The Remarkable Record of Job

I've been reading a book by this title. I picked it up at the museum over the summer. I'm not finished with it yet, but it raises an interesting concept that is on my mind today. The author (Dr. Henry Morris) approaches the book from a very scientific point of view. I will admit that I sometimes get lost in the more technical aspects of the science parts, but what he says is making me rethink my entire view of Job.

If you go ask pretty much anyone who is familiar with the story of Job to tell you the highlights, here is pretty much what you would get.

There was this guy named Job, and he was really rich, and really good. So good, that God trusted in Job's goodness enough to point him out to Satan. So then a bunch of bad stuff happens, because Satan is trying to prove that God isn't all that cool, and Job doesn't really love God as much as God thinks. But Job is still a really good guy, so he sticks with God even though Job doesn't understand what is happening. So then Satan gets God to let him make Job really sick. His wife leaves him, and these so called friends of his come to try and comfort him. Only they do a really lousy job of it. And they just make him more depressed. Then some young punk who thinks he is all that comes along, and just makes matters even worse. But, in the end, Job still loves and trusts God, and that is pretty cool. So God gives Job everything that he lost, plus some in the end. And the lesson that we learn is that we should trust God, and God's plan will always work out and be good in the end.

Except, that isn't what the book is about. I've always found this book to be extremely comforting, because, despite all of the crap that Job goes through, it shows that God cares about human suffering, and has a plan for it... Right?

Well, according to Dr. Morris, that isn't so much the point of the book. And despite a three chapter long monologue from God directly to Job at the depths of his despair, God never once mentions human suffering. In fact, God talks a whole lot about creation, and what He made, and how amazing that is, and how He has all of this power.

When I stopped to think about it, then went back and read the entire book of Job, I have to agree with Dr. Morris. The book of Job, and its purpose, isn't really so much about me. Or you. Or any other human. The book of Job is all about the glory of an Almighty God. When I think about it as a treatise on human suffering, that all of a sudden puts me at the center of God's universe. And I have no business being there.

How much easier would it be to let God be God if I would get out of His rightful place at the center? Wouldn't that make this whole storm so much easier to weather? It was interesting to me to see just how deeply my "self-ism" is rooted. I was so focused on what the book of Job meant to me, that I'd never taken the time to notice what it might be teaching me about the character of God, aside from how it related to me and what I wanted to hear.

I'm interested to see what the rest of the book has to say.