Three Philosophies Of Life Part 3

2.Rational premise: Justice means rewarding the good and punis.h.i.+ng the evil.

3.Commonsense premise: Rewards make you happy; punishments make you unhappy.

4.Experiential premise: job is unhappy. Conclusion: Job is evil.

This argument, when unpacked logically, has four different premises from four different sources. The first premise comes from faith, from the nonnegotiable core of Jewish faith in G.o.d's emeth emeth, G.o.d's truth and justice and reliability. It is the faith that G.o.d is real, just, good, reliable, and all powerful and rules his world justly. That is the premise Job questions. Everyone who suffers as Job suffered naturally tends to question this premise, whether they successfully resist this temptation or not. We must credit Job's three friends with at least enough faith to resist this temptation. They may malign Job, and that may be as blameworthy as maligning G.o.d, but at least they do not malign G.o.d. Job flirts with this again and again. He says G.o.d invents grievances against him without cause, that if G.o.d and Job showed up in court before a neutral judge, Job would win his case-the only reason he is losing is not G.o.d's justice but G.o.d's power. This is maligning G.o.d indeed, indirectly calling him an unjust tyrant, Job (and we) must must hold on to the first premise, G.o.d's justice. hold on to the first premise, G.o.d's justice.

The second premise unpacks the meaning of the key term in the first premise, the term just just. If G.o.d is just, what does that mean? Well, justice means rewarding the good and punis.h.i.+ng the evil, not vice versa. It means giving each his due, his "just deserts". This is a premise not from faith but from reason, from rational ethics. It is as basic to ethics as the first premise is to faith. Without a trustable G.o.d, there is no religious faith, and without a meaningful justice that discriminates between good and evil and a.s.signs appropriate rewards and punishments, there is no ethics. So far none of the premises seems questionable or modifiable.

The third premise unpacks the predicate of the second, as the second did to the first. If justice means rewards and punishments, in what do rewards and punishments consist? Obviously, many things in the concrete and particular, from money to honor and from execution to fines. But the one thing all rewards have in common is that they give to the person who deserves them something to make him happy, while the one thing all punishments have in common is that they give to the punished person o make himg to make him unhappy. If prisons were spas, they would not be punishments. If money were a disease, it would not be a reward. That is the point of the story of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox, from the Uncle Remus stories. Br'er Fox had tried to catch Br'er Rabbit for years in every conceivable way and never caught him, because Br'er Rabbit was so clever. But one day Br'er Fox caught him. He held him by the ears and said, "Now, Br'er Rabbit, you can choose how you is goin' to die. Do you want to be skinned, roasted, or boiled in oil?" Br'er Rabbit replied, "You can skin me if you like, and you can roast me if you like, or you can boil me in oil if you like, but please, please, don't throw me in that horrible briar patch!" Br'er Fox saw the gleam of terror in Br'er Rabbit's eye and said, "You know, Br'er Rabbit, that's just exactly what I'm gonna do." And he flung Br'er Rabbit gleefully and hatefully into the briar patch. But instead of pieces of dead rabbit, what Br'er Fox saw in the briar patch was Br'er Rabbit running through the briars laughing, "Fooled you again, Br'er Fox! I was born and bred in a briar patch!" The only reason the story works is the a.s.sumption that punishments are supposed to harm you or make you miserable. No one questions this premise. It comes from common sense.

The fourth premise is that Job is unhappy. This premise comes from experience and is even more obvious than the ones before it. Indeed, each of the lour premises is more obvious and undeniable than the one before it-which means that only the first, the faith premise, is really in question. No one is tempted to deny the other three premises, but job is tempted to deny the first. The only other possibility seems to be to draw the logical conclusion, as the three friends do, that Job is miserable because he is suffering deserved punishment, that is, that Job is a great sinner.

But the reader knows this is wrong. G.o.d himself said so, to the devil. The reader also knows that it is wrong to deny the first premise. Yet the first premise, G.o.d's justice, coupled with three other apparently utterly undeniable premises, logically necessitates the conclusion. What a puzzle!

Let us play a game the book of Job does not play. Let us do some logic. We have translated the existential problem of evil into the logical problem of evil, so we had better solve it on the logical level. (The book, of course, solves it only on the level on which it raises it, the existential level, the lived level. The drama is resolved-how, we shall see later.) There are three and only three ways to answer any logical argument (as we saw in discussing the argument in Ecclesiastes).

If the terms are not ambiguous, if the premises arc not false, and if the process of argumentation is not logically fallacious, then the conclusion has been proved true and there is no way to oppose it except simply to a.s.sert your own bullheaded obstinacy, to say, "You proved your point to be true, but I just won't admit it is true." That, of course, says nothing at all about the argument or the conclusion, but it says something about you.

None of the four premises is simply false, and the conclusion logically follows from the premises, but each of the premises contains an ambiguous term. That is how the logical form of the problem of evil can be answered.

