Since some experiences in 2012 that deconstructed my faith and created a big shift in my approach to life, I’ve fallen in love with the Psalms in the Bible, and also the book of Job. During that year I had an experience with the book of Job at a monastery. That experience has imprinted it within me and the impression it left has been lasting.

I previously didn’t give the book of Job much attention because, like many, I got hung up with the beginning. The prologue of Job does exactly what it’s supposed to do, it provides the setting and earlier story to the main events. It’s not the point of the story, though many of us have majored on it and made it the point. I can understand why – it offers up a wager between God and Satan, the latter presenting himself before God like the other angels. The wager focuses on the righteousness of Job and sets up a challenge whereby Satan is allowed to rip Jobs life apart as a test of the genuineness of that righteousness. Satan is fulfilling what seems to be his predominant function in Old Testament thinking – acting as the prosecutor in the courtroom of God.

Lots of discussion about the book gets no further than that as the set-up provides fodder for those reading it who want to work out details about who Satan is and his relationship to God. Then there is the wrestle with the seeming injustice of an innocent man being a pawn in a wager between God and Satan. At the heart of the struggle with that is the question ‘why does stink stuff happen to good people?’ We all want a solid answer to that question and many venture answers. The idea that God would be involved in a wager that destroys a man’s life is abominable, so many theories are put forward from those wanting to defend the book and God, and conversely, those who want to condemn it.

Allow me to put my cards on the table; I line up with most scholars who argue that the book of Job is not the account of an actual, historical event in time and space. I believe that it is a mythological story that conveys some deep truths about life, humanity, and God. So my big question is, what was the storyteller trying to say, what truth were they trying to get across? With that question in mind, I don’t see the opening as a literal event that needs me to work it out, rather it’s a literary device to set up the main event and the main event is the unfolding of the very question many get hung up on in the prologue ‘why do stink things happen to good people?’ I believe the writer was deliberately stirring up emotion around that question with the prologue. It’s supposed to feel confusing and like a grave injustice. It’s supposed to stir us up to rant and rave, and to pontificate endlessly, but we’re not supposed to stop reading there.

We shouldn’t stop reading there because if we do, we’ll fail to see that the writer has then captured the broad responses that many put forward within the very dialogue that plays out between the characters of the story. In there you’ve got the knowledge of those who see themselves as wise, the torment of those who perceive that it’s just not right, the hurt, pain and anger that comes with suffering, the endless pontification of theories and ideas about why, the berating of those who venture an emotional response, and it goes on. I wonder if the writer was capturing the ideas of various schools of thought on the question of suffering during their time – schools of thought that haven’t differed much as the years have gone by, though we’re much less poetic about it now and there would be more ideas in there from an approach that denies the existence of God.

It’s easy to get to the end of chapter 37, feel for Job and be sick of the endless blah, blah of his companions. It’s easy to get there and be sick of the theories, answers and attempts of those in the dialogue to try and explain it, especially with the prologue in mind. It’s then, at the beginning of chapter 38 that God speaks from the storm.

Being a fan of the Chronicles of Narnia I imagine that moment to be like a bunch of Narnian animals who have gone a little off track, thinking they know a whole lot of stuff about Aslan, sitting around a fire and sharing their rather useless ideas with another who has suffered some great loss and berating that animal when they try to plead their innocence and confusion. I can imagine them all puffed up in their self perceived wisdom and knowledge, thinking they know, only to then have Aslan appear with a great roar, making them look and feel feeble, and causing their words to melt away as nothing but useless vanities.

You see, that’s what happens in the book of Job. After all their vain chatter, God turns up and wipes the floor clean with their supposed wisdom and knowledge, pointing out that compared to him they’re nothing. If you want to get a sense of awe, finding a good audio version of Job 38-40 will take you there (I use The Bible Experience). Job’s response is humility and silence – he realises his insignificance and the vanity of trying to venture knowledge of things he ultimately doesn’t understand, which is exactly what had been happening with all the characters in the dialogue leading up to God’s moment.

Then in the epilogue it’s Job’s honesty in his hurt, confusion and humility that God honours, while he berates the others who talked as if they knew and had the answers.

Too often I’ve been the person who thought he had the answers. I’ve spent much time chattering about things that, in the face of an almighty God, I really know little about. So often we put forward mindless chatter to try and answer the conundrums of our humanity and the experiences of life and we berate the honest and passionate response of those caught in the middle of it all. Putting aside all the theological questions that the book of Job might throw out there, it’s a story that humbles me and puts me in my place. It reminds me that any answers I think I’ve got need to be held lightly, especially in the face of suffering. Ultimately it reminds me that I am dust and to dust I shall return.

But for me it doesn’t end there because I then look to the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus, and with my insignificance in focus it demonstrates the immense love of God. That he, the one who spoke to Job from the storm, would empty himself of all the privileges of deity, become a man, live, suffer and die as one of us so that we could be restored with Him in his resurrection life, brings a hope that I cannot truly fathom.

I don’t have all the answers for suffering but I have hope. Sometimes that hope feels naive, but I have it anyway. When faced with the suffering of others I don’t get it and I think it’s pointless for me to try and get it. Rather, hopefully I’m someone who makes room for the all the highs and lows others experience in this broken journey of life. Sometimes it’s beautiful and sometimes it’s a painful mess. May I continue to do less pontificating and theorising about it all and more time diving into the mess with others.