter 19: Job asks his friends: "How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?" (All human sympathy has been withdrawn from him. Why? Because his friends fear that if so good a man as Job is treated in this way by God, then goodness is obviously not enough for God. If God is against Job, then, for safety's sake, they must be against Job.) Job pleads: "Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me." (verse 21) And then, "Why do you persecute me as God…?" (verse 22) and finally, "… I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." (verse 25)
Chapter 20: Zophar says that Job has tried to make him feel ashamed for calling him a sinner.
Chapter 21: Job asked how his friend can hope to comfort him when the entire basis of his friend's argument is wrong. He points to how the wicked flourish. (By implication, so do the good suffer… so it is clear that it is not goodness or wickedness that leads to prosperity - which means that adversity cannot be a punishment for sin.) Punishment of the wicked is reserved for "the day of destruction". (verse 30) "… they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath".
Chapter 22: Eliphaz tells Job to quit quarrelling with God! Again, in order to justify Job's suffering, he accuses him of sins that he has not committed and advises him to "return to the Almighty". (verse 23)
Chapter 23: Job: "Oh, that I knew where to find God!" Yet he knows that he has kept the faith. "… his way have I kept and not declined". (verse 11) "Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than any necessary food." (verse 12) Chapter 24 continues in the same trend.
Chapter 25: Bildad demands to know how a mere man can stand before God and claim to be righteous.
Chapter 26: Job refuses to bear false witness against himself: "I am not a sinner," he says.
Chapter 27: His final defence is to reiterate that his lips will "not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit" (verse 4) "… till I die I will not remove my integrity from me." (verse 5) "My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I love." (verse 6)
Chapter 28: "… where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?" (verse 12)
Chapter 29: Job recalls the spiritual and material richness of his former life.
Chapter 30: People whose fathers he would "not have set with the dogs of his flock" deride and mock him. (verse 1) "Thou art become cruel to me: with thy strong hand thou opposest thyself against me." Job has called to God in vain.
Chapter 31Chapter 31: Even if he has sinned unwittingly, Job asks, surely the punishment is out of proportion? He asks that he be equitably punished for any unwitting transgression. (His assumption is that he must be to blame for something.) "Oh, that the Almighty would answer me…" (verse 35)
Chapter 32: Elihu, the fourth friend, tells Job not to fight against God just because He doesn't justify Himself to Job. "… these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. (verse 1) Elihu was angry because Job justified himself rather than God. But he was also angry with Job's three friends because they had found no answer, yet had condemned Job. (verse 3) Being younger, he had kept silent. Now he gives his opinion.
Chapter 33: Elihu says: "I have heard thy voice of thy words, saying (verse 8) `I am clear without transgression, I am innocent; neither is there any iniquity in me. (verse 9) `Behold, he findeth occasions against me, he counteth me for his enemy…'." Elihu points out that there is no point in striving against God for "God is greater than man." (verse 12). He promises that if Job listens to him, he will teach him wisdom. (Does this not smack of pride… or is Elihu, being young and of questing mind, a step ahead of Job at this point regarding the way God needs to be perceived at this stage?)
Chapter 34: "Surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgement…" His view is that Job has erred in feeling that he has been righteous because that suggests that God has not been righteous.
Chapter 35: Elihu says: "Thinkest thou this to be right, that thou saidest, my righteousness is more than God's." Is Job's sin vanity, he is asking.
Chapter 36: Elihu says that he has something to say on God's behalf. God is portrayed as a vengeful God who rewards those who obey and serve him and kills or severely punishes those who do not (ipso facto, in the eyes of others, Job must have transgressed!) God, says Elihu, cannot be questioned.
Chapter 37: We cannot expect to comprehend what God does.
Chapter 38: Finally, God speaks to Job. (God's ANSWER TO JOB… which turns out to be no answer at all.) God speaks out of a whirlwind, demanding to know who it is that "darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge" (verses 1-2) God goes into quite a rave, describing how he has created and controlled the universe and everything in it. Who else was there, after all, but He? He proceeds to give an impressive list of His creations.
Chapter 39: God parades His power, compared with which man is a grain of sand. Did you have anything to do with creation, he asks. Were you there? Can you really contend with me?
Chapter 40: Job replies that he is nothing and how could he ever find the answers to such questions. "Behold I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth… I will proceed no further." (verses 4-5)
God demands to know: "Wilt thou then condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?" (verse 8) (This seems less than honest.) A testimony to God's might follows.
