We visited Job first in Chapter 2 and considered his initial prosperity and happiness and then his descent into pure hell and how he was salvaged, as it were, from death and destruction by the munificence of God in a magnificent act of grace. But neither he nor we understood the cause of his debacle. He simply was lucky to be kept alive and, indeed, to be restored to his previous happiness. Now, as we come towards the end of the book, we may perhaps be able to consider the whole question of suffering in relation to Job at a more mature level.
Why did Job have to suffer as he did? The reason was that his way of life was previously inadequate. We came to this conclusion in the second chapter of this book. He depended very much on God to protect him and his family, his money, and his possessions. He was perpetually afraid that some dreadful disaster might overtake them all. And so he sacrificed animals in plenty, and did everything possible to placate God, and do what the law, and particularly his interpretation of the law, required. One does not have to go very far to see how selfish he was in his attitude. How little faith he really had in God, and how desperately he depended on his relationships and his possessions to keep him sound and even sane, and yet he knew intuitively that all this had to go, as it has to go in the case of all of us, as we proceed through life to the inevitable death that terminates all our plans and prosperity and relationships that we may have treasured one with another.
There is one thing that is certain about our lives: it is their transience. None of us is here for any great length of time, as I have already pointed out and, indeed, if this were not the case, the overcrowding in the world would be intolerable. Nobody would have any chance of actualizing their own particular talents or capabilities. All this is perfectly logical, but nobody likes to follow it up in their own particular lives or those of their family. We are always different, as indeed we are of course, but not different in the way of common sense; different rather in the way of being more valuable than other people, and yet we know intuitively how wrong this is.
Through the world's tragedies, in all the centuries, there has been destruction after destruction of human beings. What was hoped for has not come to pass, and people have died. Two chapters from the books of the prophets give us some understanding. From the first of the writing prophets, Amos:
Spare me the sound of your songs; I cannot endure the music of your lutes. Instead, let justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never-failing torrent. Did you bring me the sacrifice and gifts, you people of Israel, those forty years when you were in the wilderness? No! But now you shall take up the shrine of your idol king and the pedestals of your images which you have made for yourselves, and I will drive you into the exile beyond Damascus. So says the Lord; the God of Hosts is his name. (Amos 5.23-27)
The other quotation, which we have already considered, comes from Micah.
What shall I bring when I come before the Lord, when I come to bow before God on High? Am I to approach him with whole offerings, with yearling calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my eldest son for my wrongdoing, or my child for the sin I have committed? The Lord has told you mortals what is good, and what it is that the Lord asks of you: only to act justly, to love loyalty and to walk wisely before your God. (Micah 6.6-8)
These are the ways that Job learnt through experience. Furthermore, he was deriving something from it. Is it right that we should do well in order to get something out of life, to be more prosperous? Please God, however we may understand God, I think it is very wrong, because that self-centredness makes us alien to our less fortunate fellow creatures so that we at least may succeed, even if they fail. If I was here to show you how successful I was and how much better you would be if you followed me, I would not be doing you any benefit at all, but would rather be irritating you by my complacency and my assurance that I was among the better of the people you knew. And here we come to the root of Job's own inadequacy.
As Blake taught us, pain is the virtuous ego that attributes to itself the virtues of the natural man, as do those social reformers who pride themselves on their concerns for those for whom material good works are so highly regarded if society believes that man may live by bread alone. Blake understood that all these works were unavailing because the selfhood cut off from the living ground of the divine body has no real knowledge of what is good or needful, either for the individual or for mankind as a whole. Blake sought to teach the sons of Eton that however great and glorious, however loving and merciful the individuality, however high our palaces and cities, however fruitful our hills, self would bear nothing but fade away in the morning's breath. Our selfhood is nothing, and love, the great healer and none but the lamb of God, can alone heal the great disease.
