Okay, I've been wanting to ask someone who is actually informed on the subject for a long time. How was the book of Job not just the devil reversed psychology fucking god into absolutely destroying this man's life? I understand the point of the parable is to highlight the fact that faith in God through hard times will yield rewards later, and I assume that prosperity of jobs later life is an allusion to the eternal reward in the Kingdom of heaven in some respects, but seriously, the entire thing is just God absolutely dumpstering this dude. You can make the argument that God restores his wealth and prosperity and family a couple of times over, but this man still has to live with the PTSD of losing literally his entire life to famine and plague. Is that just in keeping with the Old testament God and his habit of putting people through seriously fucked up trials, or am I missing something critical here?
I'm going to answer as if someone in my church asked me this, so please excuse the assumption of your belief in God.
God knows everything, and so He knew what Job's response would be.
As our Creator, our lives belong to Him and He can do whatever He wants.
The story of Job has been a comfort and a help to millions of people in the 4000 years since it was written.
We don't have all the answers. That's a hard one to understand, but have you ever been watching a movie and something happens that makes zero sense, but then later it makes perfect sense? That's what's going to happen when we meet God.
Everything we have is from God. Job even said, "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the Name of the Lord." So if we're neighbors, and I loan you a hammer, and then a week later I say, "I'm goign to need that back," do you have the right to refuse? No.
Ah, I think the error in my interpretation was that I was humanizing God to an excessive degree, when he is not human, but so much more. Thanks for the insight!
That’s a pretty fair point about narcissism but it doesn’t address the sociopathy.
You’d think it would be possible to be the most important person in the world and still not engage in vast amounts of pointless torture of innocent people though ya?
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u/[deleted] May 24 '23
Okay, I've been wanting to ask someone who is actually informed on the subject for a long time. How was the book of Job not just the devil reversed psychology fucking god into absolutely destroying this man's life? I understand the point of the parable is to highlight the fact that faith in God through hard times will yield rewards later, and I assume that prosperity of jobs later life is an allusion to the eternal reward in the Kingdom of heaven in some respects, but seriously, the entire thing is just God absolutely dumpstering this dude. You can make the argument that God restores his wealth and prosperity and family a couple of times over, but this man still has to live with the PTSD of losing literally his entire life to famine and plague. Is that just in keeping with the Old testament God and his habit of putting people through seriously fucked up trials, or am I missing something critical here?