The first premise states that G.o.d is good and trustable. But the goodness of G.o.d cannot mean exactly the same thing as the goodness of man, because G.o.d is not man. A good man is not the same as a good dog; for the same reason, the goodness of G.o.d is not the same as the goodnesof man. The reason is that goodness is proportionate to being. G.o.d's being is divine and infinite; man's is finite and human; a dog's is finite and doggy. Each has a goodness proportionate to its nature. For instance, it is not evil for a dog to be s.e.xually promiscuous, as it is for a man. A dog's goodness ("good doggie"), if carried over into a man, would not be goodness but imperfection, regression to merely animal instinct. So it must be with human and divine goodness. The term is a.n.a.logical, not univocal: its meanings are not wholly or exactly the same but modified, partly the same and partly different. If we were to do, or try to do, some of the things G.o.d does, we would not be good but bad. For instance, if a human father deliberately let his child be run over by a car when he could have run into the road to save him, he is not a good father. But G.o.d can save us, by miracle, every time we are threatened; yet he does not save us from all harm. Yet he is good in not saving us from all harm, for he sees, in his infinite wisdom, just what sufferings we need for our ultimate fulfillment and wisdom and happiness in the long run, and he sees the spiritual spoiledness that would result from our being saved from every calamity, Human fathers have only a tiny bit of this kind of foresight; that is why it would be wrong for them to play G.o.d and let their children suffer, except in a few cases where the human father's knowledge is fairly certain. For instance, it would be wrong for any human father to let his child die because he thought that if the child lived he would not go on to moral and spiritual progress but would regress and eventually die in a worse state. For no earthly father knows such things, as G.o.d does. But it would be right for an earthly father to send his child to an unusually difficult school, one that caused the child to sweat at studies and have twice the homework, if the father knew the child was bright and the school was worthwhile. So for us to be good and trustworthy is usually (but not always) for us to save each other from suffering, but this cannot apply to G.o.d in the same way. The marching orders for the infantry do not apply to the general, who makes the overall strategy.

This does not mean that G.o.d is amoral, or that goodness is simply a creature, not an attribute of the Creator, something G.o.d arbitrarily makes and could have made differently, just as he could have made the sky red instead of blue. No, "G.o.d is love" and G.o.d is also just, but what these moral perfections mean in G.o.d exceeds what they mean in us just as goodness in us exceeds goodness in a dog.

The ambiguous term in the second premise is the term justice justice. For us, justice means equality, or at least equal opportunity. It means something almost mathematical. "We are all equal before the law. But this is not the deepest meaning of justice. There is a justice in music, a harmony and proportion and relatedness that make for beauty, but it is not equality. It is something much more mysterious, more heavy with meaning, and more wonderful. "By justice the stars are strong", says the poet. The Greeks spoke of a cosmic justice (dk), "the music of the spheres". This is closer to the divine justice. Is it "just" in the simply mathematical sense that half the human race lacks a womb? Is it just that men have stronger upper body muscles than women? Is it just, even, that men are superior to monkeys? (I make an exception for those men who do not think they are superior to monkeys, as a self-fulfilling prophecy.) The highest and most mysterious form of divine justice we have ever heard of is, precisely, the Gospel, the astonis.h.i.+ng events of G.o.d's lowering himself to become a man and dying on a Cross for us. Saint Paul calk this Gospel "the righteousness of G.o.d" in Romans. But this "righteousness", or justice, centers on the most unjus thing that ever happened in history: deicide, the murder of the man who least deserved it, the most innocent, the only innocent, suffering for the guilty. And this is G.o.d's justice* justice*. Obviously, justice there is something other than justice here. Here, it is rewarding the good and punis.h.i.+ng the evil. There, it is "all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Is 53:6).

In premise three, the ambiguous term is happy happy. Rewards arc in the form of happiness-common sense is right to say that, of course. But perhaps common sense is not very clear about what happiness means. We tend to identify it (1) with something immediate and present, not future, long range, or eternal, and (2) with a conscious subjective feeling of satisfaction of desire rather than with an objective fact. Perhaps Job is not happy yet, but he is happy in the end; and perhaps Job docs not feet feet happy but happy but is is happy nevertheless. happy nevertheless.

To see the second point, consider the a.n.a.logy of health. We can be healthy without feeling healthy, as when we have a nagging headache but nothing else is wrong with us. The little headache takes up the center of our consciousness, and we feel as if we are going to die, hut the objective fact is that we arc very healthy. Our feelings are an imperfect indication of our health. Alternatively, we may be victims of some dread, fatal disease and doomed to die in two minutes yet feel perfectly healthy. Feelings are not an infallible indicator of fact.

Well, what is true on the bodily level can be true on the spiritual level, too. A Pharisee can feel morally and spiritually healthy, when in fact he is so rotten that gentle Jesus calls him a tomb full of dead men's bones. A saint can be going through "the dark night of the soul" and feel totally dried up inside, while in fact G.o.d is perfecting him like an artist perfecting his masterpiece.

Job may be happy in the sense of being blessed blessed without being happy in the sense of being without being happy in the sense of being satisfied satisfied. Job is G.o.d's masterpiece, and his sufferings make him even more of a masterpiece. His objective happiness, or perfection, or blessedness (which includes his wisdom and courage and maturity) is in fact attained precisely by means of his subjective unhappiness, or suffering.

Finally, the fourth premise contains the ambiguous term unhappy unhappy, or miserable miserable, which is ambiguous in exactly the way happy happy was ambiguous in the third premise. Job is really blessed in his sufferings, as Christ promised in his Beat.i.tudes: "Blessed are those who mourn... blessed are you when men revile you." It makes no sense at all, in the shallow and obvious sense of "happiness", to say, "Happy arc you who mourn." But in the deeper, older sense of happiness (blessedness), Job is deeply happy there on his dung heap. He is suffering and not satisfied, but he is blessed and not rejected. was ambiguous in the third premise. Job is really blessed in his sufferings, as Christ promised in his Beat.i.tudes: "Blessed are those who mourn... blessed are you when men revile you." It makes no sense at all, in the shallow and obvious sense of "happiness", to say, "Happy arc you who mourn." But in the deeper, older sense of happiness (blessedness), Job is deeply happy there on his dung heap. He is suffering and not satisfied, but he is blessed and not rejected.