Job lived in such a state of mind. Blake used the story of Job as a parable to expose the falsity of natural religion, and of the morality of the self-righteous individuality. This would apply even more today to the permissive society and the trend towards atheism, but was he justified in seeing Job as an exemplar of self-righteousness? Certainly it is a possible reading of the book, and so was understood by St Gregory the Great. It is therefore an orthodox Christian reading, so far as it goes. Blake, of course, carries the attack further by seeing self-righteousness as the inevitable result of materialistic thought and natural religion. But his view of Job is not in this respect unorthodox. There was a difference of opinion about Elihu's criticism of Job, but that criticism in itself was based on Job's self-righteousness. Elihu said in his speech in which he criticizes Job and his three orthodox friends, that Job has consistently insisted on his own righteousness, defending himself and blaming God. Job said, I am righteous and God has taken away my judgement. Elihu had listened carefully to Job's words and his judgement is supported by the text. Job's self-justification has been absolute.
In a passage of great eloquence Job describes himself as he had been in the days when he was universally honoured. "My righteousness clothed me and my judgement was as a robe and a diadem." He tells of his many acts of goodness, and as the passage concludes: "I should plead the whole record of my life and present that in court as my defence." Elihu became very angry not only because Job had made himself more righteous than God but that his three friends had offered no satisfactory solution. Elihu had his answer, that Job was clearly not in the right, for God is greater than any mortal (Job 33.12). Why then plead your case with him, for nobody can answer his arguments? Indeed, once God has spoken, he does not speak a second time to confirm it. In dreams, in visions of the night, when deepest slumber falls on mortals, while they lie asleep in bed, God imparts his message, and as a warning strikes them with terror. It is clear that Elihu sees in Job the basis of insolent pride, for he has boosted his own previous character and actions, virtually to the level of God himself. This insolent pride is called hubris, an overweening pride, leading to its antithesis, which is known as nemesis. (Nemesis is the goddess of retributive justice in Greek mythology.) This is where Job went basically wrong.
He was extremely satisfied about his goodness which showed itself in the wonderful prosperity he and his family enjoyed. He almost certainly looked down on other people, although he does not say so directly in the script, but a person who could have said the things that he did say, particularly after his downfall when he was suffering greatly, showed how much he valued his own witness, and how he looked down on those who waited on him carefully to hear what he had to say, until he had nothing more to say at all. So his own hubris, or insolent pride, was followed by the nemesis of complete destruction. Then he had to face the fact that he as well was nothing in his own right. That is the whole point of Job's story and our own life. We are nothing of our own right at all. Only when we can face this directly and not delude ourselves, can we start to live the proper life. That is ultimately what doubt is about, the doubt which leads to truth. If I have no doubt, if I am sure of my own way and self-importance, if I know that what I do, believe, and say is right, and there is no doubt in my attitude, there is no means of growth or even of communication with other people whom I may regard as grossly inferior to me intellectually, morally, and socially, none of this is of any value at all. If quoting Martin Buber again, all real living is meeting, there is no meeting at all where there is no doubt, because I have the answer and can only repeat it dogmatically to you, but I cannot listen at all to what you have to say to me, particularly in your own suffering and misery.
That is the point of the Job experience, seen not in terms of the horrors that God has visited on a poor, defenceless individual for no apparent rhyme or reason, but to bring him on his way to becoming a full human being able to relate to a host of people whom before he would hardly have noticed as people in their own right.
No, we are nothing in our own right at all, and we only become something when we are nobodies. Then we can relate with other nobodies, and in being a nobody we can become Jesus Christ himself who was merely a carpenter's son when he was alive and died the death of a criminal. We often forget this about our Saviour, who, for this reason alone, in my opinion, surpasses all the other great teachers and masters of the world.
The glory of Jesus does not depend on the brilliance of his resurrection, or any other miraculous event from outside, although I accept them all, and respect them more than I could possibly say. But it is the inner man that makes me sure of his divinity: that he came up from nothing and descended into nothing, but on the third day rose into the fullness of such being that all people were inspired by his example and his growth in their own soul.
As I have said before, the miracle of the physical resurrection, which I accept entirely on intuitive grounds, cannot be proved, except to those who have an inner revelation. But that is not the ultimate way. We do not prove God by miracles. We live by proving God in our own lives, so that we may be sure of God in that he now lives in us. Our God is a living God, and the proof of his life is what he does in us. That is really the basis of theism, and why deism, or natural religion, is a mere travesty of religion.
