God, Job and Leviathon

N.D. Wilson, in “Notes from the Tilt-a-whirl”, attempts to explain the problem of evil by appealing to art. I don’t mean this as a criticism. He makes some excellent points, and does it in an entertaining fashion, but I have some problems with some of his conclusions. When it comes to Christian thought, N.D. Seems somewhat unique, in his creative wording of theology. I found out a long time ago that C.S Lewis had the ability to blow my mind pretty consistently. (Both Wilson and Lewis were also authors of children’s fiction and both were/are bald, but the resemblance ends there.)

Anyway, when you have to read the same paragraph several times to understand what is being said, you know you’re in deep.

N.T. Wright takes this to a whole new level. (Wright is also bald, maybe it’s a requirement for writing books on theology?) Of course, this is a man who has his own Bible translation in print, so obviously, he has spent a few hours studying the scriptures in their original forms, which is no doubt difficult enough to make anyone lose their hair.

But, let’s get back to the problem of evil and art. Is this world God’s canvas? Is the big truth about the Almighty that He is the master Artist and Author and we are His characters and the stick figures who act out His play? How can we argue with that? He is the Supreme Being, after all. He can write the plot as He sees fit, right? The problem I see with this explanation is that is seems a bit glib in the face of real pain. If this world is only God’s work of art, and He is painting the shadows as well as the sunshine, just how dark do those shadows have to be? Is the holocaust only one out of many necessary shadows? Can I tell someone who has been raped repeatedly throughout their childhood that their suffering is only God’s way of adding some drama to His story? And how well does this jibe with scripture?

What we find in the Bible again and again are God’s conditional promises. “I’ll bless you if you humble yourselves before me. If not, evil will befall you.” (I’m paraphrasing.) Is this God drawing in the shadows? Is this God creating evil? And what about Job? The way most people treat the book of Job frankly makes me wonder if they have ever read it.

The patience of Job? Job was flat out ticked off as much as he was patient. He was wishing to die, wishing he’d never been born. He asks again and in again in essence: “What the heck, God? What did I do to deserve this?” No, God doesn’t give him a total answer, but the usual conclusion, that God basically tells him to sit down and shut up, is only partly true. God asks if Job understands what is really going on. “Did you create all this, Job? Do you know all the details of how it all works? Can you hold back the evil forces that threaten it?”

Oh, you bet, Job trembles and answers: “I spoke of things I didn’t understand.”

But, a curious thing happens that I don’t often see mentioned. God tells Job’s friends to repent,  “for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.”

What was it that Job was right about? Didn’t God just tell him off? Seems the only thing we know for sure that Job got right was that he didn’t understand what God was doing. And what were Job’s friends wrong about? They thought for sure that this was all about God punishing Job for his sin. And they were wrong. And Job was also wrong when he said God was tormenting him unjustly, because God was not doing the tormenting! What? Isn’t Job’s claim to fame, “Though he slays me, yet will I serve him.”?

Ahh, but dear reader, we get to see what Job doesn’t. We, the readers, get to see behind the scenes and understand what was really going on. Right from the start, it is the uninvited visitor, Satan, who asks to torment Job. Some take a flying leap here and assume the Satan has to ask permission every time he tempts or torments someone, which, in my not so humble opinion, is absurd. We are also privy to the “why” Satan couldn’t touch Job. God had put a special fence around him. God didn’t torment Job, ever. He only temporarily removed the fence to prove a point. And I happen to think the point is this: Love has to be tested. God used Satan’s actions to prove that Job was really His man, regardless of the circumstances. Job’s love was not based on what God had given him. And although Job certainly indicates that he longs for the days when he was a respected and prosperous individual, what he doesn’t do is curse God for what has happened to him. Job’s love went deeper then Satan every suspected. As an aside: Does God put a fence around every believer? That’s a subject that would take us too far off track. Another time, perhaps. What I don’t see is God being ticked at Job’s questions or his laments or even his longing for death. Instead God says something like: “Job, son, you can’t possibly understand what goes into my job description. You need to know what you don’t know.” What did Job get right? He never stopped talking to God, and even though his theology was not much better then that of his friends, (“If I do this, then God owes me this…”)he was willing to humble himself in the face of God’s majesty.

But, those who use this book to say: “ God will do as He pleases.” are missing the point. Those who use Job to say: “God causes calamity.” have it wrong. To say that God was drawing in the dark shadows of Job’s life seems to me to be borderline blasphemy, and it makes a mockery out of the very real picture of spiritual warfare that is though out scripture. Some assume that Job was right to say that he would accept trials from God, but that is also missing the point. God was not the source of Job’s trials. Maybe what Job should have said was: “God forgive me for blaming my pain on you, even for a moment, when all you have ever brought me is good. God wasn’t drawing in the shadows of Job’s life. He was preventing those shadows from doing their worst. The kind of health and wealth theology that says: “If I live a good life, I will never be attacked by Satan and every thing will be peachy keen.” is one direction that our assumptions about how God works can take us, and Job seemed to have subscribed to that, at least in part, when he kept saying that because he was blameless, he deserved better. Another direction that some go with Job is to assume that it is all about God controlling everything including Satan..but more on that later.