The other ambiguity of the term happy happy also applies to the fourth premise. Job may be short-range unhappy, bur he is long-range happy, even in the sense of satisfaction. Job is satisfied at the end (and we will explore why later). He is in a drama, a story, after all, and only in the earlier acts, the earlier chapters. How can you understand the point of Act II until you get to Act V? The problem of evil, as lived rather than as thought, is a problem in a story, in time, and Scripture's one-word answer to the problem is "wait". also applies to the fourth premise. Job may be short-range unhappy, bur he is long-range happy, even in the sense of satisfaction. Job is satisfied at the end (and we will explore why later). He is in a drama, a story, after all, and only in the earlier acts, the earlier chapters. How can you understand the point of Act II until you get to Act V? The problem of evil, as lived rather than as thought, is a problem in a story, in time, and Scripture's one-word answer to the problem is "wait".

When Saint Thomas Aquinas stated in the Summa Summa the problem of evil as one of the two objections to the existence of G.o.d, he remembered what many philosophers forget: that the solur perfod's solution, is concrete, not abstract; dramatic, not schematic; an event in time, not a timeless truth. Saint Thomas, as we saw, stated the problem as follows:"'G.o.d' means infinite goodness. But if one of two contraries is infinite, the other is totally destroyed. Yet evil exists [and is not destroyed]. Therefore G.o.d [infinite goodness] does not exist." And he answered it as follows: "As Augustine says, Since G.o.d is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." In other words, life, like Job, is like a fairy tale. To get to live happily ever after, you have to go through the dung heap. Evil is only temporary; good is eternal. Once again, in a word, "wait". the problem of evil as one of the two objections to the existence of G.o.d, he remembered what many philosophers forget: that the solur perfod's solution, is concrete, not abstract; dramatic, not schematic; an event in time, not a timeless truth. Saint Thomas, as we saw, stated the problem as follows:"'G.o.d' means infinite goodness. But if one of two contraries is infinite, the other is totally destroyed. Yet evil exists [and is not destroyed]. Therefore G.o.d [infinite goodness] does not exist." And he answered it as follows: "As Augustine says, Since G.o.d is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil." In other words, life, like Job, is like a fairy tale. To get to live happily ever after, you have to go through the dung heap. Evil is only temporary; good is eternal. Once again, in a word, "wait".

But wait in faith. Jesus told Martha, before he raised her brother Lazarus from the dead, "Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of G.o.d?" Seeing is not believing, but believing is seeing, eventually. Job does not wait patiently, but he waits. Job's faith is not sunny and serene, but it is faith. It is not without doubts. (Indeed, his doubts came from his faith. When faith is full, it is open and can include doubts; when it is weak, it cannot tolerate doubts.) But Job remains a hero of faith. He waits in faith, and he sees the glory of G.o.d. He is blessed in the very waiting, in the dung, in the agony; and he is doubly blessed in the finding, in the end.

2.The Problem of Faith versus Experience.

So far, we have only scratched the surface. The problem of evil is only the most obvious problem in Job, the one all the books talk about. But deeper than this there are other levels, like underground caves or even cities, whole realms of mystery and meaning less amenable to clear a.n.a.lysis and simple solution. A second level of problem is the conflict not between faith and reason, as in the problem of evil, but between faith and experience, Job's faith and his experience. Here we have not a philosophical puzzle but a child's tears. Throughout Scripture and throughout Job's life, G.o.d approaches with a "sales pitch": "Trust me." G.o.d's emeth emeth, or fidelity, is here not a datum in a logical puzzle but a lifeline, and the rope seems to have broken. Throughout the Bible the promise is always that fidelity to G.o.d will be rewarded by G.o.d's fidelity to you and to his promises of reward. The righteous prosper; the wicked perish. So Job buys into this advertis.e.m.e.nt, this faith. He stakes his whole life on righteousness, obedience, fidelity, piety-and what is his reward? Loss of his possessions, his children, his wife's loyalty, his friends' respect, his health, and even, it seems, his ident.i.ty and his G.o.d (as we shall see in two subsequent, even deeper levels). Worst of all is G.o.d's abandonment, Job's "my G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?" experience. "I cried out, and the Lord heard me and answered me from his holy mountain"-this is the constant theme of the Psalms. But Job's experience seems to falsify it. G.o.d may be there, but he is not there for Job.

Here is what Job's experience seems to teach him about G.o.d. G.o.d seems like the father in the following cruel joke. A father said to his little son, "Son, I want to teach you one of life's most important lessons: how to trust your father. Get up on that five-foot-high wall and jump into my arms. I'll catch you." "But Daddy, I'm afraid. Don't make me climb up there." "I know you're afraid, son. But I want you to do this for me." "All right, Daddy. Here I come.... Wheel You caught me!" "Of course I caught you. I promised, didn't I?" "Can we go home now?" "No, I want you to jump from that ten-foot-high wall now." "Ooh, Daddy, I'm scaredousnes "Trust me." "OK. Here I come.... Whee! You caught me again!" "Of course I did." "Can we go home now?" "After just one more time. This time, jump from that twenty-foot-high wall." "Ooh, Daddy, I'm so scared." "Trust me." "OK. Here I come..." And the father stepped back at the last minute and let the boy slam against the sidewalk. From a pool of blood and tears came the question, "Daddy, Daddy, why did you do that?" The answer: "To teach you life's most important lesson, Son: Never trust anybody, not even your father."

