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When my boys and I go backpacking and hiking I always tell them a story. I make them up as I go and aside from being goofy, they have another thing in common, a happy ending. Thus, it would seem that upon first reading that, Job too ends happily. Our hero suffers but learns his lesson. He reverently submits to God and God blesses him with wealth and children. The evil friends are chastised and forced to do penance. The story appeals to our love of fairy tales in which all things are made more than right with Job receiving twice what he has before. Living happily ever after. Or is this the case?
I think that if read honestly, Job distresses us so badly that we must recast it into a more palatable story. We take an insolent and impatient Job who shakes his fist at the heavens and make him a submissive and patient soul. We take God and make him not the cause of the problems, the ultimate antagonist and make him wise old teacher trying to gently teach his charge something via smooth discussion. We take the angst of losing children and put a literary Band-Aid on it by pointing to the scores of children he ended his life with.
However, we must ask, why did the Church hand this down to us? Why would the church hand us down an inspired fairy tale? As you can surmise, I think that truly understanding Job requires us to be discomforted. It is only then that we can identify with Job. It is only then that we can be put in Job's shoes and decide if we will submit to God.
Think of the story. Job suffers horrendous loss. His wealth, his family, his health, even his wife tells him to curse God and die. His friends which were meant to support him castigate and accuse him. They work with a theology that says bad things happen to bad people. Yet, we have been given more knowledge than Job. We know of the dialogue between God and Satan. We know that Job is not to blame and ultimately, God allows this. Note, that Job is intuitively aware of this and so challenges God and rightfully says He is to blame.
It seems a simple question with a simple answer. Why am I suffering God? "Because Satan challenged whether you or anyone would be faithful to Me when it cost them everything." It is not that hard of an answer for WE are given it the first two chapters. However, in place of this reasonable answer, God comes down out of heaven and plays the heavy. He demands that Job speak to him about Leviathan, about the creation of the heavens. He seeks to create a distance between Job's finiteness and His infiniteness. Hence, Job has to choose....will he accept a non-answer when his experiences and every fiber of his body demands, seeks, pleads for understanding. Will he accept that which he cannot accept? He does and recognizes that he 'uttered things" he "did not understand, things to wonderful for" him " to behold."
The tension is resolved for Job but not for us. We know what happened. We know why his children were savagely killed. We know why he was stricken from head to tow. We know that these are just replacement children and replacement gold. Job has a beef and it is a legitimate one. We should be indignant at the response Job receives to a very legitimate and simple question. It is then - if we let this book resonate in our heart, if we let our spirits identify with Job's struggle - that we too are then at the point of Job’s dilemma and are given the choice. Will we submit and yield or understanding to God when everything in our body does not want to? Will we yield solely and simply because He is God and we are not? It is then that we become Job. It is then that we realize why the Church handed down this mis-read "fairytale."