In the final analysis, God is God

In 1965, British songster Donavon sang, “ah but I might as well try and catch the wind”.

I am studying Job right now, a sophisticated philosophical discourse between Job, his wife, three friends, a younger understudy and the great God above us all.

It views Job’s crisis from various perspectives. 

It is a classic example of dramatic irony, in which the actors are denied privy knowledge of the unseen causative events that transpired in God’s court.

It’s a longer story, but boils down to Satan approaching God’s court and challenging Job’s righteousness on the grounds of divine protectionism. It implies that God is subjective and biased, a heavy accusation for any court, let alone a divine court.

Satan secures leave to go against Job, initially limited to not touching the man, which resulted in him touching every possible aspect of his life, short of his own physical being – his children, livestock, wealth and so on were all game.

Not content with that, given Job’s stoicism, Satan secured leave to also touch the man, with a terrible blight – boils and sores, that reduced him to a cur.

The seemingly wise then enter the stage ... and the debate

His wife advised him to curse God and die, thanks to her perception that God is a free agent, a terrible power, unpredictable, unable to be known, given to impulsive whim, without restraints and capable of doing whatever to whoever for no particular reason.

Job rebukes her cynical view and holds his own, humbled before God. His friends then attack the issue from alternative angles – you sinned, you have not petitioned God for a miracle, you don’t get God or, as his wife concluded, God is just being God.

Well, in the final analysis the young Elihu cuts through the debate, dismissing the friends for their a naive concepts of God, whilst rebuking Job for trying to justify himself or for presuming that he was a victim of injustice.

Well it’s a big comeuppance for us all to find that we all qualify for life and its pains or disappointments. Life is not fair, never has been and never will be.

God seconds Elihu’s position and then puts Job in his place by simply saying, “where were you when I made the worlds?”

God has the final say

The debate concludes with God implying that as God He does what He does, but never without reason. He is just and integrous, needing no one to examine his integrity. He also reveals the bigger picture and the cosmic struggles beyond our myopic and selfish perspectives of life.

I listened to the world’s leading (Christian) philosopher, Alivin Plantiga. He was asked to defend his stance against naturism and materialism.

He elegantly cites the chameleon, which can snare an insect with its tongue in a dazzlingly quick burst of energy. That requires many calculations of distance, timing, anticipation, the required power and so on. Yet, the Chameleon doesn’t really think about it that much.

He just does. It is far more instinctual than rational. He certainly does not reflect on moral perspectives or whether the insect has a family to feed. He sees food, kills, eats.

If we were wholly evolved and natural, we would only require the basic instinctual elements needed to survive, without the restrains of a moral conscience. Yet we are sentient. The naturist tries to argue that experience and learning wires such neurological faculties into us.

Plantinga dismisses that, yet in his final analysis he does a Job. He reflects on how he can gaze on the mountains in his neighborhood or see the beauty all around him and simply accept, without deep reflection, that God is God and God is good.

In the final analysis

No matter how the 60% of the scientific community that is atheist, might argue that all of this is spontaneous, the faithful minority have defended a theistic view with elegance.

However, having faced life as Job did and having seen it all from both sides now, as Joni Mitchell once sang, they eventually all reduce their faith to its fundamentals.

Instead of trying to catch the wind by harnessing every argument for or against God, they concede that it is, after all, still about faith. Our greatest gift enables us to peer into the realms of mystery and see God, in crises, in highs and lows, in life and death or in sadness and joy.

That is the cornerstone of our belief system and Hebrews 11 agrees, that anyone who comes to God must accept that He is and that He rewards all who believe in Him. The same God simplified the worldview of a learned Moses to an unembellished, “I am who I am”. Job agreed. So do I.

That, as Solomon said, is the beginning of all wisdom. I therefore concede to David’s view, that only the fool in his heart can say there is no God. 

(c) Peter Missing @ Bethelstone.com