{"id":5052,"date":"2011-05-18T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/?p=5052"},"modified":"2011-05-18T00:10:56","modified_gmt":"2011-05-18T04:10:56","slug":"book-of-job-a-parody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/book-of-job-a-parody\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the Book of Job a Parody?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

Sometimes I really do not like certain chapters of the Bible. Two of the worst chapters for me have always been Job 1-2.<\/p>\n

They tell the story of a good and righteous man who becomes the pawn in a little game of Russian\u00a0Roulette\u00a0between God and Satan. Job is the unwitting butt of a cosmic wager.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While I do not believe that good and righteous people who love God will always have life turn out peachy keen, I nevertheless have a big problem with a God who uses humans the way that God uses Job in these two chapters. This is divine entrapment!<\/p>\n

What would you think of a parent who conspired with a drug dealer to sell drugs to the child and threaten them with killing their parents and siblings to see if the child will stay true the parent’s instruction to “Say no to drugs”? What kind of a sick parent would do that? (See my previous posts about this\u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

What would you think of a husband who conspired with a friend to try to seduce his wife just to see if she really loved him? What kind of a husband would do this?<\/p>\n

Yet this is what God and Satan conspire to do with Job.<\/p>\n

I’m sorry. I really do not like these chapters of the Bible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Which is why I fell out my seat when I recently read this in Unmasking the Powers<\/a><\/em> by Walter Wink (p. 13-14):
\n<\/p>\n

What kind of God is this, that trifles with the lives and flesh of human beings in order to win a bet? This God is too bent on sheer power to mark the sufferings of mere people. The author seems to be deliberately lifting up the God of a degenerated Deuteronomic theology to ridicule.<\/p>\n

That God, who rewards the wealthy landed aristocrats with riches and long lives and curses the poor, is the butt of a merciless lampoon that issues from the outraged sensitivities of a writer who has acutely observed how the oppressed and\u00a0infirm\u00a0suffer undeserved evil at the hands of the powerful and rich.<\/p>\n

Those God has not blessed, who have no such vast herds and spacious homes, but barely subsist on the land, must relish seeing this rich man stripped of his props and reduced to their level. And they must have chuckled with delight at the storyteller’s artful repetition in 2:1-3 where God behaves like a forgetful potentate unable to recall the job description of his own appointee!<\/p>\n

If one reads the Prologue of Job without awareness of the author’s intent to polemicize against a perennial but perverse notion of God, the picture that emerges is precisely the one the author attempted to confute!<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, Job 1-2 is a parody of a false view of God. It shows a forgetful God. A power-hungry God. A God who is so desirous of proving Himself right, that He plays around with humans lives, which mean nothing to Him, just to make a point. The author of the Book of Job is making fun of this popular and pervasive (but perverted) view of God in order to show us that our God, the God of the Bible, is not like this at all.<\/p>\n

I must say, I find this view highly attractive. The problem is that I cannot make it fit well with the rest of the Book of Job.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So has anyone out there come across this view before? Have you ever heard of it? If so, do you have any books, resources, articles, or commentaries that talk about it? I really want to study this view more. Why? Because Jesus is my interpretive grid for reading the Bible, and I have always struggled to fit the “God of Job” with the “Jesus of the Gospels.”<\/p>\n

Even if you have never heard of this view before, and don’t know of any further resources, what do you think of this view? What are your initial questions or reactions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the author of the Book of Job is making fun of a popular view of God in order to show us that our God, the God of the Bible, is not like this at all?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[12],"class_list":{"0":"post-5052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"tag-bible-study","8":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nIs the 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