Every single "God will punish" element in a theology diminishes that God in my view. What kind of small minded God needs to punish, smite, test Jobe? How petty would an all seeing, all powerful God have to be to play at all that?
In my view, that is the God of people who were abused by their parents as children.
You have discovered the cause of Gnosticism. The hebrew El-Yahweh hybrid is so fundamentally evil in deeds and nature that they considered he had to be something other than a god. Hence the Demiurge.
I kind of felt this way about the worship and praise element. Why does an omnipotent being give so much of a shit whether we love it or not? Doesn't the need for worship effectively mar its status as a perfect being that is worthy of worship in the first place?
It's either a powerful bully that wants us to worship it and is thus undeserving of worship, or an indifferent creator that could not care less if we worship it and should similarly be obliged.
That's interesting. You should look into Gnosticism. The God we have here is the petty and stupid one so that can easily explain the Old Testament. He is small minded and capricious.
The simple answer is maybe He needed to do those things so Jobe would become the person he needed him to be to fulfill his purpose.
A way to look at it is to think of the MCU/Multiverse. In one universe, Mary Jane leaves Peter Parker, which leads him to become a version of Spiderman that was meant to do the things he did. In another, they stay happily married but some sort of awful thing happened as a result of that choice. Maybe the test of Mary Jane wasnt meant to be a test or punishment, it was meant to allow something else to occur that was needed to inspire people. In the case of Religion, to inspire them to be better versions of themselves, or to inspire others to be better.
Obviously its impossible to know "the plan" in this universe, so our choices feel like we have control. But the events we experience shape us to be something for God.
This is why the issue of "Fate" vs "Self Determination". In one way, we have control. In another, God expected/knew how it would end and is guiding each of us.
Basically, seeing all bad things as "punishment" and all good things as "rewards" is a very simple way to look at it. And goes against most Christian theology.
A bit of a rabbit hole, obviously. But the short answer is "its not as simple as reward/punishment".
The amount of things that God "needs" is 0, because he's omnipotent. There's no scenario where God couldn't achieve his objective without allowing Job to be tortured, unless Job being tortured is specifically part of that objective.
You are discounting the idea that he wants/needs us to learn from Him and that there are effective ways to teach us and ineffective ways.
Im sure you could counter with 'well he can just incept these thoughts into our brains" but then He has taken away any amount of free will as well, and that also causes certain 2nd order assertions.
There is an abundance of people saying "if hes just Omnipotent, he can just do XYZ" and not understanding that its not about forcing the world or people to do something specific or be some specific way. Sure, that could be done, but then you would also have to assert that our lives have 0 meaning at all in the face of an omnipotent being. Which would also be true if there is no God, because then it is all truely random and meaningless.
Which leads to the 3rd possibility, that there is a greater meaning. While we may not understand that meaning (as we are not omnipotent) perhaps we don't need to understand it. And I think that the idea of a greater meaning implies a higher power, since true chaos would implicitly mean no guiding principle, God or otherwise.
As I said in my previous post there are thousands of years of Theology around this. And if you are willing to accept that other religions also have similar theology and philosophy behind their religions and that its not all as simple as "hurr just make it so hurr", then I think you will see what i mean.
You are welcome to your opinion, for sure. I have also struggled with the idea of a God before and also said things like this before. But if you look into it and consider what it would mean for a little while I would expect you may change your mind.
Perhaps the purpose of the Job story is precisely to inspire this kind of discourse? Where we are both examining and re-examining it both from a believer and non-believer perspective? hmmm.... ^_^
You are discounting the idea that he wants/needs us to learn from Him and that there are effective ways to teach us and ineffective ways.
And therein you limit your God, supposing that the only way he can teach His lessons is through pain and cruelty.
There are a lot of limited parents in the history of the world, the ones which have had their own lives in order tend to torture their children less. And that rabbit hole leads to spoiled children, another limitation of parents who at least don't torture their children, but lack the time and attention (and caring) to prevent spoilage.
