“It is safe to say that at the present time the church makes little use of the book of Job for its pastoral ministry. This has not always been the case. The medieval church made heavy use of it in preparing Christian souls to deal with suffering without falling away from their faith. But the modern church has pulled back, even in recent decades. Episcopalians may discover a sign of our retreat in the latest revision of The Book of Common Prayer (1979). The Burial Office retains the luminous affirmation: “I know that my Redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25). But gone is Job’s statement of resigned grief: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21). “The Lord hath taken away”–does that in fact express resignation, or is it the beginning of an accusation? That troublingly ambiguous statement is in the 1928 version of The Book of Common Prayer, but the 1979 version pitched it out. And one must ask, Why? Have we grown afraid to lodge the responsibility for our grief with the Lord, as Job so consistently does?
"The focal point of the book is not God's justice . . . , but rather the problem of human pain: how Job endures it, cries out of it, wrestles furiously with God in the midst of it, and ultimately transcends his pain--or better, is transformed through it."
"The focal point of the book is not God's justice . . . , but rather the problem of human pain: how Job endures it, cries out of it, wrestles furiously with God in the midst of it, and ultimately transcends his pain--or better, is transformed through it."
-from Getting Involved with God (Cambridge: Cowley, 2001), 121, 122.
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