Radically Happy

…asserts that Job has an unhealthy view of God… yes, he does believe that the wicked prosper… he doesn’t subscribe to this philosophy… Job the empiricist takes on his traditionalist foes …You guys are willfully ignoring the evidence, which demonstrates your ulterior motives…

…Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard …Oh that my words were now written! …For I know my redeemer liveth, and he shall stand at the latter upon the earth… mind-blowing… for all his hangups, there is something awe-inspiring about Job… That’s a hard tension to…

Eliphaz sees Job as promoting impiety… why bother being good? …why should we believe one man?… Job appears to have been borne out: his story still has the power to stun… Grant me the honesty to face the ugly facts of life, but also the hope and strength to turn…

would make a great rap opera, the characters are continually talking smack… Job needs to repent, then God will heal him… Job seeks to prove his ways, rather than repent… the sheer agony… like a young child cowering in fear… not so much from his troubles as from himself

…”If God is just, then trouble must be our own fault”… but how should man be just with God?… God really does seem a hard master …Save me from the folly of despair, and from dark-colored glasses that reveal only your justice and not your love.

His friends say, “Ask God for mercy,” Job says, “Why bother?”… Job feels that to be destroyed would be a comfort… something going on here that is more than just whininess… Underlying his despair is a steadfast loyalty to God… he will not curse God, though he curses himself. Why?

Take Eliphaz… emphasizes God as refiner …the evil suffer, the righteous do not… I wouldn’t complain, ask God to stop it… Be happy … attitude is condescending, unsympathetic.. refining makes it easier but at a price: the loss of vital nutrients… a nice, clean, simple, logical — and wrong —…

“Let the day perish wherein I was born”… clearly Job is royally depressed … anger at God was unthinkable, so it got rerouted into anger at myself… Job’s earlier good behavior was at least partly due to fear… Despite his intense suffering, Job refuses to curse God… Is that loyalty…

“Doth Job fear God for nought?”… Why do we fear God?… strike at the very premise of this blog — that happiness has roots, and that serving God and being happy are compatible… Serving God is not merely pursuing one’s one happiness… Otherwise, Satan’s critique would be accurate… those are…

..the LORD scattered Babel… God seems more worried about there being not any restraint on planned doings… “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” … glorifying in your own is often a precursor to unspeakable violence …Lead me to your new Jerusalem, where people from every tribe, tongue, and nation experience unity without…

We see Noah begin as a very earthy fellow, in several senses… One of the things I’ve always loved about the Bible is that it never whitewashes its heroes… it was a pretty shameful situation in that culture … How people see us, and how we see ourselves and each…

… God’s relationship to man is changing at this time… there seems to be more structure appearing… now God is explicitly including himself in the bargain… “God said unto Noah, This [is] the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh ” … God is…

And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation … to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth … The parallel is highly suggestive – that preserving continuity of life…

…”And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth”… It’s enough to make you sympathize with the view that it was some random natural catastrophe, or that the Old Testament God was arbitrary and violent … Put another way, it appears…

…an essential part of the image of god … is our ability to create other humans in our own likeness (requiring both the male and female parts of that image). Adam and Eve apparently took that injunction to heart … Help us to manifest the imago dei within us by…

… why Cain’s offering was unacceptable… he wanted God’s approval for selfish reasons, rather than out of a genuine desire for relationship with God… Cain sees the whole world in terms of what it does for — or to — him… seek God for Himself, not for the gifts and…

…I would go further in saying that God actually intended Adam and Eve … to learn to be like God by doing the things God does — creating a very good world out of chaos. Alas, humanity lost sight of God’s ultimate purpose — misinterpreted His second command as restricting…

… this feels like the inverse of the story of Mary and Martha. There, we are reminded that it is better to wait on the Lord than to work. Yet in the beginning, the mandate seems rather the other way around. Perhaps before the fall, work was pure worship, rather…