The Queering of Job: Part 2

January 1, 2006

Job’s Orientation

The moment we encounter Job in the story we’re impressed. Job is a wealthy family man with a distinguished reputation in his community. You might say he’s part of the in crowd, established and successful. And he’s a good man too as both the narrator and God will attest. That’s a little about Job’s social orientation but what of Job’s theological orientation? When the story opens Job’s stands in the middle of established traditional or orthodox theology, the same as the one soon to be espoused by Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu, and which is most often reflected throughout the Old Testament. In traditional theology God was understood as a God of vengeance and of the law, a God of a particular people, a God who spoke through messengers and revelation, involved in every action in the world and understood and expressed in human terms. Central to traditional theology was the belief in retribution, that God unfailingly punished evil and rewarded good. Retribution theology threads it way through the early stories of the Israelites (Leviticus 26) to the wisdom of the Proverbs (Proverbs 10:30) and to the admonitions and visions of the prophets (Ezekiel 7:3).

In a modern play based on the book of Job entitled J.B., the playwright describes retribution theology through the voices of the main characters. In the opening scene while still basking in the good life, Job’s wife says

God doesn’t give all this for nothing;
A good home, good food,
Father, mother, brother, sisters.
We too have our part to play.
If we do our part He does His,
He always has. If we forget Him
He will forget. Forever. In everything. 5

Traditional theology also held that sin was communal, and as a father Job was responsible for the sins of his children. Yes, Job fears God in the sense of reverence but Job also fears God’s retribution should Job or his children sin and so he offers regular sacrifices to assure that any sins, known or unknown will be absolved by God.

And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” This is what Job always did. (Job 5:1)

Job’s belief in traditional theology was absolute and most likely Job had never encountered anything in his life to lead him to believe any different. He saw good men, like himself flourish, and evil men suffer and this proved the truth of it all. But what of those who seemed to suffer for no reason? For Job, as it will be for his friends, there must be something sinful to that person’s account, a forgotten or hidden transgression or the sin of a past generation laid at his feet. But of those who were evil who continued to enjoy wealth? Watch and wait for their time to receive the fair due for their sins will be sure to fall. Perhaps not today or tomorrow but it would eventually happen because it had to or else, “God is God or we are nothing. We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.” 6

Even as the first blows to Job’s world began to fall and all his possessions were destroyed and his children reported dead, Job clung to the one thing he knew to be true and that he held as absolute in a good and upright heart. “Naked I came from my mothers womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.” (Job 2:21,22)

Anita’s Orientation

As I’ve already mentioned, in looking at Job’s life I was reminded of how my own life was before I realized I was a lesbian. I came from a large and wonderful family and lived quite comfortably within an upper-middle class community. I owned my own home, had many friends and was quite successful in my profession as a full-time minister. I traveled around the country leading workshops for Christian parents and educators, wrote educational curriculum for several large Christian publishing companies and was well-known within the denomination to which I belonged. Being a person of integrity has always been important to me and despite all my foibles I also made every effort to avoid wrong doing (no wild parties for me!) and placed great reverence in God.

My theological location was within conservative Christianity and many of the same themes present in Job’s traditional theology were present in mine. Because I believed in an orthodox interpretation of the Bible, I understood God through the eyes of the Old and New Testament writers, so as it was for Job, I believed in a God of justice and of vengeance. I believed in a God of a particular people, first to the Jews but then to all believers in Christ Jesus. I believed that everything that happened in the world happened as a result of God’s direct action or by God allowing it to take place and I absolutely believed in retribution theology. I believed that evil was punished and good rewarded because that was a clear message through so much of the Bible and it just seemed to make sense that “you reap what you sow,” and “you get what you deserve.” Equal to the “hell, fire and brimstone” of retribution theology I relied on hope in the “if-then’s” to receive God’s favor.

If I do good then I will receive glory and honor and peace.
Romans 2:10

If I acknowledge Jesus to others then Jesus will acknowledge me before God.
Matthew 10:32

If I delight in the Lord, then he will give me the desires of my heart.
Psalm 37:4

If I am good then God will listen when I call.
Psalm 4:3

If I fear the Lord then he will keep me safe.
Proverbs 29:25

If I believe in Jesus then I will have eternal life.
John 3:16

Carol Newsom, in her commentary on the book of Job addresses our contemporary acceptance of reward based on merit in saying,

“Hasn’t the way people understand divine blessing slipped
into essentially a barter religion? ‘If you will do this for me, I will
do that for you.’ ‘If you will guarantee me this, then I will agree to
do that.’ It does not take long, listening to religious talk shows or
browsing through religious book stores, to feel the force of the
satan’s question. Explicitly or implicitly, much of religion seems
preoccupied with striking a bargain with God.” 7

With a faith confident in traditional theology I never stopped to consider I might be living a bargained life but rather I was hoping in God’s promises that needed to be earned, no matter how much the two sound the same. When I saw human experience clash with my theological orientation I never questioned the theology, only the person or the circumstances and when I could find no cause in either of those places then I defaulted to the unknown will of God. The collective suffering in the world; starving children, murders and war, and even the Holocaust, when the victims were innocent then the cause was the consequence of the action of Adam and Eve in the garden. There was universal suffering because there was universal sin which is little more than a contemporary variation on the communal idea of sin that caused Job to offer sacrifices for his children. But whatever I saw play out in the lives of other people, no matter how little sense someone’s suffering made, there had to be some cause required because God was a just and loving God, faithful to reward the good and punish the wrong. When all was said and done I knew what I believed was right so there had to be something else going on in the background that I just didn’t understand.

“People succumb to the temptations of cliché speech for many reasons, including simple laziness. Social insecurity, too, leads people to say words they have heard before, words that they hope will make them fit in. More disturbingly, people are drawn to platitudinous language when they are uneasy in the presence of something they do not understand and fear to examine. Religious leaders in particular often assume that they are supposed to have answers for every human dilemma. How much easier it is to speak in an authoritative voices of ‘the wisdom of God which we cannot comprehend’ or ‘the plan of God for your life’ than to admit that there is no simple answer for the pain, confusion, and devastation that erupt unexpectedly in people’s lives. How much easier it i s to mouth the conventional words of comfort than to find words for the unspeakable contradiction between a God of love and a world of cruelty and broken bodies.” 8

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