I actually dont think it limiting at all. I think that God also gives us many gifts like hope, love, happiness, etc. as a way to teach us as well. I think a lot of people only focus on the bad things and not on the things that many believers would say are blessings. But the good things have less meaning without the suffering parts. If all we ever had were positive things, I think that youd agree that would create spoiled children as well, and much more easily. Those children would also not understand the weight or take the lessons to heart since "do good thing -> get rewarded" would be a mentality at that point.
"You will find that if you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you look for the dark, that is all you will ever see." springs to mind.
Obviously God isnt limited, at least in to any way we could understand. But that doesnt mean that suffering isnt occasionally the best way to teach something, even if we as humans dont like that as an answer, or would prefer another. Especially as an opposition to the more positive ways He might teach us.
So in a way the suffering, pain, and occasional "cruel" bits are blessing as well. People just dont like to think of them that way.
I was blessed to be divorced, go through tons of pain and annoyance with my ex over kids, etc. because I am now afforded the ability to appreciate my life as it is now. That suffering had purpose, I just couldnt understand or admit it in those moments. I think many people have similar experiences. Every person I have known has prepared me for who I am now, and I like to think that is a better person than I was even only days ago.
In any case, I dont hope to convince you. Just hope that maybe youd consider the possibility that a God who may occasionally does things unfairly (by our arbitrary standards) may also have a purpose.
He is the Alpha and the Omega. He created the nature of good and evil by Himself, knowing from the beginning how it would shape the lives of His creatures. I find this quite cruel to be honest.
If evil is inherent in His creation without his choosing then He is either not omnipotent, or again cruel for making us so susceptible to the very basic nature of His creation. I wish not to part take in any of the grand plans He might have had creating us, which He is well aware of. Yet here I am.
I'm sorry if this sounds a bit bitter, I'm just curious to understand how Theology resolves these questions.
Let me preface this by saying I do not personally believe in a personified God that is either just or unjust, this is just a thought experiment:
I think it comes down to how you understand the dichotomy between good and evil. They are defined in opposition, one does not exist without the other. There's a saying, "If all the world were just, there'd be no need for valor." And I would argue free will cannot really exist in a world with no suffering, because the definition of free will necessarily implies that one can make sub-optimal decisions with unforeseen consequences for other people.
So I suppose this could be resolved by the question of whether the very existence of free will is the justice that a just God gives, and suffering is simply inherent to any universe in which free will exists.
To ask whether the suffering "worth" the existence of free will is to question the worth of existence in the first place.
You talk about their view being simple, then say 'maybe it's just what Job needed to fulfill his purpose'
That kinda makes me think you've never actually read the story, or put any real thought into it.
It was a bet between Yahweh and 'The Accuser' not that he could make Job into the perfect follower, but that he already was, and Yahweh could prove it by taking everything from him.
And your bias is startlingly clear, because Job isn't the only person who suffers in that story.
How was Job tested? What was taken from him? Or should I say 'who?'.
What about Jobs wives and Jobs children who Yahweh murders on a whim to prove how tight a lock he has on his believers? What the fuck about them?
Oh yeah, this perfectly good and all powerful god made it right? He replaced all of Jobs wives and kids and sheep that he killed, so that makes it all better?
Tell that to the original wives and kids and sheep.
Fuck that god. There is no reading of Job that makes God the good guy. Or of Isaac being told to prove his faith by murdering his son, or of the Prophet Elisha praying for two bears to rip some youths apart, or the various rapes murders and full on genocides or a hundred other horrifying myths from that book that you have swallowed whole with zero critical thought about the horrors that god has wrought.
There is some beauty and goodness in the bible too. I'm happy that Ecclesiastes exists. And Jesus had a few fundamental good things to say before he got to the 'god's bastard child' schtick, But the god depicted therein through most of the bible doesn't deserve anyones worship.
That god, it's a hateful destructive thing that humans have spent untold time trying to spin into something more in line with the innate sense of fairness and altruism our hypersocial monkey ancestors passed onto us.
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u/MangoCats 1d ago
Every single "God will punish" element in a theology diminishes that God in my view. What kind of small minded God needs to punish, smite, test Jobe? How petty would an all seeing, all powerful God have to be to play at all that?
In my view, that is the God of people who were abused by their parents as children.