Our third and final part {for now} of a three part series on the book of JOB.
We recieved such a great "question" from a wonderful listener Meg that we decided to use it as the frame for the first half of the episode. Meg writes in part: "The entire premise of Job occurs because God and Satan basically had a bet going about how righteous Job was and how much crap they could throw at him to test this out. Like some sick experiment. It seems to me that not only was it senseless suffering, which is hard enough to deal with on its own, but feels like it was even encouraged by God. .... And then when Job finally gets to ask God why (and honestly sometimes it doesn’t even matter why, it’s an expression of angst) he basically gets told off by God and his pitiful insignificance pointed out by the Loving Just Father who was basically the cause of it all in the first place. How was any of it just? God didn’t need to prove Job’s faithfulness to Satan. He’s God for crying out loud! I’ve just always struggled with the notion of who God appears to be in Job, it seems to be in complete conflict with a God that apparently loved the world so much he sent his only son to die for it.... And it just all makes me wonder if all the suffering we all go through in our lives is actually just God playing games with his children that ‘he so loves’ and maybe what I’ve been taught my whole life about God through the bible and church and my own apparent relationship with him is wrong. It’s the first thing you learn as a kid: God loves you. And yet he didn’t really love Job all that much to treat him like that...It was cruel..."
Our very own DJ has prepared a simple Book of Job outline - you can download the PDF here.
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