Opening the Word: Job’s folly

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Job
Job restored to prosperity. Laurent de La Hyre/Public domain

Timothy P O'MalleyJob presents the naked tragedy of life as a contingent creature.

It is something that we — still locked into the global plague of COVID — know far too well.

We understand what it means to worry about loved ones in nursing facilities whom we cannot visit. We have experienced the hospitalization of friends and loved ones, some who survived and some who have not. We know the loneliness of not being able to gather with one another, to celebrate the mysteries of life and death that are part of being human.

We know.

Job did not possess this knowledge at the beginning of the book named after his own initiation into suffering. Everything that Job had, including his wealth, his children and his happiness, is taken away from him.

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Further, he endures accusations upon the part of his friends. They accuse him of infidelity against the Law. Job surely did something to deserve this kind of suffering.

“Just admit it, Job. You are unfaithful.”

Job’s confession of the brevity of life, of its tragic character, is an answer to his friends’ allegations. He has been faithful to God unto the end. And yet, the tragedy of life is inevitable. What is given is to be taken away. We live and then we die. End scene.

If one stays with the Book of Job until the bitter end, one learns the folly of Job’s response. Job is accepting the tragedy of life as it is.

“What are we to do? Just accept the misery and move on.”

At the conclusion of Job, we hear another response. This suffering, this misery of life, is part of a broader plan hidden from the foundations of the world (cf. Col 1:26). Only God, the creator of the cosmos and the slayer of chaos, knows what it all means.

Since Job was not there at the beginning before all beginnings, how can we presume to know? He cannot solve the mystery of life. He is not God.

Jesus’ healings are the beginning of an answer to Job’s cry from the heart. Yes, life is hard — it is for many a tragedy. And yet, Jesus Christ has come into the world to heal the sick. He preaches and heals, revealing not a stoic disregard for the tragedy of life.

God is faithful to us in our suffering. God is faithful in his beloved Son unto the very end.

It is not that contingency is erased. Suffering is not explained away through the revelation of a cosmic plan that finally makes sense of everything. Jesus is not one to teach that pastorally vapid phrase, “Everything happens for a reason.”

God is there in our darkness, in our suffering. He comes to heal us in our woundedness. He orders the chaos of our lives through the presence of the beloved Son.

Job got it wrong. Life is not meaningless, precisely because God is faithful to us even in the darkness.

Job’s stoicism, our stoicism, is wrong, wrong, wrong.

In this plague, let us not embrace a similar stoic attitude. Let us not say, “Well, we all die, don’t we?”

Rather, let us recognize that death was not the plan. Suffering was not why God created men and women.

The pathos we have for those suffering in COVID-time, whether from illness or loneliness, is real. It should wound us, as our fellow men and women suffer from the wages of sin and death.

And let us follow the path of Our Lord, who does not abandon us in suffering. But faithfully dwells with us unto the end.

Timothy P. O’Malley, Ph.D., is the director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.

Timothy P. O'Malley

Timothy P. O’Malley, Ph.D., is the director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.