Angry
Prayers
“According
to Job, we do not have to be polite about it, either. In the end, God prefers
Job’s outrage to the piety of Job’s friends. When in pain, we are allowed to
yell as loudly as we can. ‘Why is this happening to me? Answer me!’ Devout defiance
pleases God. It may even bring God out of hiding, with a roar that lays our
ears back flat against our heads (and makes the angels shout for joy).”
Barbara
Brown Taylor (“Out of the Whirlwind;” Home By Another Way, p.169)
The
book of Job has always been interesting to me. It recounts a tale about God and
Satan having a conversation in which God brags about Job’s loyalty and devotion,
and Satan tells God that’s because Job is constantly showered with blessings.
Who wouldn’t be devout when he’s rich, happily married and has ten children? A wager
is cast between the two that if all that is taken away then Job will denounce
God and even curse God to his face! God says he won’t, and Satan says he will.
Then Satan proceeds to take everything away from Job while God sits by and eggs
him on.
I must
admit, I don’t like this God. I don’t like the way he allows his devoted servant
to be used as a pawn in a chess game; allows Job’s family to be harmed, all his
children killed, all his crops and herds destroyed. When that did not work, Satan
caused boils to erupt all over Job’s skin. Everyone asked Job what he had done
to deserve this terrible fate—they assumed God had to be punishing him for some
reason. A caring God would never allow this to happen to a good and faithful man
such as Job, right?
Finally,
Job’s had enough. He rails against God, pleads his case for a long, long time
(37 chapters!) He yells at God, fists raised in the air: “I have done everything
you ever asked me to! Why is this happening to me? Answer me!” And then God’s
had enough. He speaks to Job out of a whirlwind and says basically, “Who do
you think you are questioning me, the creator of the universe? Where were you
when I planned the earth and spread the stars?” God’s rant goes on for four
more chapters, and somehow after all that, Job survives without cursing God. In
fact, he is so happy that God has actually answered him directly that he says
something like, “Ok. Cool, man. I get it now. Carry on.” And then, of
course, everything Job has lost is restored ten-fold and he lives “happily ever
after.”
It
makes for a good story, I’ll admit. But it doesn’t happen that way in real life,
does it? Bad things happen to good people every day. No wager is involved
between God and the Devil. And when these terrible things happen, people very often are not recompensed for their losses. In many cases, things go from bad
to worse, and sometimes we end up homeless and living under a bridge. And,
worse still, sometimes bad people get all the breaks—they seem to prosper and
continue to enrich themselves no matter what evil they perpetrate on the earth.
It hardly seems fair. But then, as country music singer, Lynn Anderson, reminded
us, “I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden.”
The
only sense I can make of the book of Job is that 1) it’s okay to rail at God;
you won’t be smitten for it. Your prayers can be angry and demand answers. In
fact, God prefers your angry prayers to the shallow sop spoken by people who
think they own the rights to the Almighty. And 2) that the only thing worse
than experiencing unearned suffering is existing without some relationship to
that which is Divine. However you define your higher power, whether you are
angry with the Sacred or not, at least have a belief in something bigger than
yourself. For your own sake. And for the sake of the world.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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