It is a bad joke, and a cruel joke, but that is what life looks like to Job. He had trusted G.o.d, and now G.o.d stepped back and let him down with a crash. Job's faith says that if you trust G.o.d, you will be rewarded. Job's experience says the opposite. Job must have been a remarkable man of faith to have held on to his faith (though just barely) in the teeth of such apparently conclusive refutation from experience.

Job is traditionally regarded as a hero of faith. This shows that faith, for an Old Testament Jew (and also for a New Testament Christian) is more fundamental than the old Baltimore Catechism's definition of it (though that in turn is much deeper than most modern textbooks describe it): "An act of the intellect, prompted by the will, by which we believe what G.o.d has revealed on the authority of the One who revealed it". Faith for Job is not primarily an act of the intellect but of the guts or the heart. Faith here is emeth emeth, fidelity, trustability, promise keeping, reliability. Job is a culture hero, for he tests the fundamental value of his culture, emeth emeth, in his life as in a test tube. He stakes his life on it; indeed, he gives up much of his life for it. But the ironic question is: Who is testing whom? It seems to Job as if job's experience is testing G.o.d's fidelity, but in fact, as the reader knows from that peep behind the scenes in chapter 1, it is G.o.d who is testing Job's fidelity.

The test is only secondarily the loss of all Job's earthly goods. The test is fundamentally job's apparent loss of G.o.d. Proof of this is the fact that even before Job gets any of his earthly goods back, he is satisfied at the end just because he got G.o.d back. But for thirty-seven agonizing chapters, he does not find G.o.d, though he seeks him. His faith tells him, in effect, "Seek and you shall find; all who seek, find." But his experience tells him the opposite. No one seeks as much, as pa.s.sionately, as needily as Job seeks; yet he finds nothing. "I go to the east, and he is not there. I turn to the west and he is not there either" (Job 23:8-9). Why? Why does G.o.d not answer Job? How is the G.o.d of faith, the faithful one, compatible with the experience of seeking without finding?

The experience is not confined to Job. As C.S. Lewis put it, in A Grief Observed A Grief Observed, reflecting on the lack of consolation his faith gave him after the death of his wife: Meanwhile, where is G.o.d? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with grat.i.tude and praise, you will be-or so it feels-welcomed with open arms, But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.

In previous ages, especially the Middle Ages, which were strong on reason but weak on psychological introspection, and attention to feeling and experience, the crucial problem was the relation between faith and reason. (Some of the philosophical and scientific conclusions of Aristotle seemed to contradict fire Christian Faith.) In our age, which is weak on reason (and even doubts reason's power to discover or prove objective truth) and strong on psychology and experience, the crucial problem is the relation between faith and experience. Today many more people lose their faith because they experience suffering and think G.o.d has let them down than lose their faith because of any rational argument. Job is a man lor all seasons but especially for ours. His problem is precisely our problem.

What is the solution? Specifically, why does Job experience G.o.d's absence when G.o.d promised to be present? One part of the answer is easy: G.o.d is testing Job's faith. Job must believe in G.o.d as real and present and faithful not only because it is easy to believe, because things are going well, because experience so confirms faith that faith is almost unnecessary; he must also learn to believe in G.o.d out of sheer faith, even when experience and appearances seem to contradict faith-like Jesus on the Cross, forsaken by G.o.d, without consolation of any kind. Such faith is infinitely more precious than the cheap and dispensable faith that leads you in the same direction as experience does. Teeth-gritting faith is valuable not because suffering is valuable in itself or because teeth gritting is valuable in itself but because such faith comes from the deep, eternal center of the person, the I, the will, not from feelings, not from the parts of the person that are dependent on the environment and what happens in the world. For the world will pa.s.s away, but the self will not. What the self decides in time is ratified in eternity. The stronger the choice for G.o.d at this obscure and unemotional center of the self, the surer and deeper will be the eternal salvation of the whole self. The will is the custodian of the feelings and must learn to lead them, not follow them.

That is the obvious and easy part of the answer. G.o.d is toughening and perfecting Job's faith, Job's fidelity, in the furnace of suffering. But there is another part of the answer, which comes not from the nature of Job but from the nature of G.o.d. Because of what G.o.d is, he cannot show up in answer to Job's questions, in function of Job's needs. G.o.d will not answer Job because G.o.d is not the Answer Man. He is not the Answerer, the Responder. He is the Initiator, the Questioner. He is not second but first, "in the beginning". His name (which reveals his essence) is "I Am", not "He Is". G.o.d exists in the First Person Singular. He is Subject, not Object, not even object of Job's searchings and questionings.

Everyone who has ever met G.o.d as distinct from a concept of G.o.d, all the saints and mystics, everyone, in other words, who is like job rather than like Job's three theologian friends, has said the same thing; when you meet G.o.d, you cannot put the meeting into words, much less the G.o.d you meet. G.o.d cannot be an object of our concepts. Concepts shatter like broken eyegla.s.ses, like broken eyes-in fact, like broken I's. No longer am I I and G.o.d my Thou, my object; now G.o.d is I, and I am his thou, his object. Thus the mystics say such strange things about the self, as if it were an illusion or destroyed in this encounter. The illusion that is destroyed is not the self itself but its usual standpoint in which I am I, the center, and G.o.d appears on my screen somewhere. This This self is illusion, and G.o.d shatters it by reversing the standpoint; we appear on his screen. We are his object, not he ours. self is illusion, and G.o.d shatters it by reversing the standpoint; we appear on his screen. We are his object, not he ours.

