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Pentz
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 59
| Posted 3/19/2006 10:38 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hello all. I am new to this site and have enjoyed reading a number of your posts. I came to the open view a couple of years back, but I have a question that is nagging me, I apologize if you have covered this back in the day.
Anyways, every time I hear the song "Blessed be the Name of the Lord" I have a hard time singing the bridge, "He gives and takes away, he gives and takes away. But my heart will choose to say, blessed be your name." When I think about that I see a God who swoops down from heaven and natches things away at his own bidding and also gives things the same way. I also think about how can I say blessed be your name, if you take my Dad from my family when I was 16? Now, this was before I came to the open view, but I still struggle with this concept of God and how does this fit into the open/warfare view. Any thoughts?
Nate | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/19/2006 11:40 PM (GMT -6) | | I struggle a bit with that song too! What makes it difficult to just not sing them is that they're the words of Job's response to wave after wave of tragedy that struck his home, family, and investments. He lost it all. What's he do in response? Tears his clothes (I think), and says the famous words, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be his name."
What are we to do?
1) We can't avoid concluding that in Job's view at least, God was responsible for all that had occured. So Job's got a deterministic worldview (at least enough to account for his assuming all this evil was God "taking away"). Greg dismisses Job's theology by saying basically that though Job ought to be admired for not ceasing to worship God (because God is always worthy of worship--a lesson Job DOES teach us), we don't have necessarily to agree with his worldview at this point. That's just Job talking. He was right to worship (since it can never be wrong to worship God!), but he worships in spite of his bad theology.
2) I think I've heard some of us say things like, "Look, the future's being open doesn't mean God gurantees every person a pain-free 70+ year existence. He gave us life. He can take it. We are his creation, and if God wants to call somebody home, that's within the scope of his overall designs for the world." Now, it's hard to just disagree with this and say, "No, God doesn't have the authority to decide to terminate a life before it has lived long and full." I think open theists really have to work on better understanding God's prerogatives as creator within the larger context of his purposes for the world. Can God just do this?
3) Calling someone home is one thing. But in Job's case the events were obviously brought about by evil human beings bent on pillaging and destroying everything in their path, which makes it harder (for me) to see this as God just exercising the choice to call some person home. To boot, we have the prelude that Job doesn't have. We have the behind the scenes footage, footage that seems to me to demonstrate that Job was wrong in his assumptions about God's taking all this away. The prelude sets us up to be able to see how Job approaches things wrongly--in terms of assigning God responsibility for evil, not in terms of his ultimate commitment to worhip God (that has to be right on).
So, Pentz, it may just be the case that this song, though it's quoting Job (someone we admire), is not quoting a view of his that we ought to be agreeing with and so you're hesitations about singing it are right on. It's just singing the Word out of context perhaps, like "his banner over me is love" from Song of Solomon, words that have something a bit more erotic in mind than Jesus covering us with his protection!
Tom
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/20/2006 9:13 AM (GMT -6) | | |
Welcome, Pentz!!
I'm closer to feelinahole on this one. I think the phrase "the Lord takes away" can be idiomatic for the fact that God VOLITIONALLY tolerates (indeed, SUFFERS) evils, which is clearly the case in Job per the prologue. As Tom said, the kind of calamities that hammered Job were improbable enough for him to realize that something supernatural was going on. Surely Job recognized that God was aware of it and allowed it for some reason. Whatever that reason was, Job was to trust that God's toleration of the evil was not gratuitous or malicious and, hence, no violation of the moral order. I suspect that's all that Job implied in the phrase.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 3/20/2006 8:59:33 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/20/2006 11:40 AM (GMT -6) | | On what linguistic grounds are you going to claim Job's words are an "idiom" with the meaning you're supposing? Idioms are a discernible feature of langauge. You get to claim some expression is an idiom on the basis of usage. So show me this Hebrew idiom at work in the language. Map it for me. We can't of course. Because there's no evidence that saying such a thing was an "idiom." It's just an ad hoc move to get Job to mean what we'd like him to mean.
I think part of the point of the book is to demonstrate that Job was wrong, wrong about THIS. Readers should recognize the tension between the worldview described in the prologue and Job's worldview. And they get to watch Job come to terms with this. See, I think if Job were to read the prologue he'd be surprised. I don't think it reflects his worldview. I could be wrong. Who knows!
Tom
Post Edited (TGB) : 3/20/2006 10:43:30 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/20/2006 12:05 PM (GMT -6) | | I agree, Tom, that Job was ignorant of the prologue. The point is that God INTENTIONALLY tolerates evils. In this sense, we have no right to complain as if GOD has done us injustice, since He only tolerates evils for rational purposes. Thus, there is no reason to cease blessing God when things are "taken away."
As for the idiom, I see it as analogous to the case in the OT where one book says God stirred up David to number the people, whereas another book says Satan stirred up David to do it. Both are true in the sense that God INTENTIONALLY allowed Satan to do it. Apparently, there are all kinds of things that Satan would do if God didn't prevent him--just like he had to ask for PERMISSION to take away the hedge from Job. So when God DOESN'T prevent him from doing evil, there is some intent on God's part. And in THAT sense, ONLY, GOD DID IT.
Also, when Revelation says that Satan was to throw some of the believers in prison to TRY them, I see that as analogous to Job. God ALLOWS Satan to do things which serve as TRIALS for us. Hence, I could idiomatically say that God did it, though God was not the proximate or efficient cause.
This brings us back to that discussion we had about Christ's command to PRAY that God not lead us into temptation. Did we ever get a good resolution to that?
Post Edited (jefscott) : 3/20/2006 11:32:43 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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