Chapter 41: Job says nothing. Among God's list are many cruelties. "Who then is able to stand before me?" he asks arrogantly.
Chapter 42: All Job can say is: "I was talking about things I knew nothing about. (i.e. Why should righteousness secure one against sorrow, cruelty or despair when one is merely a man?) He tells God that previously he had heard of him "by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. (verse 5) Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. The Lord then speaks to Eliphaz and the other two friends: "You have not been right in what you said" and he demands seven bullocks and seven rams as burnt offerings. Only Job's prayers for them will God accept. Job then prays for his friends. This is the turning point and from then on Job prospers again, receiving twice as much in material goods as before, except that there is no mention of his dead family members and servants, killed at God's whim because he succumbed to Satan's temptation. All Job's brothers and sisters now return to comfort him "over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him". (Surely there is a touch of innuendo here?) Each brought a gift. Job lives on for 140 more years, seeing four generations of his family.
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Answer to Job
God gave no answers to Job, but Carl Jung endeavoured to, delving not only into the Book of Job, but into ancient sources not available to most of us. To these, he added the contemplation of a formidable mind.
What follows is, of necessity, a somewhat truncated, and therefore much less wide-ranging, discussion, a blending of Jung's splendid thesis with lesser observations of my own, because Job's story has always intrigued me and helped convince me many years ago that one cannot hope to understand a universe founded on paradox. One can only strive to keep the doors of perception open.
As Jung points out, religious statements refer "without exception to things that cannot be established as physical facts". If they did not do this, they would fall under the natural sciences, and we would have no religious philosophical dilemmas. We also have to take account that every single written record we have, whether God-directed or not, has been filtered through human consciousness and subject to its influences.
When we speak of religious contents, Jung points out, we "move in a world of images that point to something ineffable. We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object. If, for instance we say `God', we give expression to an image or verbal concept which has undergone many changes in the course of time", and we have no idea whether these changes affect the nature of our images and concepts, or even the nature of God himself. The way we perceive God depends largely upon our imaginations, our era and our environment, and the particular quality of our world view, our philosophy of life.
Something lies behind our images, of course, something that transcends consciousness and that links all our images and concepts to a few basic but powerful ideas or archetypes. Jung points out that "although our whole world of religious ideas consists of anthropomorphic images that could never stand up to rational criticism, we should never forget that they are based on numinous archetypes, i.e. on an emotional foundation which is unassailable by reason". (page xiv of Answer to Job)
An historical landmark
Jung sees the Book of Job as "a landmark in the long historical development of the divine drama":
At the time the book was written, there were already many testimonies which had given a contradictory picture of Yahweh - the picture of a God who knew no moderation in his emotions and suffered precisely from this lack of moderation. He himself admitted that he was eaten up with rage and jealousy and that this knowledge was painful to him. Insight existed along with obtuseness, loving kindness along with cruelty, creative power along with destructiveness… none of these qualities was an obstacle to the other. (p. 3)
This, says Jung, is "only thinkable either when no reflecting consciousness is present at all, or when the capacity for reflection is very feeble…", a condition which can only be described as amoral.
But what we are concerned with here is not how the people who followed the Old Testament felt about the many faces of God or how they interpreted the Book of Job, but how a modern human from a Christian background might deal with this exposure of divine darkness. It goes without saying that feeling plays a significant role and that any analysis will be subjective. It is also important to say that it is difficult in a short discussion like this one to deal adequately with such image-laden material relating to the divine and the problem of evil, let alone retribution. I will try to avoid any kind of intellectual approach or religious value judgements and stick to what the poet says and what it might mean in the sense of an evolving concept of God.
The paradox of injustice is one that never fails to elicit strong responses. Here, we want to discover why Job was treated so badly and whether there was any purpose - apart from God's pride in having so faithful a follower, yet wanting to prove to Satan that even the most painful physical and spiritual afflictions would not turn Job against him.
Job is fully aware of the impossibility of making moral demands which he ought to be able to expect of the Almighty. He already knows that God destroys both the good and the wicked. No matter what I do, he says, "I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent." (9:28) "For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgement." (9:32) Despite his doubts as to whether a man can be considered to be just in God's eyes, "he finds it difficult to relinquish the idea of justice, and therefore of morality"… in spite of everything, he cannot give up his faith in divine justice and cannot accept that God can just arbitrarily break his own laws. Although he perceives that God is at odds with himself here, he does not doubt the unity of God or that, within the Oneness of God, there is an aspect of him that is perfect and will help him.