That is why Jesus manifests his divinity so powerfully by always reversing the relations.h.i.+p into which questioners try to put him. His enemies try to pin him down; he pins them down. Theners to cla.s.sify him; he cla.s.sifies them. They try to judge him; he judges them. Even his friends try to unveil him, understand him, reveal him, get the mystery of who he is to come out of hiding; but every encounter accomplishes the opposite: they they are unveiled, understood, revealed; the mystery of who are unveiled, understood, revealed; the mystery of who they they are has to come out of hiding when in the presence of the divine Light. "Shall we stone the adulteress or not?"-"Let him without sin cast the fust stone." "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?"-"Give G.o.d what is G.o.d's and Caesar what is Caesar's." (They were robbing both.) "Who is my neighbor?"-"Go and be a neighbor, like the good Samaritan." Whenever you try to test him, he tests you, for he is the teacher and you are the student, not vice versa. are has to come out of hiding when in the presence of the divine Light. "Shall we stone the adulteress or not?"-"Let him without sin cast the fust stone." "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?"-"Give G.o.d what is G.o.d's and Caesar what is Caesar's." (They were robbing both.) "Who is my neighbor?"-"Go and be a neighbor, like the good Samaritan." Whenever you try to test him, he tests you, for he is the teacher and you are the student, not vice versa.

Viktor Frankl speaks of this experience of startling, sudden reversal of standpoint or perspective in the context of the concentration camps. He says in Man's Search for Meaning Man's Search for Meaning that many of the prisoners learned to stop asking the question "What is the meaning of life?" and realized that life was asking them what that many of the prisoners learned to stop asking the question "What is the meaning of life?" and realized that life was asking them what their their meaning was. Instead of continuing to ask "Life, why are you doing this to me? I demand an answer!" they realized that life was questioning them and demanding an answer-an answer in deeds, not just words. They had to respond to this question, this challenge, by being responsible. Even when they did not interpret life, as G.o.d's instrument, even when "life" was an abstraction rather than a person, they felt it questioning them, as the millions of people who have had near-death experiences felt the "Being of Light" questioning them, rather than vice versa. For the one thing you cannot light up is light. Light is the best physical symbol for G.o.d because it is the only physical thing that cannot be an object of sight. G.o.d cannot be an object of sight, physical or mental. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that we know G.o.d correctly only when we know him as unknowable. Scripture says the same thing: "No man has seen G.o.d at any time; only the only-begotten Son, in the bosom of the Father, has made him known" (Jn 1:18). If G.o.d had not taken the initiative to reveal himself, there is no way we could know him. When we want to know a stone, it is all pa.s.sive, and we are all active. When we want to know an animal, it is a little bit active, and it can run away and hide. When we want to know another person, we are dependent on the other's free choice to be known, as well as our own free choice to know: the two roles are equal. Finally, when we want to know G.o.d, all the activity must begin from his side. meaning was. Instead of continuing to ask "Life, why are you doing this to me? I demand an answer!" they realized that life was questioning them and demanding an answer-an answer in deeds, not just words. They had to respond to this question, this challenge, by being responsible. Even when they did not interpret life, as G.o.d's instrument, even when "life" was an abstraction rather than a person, they felt it questioning them, as the millions of people who have had near-death experiences felt the "Being of Light" questioning them, rather than vice versa. For the one thing you cannot light up is light. Light is the best physical symbol for G.o.d because it is the only physical thing that cannot be an object of sight. G.o.d cannot be an object of sight, physical or mental. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that we know G.o.d correctly only when we know him as unknowable. Scripture says the same thing: "No man has seen G.o.d at any time; only the only-begotten Son, in the bosom of the Father, has made him known" (Jn 1:18). If G.o.d had not taken the initiative to reveal himself, there is no way we could know him. When we want to know a stone, it is all pa.s.sive, and we are all active. When we want to know an animal, it is a little bit active, and it can run away and hide. When we want to know another person, we are dependent on the other's free choice to be known, as well as our own free choice to know: the two roles are equal. Finally, when we want to know G.o.d, all the activity must begin from his side.

So G.o.d cannot show up in answer to Job's questions as if he were a library book (which is the way Job's three friends treat G.o.d). Job pushes b.u.t.tons, but the G.o.d machine does not work, not because it is broken but because it is not a machine. Job finally realizes this when G.o.d shows up in his true character as Questioner, not as Answerer. That is why Job repents in the end (Job 42:6). What he repents of is not some specific sin he has committed and hidden, as the three friends suspect, but of his metaphysical mistake, his sin against the grammar of being, his playing the part of G.o.d. The best words Job uttered were his last: "The words of Job are ended." Only when Job shuts up does G.o.d show up.

