Our study of suffering and meaning in the Bible focused heavily on the life of Job. God allowed Job to be tested by Satan because he was blameless and upright. Job’s oxen were stolen, his servants were murdered, his kids died, and illness was bestowed upon him. Job took all of this hardship with dignity and grace at first and continued to praise the Lord. He did however begin to curse the day of his birth and his friends joined in to console him in anger and defeat. God answered Job in anger. He asked questions of Job that only God would know how to answer and basically showed his power and knowledge over Job. Job’s fortunes were then restored two-fold.
In class today we talked about proverbs, wise sayings that you can apply to life. Some known proverbs in our lives are: don’t count your eggs before they hatch and God loves those who help themselves. We then talked about the book of Job and how it is essentially a philosophical thought experiment. Once Job’s friends arrive he tries to use language to undo his creation and God gets very angry with them. This does not seem like a historical story in the Bible, but rather it is a story to explain something that was happening at the time. It could have explained why tragedies occur in good people’s lives.