Deism, or natural religion, is a religion of the mind; it conjures up a god to explain various phenomena. Scientists are particularly effective deists on that level, if indeed they need a god at all. Ultimately such a point of view moves into impersonal atheism, which is probably more honest on an atheistic level than any other. But we who know the truth, know that God lives in us and changes us, as he changed the disciples and Saul, who met the risen Christ. They knew, and we who know God know as well, and enter into a new phase of reality. No longer do we need the sort of proof that a scientist requires in order to believe; we know because we are changed and now can enter into Christhood.
Our life will never be changed until we are all Christs. This does not mean that we all should be replicas of Jesus, but that the spirit which inspired Jesus and is the Holy Spirit which guides all of us and gives us life, being the Lord, the giver of life, makes us full people in our own right. It would be dreadful, indeed, if we were all the same, but the very fact of our individuality means that we all have something unique to give and to show people in our particular way - the fullness of being, as revealed in Jesus. But as I speak to you now, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I am one with my Lord, and you are also one, and everyone who listens and has moved beyond mere cerebration is in Christ as well.
This does not mean that we have to forfeit our cerebral activity and accept spirituality in terms of ignorance. The cerebral mind, the mind of reasoning, is also part of the work of God, but it rises beyond the hubris, the insolent pride of human understanding, only when it comes close to ultimate reality. Then we can know the truth which alone can set us free from illusion. The illusion of the human being is that their life is isolated, limited, is alone important, and that they have to live in continual competition with others, and in the end win. But that I should win and prove that I am right and you are wrong is the futility of human existence.
When one knows the truth that sets one free, the idea of personal victory is childish - as childish as winning a game on the sports field. What is important is that we may grow together and change the world, not in the form of a sports field but in the form of a place of universal harmony where we may live and bring joy and happiness to all that lives. It is then that we will know that there is no death; that those who are dead to the body and those who are still alive in the body are indeed one, because we will see ourselves in a completely new framework of reality and then we will know that God is with us as much when the body is dead as when it is alive. As I have already said, death of the body must occur or else the overcrowding of the world would be intolerable, but that is not important. What is important is the animating spirit that brings the body to life, that makes the body useful and of universal relevance and when it has had its day, it goes, and we in our universal spirit go on and produce great things on other levels.
The really great human achievements are not done on a physical level but on the level of the Spirit. The great artists, writers, musicians, and also those involved in scientific and other work are all concerned in changing the world and bringing it intentionally to a better, more fruitful place. This, however, is not inevitable. Our own mind has to play its part as well. I might, for instance, have a very great gift in one particular field, but if I do not use it fruitfully, it will be destructive rather than helpful. We shall consider the ultimate relationship between faith and creativity in the last chapter of this book, but until we have faith, we cannot use our natural gifts properly; we will either try to prove that we are better than other people or else try to benefit ourselves on a personal level, or in some way be destructive; we will never grow up, in other words. The faith of God helps us grow up from immaturity to maturity, and from maturity to immortality.
Human beings are naturally immortal, as indeed I believe all creation is, but that immortality is irrelevant until we can use it. What is the use of my going on in the living form, however we may envisage this? It would obviously be a psychic form rather than a purely physical one. If I cannot give any help to others to grow into their fullness of being as well, I am a mere nothing, but once I can give, and change the world through my influence and what I am inwardly, then I become a saint in my own life: a follower and manifestation in my own way of the Lord Jesus, in whom the Spirit works perfectly and through whom I may know the Spirit, and from whom I may reveal the Father to all people.
We grow into the knowledge of God primarily through our experience of Jesus, who leads us to the work of the Holy Spirit, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, we see the ultimate Lord and giver of all life, who is God the Father. God the Father comes to us through the Son and the Holy Spirit. I am not for one moment saying that one is more important than the other, but I am giving an order of primacy. We know the Son, who is human as we are, and therefore is closest to us in divine relationship, but in that relationship we know something that we would not have known otherwise, the Holy Spirit, who brings us to full life, the life that was shown definitively in the life of Jesus, and in the combination of the Son and Spirit we know the one from whom both emanate and grow, namely the Father.