Most of us talk too much. It is amazing how short Jesus' sayings arc. When we pray, who does most of the talking? Is it the most important party to the conversation or the least important one? If we had the opportunity to converse with some great person, like Mother Teresa or Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, would we want to do most of the talking, or would we want to listen most of the time? Why do we talk so much to G.o.d that we have no time to listen? How patient G.o.d must be, waiting until we get rid of all our mental and verbal noise and hoping thatwe do not then immediately turn from addressing him to addressing the world. In that split second of silence between the time we stop talking to G.o.d and start talking to the world, G.o.d gets more graces into us than at any other time outside the sacraments.

Job says at one point to his three talkative friends, "What a plague your need to have the last word is!" They are like soap opera queens, always waiting at the exit door to deliver the "zinger" and then leaving. But Job does to G.o.d exactly what Job's friends do to Job! They do not listen to Job because they are too busy talking to him, and Job does not listen to G.o.d because he is too busy talking to him. What Job repents of in the end, when G.o.d appears, is not that he was worse than his three friends but that he was just like them! They were like the four Zen monks who made a vow of lifelong silence. One day, one of them let out a single word. The second said to him, "You broke your vow of silence." The third said to the second, "You're a bigger fool than he is. You did, too!" The fourth smiled to himself and said, "I'm the only one who didn't."

Have you ever kept silent for half an hour, speaking with neither your lips nor your mind? You are going to have to learn that art if you want to endure Heaven, because there will be silence in Heaven for half an hour after the opening of the seventh seal (Rev 8:1).

Only in silence do faith and experience perfectly line up, for faith tells us that G.o.d is I Am, and silence lets us experience his I-ness as well as his am-ness, his priority as well as his reality. All talk subtly falsifies G.o.d. As Lao-tzu put it, "Those that say don't know; those that know don't say." For "the Way that can be spoken of is not the eternal Way". Nevertheless, the Way has spoken to us. "In the beginning was the Word", not just the silence. We need silence not because G.o.d is silence but because G.o.d is Word. Only in silence do faith and experience totally line up.

3.The Problem of the Meaning of Life.

The greatest of all questions, the question that includes all other questions, is the one Job asks G.o.d in Job 10:18: "Why did you bring me out of the womb?" In other words, what kind of a story am I in? What are my lines? What play is this? Why was I born? Why am I living? What's it all about, Alfie?

It is Ecclesiastes' question, too, but Job gets an answer, while Ecclesiastes does not. Pascal calls them the two greatest philosophers, and I agree. But why did Job get an answer and Ecclesiastes not? For the same reason Moses got an answer to the questions about which philosophers had speculated endlessly and fruitlessly for ages: Who is G.o.d? What is his name? What is his nature? Moses had the good sense to ask him! (See Ex 3:14.) Ecclesiastes is like Job's three friends: endlessly philosophizing about about G.o.d. Job is like Moses: Job asks G.o.d. Job is like Moses: Job asks G.o.d G.o.d; he seeks G.o.d's face. And "all who seek, find".

But not for a long time. Why the delay? What is the meaning of the delay? Job's life, about which he asks, is twofold: seeking and finding. Clearly, the answer to the question: What is the meaning, purpose, end, point, and consummation of life? is in finding G.o.d. But what about the other half, the seeking? For whom does G.o.d let Job suffer and seek and agonize? What did G.o.d have to prove? Is Job a bug in a test tube to satisfy G.o.d's idle or s.a.d.i.s.tic curiosity? Or did G.o.d turn up the heat under the test tube just to win his bet with the devil?

Clearly, G.o.d does nothing for Satan's sake, for evil's sake. There is no justification for Good kowing to evil, and no need for omnipotence to make the smallest compromise to evil. And clearly not for G.o.d's sake, for omniscience has no need of experiments. G.o.d did not need to know Job's faith would hold. But Job did. All the agony and waiting must have been for Job's sake, for Job's good, for Job's beat.i.tude. Even the cross "is the gift G.o.d gives to his friends", says one of the saints. Especially the cross.

This world is "a vale of soul making", a great sculptor's shop, and we are the statues. To be finished, the statues must endure many blows of the chisel and be hardened in the fire. This is not optional. Once we lost our original innocence, the way back to G.o.d has has to be painful, for the Old Man of sin will keep on complaining and paining at each step toward his enemy, goodness. Saying "not my will but thine be done" was ecstatic joy in Eden and will be in Heaven, but it is life's most difficult (and most necessary) task now. Without it, we have no face with which to face G.o.d. Why could Job see G.o.d face to face and live? Because Job got a face through his suffering faith. As C.S. Lewis says at the end of his novel to be painful, for the Old Man of sin will keep on complaining and paining at each step toward his enemy, goodness. Saying "not my will but thine be done" was ecstatic joy in Eden and will be in Heaven, but it is life's most difficult (and most necessary) task now. Without it, we have no face with which to face G.o.d. Why could Job see G.o.d face to face and live? Because Job got a face through his suffering faith. As C.S. Lewis says at the end of his novel Till We Have Faces Till We Have Faces, "How can we meet the G.o.ds face to face till we have faces?"

That is the meaning of life: getting a face, becoming real, becoming yourself-but in ways and toward an end not even dreamed of by the pop psychologists who say these things so casually. Yes, life is a process of becoming yourself-but this is done by suffering, not by sinning; by saying No as well as saying Yes; by climbing against the gravity of the selfish self, not by the direct paths of "self-realization" and "self-actualization". The meaning of life is war. And our enemies are not less but more real and formidable than flesh and blood. Unless we defeat them, we will die a death infinitely more hopeless and horrible than any battlefield gore. It is not easy to get a face. Job is no exception, but the rule; the trouble G.o.d had to bring him through is ours, too, in one way or another. However, Job's way is unusually visible, extraordinarily externalized. Not all of us lose our children, our health, our possessions, and our confidence in one day. But all of us must learn to lose everything but G.o.d, for all of us will die, and you cannot take anything with you but G.o.d.

