Job's Faithfulness & God's Trust - Essay Sample

Introduction

God treats Job as his most trusted servant. He considers Job to be blameless upright, has a fear of God, and stays away from evil. God is confident that Job does not just fear him because of what God has given Job. He is very optimistic that even if he puts Job through a lot of affliction, Job would never curse him. God allows Satan to strike Job with constant misery for months. He began by afflicting him with sores all over his body. At the same time, Job bore the grief of losing seven sons and three daughters. He lost all his wealth in one afternoon. Job becomes repulsive to his brothers, and his wife loathed him. Even children showed him spite as he lay in heaps of ash outside the town.

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What kind of person is Job?

The Bible presents Job as a good and successful family man. After Satan strikes him with horrendous disasters with the permission of God, he loses everything he holds dear, including his property, family, and health. As he struggles to come in terms of his situation, he proves to be a faithful and loyal man. Even as he searches for the answers to his hard questions, not once did he curse or blame God for his troubles. Job sanctified the Lord's name in all of this. For example, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (Job 13:15). Job's actions also prove that he had a great friendship with God.

Does Job deserve the things God does to him?

The Bible describes Job to be blameless, upright, has a fear of God, and stays away from evil. Job is also a loyal and faithful man. He is kind to his wife and children and has friends that he respects. Being such a good man with neither a quarrel with God nor man, Job does not deserve the things God does to him.

What kind of God/person does what this God does? What motivates him?

The Kind of person/God who does this is one with a lot of confidence in someone to remain loyal and faithful despite the circumstances they are undergoing. God brags to Satan about Job, saying, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil" (Job 1:8). To be able to say such things about Job, God must have genuinely believed in Job not to disappoint him when he was put under pressure to curse God by his wife and friends.

Job captures the dilemma of this story when he asks God: "Does Man Serve God for nothing?" and "Why do the Righteous Suffer?" The story deals with the relationship between morality and the order of the cosmos or God's will. It raises the question of the earthly rewards for living a just life. What does it mean that God punishes a good man? Why be good if one is not rewarded for it?

We expect that because Job was a good man, he should not have gone through so much suffering. It is painful and challenging for a good man to suffer knowing too well that they have done nothing wrong to deserve such punishment. However, pain is not just punishment for sin, sometimes like in the case of Job, it is to test the purity of faith. A right person may suffer temptation and go through trials so that the genuineness of their loyalty and faith is tested. As a result, the suffering paves the way for honor and more important things if one is successful. We might ask the importance of being right if we are not rewarded for it. However, being good is not necessarily so that others see and appreciate us. Sometimes people need to be suitable for their peace of mind and to maintain a clean conscience.

The Book of Job is one of the first times we see Satan in the Hebrew Bible. What is Satan's role in the story, and how is this image of Satan different from how we conceive Satan today?

In the book of Job, Satan is presented with the role of a prosecutor or adversary. Just like the angels, he is an agent of God whose responsibility is to search out the wrongdoings of individuals and appear to God as their accuser. The picture of Satan painted by the book of Job differs from what we conceive of Satan today as a demonic angel that fell from glory and opposes God or is a personification of pure evil, which makes people turn from good and do harm. The evil dragon from the book of revelations that Christians today consider Satan is far from the description given by the book of Job.

Job does question God, but why do you think he never abandons or loses faith in God completely? Hasn't God abandoned Job? What would you do if you were Job? (Compare with the story of Abraham and Isaac)

Although Jacob questions God, he does not lose faith in Him. Jacob believes that whatever he had was given to him by God, and so God had the right to take them away. He believes that if God blessed him before, then he was more than able to bless him again. God has, however, not abandoned Job completely because when Job questions Him, God answers back out of a whirlwind "Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me" (Job 38:2-3).

If I were Job, I know it would have been tough to keep faith faced with such problems. However, knowing that the same God who asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son that he had waited for so long to get and provided an alternative sacrifice just in time was responsible for my problems. I would believe that he was able to save me before it was too late for me.

What does this story, particularly its ending, say about God's relationship with Job and humanity generally?

In the end, God rewards Job for his endurance and faithfulness throughout his period of suffering. In the end, Job was better than he was in the beginning. Even though he never got the answer as to why he was allowed to suffer, Job ended up with considerably more than he had before the suffering. This story shows that God blesses the humble and those who endure to the end without giving up on Him along the way. It is clear that even though one has a strong relationship with God, just like Job, it does not mean that they will not suffer. Job understood that God appoints it for man to experience; therefore, he knew that God intended to do something to him at the end of it all; hence did not lose faith. Besides, God's love for Job made Him warn Satan not to touch the life of Job. Also, after God had fulfilled the purpose of Job's suffering, he did not let him continue to suffer for any much longer.