The Old Testament scribes had given God a distinct personality that differed little from that of a tyrant king except that the concept of God was much larger and therefore more terrifying. As Yahweh of the Old Testament, God compelled a dominating personal relationship between himself and man, and people felt his scrutiny at all times and were afraid of it.
There is much evidence in the Bible for God's inconstancy. In terms of modern behavioural analysis, the Old Testament God seems able to convince himself that he exists only through his relation to something else. He seems "totally lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into himself". (p. 14) He is too unconscious to be moral, consciousness being necessary for morality. This does not mean that he is imperfect; he is, rather, "everything in its totality"… "therefore, among other things, he is total justice, and also its total opposite. At least this is the way he must be conceived if one is to form a unified picture of his character." The Old Testament God was an anthropomorphic picture, yet one curiously difficult to visualise satisfactorily because of his contradictoriness. "For instance, Yahweh regrets having created human beings, although in his omniscience he must have known all along what would happen to them," Jung points out.
For me, the question arises as to whether "knowing everything" (omniscience) has any real links with "consciousness" (being aware of knowing). Risking the danger of sophistry, it might be possible to have "perfect knowledge" without "consciousness" of the kind that enables one to reflect upon this knowledge.
"Existence is only real when it is conscious to somebody," says Jung (p. 16) "This is why the Creator needs conscious man even though, from sheer unconsciousness, he would like to prevent him from becoming conscious." (p. 16) And here we are back to the Garden of Eden myth, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the temptation of Eve by the Serpent.
The people of the Old Testament knew what they were talking about when they said: "Fear God", for their God was indeed a fearful God. They had given God a mythological biography that grew more judgemental and unpredictable with the passing of time. At the same time, man was growing in judgement himself, and some were becoming critical of this God of the Hebrews. There were incidents that they could not easily stomach; for instance, God's lavish promises to David in Psalm 89, which were so easily broken, despite David's pleas to God to remember them. This psalm is attributed to David himself and is believed to have been a song for the community written while he was in exile.
In the Book of Job, the spotlight is on one man, a man beloved of God, we are told, because of his goodness and piety. Yet God lets a "doubting thought" (Jung, p. 19) to allow Satan to lure him into testing a man whom his omniscience must surely tell him would pass such a test without any need for it to be actually inflicted on him. "The mere possibility of doubt was enough to infuriate him and induce that peculiar double-faced behaviour of which he had already given proof in the Garden of Eden… Similarly his faithful servant Job is now to be exposed to a rigorous moral test, quite gratuitously and to no purpose" (since he could have used his omniscience to resolve all doubt). (p.20)
One cannot help but wonder why this testing of Job, the faithful servant of God, is necessary to God. It is not pleasant to see how easily and pitilessly he abandons the luckless Job to his fate.
"From the human point of view," says Jung, "Yahweh's behaviour is so revolting that one has to ask oneself whether there is not a deeper motive hidden behind it." Does God give in to Satan because Job has something that he himself does not have; that is, constancy? Job's defence makes it clear that he is given to self-reflection and is not good simply out of religious obedience.
Job is mindful of his inferior position before God and has to watch himself constantly. This creates a habit of awareness. Is there a spark of jealousy in God that this creature whose mythological forebears ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is able to cultivate something in himself consciously that makes him more than a mere creature?
Jung points out that God "flagrantly violates at least three of the commandments he himself gave out on Mount Sinai" (p.22). One can be sure that this did not escape the notice of those people of the Old Testament who were evolving into self-awareness.
Job's friends - instead of giving him support - make him feel even worse with their moralising. Afraid of angering this perfidious God, they give Job ridiculously sanctimonious advice (for which they are castigated and `fined' by God later). They are therefore responsible for denying Job the solace of friendship.
It is interesting that - in believing in the wholeness, the oneness, of God - Job shows that he actually has a superior knowledge of God than God is shown to have of himself. He continues to believe fervently: "… behold, my witness is in heaven, and my record is on high…" (16:19-20) and "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." (19:25)
In the view of God given in the Book of Job, God cares little about being just; instead he displays the power of might over right. It is not surprising that Job, as a mere man, cannot understand this, because the Old Testament anthropomorphic view of God (which many still cling to today) leads him to look upon God as a "moral being" rather than a vast creative power in which paradox is inherent.