Philosophers give some n.o.ble and beautiful answers to the question of life's meaning, purpose, and end: virtue, wisdom, honor, character, joy, freedom, "the true, the good, and the beautiful"-but they ignore the grubby little question that nags us as we admire these true ideals: How? How is this dwarf to fly like that eagle? How can I get from here to there, from Before to After, from cretin to Christ? "All right, now you know what you are made for: to become a s.h.i.+ning, radiant, strong, n.o.ble creature that can endure the perfect light of Heaven, a veritable G.o.d or G.o.ddess. So get on with it, please. Turn into one. Be ye holy as the Lord your G.o.d is holy. Be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." Right!

You see, a bit of doing is necessary. A bit of sculpting. A bit of spiritual warfare. What is remarkable is not that G.o.d hits us with so many blows of the sculptor's chisel but that he manages with so few. What is remarkable, once you see the distance between where you are now and where you are destined to be, is how G.o.d's mercy succeeds in bringing us there with so little trouble, so little pain. What is remarkable is not how many bad things happen to good people but how many good things happen to bad people. And this is what Job realizes as soon as he sees G.o.d at the end, and this is why he is answered and satisfied. And we will be, too.

G.o.d could have created us in Heaven to begin with, happy and sinless. Why did he our chilead give us a time of testing on earth? For the same reason a good teacher does not give the student all the answers. We appreciate the truth more when we find it for ourselves. Then it is more truly ours. The truth here is not just objective truth but our own ident.i.ty, our own true face. G.o.d designed it, but G.o.d arranges for us to cosculpt it, to cocreate our own very selves by our choices and experiences in time. We find out who we arc only by living.

This means that until we are finished, we do not really know who we are (once we stop fooling ourselves). It means that every life is a prolonged ident.i.ty crisis. Job's is only more visible and sudden. Once he was Job the righteous, Job the just, Job the good example, Job, G.o.d's favorite. Now all these labels are torn away, and he is a heap of sores on a dung heap scratching himself with a potsherd. No wonder his three friends, when they arrive, do not recognize him (Job 2:12)!

The Jerusalem Bible's apt footnote reminds the reader of the suffering servant of G.o.d in Isaiah 52 and 53, who was the outcast, like a leper, one from whom men hide their faces, one who was taken outside the city gates to be crucified, outside humanity, excommunicated from his people, "a worm and no man", as Psalm 22 says that he recited from the cross. Job is a Christ figure, so starkly unrecognizable that he is starkly recognizable, for this is part of what Christ is: unrecognizable, "a worm, and no man... outcast of the people".

The only place Job can find his ident.i.ty is in his Author and Designer. The same is true of everyone, for we are all characters invented by one Author, and how could the character find his ident.i.ty outside the Author? Thus, Job finds his ident.i.ty only in finding his G.o.d; Job solves problem three (his ident.i.ty and purpose) only in solving problem four, the deepest problem of all, the G.o.d problem, to which we must now turn.

1.The Problem of G.o.d.

The problem of G.o.d in Job is not whether G.o.d exists. Only the fool says in his heart that there is no G.o.d, and he says it not because reason and evidence tell him but because his deceptive, wish-fulfillment desires tell him to pretend there is no G.o.d so that he can sin without punishment. (That is the psychoa.n.a.lysis of both the psalmist [Ps 14] and the apostle [Rom 1:18-2:1]).

Nor is the problem of G.o.d who or what G.o.d is in himself. That is the problem of the theologian or the philosopher. Job's problem is: What (or rather who) is G.o.d to me? What is the relations.h.i.+p?

There are two problems of G.o.d in Job: the first concerns Job and the search; the second concerns G.o.d and the finding. The first problem is why Job is in a right G.o.d-relations.h.i.+p in his searching. The second is why G.o.d, once found, proves totally adequate to answer all of Job's questions and agonies even without answering any of Job's questions and even before he gives Job back all the worldly goods he took away. There are two puzzling sections in Job that pinpoint these two problems. The first is Job 42:7, where G.o.d approves Job's heretical and blasphemous words and disapproves the orthodox and pious words of the three friends. The second is Job 42:1-6, where Job, the most demanding and impatient and hard-to-satisfy man in the Bible, is totally satisfied.

The first puzzling phrase reads as follows: "When Yahweh had said all this to Job, he turned to Eliphaz of Teman. 'I burn with anger against you and your two friends', he said 'for not speaking truthfully about me as my servant Job has done.'" (Job 42:7). But Job, by his own admission, uttered "wild words" (Job 6:2-3). H thought G.o.d was his enemy, thought G.o.d was inventing grievances against him without cause, and even thought G.o.d would lose a fair court case against him! How awful that would be: to win in court against G.o.d. What hope would there be then? Our only hope, as Kierkegaard so arrestingly puts it in a sermon t.i.tle, is "On the Edification Implied in the Thought That Over Against G.o.d We Are Always in the Wrong". If the source of all right is himself wrong, then there is no right reality for us to be reconciled with, to hope in, to find our way back home to. Job's words are foolish, wild, even blasphemous. How can G.o.d say he spoke truthfully?