This is why in the end the trinitarian scheme of reality is the most satisfactory. I am not here trying to be polemical, or prove that one religion is better than the other, but if we do understand the meaning of the Holy Trinity, we can understand the significance of God's nature to us in eternity, in a way that can bring our life into permanent relevance. So it is really the Son, Holy Spirit and Father. We know the Father last of all because he is greatest of all. First, the Son is closest to us in being, then the Spirit who flows or proceeds from the Son and then the Father, by whom we know both the Spirit and the Son, and we see that the Father shows us the way that the Son works; the Son is, indeed, the image of the eternal Father. Not one is greater than the other, all three are part of an amazing synthesis of reality, and once you know one permanently and definitively, then you know the others as well and you come closer and closer to ultimate reality.
That is the way in which we know Job as well. Nobody here has ever met him, but we understand his nature much as we do when we believe we are strong. But in our weakness the Spirit can flow through us and he begins to show us the truth. And following truth we begin to understand. So also job, once he has seen the fullness of God in the divine epiphany, says
I know that you can do all things and that no purpose is beyond you. But I have spoken of things that I have not understood; things too wonderful for me to know. I knew you then only by report, but now I see you with my own eyes. Therefore I yield, repenting in dust and ashes. (Job 42.1-6).
That is the whole point. Of course, Job cannot see God, but he sees the nature of God and he understands the meaning of God's works as well. Nothing is hidden from Job now that he is far from self-regard, as well as any intolerable suffering. He knows that he knows nothing and that he is in a state of divine knowledge. He who believes that he knows, knows nothing. He who knows that he knows nothing is coming towards understanding. One will never attain that full understanding but at last one is beginning to know the truth. So Job's suffering has brought him to the truth, the truth that he is an impotent, unimportant individual with a certain amount of money, children and power, but is groping towards death as we all do.
But then in his suffering he begins to know the meaning of nobility as well, that although we are all dust, ashes, worms or whatever analogy with which you like to compare humans, when they face the inevitable in calm strength and restraint, they enter into something of the nature of a real human being, and in this respect Job and Jesus have more than a little in common - except that Jesus faced his end with a complete quietness from the beginning to the ultimate destruction, whereas Job could only fight and try to justify himself, since he realised that self-justification was completely irrelevant.
Who cares about what Job did, or what people thought about him in the olden days? It is simply past history now. It is what he is now, and what he shows himself to be now in his desolation, that makes him important. And that applies to all of us as well. When things go well with us, we tend to have too high an opinion of ourselves, thinking that people ought to honour us because of our success, but when we have failed, or what we regard as failure, and still go on day by day, then we begin to know the meaning of real success, in the world's understanding of that word. But unfortunately, this type of success is not popular in the usual secular type of society.
I spoke about the Job experience, how I myself have had to go through it in a state of complete weakness and pain in my limbs in such a way that I can hardly do anything for myself. And at that time I was very sorry for myself, even weeping for a time. Now I am no longer in a weeping mood. I am only grateful to God for showing me so many things that I would not have understood otherwise. While in no way ashamed of my emotional outpouring, it is always good to be honest with other people about how one feels and not put on the "stiff upper lip".
I am even more grateful now to be able to face whatever is in front of me, whether death, permanent crippledom, or at least some degree of impairment of movement again. It does not matter in the end. This is the important thing. What is important is that my life, or Job's, or Jesus', or anybody else's, should be of value to other people, not merely by example, but by giving something of themselves as well. Jesus gave everything of himself.
Job learned to give much of himself, which did not depend on material possessions, and I, in an infinitely lesser way than either of these two great ones, have still been able to give something of myself through my own particular mental abilities. This is the joy of living - being able to enrich those who do not understand life through one's own experience. One cannot understand except through experience. Let us follow that and accept it right away. You do not understand truth by reading books, but by going through an experience with vitality, strength, and complete honesty. Then the truth will be revealed to you, but if you try to avoid it, or make a bargain with God, your bargain will be ignored before it is even registered. But when we are strong in our own resolve, we will never be far from our Creator, and then we will know God.