While God talks on for pages and pages about his infinite power and might and his capacity for creating whatever he feels like creating, his victim sits among the ashes and scratches his sores with potsherds. Job hardly needs to listen to this diatribe. It seems as though it is God himself who needs to listen to it … perhaps because of the "doubting thought" created by Satan.
God appears to have no remorse whatsoever. He seems far more concerned with something that is implied but never stated: something in this loyal servant, Job, some real and infallible fidelity, that questions God's lack of faith in his own omnipotence.
We do not know what thoughts pass through Job's mind during God's displays of his enormous power, including a mighty drama of thunder and lightning. But his silence allows us to speculate. He no longer asks for (because he no longer expects) justice. Instead he says: "I will lay mine hand upon my mouth… I will proceed no further." (40:4-5) He has realised that man's idea of justice is not God's and that it is forever beyond man's understanding.
In psychological terms, God has projected his own doubts onto Job and proceeds to punish him for what he has himself reflected there. What Satan has created in God is not doubt of Job, but self-doubt, and it is this self-doubt that motivates God to accept Satan's challenge. God already knows that Job is a thoroughly good man, and His subsequent fearful displays of power are a clear indication of his insecurity in the light of Satan's taunting. Since he already knows of Job's constancy, why on earth does he succumb to Satan's wiles in order to prove it?
When Job tells God : "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee (42:5) Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (42:6), we are left to speculate whether his speech is quite as self-abasing as it sounds. It could be equivocal in that he is now aware of the `other side of God' and that it is a lesson that he will not forget. (Jung, p. 32) The naïve Job believed in a just and good God. He believed he had fulfilled his contract with God honourably, and that God would treat him accordingly. It certainly would not have dawned on him that God would fail to keep his own commandments.
What then did Job have to learn? He had to discover that the anthropomorphic God was a human conception, that God is not human, that He contains all of everything and that He cannot be judged morally in human terms.
Finally, there is no answer from God at all; Job merely has to adjust to a new perception of God's reality. He is able to do this because of his undiminished belief in God's goodness… but he knows now that there is also another side to God, a divine darkness beyond man's understanding. He realises that one cannot apply the same rules to God as one applies to men, because God is above such notions as justice, morality and ethics. He has to be; otherwise he would not be the Oneness, the Totality. To all but those who trust blindly, a relationship of blind trust in God's unfailing support of any human being and his protection against all evils is "completely out of the question to our modern way of thinking". (Jung, p. 35)
It is one of the paradoxes of life that man must strive to be just and ethical, while God - by his paradoxical nature and his very wholeness - is above both justice and ethics in our human terms. What Job comes to recognise is the dual nature of God before which he indeed knows that he is nothing… and everything. This is what the poet shows in the Book of Job. This is his purpose, his intention.
It is interesting that by punishing Job so severely, God unwittingly elevates him to even higher stature. It has to be unwitting, because God's behaviour shows he had no such intention.
Jung suggests that, in terms of creating God in terms that make him more approachable to humankind, Satan's failure to annihilate Job's faith in God actually changes the nature of God in that he evolves from the power-obsessed , punitive Yahweh of the Old Testament to God the Father acclaimed by Jesus Christ. Jung spends some time showing us how the perception of God evolves from the earliest Genesis and other records and how this is captured in sustaining myths. God is constantly involved in his own creations and since he is the Totality, he is also involved in his own ongoing creation.
The story of Job plays a significant role in changing both God and man. The message for mankind is an enduring one picked up this century by Viktor Frankl during his incarceration in Nazi death camps: that while man has no control over the "tragic triad" of pain, guilt and death, he does have control over the stance he takes to even the worst circumstances. This is one of the instances where man's divine spark can manifest.
Since Job had emerged "morally higher than Yahweh", it was clearly time for a new religious paradigm in which God would be conceived of differently. Although he wasa a rabbi and not a rebel, Christ was one of the religious teachers who saw the need for a different conception of God. He wanted a return to the old spiritual laws, but under the guidance of a loving God, God the Father whose kingdom was within every human being, if only they would recognise this.
