The Queering of Job: Part 3

January 1, 2006

Job’s Disorientation

Job’s children are dead. His cattle destroyed. His fields and property gone. Job has lost everything and still he holds strong in his faith. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes a way; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Then Job is struck with boils that ravage his entire body, not only creating immense physical pain but visible to everyone in his community who would have seen his disease as a sign of God’s displeasure. So we find the once distinguished insider now cast out to reside upon a heap of ashes and yet still he clings to his faith and even at the urging of his wife, Job refuses to lift his voice against God.

The disease that’s causing Job’s physical suffering receives little direct mention for in the end the boils and physical pain are only the catalyst for the immense spiritual suffering Job will wrestle with throughout the story and beginning in the seven days that Job sat silent upon the ash heap, surrounded by his gratefully silent to this point friends, it’s hard to not imagine what Job is thinking. He’s confronted with an insurmountable conflict between his theology and his experience that must make sense with the right knowledge. In his theological hand Job knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that God protects the righteous. He reflected in his heart upon the scriptures he cherished and the teachings of past generations for illumination. And yet, at the same time in his experiential hand Job knows he is a man of integrity and without sin, but…”Perhaps there’s something I’ve forgotten. Did my children sin without a sacrifice being made? Have I sinned in deed or intent? Some wrong that’s gone unnoticed?”

At the end of seven days Job answers the questions of his heart. “No! I have done no wrong! I curse the day of my birth! I wish I were dead!” In cursing the day of his birth Job curses creation and the Creator. Job, who feared God enough in the past to offer regular sacrifices, to utter no complaint against God while news of his children’s deaths continued to assault him, now cries out against God. In Character in Crisis, William Brown explains, “The enormity of his suffering has overcome his concern for life and terror before God. In short, Job’s suffering has empowered him.” 9

In the summary you’ve already read of the comfort brought to Job by Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and finally Elihu. These four assault Job continually with a battery of words defending traditional theology all the while placing the blame for Job’s condition squarely on Job’s shoulders. They come speaking in authoritative voices, each with certain answers to the problem at hand. “You have sinned,” “Your children have sinned,” and “Be grateful for God only corrects those God loves.”

Job responds to these harsh speeches full of judgment and arrogance with anger and frustration. His words are often sarcastic and mocking toward his friends and at times toward God. He wishes for death. He wishes for justice. In fact, as the dialogues progress Job demands more and more ardently that he be granted his day in court to prove his innocence. Job refuses to take the blame his friends are trying to place upon him but demands for public vindication in a court so that he can be vindicated (Job 13: 3, 18, 19). He doesn’t ask that God be the judge but it’s God who needs to be on trial because God isn’t being fair; there is no justice forthcoming from this God of justice.

Everything is beginning to shift for Job. Where once Job welcomed God’s attentiveness, now he considers it unwelcome scrutiny. Where once there was comfort in God watching and seeing all, now there is regret and the wish that God would no longer look upon him (Job 7:19). Job’s disorientation is most clearly seen in his struggle with retribution theology for he stands at times trying to balance between traditional theology and his experience where no solid ground can be found. He knows in light of his experience that what he once believed and what his friends still maintain makes no sense and yet he can’t let go and so he pleads, “Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be” (Job 7:21). By the end of the dialogues however Job has seen that the traditional view is entirely contradictory to his experience and can’t be salvaged. All that has been said by his friends is meaningless.

While everything in Job’s world is shifting out of control there is one thing of which Job is certain and that is his innocence. In one of his first speeches Job declares “Though I am innocent, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse” (Job 9:20), and in what is to be one of his last speeches in Job 27:3-6:

As long as my breath is in me and the spirit of God is in my nostrils,
My lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.
Far be it from me to say that you are right; until I die I will not put away my integrity from me.
I hold fast my righteousness, and will not let it go; my heart does not reproach me for any of my days.

Job continues to declare his innocence though his friends don’t believe him and God doesn’t respond to him. His words seem to further provoke the fevered accusations being thrown at him so why does he continue? Because “bearing witness is both a means of survival and an act of defiance. The passion to speak is the power to live. Bearing witness is also an act of faith. It testifies to the belief that if people only knew the truth, they would do something to change the
situation, because they deserve justice.”10 Job had lost everything but he would not be silent about the one thing he had left and that was his integrity.