If this is the best of all possible worlds (shades of 16th Century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina )

then how much worse would it be if God didn’t hold back the Leviathan? Now, you might think the Leviathan was just a mythical sea creature, but it represented much more to some:

The Leviathan of the Middle Ages was used as an image of Satan, endangering both God’s creatures—by attempting to eat them—and God’s creation—by threatening it with upheaval in the waters of Chaos. St. Thomas Aquinas described Leviathan as the demon of envy, first in punishing the corresponding sinners (Secunda Secundae Question 36).Peter Binsfeld likewise classified Leviathan as the demon of envy, as one of the seven Princes of Hell corresponding to the seven deadly sins. Leviathan became associated with, and may originally have referred to, the visual motif of the Hellmouth, a monstrous animal into whose mouth the damned disappear at the Last Judgement, found in Anglo-Saxon artfrom about 800, and later all over Europe.

 In The Satanic Bible, Leviathan is listed as one of the Four Crown Princes of Hell. This association was inspired by the demonic hierarchy from The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage. The Church of Satan uses the Hebrew letters at each of the points of the Sigil of Baphomet to represent Leviathan. Starting from the lowest point of the pentagram, and reading counter-clockwise, the word reads “לִוְיָתָן“. Translated, this is (LVIThN) Leviathan.[23] In demonology, the Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell (envy) and its gatekeeper.

Isaiah 27:1King James Version (KJV)

27 In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.

I mentioned N.T. Wright earlier because I have been reading: “Paul and the faithfullness of God.” To say that Wright is a little wordy is like saying that Babe Ruth was a half decent hitter. I’m over 1000 pages in and only about half way through and I’m only reading one of the two parts of this book. And yes, sometimes it is over my head deep. But I understand the part about Paul finding the answer to every question in Jesus and his death and resurrection. It’s the answer, and yet, for those of us still living in this broken world, questions remain. We live after the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham has come to pass, but before the complete restoration of creation. We would do well to remember that creation is still groaning for that completion and we are part of that creation. And we groan a lot, and sometimes that groaning is not a bad thing. Job groaned and lamented, as did the prophets. And God didn’t hate on Job or the prophets for their questions and complaints. God just confirmed that Job was only seeing a small part of the elephant, so to speak. His understanding was severely limited, as is ours.

In the end of the movie: “Gladiator”, after Maximus is dead, his friend looks to the sky and says” “I will see you again. But not yet. Not yet.”

We live in the now but the not yet. We live between the cross and the glorious appearing, when all will be set right. And we live with that tension, whether we know it or not, of being children of the King in a world where the Leviathan is still painting deep shadows that creep into our lives and invade our dreams and threaten to pull us off course.

I’m writing this part of the blog post after getting up early because I ache all over from splitting a couple loads of firewood yesterday. I wrote the earlier part while sitting in the waiting room at the oral surgeons, while my wife had a tooth cut out. These temples we live in sure have some crumbling walls and dusty corners and broken bricks. I don’t know about you, but I would love to have a resurrection body that didn’t ache and teeth that never wear out. But that’s the not yet. We work every day to make money to put food on the table to give us enough energy to work for another day to do the same again. From a strictly worldly point of view, it can seem pretty pointless. After all, we are all going to wear out and die eventually. How does the non-believer live with that hopeless picture of life? Is his greatest hope only propagation of the species and having a bit of fun while it lasts? When this life is nearly over will it be any comfort to say with N.D. Wilson, “I was here. I lived my part of the story.”? Is that enough? How about: “Through God’s grace, I changed someone elses story.”? How about: “I brought hope, I worked to help implant eternity in someone’s soul.”? “ I suffered, but I persevered and found that life is more then mere survival.”

The book of Job is not, I believe, supposed to only teach us that God is in control and we are not. It seems to me that it teaches us how much difference one man’s life can make in this universe, which is the opposite of what many use the book to say. Satan peers over his cards and whines about the game being rigged. So God says, in essence: “Fine, I’ll put everything on Job. I’ll gamble that he really does love me and not just the stuff I’ve given him.”

And although Job whines a bit, and is extremely confused about what God is doing, and what in the devil is going on, he comes through with flying colors. God bets on Job and Job places his bets on God’s goodness, against all odds, in spite of what he feels or how life looks at the moment. He says: “God will see me though in the end. I’ll cast my lot with Him.”

