In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. With all due respect, regard, honor, and significance to the angels, I should like to continue our thinking about the book of Job, which is concerned with the problem of evil. I know a lot more about that than I know about angels. As I ask you, urged you, pleaded with you to, I again say, read it.
It'll only take you a little over an hour to do it at the most. And when I say that it's the most significant treaties on the problem of evil that's been written, that's not just my opinion. Furthermore, it is considered one of the most the most original, the most profound book of the old testament. How about that? That again is not just my opinion.
From a purely literary point of view, it has immense significance. It's it's extremely unique. There's not another book in the old testament like it with the with the drama. Because that's what it is. You have the the friends of Job, you have Job, and they have this very animated argument.
It's a very strong argument, no holds barred. You don't find anything like that in the old testament. It's a very special book. Even its origins are special. It the story itself may go back to Babylonia for all we know.
It's a book that beyond all doubt has been always considered part of the revelation of God, both in the old and the new regime. The church has always accepted it as an authentic statement on the part of God as divine revelation. Now, the But it is not a philosophical dissertation. It's not something that somebody would write for a PhD. It's not that kind of a thing at all.
It's much more poetry. Although, I don't know what poetry is, but it isn't just straightforward argumentative prose. That's for sure. So, I I'm merely voicing other people's opinion when they say it's there's a great deal of poetry in it. Well, you see the trouble with saying that, in my estimation, puts it in the world of the unreal, of the fantastic, of the imagination, of fiction.
Well, now whether Job ever existed or not, I surely don't know and no one else knows. We don't we're not sure who wrote the book. Very likely it was an Israelite. We're not sure where it was written, probably in Palestine someplace. We're not sure when it was written, probably between the fifth and the third century BC.
Probably more closer to the fifth than to the third. It's a very curious book that we know so little about it. In a sense, it's a confusing book, but it's not confusing on the part of Job's adversaries. Their position is perfectly clear. You see, Job has been afflicted by God.
That in mind. The word Satan there doesn't mean the devil incidentally. It's someone who is part of God's company in heaven. But he is taking the adversary point of view as regards God. So, he says there's look, I can't find a good man on earth.
And God says, oh, yes, you can. Look at my look at my friend Job down there. And Satan says, oh, yes. But look how nicely you've treated him. Why?
He's had a plush life. Everything's going well with him. Any way you look at him, he's a success, he's happy, he's generous, he's magnanimous, he's respected in his community, he's wealthy, he has family, he has daughters, he has sons, he has everything. Why shouldn't he be a loyal son of yours? But just let me touch him and you'll see how he'll change.
I said, well, go ahead and do it. So, bang, bang, bang. In one afternoon, Joe finds himself without a family, without a house, without his herds, without his servants, and practically a pauper. And still, he praises God. God's will be done.
So the Satan comes back to God and said and God says, I told you, you couldn't change Job. And Satan says, remember this is not the devil. Satan there does not mean devil. I read this in the Hebrew translation. He said, just let me touch him personally.
All I've done so far is take away possessions. Let let me touch him personally, and then he'll change, then he'll reject you. God said, well, go ahead, but don't kill him. So then Job gets afflicted in every way. He's cast out, he's diseased probably a leper, which was so frightfully treated in those days.
So he's cast out. So then his three friends, prosperous, good men, devoted to the law of God, they come to sympathize with Job and the donkey. And then there's another friend Elihu. Now, those three friends argue this way, and their argument is very consistent. Everything that is good in this world comes from God.
If you do what he wants, if you're obedient, faithful to his law, he will reward you with all that is good. Now, then they put it this way. On the other hand, if you suffer tragedies, losses, failures, defeats, it's because you have not obeyed God. There's something wrong with you. You have sinned and God is punishing you.
That's their position. And they don't change throughout the whole drama. Now, so what they try to you see, that's their position. Therefore, when they look at good old Job here, with having suffered everything he can lose except his life. Everything is gone from him.
