The book of Job, found in Jewish and Christian texts, has always fascinated me. Even when I was young, there was something that never sat right about the concept of Job being the subject of a bet between God and the devil.
Don’t worry, despite this being a religious story, this isn’t a bible lesson. It is a concept that I think we all grapple with, no matter faith you ascribe to. Sometimes we just feel like the universe is out to get us. The fact that the story has a few thousand years of being retold and revised in parables and fables shows that it offers some value that exceeds its supposed origins.
The story of Job starts out describing a man of upstanding faith. He is doing all right for himself and is grateful for it. Then God and the devil have a chat. The devil thinks that Job will curse God if things go wrong enough, and God takes that bet.
The devil in this story taps into a deep part of the human condition. When things are going well, we find it easy to be grateful and easy to follow the rules. We feel that our fortune is due to us doing the right things. When we do the right thing, good things happen to us as a reward. Meritocracy. That is the beauty of this text: it outlines, tears down, and rebuilds the entire idea of meritocracy right before our eyes.
As the story progresses, Job’s life falls apart. The guy who did everything right and was relatively successful starts to watch his livelihood, his relationships, and his health all simultaneously decline. Worse, the people close to him blamed him for it. His wife told him to give up. So on top of all the suffering, he was made to believe it was his fault. Meritocracy.
Finally, Job loses it. He confronts God and asks him why. His gratitude all but gone. That is when something unique in religious texts happens: a pointed lecture from God to a one man’s situation. One where God starts with simply telling Job to “Man up!” That call comes with a “Who do you think you are? and a “You think you know enough to question me and my reasoning?” (paraphrasing, of course), then a laundry list of all the things God has done that Job can’t even fathom.
This is the humbling part of the text that I, too often, see Christians overlook, despite it being one of the strongest atheist arguments against the existence of God; that is, if there is a god that is all-powerful and “good,” then why is there so much suffering in the world? Again, fairness and meritocracy as the human brain sees it. It is humbling because when Job calls out to God about his suffering and God answers back, it is not with sympathy at all; it is a dressing down of a ruined man for being bold enough to question God’s motivation.
You see, no matter how much we want it to be, life is not a meritocracy. It is often unfair, sometimes just sucks, sometimes it is unfathomably cruel, and sometimes you did everything right and it all falls apart anyway. That reality carries with with a critical blow to our sense of purpose and meaning. Do we really have any influence on our outcomes if random cruelty is always a possibility? If pouring effort into doing everything right can’t give us some guarantee of success, then why do the right thing at all? It isn’t the easy way or the most lucrative. The proper thing to do is rarely the most pleasurable. The answer is simple and unsatisfying:
You do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do.
You don’t get to question the reasons, motivations, or ask for anything in return. You “man up” and face your reality in the most upright manner you can and carry on.
As motivating as that does not sound, there is another piece to why you simply do the right thing. Doing the wrong thing will more likely cause negative outcomes. The toll that acting against what you know is right and good will surely cause much more suffering than the randomness of a cruel universe. The universe won’t stop, but you become a complicit cause of suffering, for yourself and for others. Being actively complicit in suffering hits different. Knowing that you caused suffering has a way of eating away at you, and if you are some sort of believer, it eats away at your very soul.
You know what the right thing to do is, or at least what the wrong thing to do is. Deep down, you know. It is the thing that you know will produce the best outcome for the most people, or is long-term going to be the least harmful. It probably isn’t the easy one or the one that benefits you at the cost of someone else. It is the “right” thing to do.
Last, there is this underlying sense of accepting this random, unearned suffering and failure of meritocracy. You see, the curse was only broken when Job forgave and prayed for the people who blamed him for his own suffering and encouraged him to give up. How could he not believe that all his friends and family were right and this was all his fault? How he must have wracked his brain to identify the “secret sins” he committed to cause all this. Following his holy pep talk, he realizes that his suffering is not of his own doing and that he was doing the right thing all along. He realizes that the superstition of others and their full belief in meritocracy are not the truth, and it is still perfectly logical for them to hold those ideas.
Because how we deal with our suffering is our own journey. No one else can offer an accurate diagnosis or provide a cure. People will always have ideas, and they can seem they are valid, but they simply cannot know the depths of your motivations and actions. The “right” thing is often less obvious to observers. Too often, their analysis is for personal validation rather than our benefit. We are all a little broken, and when we encounter suffering in others, we want to identify the cause so we can avoid it. In that endeavor, we often deepen the suffering of those we would like to believe we are helping. Most times in life, people don’t need help identifying the source of their suffering; they simply need someone to be there with them until it passes.
In the story, eventually the curse was lifted, and prosperity and relationships returned more than previously experienced. Health, wealth, and relationships abounded as a result of maintaining faith and perspective; asking the tough questions and being receptive to tough answers.
So, no, this isn’t a bible study, but maybe support that God approves of Stoic philosophy. Sometimes life dishes up meaningless suffering, and it isn’t our job to find out who to blame or even why, but to weather it with grace and humility, trying to maintain our focus on doing the right thing, even when it is not easy or comfortable. When those around us are suffering, it is often not a failure on their part, but a cruel and random world. They need no further condemnation; instead, just a friend to support them until fate turns around. We shouldn’t be angry about people’s shallow assumptions, but we should be understanding of them and quietly prove them wrong. We have to focus on what we can control, and that is not all the cruelty in the world, but the ability to do the right thing without reward in mind.
What are your thoughts?
Reid Pierpoint