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Sahid
Megistered Rember
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 12/1/2005 5:12 AM (GMT -6) |   | | I don't get it. Here's what I think it's about. Educate me from here.
Job is a good guy.
Satan thinks Job fears God, because he is blessed.
God thinks otherwise.
God conducts an experiment to show Job's character and lets Satan mess him up.
Job sits in the dust with three friends for a week.
Job curses his birthday.
His friends say his suffering is the result of his sin. That's how God does things.
Job says he didn't sin.
His friends keep reciting their conviction, getting angrier each time.
Job then wonders why the innocent suffer all the time.
Ehilu shows up and says God is big stuff; what does he care about your whining?
Then God shows up and says that he is big stuff and that he doesn't want to hear Job's whining.
Then God says that Job didn't sin and that his friends were wrong and bad.
God fixes up Job real nice.
Moral: When you suffer unjustly, don't whine about it to God.
Now that can't be right, can it? I have a similar problem with Doc's battle picture. He says it's like God is a general in a battle and we are like people in a cottage caught in the cross fire. We can ask God for help, but given the ins and outs of the battle he might not be able to deliver.
In both Job and the battle picture there are people asking "why?" In both cases they don't get their answer. So I guess my question is 'Why can't God at least fill sufferers in on the reasons he can't save them?' Is there some sort of demonic CIA intercepting messages that pervents this communication? You'd think he could at least let Job and the people in the cottage know what they're suffering for, wouldn't you?
P.S. No, I haven't read the books, so I apologize if this is a dumb question. I'm hoping to find the time to read them soon.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 12/1/2005 5:02 PM (GMT -6) | | |
We are mere mortals struggling through the intellectual crisis of being contingent beings. Human lives are contingent on glorifying God as their central object of love. LFW is the wager God accepted for love --warfare is the risk of that wager.
Yes, God is a gambling man. There’s some amongst us that believe He’s bluffing.
Wanted Dead or Alive,
Mark
Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity. Post Edited (sparknheart) : 12/1/2005 4:20:12 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Violin for God
Luke, I am your father. --Nooooooooo!!!!!
Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 690
| Posted 12/1/2005 6:21 PM (GMT -6) | |
Sahid said...
I accept the idea that God risks for love. But why does he keep us in the dark about the factors involved in our own lives? When suffering comes and we ask why, couldn't he answer? I believe the overall answer is that God must risk to make love possible. But why couldn't God fill Job in on the the first chapter and a half of the story? Were I in Job's place, I think I would take some comfort in that knowledge.
I agree that the whole thing of Job is a bit confusing, but I also haven't read all the way through it. I get a bit bored in the middle... but I'll throw out a few ideas in the mix here. I've heard from a couple of places (can't remember exactly where anymore) that Job may have been more of an allegory or something based on the literary style of this book. (I think CS Lewis may have written about this somewhere).
But to the question: "But why couldn't God fill Job in on the the first chapter and a half of the story?" ... my guess is perhaps this ties in to the whole perseverance promotes character kind of thing? Also maybe God is telling us through this story that he may or may not answer our questions of "why" until after the whole trial finishes because having that knowledge may interfere with a greater plan He may have. His giving us insight may depend on the circumstances but perhaps we shouldn't always expect inside information.-- that's my guess anyway...
[As Bill and Ted approach Socrates]: Bill: "Yo Ted, say something profound, dude."
Ted: "Oh, yeah. Right. All we are...is dust in the wind dude."
Bill: ..."Dust".... "Wind" ... "Duuuude".
Socrates: (gasping in awe) "Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives." | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 12/2/2005 5:19 PM (GMT -6) | |
Sahid said...
I accept the idea that God risks for love. But why does he keep us in the dark about the factors involved in our own lives? When suffering comes and we ask why, couldn't he answer? I believe the overall answer is that God must risk to make love possible. But why couldn't God fill Job in on the the first chapter and a half of the story? Were I in Job's place, I think I would take some comfort in that knowledge.
Life can seem like an endless maze of pain, despair and hopelessness. But it’s only a brief probation period, a trial and <beep> test of character; more lovely, a “courtship”. But hearts beware, for our eternal lives depend on the faithfulness that corks the wrath poured from a jealous Bridegroom that’s made a cuckold.
To be God’s bride according to the holy decree: I trust you with my love, the outpouring of my heart, as a symbol and pledge of our uniting in one spirit. To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, forsaking all others, united at death for ever: and to that I pledge you my faithfulness.
In free obedience to the law of love,
Mark
Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity. Post Edited (sparknheart) : 12/2/2005 10:53:07 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 12/2/2005 7:32 PM (GMT -6) | |
Sahid said...
When suffering comes and we ask why, couldn't he answer?
Seriously, maybe you’re reading the wrong book.
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Merton
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 17
| Posted 12/9/2005 12:05 PM (GMT -6) | | Sahid,
How are you man. Hope that test went well. To begin to answer the question. I would say do not read is God to blame. That is the LCD version of the two part of the warfare trilogy. Read God at War and Satan and the Problem of evil.
Good Dr. Boyd does have some helpful things to say in both. But nothing, nothing solves the "problem of evil." I that the warfare view, although somewhat helpful, has holes. As do all systems. To quote Kierkegaard ...The only system that can be had is an existential system, one that is imperfect, and ultimatly deals with the now. When we try to extrapolate universals we no longer have a system that deals with life and the living, but principles about life. God is that which shatters all systems, because no system can contain God (or for that matter any individual).
There are reasons given by Boyd as to why we are not told, but the main thrust is that we should take for granted that the world is filled with this warfare and know that harm (usually) comes from the demonic. We rarely get answers..... (sorry those are my random musings at this time) | | Back to Top | | |
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Truth Aficionado
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 1544
| Posted 12/10/2005 11:30 AM (GMT -6) | |
Merton said...
I find that the warfare view, although somewhat helpful, has holes. Hello Merton,
Would you please share some of these "holes" you've found?
Thanks,
Mark | | Back to Top | | |
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Reader
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2005
Total Posts : 66
| Posted 12/15/2005 3:55 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Merton
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 17
| Posted 1/3/2006 7:23 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Sorry that the reply is so long in coming. Life sometimes gets in the way. To answer the question about Kierkegaard, it was a bad paraphrase of the entire work by SK called Concluding Unscientific Postscript. In the entire work Sk seeks to eliminate the problems Hegel creates for thought. What I meant to say was a logical system is possible (Hegel's time-spirit idea, the Warfare World View, Calvinism), but does not correspond with life. The system is always a minute behind because it claims objectivity. Objectivity has little to do with existence because we all experience existence, and not abstract logic. A system that deals with existence is impossible. That is my statement. No system can accurately take in all of life, and if it could it would necessarily be life that is past.
To the questions of holes. Let me rephrase my response. No logical system can accurately describe human or divine life. I hope to the system I hold to because it appears to do the best job in describing past life, what has gone before. To paraphrase Karl Barth, if there is any system to be had at all, it is the system that says God is totaliter aliter, wholly other, who intersects our horizontal plane from God's own vertical plane, and smashes everything that we can concoct. The Warfare World View is extremely useful and is a needed corrective to any so called "Christian" view of reality that does not give credence to the very real battle between God and the powers and principalities (although we must not overreach and claim that the battle is a battle of ontological equality). However no system can explain reality. That is the intention of my earlier statements. | | Back to Top | | |
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