This raises new questions, including regarding the nature of evil, if God is totally good rather than goodness being part of the All. In this sense, this longing for God to be a loving Father God is a step backwards from Job's painful realisation that the totality of God places Him above human morality and ethics, because He is Everything. It also raises the question of why a loving God would later need to sacrifice His own son. This needs an entire dedicated discussion, so cannot be discussed here, but Jung suggests that in mythological terms "Yahweh must become man precisely because he has done man a wrong" (as in the Book of Job and in God's broken promise to David, see Psalm 69). The evolving God - always creating - becomes "a guardian of justice" and "knows that every wrong must be expiated". He knows, too, that he is not above the moral laws that he himself set down. (Jung, p. 69) "Yahweh's intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and suffering." (Jung, p. 77) It is not only a promise, a commitment, but an expiation.
If this longterm view of an evolving God seems strange, let us remember that Christ Himself talked of this when he said: "Before Abraham, I am." In other words, the God of Love was always there as part of the Godhead, which was why Job was able to believe in Him and call on Him.
Following on Christ's teachings, the doctrines of the Christian churches have to this day continued to emphasise the notion of a loving Father to the extent that one must see how incompatible the Yahweh of the Old Testament had become to the religious consciousness of pre-Christ days. The Book of Job - far from being a self-contained story of one man's tribulations at the hands of a power-hungry and pitiless God - is a metaphor underlying a process of change. Men were already turning away from the Old Testament Yahweh and the idea of man as a helpless plaything of the Divine.
What Job shows through his unshakeable belief and unassailable goodness is that there is indeed a divine spark in man over which neither divinity nor darkness has ultimate power, since the spark, the divinity and the darkness are all part of the same Totality.
Frankl's 20th century observation can be seen in the same light: there are times when we cannot avoid the encounter with darkness, with the tragic triad, and when we have no power over what happens to us - but we do nonetheless have the power to choose the attitude we take to those times of darkness and helplessness.
The Age of Christianity with its loving Father God did not burst unheralded upon the Middle East with the birth of Christ. It had been evolving for centuries and was historically prepared for with the notion of a coming Messiah. Jesus was the man for the time, and his image of a loving God was the fruition of thoughts and longings that began centuries before and were most starkly and unequivocally captured in the story of Job's struggle for understanding in the light of Yahweh's refusal to give an answer to his questions.
Judaism had split into many different sects, and Jesus emerged at first as a Jewish reformer and the prophet of a wholly loving God. In doing this, Jung points out (page 110), he offered people a new concept of God at a time when many were becoming increasingly estranged from the God of the Old Testament. Other peoples were also becoming estranged from their gods; for instance, both the Greek and Roman pantheons had faltered. In Rome, emperors were to assume divine aspects until the age of Diocletian, who declared in favour of Christianity.
The "answer" came with the Christian era, but it is by no means a final answer, for the essence of Christ's teachings and the dogma of churches grow ever further apart, and once again men are searching for new understandings and forming new concepts of God, one of many questions being how a "supremely good God" could arrange the forgiveness of sins "through a human sacrifice, and, what is worse, through the killing of his own son". (p. 111) There is a lingering dissatisfaction that this new concept of God did not abandon the notion of human sacrifice. Jesus was probably a victim of largely non-Roman conspiracy rather than divine arrangement, but what matters is that the new concept of a loving Father is totally at odds with a God demanding yet another sacrifice. Does Yahweh lurk in the Christian concept of God, too? Instead of gaining insights into the problem of evil, its manifestations multiply and its meaning mystifies us. Jung goes on to look at Revelation and opens up a whole new range of speculations for us, beyond today's scope.
We are increasingly understanding how dogma digs its own pitfalls. If we are to look at dogma from a Unitarian point of view, we see how much spiritual energy is saved by avoiding dogmatism. Those who choose to adhere to dogma are tightly bound to its inconsistencies.
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Jung's Answer to Job bears a great deal of study. In it he shows the enduring nature and the constant evolution of myth and how closely myth reflects our human realities. Myths encapsulate the great eternal truths that we can perhaps never discover except by the reflection of archetypes indirectly manifested in our lives. It is important to note the importance that Jung gives to the God spark in the psyche of man. Its realisation is the entire purpose of the individuation journey, the journey to wholeness.
Jung casts his eye - and his amazing pioneering intellect and spiritual sensitivity - across the Biblical centuries and shows the evolution of God, as well as the evolution of dogma and the concretising of Christian beliefs into the Roman Catholic and Protestant camps. He shows that man is as important to God as God is to man… God not as static concept but as a living creative power who needs the God-spark in man to realise his own Godness and to evolve as part of an ever-changing creation.
Copyright: Shirley Bell
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