Even the ancient book of Job looks forward to a day when a former murderer and learned pharisee named Saul becomes God’s man, Paul, and Paul looks back at all his Torah learning and understands that Christ has fulfilled all the requirements of the law. And Paul says: “I’ll gamble it all on Jesus and Him crucified. This is where I take my stand.”

Job isn’t about God saying “Shut up, I’m in control here.” It’s about God’s faithfulness to come through in the end for those who truly love him. He might not make us wealthy or wildly successful in this life. We may be poor and blind and naked. But, if we place our bets on Jesus and Him crucified, we can be assured of being part of God’s restoration of creation, to be made new, and shed this old body like a worn out garment.

What do you think Job is about? I always welcome comments!

Why we still need the Devil

A poll of American Christians in 2009 tells us the about sixty percent of us don’t believe the devil is a literal being, but only a symbol of evil. Now, perhaps some misunderstood the question. Maybe they were just saying that the devil was not a red guy with horns and a pitchfork who terrorizes young children, but that he was an invisible force in this world. But to say that he’s only a symbol, raises more questions then answers. Do Americans have a Star Wars concept of good and evil? An invisible force with a good and bad side, a ying and a yang, an eastern religion sort of deity? And how do they get these views from their Bibles? The most likely answer would be that they don’t.

Is it enough to say that God exists, or must I also say that Satan exists as well? Why are we so squeamish about admitting that evil is real and alive in our world? Believing in God as the overarching force who does everything, as comforting as that can be on one level, is also very disturbing and problematic. If God is running the whole show, then the whole show is His idea, and frankly, He has some lousy ideas. Because a baby with bone cancer is not, one would presume, the invention of a benevolent dictator.

If God is running the whole show unopposed, then we have reason to call Him a dirty double crosser, on the grounds that war is hell and death and disease are ugly and painful. But, if there is a negative force in this universe, and he looks like hell warmed over, then we at least have another target for our disgust. But does this really get God off the hook? Isn’t He just as liable for not doing something about this cancer on the face of the planet, this thing that we used to call sin? We Christians claim that he, in fact, did something, and something quite dramatic, and effective and magical, in the cross. And yet, we still have this mess. If the something He did was effective, we have not yet seen it’s total effect, and we are pretty bummed out about that, if we care to think about it at all.

We can’t even be who we want to be, for God’s sake. And in spite of all our talk about our sinfulness, darn it, we really do want to be good. We really do want to treat others as we want to be treated. We really do want to be better then we are. And the fact that we fail pretty consistently to reach that standard of good that we perceive to exist, should tell us a great deal about the real state of affairs. There must be opposition. We may downplay his, it’s or her importance, but this really doesn’t help our cause. Because if not he, then the problem is purely us, and by us, I mean God  making us this way. The non-existence or weakness of Satan only leaves us with an unsolvable puzzle. And if, as some suppose, we are only the sum of our DNA, this struggle shouldn’t even be an issue. What animal cares to be more then it is? Does a Zebra aspire to be a Giraffe, and feel sad for failing to reach that goal? But, we are constantly inspired to be more. More loving, more efficient, more kind, stronger, more compassionate, prettier. And our failures grieve us.

A chicken is quite content to peck at the dirt and lay and egg now and then, while it seems we humans are never happy with our own piece of dirt or the number of eggs we lay. We want more. If we are merely animals, then let us act like animals and quit all this nonsense about world peace and excelling at our given tasks. Yet, like it or not, we long for a world where we might rise about mediocrity, where cancer will be cured and disease of every kind done away with and wars cease and love reign. Christians and atheists alike long for that world.

And, as Lewis has rightly said, a longing for a place like that is a pretty good indication that such a place exists.

Do we really need the devil anymore? Isn’t he obsolete?

If we eliminate him, we only have ourselves to blame. Some will say that’s a good thing. That once we get him, and God out of the way, we can quit blaming anyone else for our failures, and soar upward to our own godhood. History, however, proves that notion wrong again and again. Eliminating this tension by supposing there is no adversary has never led us to utopia. Imagining there is no hell has not brought us any more peace then imagining there is no heaven, Mr Lenon.

As one old song says “We never fail to fail. It’s the easiest thing to do.” (Crosby, Stills and Nash)

This is the human condition, the tower of babble that always leads to defeat rather then victory. We can never achieve that lasting victory on our own. We don’t possess the power to defeat Satan by sheer strength of will. And denying he exists only leads us to further despair. It’s impossible to hear God when the devil is screaming in your ear and you think it’s just your own brain talking. We can hide our heads in the sand for awhile. Perhaps you remember this scene from The Lord of the Rings:

Theoden: I will not risk open war.
Aragorn: Open war is upon you whether you would risk it or not.

Theoden: So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?
Aragorn: Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them.

Open war is upon us. Denying it is foolishness. Your only hope is to ride out and meet them with the King at your side.

Ephesians 6:10-18King James Version (KJV)

¹⁰ Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

¹¹ Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

¹² For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

¹³ Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.