Even his wife comes out and and remonstrates with him. I I thought immediately of saint Thomas More in the in in the tower when his wife came to tell him what a fool he was. When they come out, you see, to commiserate with him, here's what they're faced with. As far as they know knew, Job was a good man. To all appearances he was just downright perfect.
But look his suffering. The hand of the Lord has touched him and it has deprived him of everything except his life. Therefore, he must be guilty of some kind of sin. That's their argument. And they change, they don't change.
And what they try to do is to get Job to admit that. Job will not admit it. Job is faced with the with this with withholding firmly to two two points. That God is just, and I am sinless. And he doesn't change because that's the truth.
Now, you'll say, this is no problem no solution to the problem of evil. And you're right. It is no solution to the problem of evil. It's an acceptance of it. There's nothing in the old testament that gives us an answer to the problem of evil.
Nothing. Now, I want to warn you there's a text in Job which refers to the afterlife. It's often quoted. It's even used in the liturgy. That is not authentic at all.
It's it's not in it's a very I'm I'm told it's a very poor translation of an interpolation in the Hebrew. So, there is nothing in the book of Job about the hereafter. There's nothing in the Old Testament for the most part having to do with a heaven hereafter. There there has to be justice in this world in the Old Testament. So if you're good, God rewards you.
And if you suffer, it's because you've done something wrong. Putting it another way, if you if you sin, if you disobey the law, God punishes you. He clobbers you. That's the old testament. And there's nothing else there.
There's no concept of any account in the old testament about heaven or any such thing as that. But when you die, it's over with. Finished. Kaput. So there is no solution in the book of Job to this problem of evil.
And if you want to see the contrast between our blessed Lord and the New Testament, the good news, and the Old Testament, which is the inspired word of God, here is as good example as I can give you. Again, our blessed Lord never played the role of a philosopher. He had more sense than that. It just happens he claimed to be the son of God. He spoke with authority.
He didn't argue and debate. He told them the truth. He brought us the good news. And that good news is this, our blessed lord didn't move a little finger to remove the physical sufferings of this world. And remember, this is what most people are concerned with.
And yet Immanuel Kant, who was not exactly the one of the most most faithful and enthusiastic Christians that ever lived, yet it was Immanuel Kant who said that the only real evil in this world is moral evil. Sin. Sin. And yet, is that the concern of people today or ever was? What people want is to be well fed, well housed, to have all the opportunities of the good and the full life, to live in security.
There's nothing wrong with these things, remember. But it's very wrong to live for them. Period. Period. Now, what our blessed Lord did is not to remove suffering.
People still die. See, people still get clobbered. The innocent do get swamped. People who live the most virtuous lives, everything seems to go wrong for them at times, at times. It is no exaggeration when you read the book of Job that here someone comes in your your your camels have all been destroyed.
All your all your herds of of of sheep and the lambs have all been destroyed. Then the next comes in, all your crops have been destroyed, one after the other. You say, this is unreal. Is it? I've known some instances where things happen so fast and all of them awfully bad things.
If these things do happen, how do we face up to this? How do you need it? You can't answer that question, how can you live in comfort? How can you have any intellectual consciousness secured if you don't can't face up to such things as death and suffering and tragedies and failures, disappointments, the treason of friends? How do you meet?
These are the things life is made of. You can say, as the three friends do when they talk to Job, they aren't suffering. They've they have everything they want. So, from their great pinnacle of security, they'll say, look Job, be honest and tell us what kind of sins did you commit. So we come back to our blessed Lord.
He did not remove what we call evil from this world. I say what we call evil. What he did is to give us a meaning for it. He gave us a meaning that it is not something frustrating or shouldn't be. It is not something that we cannot accept in a consistent reasonable way with what being a Christian and being a follower of Jesus Christ means.
He gave us the answer. And the answer is the cross, suffering with him, and resurrection. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.