Job 1-48: "Perfect" and "Upright"?

In many movies, there is always the plot line where the main character curses the day he was born since his life at the moment thoroughly sucks. Then because of destiny or reasons of origin unknown, this main character makes his life wonderful, becomes a hero and gets the girl, and gets the attention. With Job, this happened the other way around. His life was perfect, he was devoted to God, he had his wife and children, and he had it going for him. And then he let the devil in him. In Christianity or at least I've heard in some of the sermons the priests would give at mass, that we have the power to control whether we let the devil in us or not. Not like the real devil, it's not really the character that we see talking to God in Job, "Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." (1:8). We have the will to decide whether we let the bad things get to us and affect us (not that Job had much of a choice), according to the sermon. But, of course, this is very different in Job. Job was the "perfect" man, why would he need to suffer the consequences? What I learnt was that what the Catholic Church was trying to tell all Catholics was that we all have to suffer eventually, it doesn't matter if we've killed ourselves to get closer to perfection, such as Job.

The Satan or Devil that I am talking about manifests itself in bad things such as jealousy and anger or in more extreme measures murder and crime. I don't believe in the actual form that is the Devil in the bible like I don't believe in God as a bearded old man watching us from atop sitting on his cloud shaped throne. I believe that the Devil is all of the things that we believe are wrong in this world and the spirit of evil that causes the bad things to happen. And God is all of the love and the values that exist in order to keep the world sane and intact from man's greediness. Not that it has worked for most of what exists now, but still. The point is that while in the Bible we are shown all of the representations in actual characters, I interpret it all as symbolism. God is good and Satan is bad. Job is a poor human that has to suffer the consequences.





I found this picture on the Internet and I thought it described religions very accurately, kind of dark humor, but still true. From what I know from the history of Christianity, it starting spreading after the decline of the Roman Empire, what I think was convenient for rulers, emperors, or kings was to say that you absolutely have to suffer simply because you deserve it. The reason they give or gave was because we are born sinners thanks to our loving parents Adam and Eve, the thing forbidden fruit, how God got beyond pissed, etc... The real reason why was because Europe was in total decline during the Early Middle Ages (when Catholicism started gaining popularity and rulers were mostly Catholic) losing trade and population. The division between the rich and the poor was evident and there were more rich than poor. So it was convenient for the rich to say that everyone (most of the population) has to suffer (not the rich) just because they exist. In present day we are told it's because we are sinners. So I found that this phrase, "Catholicism: If S**t happens, I deserve it." describes very accurately what must have been going on in Job's mind when he decided to keep worshipping God after the numerous things that happened to him, including having his whole family killed off. Job was thinking he totally deserved it, even though according to the bible he was “upright” and “perfect”.

Aren’t Catholics encouraged to get as near perfection (nearest to God) as possible? Yes. And isn’t this story telling us that it won’t do us any good since we’ll have to suffer anyway? Yes. So why would we want to be absolutely perfect for God, if in the end he will still punish us for our “original” sin? So I came up with this other idea. Maybe we suffer for others. Maybe we suffer so that others can be good. Maybe all of the people dying in wars and of starvation suffer so that the rest of the world can be OK. Then we are introduced to other ideas and religions and possibilities. “Buddhism: When S**t Happens is it Really S**t?” What if in this life I’m supposed to suffer, but in my next life I’ll be perfectly happy? What does it feel like to be an insect anyway, maybe it’ll be happy? What is happiness? Is it just an illusion that we have to keep ourselves from going insane? Isn’t religion just like happiness, since they are both supposed to keep us from going insane? In the end it’s all OK though, since God gives Job everything he had taken away from him back, so that brings in a whole set of new questions and changes everything. Are we supposed to suffer only for a little while and then we’ll stop suffering? Will God make half of the world hungry just so they know what is feels like to suffer only to later feed them and make the other half of the world suffer afterward? And again, what is happiness? What is perfection? To me it all seems like what we think is perfect. And wouldn’t you have to be a little imperfect in order to be 100% perfect since perfection is everything? With no flaws? But there are so many bad things happening in the world that no one really wonders whether a reason exists for it. It just does because that's the way the world is. A place with good and bad in order to create a balance. Even though mostly bad is not the way to balance things.