THE BOOK OF JOB

I saw a reference to the Book of Job the other day and it set me thinking. Job's story begins with God and Satan talking about humans. Satan says that it's easy to be pious when things are going your way, but if suffering and loss come, then a person will denounce God. Nonsense, God says, consider my subject, Job. Satan then bets God that if Job loses everything, he will turn away from God.
     God makes the bet and then, one by one, he takes everything Job  possesses - his farm and animals, his home and family, even his children. He inflicts boils and other physical pain until Job is left with nothing but loss and suffering.     
     Friends come and argue that Job must have done something wrong but Job maintains he didn't. He demands to know why God has punished him; he knows he has nothing to deserve it. He demands justice from God. 
     God then appears to Job as a voice out of a whirlwind. He doesn't answer Job's questions directly. Instead, he reminds Job of God's greatness - it is God who has created heaven and earth and all the awesome miracles that have brought life and Nature into being. What is Job in comparison to that? Can Job bring forth the constellations in their seasons, or give the ibis wisdom and the rooster understanding? Job is only a man; how can he hope to comprehend the whys and ways of anything as vast and powerful as God? 
     Job immediately recognizes that he has no right to ask God to justify Himself. He must accept the fact of God's incomprehensibility and that there is no "reason" for his suffering that he will ever be able to understand. God sees his acceptance and in a very short epilogue restores to Job everything he lost and even more. 
     The story is asking how, if God exists, can there be suffering in the world. Why would a loving God allow his subjects to suffer? The answer is we will never know, we can't comprehend this vast and all powerful God and so it's pointless for us to ask, "Why?"
     There are many interesting aspects to this story, not least that God and Satan fall into casual conversation and in order to win a bet God allows Job to fall into almost unbearable suffering - what kind of a God is that? But what strikes me most is how the God of the voice in the whirlwind is imagined - as something so powerful and huge as to be beyond human comprehension. There is a great mystery at the heart of existence and we can't understand it. We can't know the reasons for evil or suffering. We can only accept them.
     The sense that there is something beyond us which we will never apprehend and understand runs through most religious and spiritual traditions. Where does that sense come from? Is it in our DNA? Why do so many of us feel a desire to give ourselves over to something far far greater than ourselves, to merge with, to lose ourselves in something infinite and eternal and universal? What is it in us that makes us feel the presence of a great mystery we imagine we will never understand? Why is that mystery so compelling?
     Books and books have been written trying to answer those questions. Many more have been written by people trying to describe in words their direct experience of giving themselves over to the mystery. I certainly have no answers, but I feel the truth of those questions, the reality those questions touch. When I think about those questions, the deepest part of me is stirred. The need for answers slips away; I only want to be close to the mystery.