It is universally recognized that Job is one of the greatest books ever written: a masterpiece, an all-time classic. To the sensitive reader, it is real magic. It is terrifying and beautiful, beautifully terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful. It is fascinating, haunting, teasingly mysterious, tender, and yet powerful as a sledgehammer. It can be obsessive, as few books can.
Though bottomlessly mysterious, it is also simple and obvious in its main “lesson,” which lies right on the surface in the words of God to Job at the end. Unless you are Rabbi Kushner who, incredibly, manages to miss the unmissable, you cannot miss the message. If Job is about the problem of evil, then Job’s answer to that problem is that we do not know the answer. We do not know what philosophers from Plato to Rabbi Kushner so helpfully, but hopelessly, try to teach us: why “bad things happen to good people.” Job does not understand this fact of life, and neither do we. We identify with Job not in his knowledge, but in his ignorance…
Job is mystery. A mystery satisfies something in us, but not our reason. The rationalist in us is repelled by Job, as Job’s three rationalist friends were repelled by Job. But, something deeper in us is deeply satisfied by Job, and is nourished. Job is not like consomme, clear and bright, but like minestrone, dark and thick. It sticks to your ribs. When we read Job, we are like a little child eating his spinach. “Open your mouth and close your eyes.” Job, like spinach, is not sweet-tasting. But it puts iron in our blood.
From: Three Philosophies of Life – Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity; Job: Life as Suffering; Song of Songs: Life as Love by Peter Kreeft (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), p. 61
Peter Kreeft (born in about 1938) has taught philosophy at Boston College since 1965. He is the author of more than 60 books.
