Grief

Unlike many, I have been fortunate enough to not to have had to encounter grief in a serious way, either as an adolescent or as I progressed into adulthood. As things have come up in life, I have had to try to deal with and understand this emotion that in so many ways seems illogical to me.

The Book of Job in the Bible is instructive.

Job, a seemingly sinless man of success and renown of old from somewhere in the ancient Near East is suddenly struck in every way that a person can be struck, short of divorce.

It is not because the Book of Job resolves anything about grief and misfortune that it draws the reader in, but rather it is in the poetic and epic way in which the question is addressed. It also does perhaps present an ideal, if not easy rendition in which we should all attempt to deal with life. In essence, it comes down to the words of the so-called Serenity Prayer, plus "never give up on life."

The joker in me would also say that if you choose to curse God, then choose your words carefully. Job may not have cursed God and died but many might argue that he did indeed curse God and live. I leave that to the discerning reader.

Let's not overpraise the Book of Job, however.

At the end, we find that Job has been "restored."

Here this means that Job got lots of replacement children and goats, oops, sheep, camel, asses and oxen. No goats apparently.

Well, according to the text, Job after going through an agony in which he prayed and prayed for death, then received double the number of sheep, camels, asses and oxen, and exactly the same number of new children, seven for his suffering.  Job only received the same exact number of male and female children as he had previously, in a ratio of four to three, while his livestock doubled. We are told at the end of the text of the Book of Job that Job's new daughters are very beautiful, so maybe that is supposed to tilt us in favor of perceiving God's restored favor upon Job, not to mention all that additional livestock.

That fatuousness of the the idea that more children, even beautiful daughters, make up for lost ones, is subsumed in the fact that Yahweh apparently "restored" Job just because He liked him again. Whatever Job had passed through seems to have had little to do with Yahweh's plans, which here, basically amounted to letting the Angel of the Morning perform an all but soul-shattering free-will test on an unsuspecting creation guilty of nothing more than having a wonderful life.

Job is much deeper than the snap  patience renditions which we have heard our entire lives in both Jewish and Christian circles, although it is my impression that Jews struggle with the message of Job much more than do Christians. Many apologists backtrack through the book and attempt to then tell us why Job is later "restored."

A simple web search shows entry after entry like this: "12 Reasons Why Job Was Restored."

The fact is that the Book of Job never states that Job is restored for anything that he did during his time of suffering. It is rather the fact that Job prayed for his misguided friends at the end of the text under direction of Yahweh and that it is for this that Job is "restored." Putting the word "restored" between quotes cannot be overemphasized in that Job was never and in no way, "restored."

It is clear that Yahweh refuses to debate Job on the merits about why just humans suffer. Job's response to Yahweh's recitation about "Where were you?" probably amounted to the following that didn't make it into the Hebrew text:  "Yes, I understand that you are reputed to have fought Leviathan although some say that it actually was El-Shaddai, but getting back to the suffering of the Just, there were just a couple of more points that I would like to make...."

I have felt exactly the same in front of judges in court.

One thing that I note at the end of the text is that it seems more probable that Yahweh blesses Job, i.e., "restores" him, not because Job refused to curse Him but rather because Job's logical analysis of the entire situation was far closer to the reality than that of the so-called friends offering advice. In that reading then, Yahweh basically says, "I do what I do," and Job says, "Gotcha. I had a feeling all along. More sheep please".

It helps to actually read the Book of Job, especially in the Revised Standard or King James Version, for English speakers as the poetic nature of the text is inspiring. I have actually read the Book of Job a few times. I can't recommend it too much.

Let me say that one of the truly beautiful sections of the Book of Job has to do with the following with respect to the action of Job's counselors after tragedy had befallen upon Job:

"So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great." Job 2-13.

In spite of the bad advice to follow, Job's friends sat with him and said nothing for an entire week. The humane understanding that words are simply insufficient during times of great trouble or sorrow is overwhelming here and shows, that whatever the cause of human suffering, we all have a capacity to try to quench it and when we can't, we tend to understand the depth of the sorrow. This is this essence of what makes us human. 

Nevertheless, I digress.

We have to accept that situations in life may not change as quickly as we hope. We have to work to make grief make us better, more understanding people and never let it change us for the worse.

At times, unlike the entirely upright Job, it becomes apparent that we have had a part in our own misfortune, perhaps. This then this goes beyond the Job analysis. We have a duty to improve and move forward. Forgiveness for Christians and Buddhists is not a choice; it is a process.

At times people come in and out of our lives and we may not have been ready for them to leave but we have to simply celebrate the good experiences, while we wish the others whom we move away from all that they seek for their futures.