Anita’s Disorientation

Homosexuality and sickness aren’t the same. Sickness is a condition that impairs the normal function of the mind or body. Homosexuality is a variation in sexual orientation. When someone is sick they look for a remedy. When someone is gay no remedy is needed. But in these ways homosexuality in contemporary life and sickness in antiquity share similarities in traditional theology: Both are viewed as either sin or an indication of sin, both require repentance as a remedy, and both cause the individual to be relegated to the margins of society, cast out from their community, family and religious life.

As I already mentioned, the focus in the book of Job isn’t on the disease or even Job’s physical suffering, but instead Job’s illness serves as the catalyst for Job’s spiritual suffering, initiating his movement from orientation to disorientation to reorientation. Realizing I was gay propelled me into that same journey.

Of course, when I first I realized I was gay no one needed to know. I didn’t break out in a rash that couldn’t be hidden so I didn’t have to endure an immediate barrage of words coming in all directions. No. When I first realized I was gay, the only voices I had to confront were the Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar chattering away in my own mind. I knew what my theology told me about homosexuality and homosexuals. Homosexuality was a sin and those who practiced it were godless, perverse, rebellious and possessed all those other less than stellar virtues found in Romans, chapter 1.

Homosexuality was a behavior that one chose and what an evil choice it was! And yet, there I was, committed to my faith in Christ, loving God and all about the business of ministry when the awareness came to me that I was a lesbian. Unlike Job, there was no time of silence on an ash heap but instead the voices in my head started up loud and certain. “You’re wrong about what you feel! You can’t be gay!”, “Homosexuality is a sin so repent!”, “Maybe God is testing you!”, “Maybe Satan is tempting you!”, “Maybe you’re being punished for something you’ve done and if not what you’ve done, what you’ve thought!” Those are the voices I heard and the voices I had to hear because I had a fistful of absolute time-tested, mother-approved, certain theology and yet….and yet I knew that I loved God, that I was none of what was described in Romans and so there welled up in me a great internal collision between my theology and my experience. There were times I was resolved to hold to my traditional theology and other times when it seemed so meaningless. What kind of God would have me gay and then condemn me for it? What kind of God would test me with something so immense or not protect me from such a temptation when I had been faithful? I demanded an explanation from God for my suffering. I cried out in anger, fear and frustration. I was mad at God, mad at the unfairness of it all and I told God so. I prayed with an honesty and a rawness that I had never dared before, afraid that God would be angered by what I had to say. God never reprimanded Job for speaking as he did and I never felt God’s displeasure in my cries. I would imagine that God longs for honest relationship even when it’s difficult.

When at last I was able to reconcile my faith and sexuality there came a moment when I too cried out to break the silence, but rather than cursing the day of my birth, in coming out to others I was bearing witness to the reality of my life and that there was nothing wrong in being who I was. Not surprisingly that’s when the flesh and blood Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar showed up in my life with all the same words, arguments and accusations I had already dealt with internally, and that’s when I experienced what it was like to be cast out to the margins. Where once I had been an insider, I found myself on the ash heap being looked upon in the same way that Job’s friends looked upon him. There were times I connected too well with the words of Job in 19:19 when he said, “All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.” Certainly, that’s how it felt. And even now, years later, though relationships with family and friends are reconciled, there are others who speak of gays and lesbians in the same way as the three accusers. And when their theological arguments deteriorate they default to denying the reality of our lives, blanketing us with stereotypes and making false accusations.

My journey out of disorientation didn’t end when I resolved the question of my sexual identity. That was only the beginning for in making room within my understanding to accept that traditional theology had been wrong about homosexuality a question even more enormous than the first was created. If traditional theology had been wrong in that one area, could it be wrong about anything else? I tried to ignore the question for a while because it was too much too even consider. I had placed my life in those beliefs and knew no other way. In fact, I believed there was no other way. One truth and it was my truth.

But in time I began to take the questions one by one. How can God be omnipotent and all-loving in the face of human suffering? When devotion to God is cherished in other faiths and God loves all equally, would God then favor only one of those faiths? Could God really send some people to hell while others were wrapped eternally in his embrace? If God can break into the world supernaturally on behalf of one person, why does God not do it for another? If the Bible is true then why would a loving God demand that whole villages, down to the last man, woman and child be annihilated? If God is committed to justice then how can we build larger churches while people are homeless in its shadow? Why does a creator God demand a blood sacrifice of an animal or a loving Father the blood sacrifice of his son? Why must I call God “he” if God is neither male or female?

Spread the Word!