Job 3

Job goes on a rant. All these people talk in these long poems or stanzas. You could make a GREAT opera of this book. I'm going to give you an abridged Message version of what he says. You can google the KJV or NIV or ESV for comparison later, if you want.

"Obliterate the day I was born and blank out the night I was conceived. Turn that night into pure nothingness- no sounds of pleasure from that night, ever. May those who are good at cursing curse that day. May God forget it ever happened. Erase it from the books, rip the date off the calendar. Unleash the Leviathan on it. May its morning stars turn to black cinders, waiting for a daylight that never comes. And why? Because it released me from my mother's womb into a life with so much trouble.

Why didn't I die at birth? Why were there arms to rock me and breasts for me to drink from? I could be resting in peace right now, asleep forever, feeling no pain...where bone-weary people get a long-deserved rest? The small and great are equals in that place and slaves are free from their masters.

Why does God bother giving light to the miserable? Why bother keeping bitter people alive? Those who want in the worst way to die and can't, who can't imagine anything better than death? What's the point of life when it doesn't make sense? When God blocks all the roads to meaning? Instead of bread, I get groans for my supper, then leave the table and vomit my anguish. The worst of my fears has come true. What I'd dreaded most has happened. My repose is shattered. My peace destroyed. No rest for me, ever- death has invaded life."

I think that sometimes in modern Christianity, we are given the following messages: 1) Sad people and moaners are selfish, 2) it's best to pretend that you are perfect and your life is perfect, 3) emotional people are crazy, and 4) Godly people have all the answers to the meaning of life.

Notice that all that doesn't qualify as cursing God or a win for Satan. Job is showing great emotion and misery. He's not sitting peacefully like a nun or a saint in a cartoon, raising his glowing face while angel choirs back up his stoic meditations. He's upset, he's allowed to be, and he's not hiding it.

He's questioning the meaning of life. That's something we all deal with. Yeah, we have more information about the afterlife, Jesus, and the Great Commission, but we all want to know the details about what we are contributing. Life must have some meaning in addition to evangelizing, or the pre-Jesus people were just a waste of everyone's time. God doesn't create wastes of time.

Looking at his situation, it's easy to see why Job feels like his life has come to nothing. He doesn't even have anything left to leave on the Earth. (If it were the present day, you can just see some good Christian coming out of the woodwork with a five-step plan to get Job right with God. In many circles, they have all the answers. There's no mystery left.)

I want to note that, obviously, Job did not kill himself or attempt to kill himself. Even though the Bible is largely silent on suicide, we intrinsically know that we are breaking some sort of important rule. At least Job did.

Also, Job isn't specifically complaining about his health, the deaths, or his material losses. He goes right to the spiritual issues. "What's the meaning of my life?" "Why did God put me here?" "I have no peace." The agony mostly comes from the existential crisis these losses have brought about, not the physical problems.

There is also a question of whether Satan was attacking Job's mind, giving him depression and spiritual malaise in addition to sickness. I find this unlikely. The human mind can drum this stuff up without the Devil's help.

I think this passage is great for people who question whether they add anything to the world or whether they should have been born. Job thought this way, and he ended up having a great destiny. He won a cosmic battle between God and Satan, brought glory to God and goodness, proved his judgmental friends wrong, became closer to God, taught millions of believers important lessons, and ended up with more riches and family than ever before.