That is ultimately in fact the meaning of Job's story. It is far more important than any other explanation that I have given in this book. Once we are full human beings, we can give of our fullness to those around us, whether they are male or female, young or old, rich or poor; we are all of these things, in fact, if we knew ourselves properly, and we should not judge according to such differentiations. Then we would know that we are creatures of God, suffering in our own weakness, and yet also part of the full Christ who is the total humanity. Remember that this is really what Christ is about; not a single remarkable human being, but the fullness of humanity, made obvious to us, as each performs their particular work in the world, so they become full of their own being, and do the work as is set before them likewise.
It is good in a way to be sorry for oneself. I have no objection to that, for it is human and honest. So therefore the performance that I put on in Chapter 6 does not in any way embarrass me, but it would be a great shame if even now I performed in the same manner. It would simply have meant that I had not learned and that I was still hankering after past ways and not getting on with my life, a life which is not to be lived in order to show how capable I am, but in order to give to other people something of the manifold mental and spiritual gifts that fall from me as from a fountain. You do not have to be especially spiritually aware to see that it does flow from me on that level, just as you would not need to have very great depth to see into my character.
"Strength is made perfect in weakness. My grace is all you need", St Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 12.9. That is really what inspiration is about. Whether one is weak in one part of the body or other, if we are in Christ and believing in God, strength comes to us and what appears to be a curse becomes a blessing. We can then do, understand, or say things that we could never have done, said, or understood before, and then whatever we do becomes a blessing to so many people. If I was an ordinary man I would behave in an ordinary way, looking for what I could get out of life, women, money, social importance, and other worldly things.
There is nothing wrong in this; please do not accuse me of sneering at it, why should not I also have as much money as possible, enjoy an active sex life, and know many important people? But a surfeit does become rather futile in the end. On the other hand, if one is open to the power of God and can understand spiritual things, not only speaking about them but also knowing about them and showing them to others, their lives can be transformed. And then a new world can come into being. That is exactly what happened through Jesus and the various disciples and apostles who followed him. Through him a new creation was indeed set up and its end is still far from over, although many people have done their best to destroy it in one way or another.
There is one other thing I ought to admit before I leave this chapter: my rather critical view of liberal religion, natural religion, and deism. After all, God is mentioned there as well, but it is seldom a living God. It is, rather, a god that is involved with the formation or creation of the human mind. It is an explanation for the various phenomena of the universe. It plays a part in Unitarianism and Quakerism as well. This is why these two religions are not particularly popular at the present time. This applies particularly to the Unitarian form. Quakers will always have their own significance because of their spirituality and their way of worship. But you cannot easily worship a god in a deistic form. Why should there be a god who creates in the first place? His only reason for creating is surely love, in other words, the god that is the true God is a living god and his life is shown not in the fact that he creates, but that he loves his creation which he fills with his own love, so that it may reflect his love.
It is for this reason that what is called liberal religion is not particularly popular at the moment. I certainly would not strive to convert people away from it, any more than I would want to convert them to strongly fundamentalist types of Catholicism or Evangelicalism. They all have their strength undoubtedly, but their weakness is not hidden from any eye either. The last two are grossly intolerant, this is really their trouble, particularly when they believe that they have the full answer to life. Some Unitarianism and Quakerism has more or less moved away from the living God altogether into a type of god that satisfies the mind or intellect without inducing much compassion.
As in everything else in the world, these statements need qualification: there are wonderful Protestants and Catholics whose lives are devoted to the benefit of their fellow creatures. On the other hand, there are especially highly charismatic forms of these religions which can be very dangerous because of their dogmatism associated with strongly superstitious trends. Whenever superstition comes in, fear and hatred follow. The results are not good, since they also diminish the integrity of the human mind.
Whenever you start to get involved in religion, as Job did, you are exposed to all sorts of dangers, from psychical to intellectual states of being. I have already discussed the psychical aspect of religion and shown how dangerous it can be, but I would still rather have the danger of religion, even in its most unpleasant forms, than a type of dull, uniform agnosticism which does not really accept anything at all, apart from the immediate evidence of the senses. This type of religion is hardly human. It may be safe, but it leads nowhere in particular, and in the end, you are, like Job, fearing for the thing that was to come to you (Job 3.25).