And how can G.o.d say the three friends did not speak the truth? Every single thing they say can be found in dozens of pa.s.sages elsewhere in the Bible. They defend G.o.d; they are pious; they are orthodox. Their viewpoint is simply "let G.o.d be true and every man a liar" (Rom 3:4). Their desire is simply "arise, O G.o.d, let not man prevail" (Ps 9:19). How can this be false and Job true?

One "solution" taken by radical interpreters is that Job was written by a heretic and contradicts the rest of the Bible. (Everyone who says that really seems to mean that the rest of the Bible is heretical because it contradicts Job.) The theory is that Job is really right and G.o.d really wrong, Job the hero and G.o.d the villain. This is the same folly, of course, that job dallies with in imagining his winning his suit against G.o.d in court. There has to be a better way.

There is. Notice carefully what G.o.d says in Job 42:7-not that Job spoke truth but that he spoke truthfully, and not that the three friends did not speak truth but that they did not speak truthfully, as Job did. What is the difference between speaking truth and speaking truthfully?

It is the difference between a noun and an adverb, between truth in the content of what is spoken and truth in the act of speaking itself. Whether or not you speak the truth is an objective question, whereas whether or not you speak truthfully is a subjective question, a personal question. Job did not always speak the truth, but he always spoke truthfully. His words were not always in the truth, but he was. He had the quality of truth, emeth emeth, fidelity, in his being and his acting. He had what Kierkegaard called (somewhat misleadingly) "truth as subjectivity" (in Concluding Unscientific Postscript Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

What does this mean specifically? Job sticks to G.o.d, retains intimacy, pa.s.sion, and care, while the three friends are satisfied with correctness of words, "dead orthodoxy". Job's words do not accurately reflect G.o.d, as the three friends' words do, but Job himself is in a true relations.h.i.+p to G.o.d, as the three friends are not: a relations.h.i.+p of heart and soul, life-or-death pa.s.sion. No one can be truly related to G.o.d without life-or-death pa.s.sion. To be related to G.o.d in a way that is only finite, partial, held back, or calculating is not truly to be related to G.o.d. G.o.d is everything or nothing. Job thinks G.o.d has let him down, so that in a sense G.o.d has become nothing to him. That is a mistake, but Job at least knows it must be all or nothing. G.o.d is infinite love, and the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Job's love for G.o.d is infected with hate, but the three friends' love for G.o.d is infected with indifference. Job stays married to G.o.d and throws dishes at him; the three friends have a polite nonmarriage, with separate bedrooms and separate vacations. The family that fights together stays together.

There is a second reason why Job spoke truthfully about G.o.d. The most obvious and important difference between the speeches of Job and the speeches of the three friends is one that escapes our notice for the sa him. Thason the capital letters naming the continents escape our notice on maps, and Poe's "purloined letter" (in the famous short story by that name), exposed to plain view, escaped the notice of the police who were carefully searching every nook and cranny for it: it is too big, too close up, too obvious, like the nose on your face (mine, anyway). It took Martin Buber to point it out to me, and this one discovery suddenly lit up the whole book of Job as no other could: the difference is simply that the three friends speak about about G.o.d while Job speaks G.o.d while Job speaks to to G.o.d. G.o.d.

This is speaking "truthfully" because it is speaking to G.o.d as G.o.d is, that is, as always present Person, not as absent object. Speaking to G.o.d in the second person is one person closer to the first person singular that I Am is in his own essential being than speaking about him in the third person. Buber says, "G.o.d is the Thou who can never become an It." He also says, "G.o.d can only be addressed, not expressed", for the same reason.

Suppose I I am in your presence, and you start talking to a third party about me, ignoring me. Not only is this highly insulting; it is also metaphysically inaccurate. It treats the real as the unreal; it treats presence as if it were absence. And that is what the three friends always do. They never pray, only preach. Job is always praying, like Augustine in the am in your presence, and you start talking to a third party about me, ignoring me. Not only is this highly insulting; it is also metaphysically inaccurate. It treats the real as the unreal; it treats presence as if it were absence. And that is what the three friends always do. They never pray, only preach. Job is always praying, like Augustine in the Confessions Confessions: every word is uttered either to G.o.d or in his presence. That is why there is such blinding light even amid the confusion: Job insists on standing in the presence of G.o.d, who is light. The three friends try to generate their own light by reasoning about G.o.d as a proper concept. G.o.d is right there all the time, between Job and the friends, so to speak, as the fifth party around the dung heap. Job believes this fundamental truth and therefore speaks truthfully (that is, to the G.o.d who really is present), while the three friends act as if G.o.d were absent. For the second person ("you") means presence, while the third person ("he") means absence.

The most practical lesson we can learn from Job-the most practical lesson we can ever learn from anything-is "the practice of the presence of G.o.d", the simplest and most fundamental exercise in realism and in sanct.i.ty. The two are identical, for both mean simply living in reality, not illusion, acting as if what is real is real. And the most fundamental reality is the G.o.d who is present.

The other puzzling pa.s.sage is Job's reply to G.o.d's speech: This was the answer Job gave to Yahweh: I know that you are all-powerful: What you conceive, you can perform.

I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words.

I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge....

I knew you then only by hearsay, But now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent (Job 42:1-6).

Job is the most demanding man in the Bible, the "doubting Thomas" of the Old Testament. Why is this Jewish Socrates suddenly satisfied? G.o.d did not answer any of his questions. Instead, all he seemed to say was "What do you know, anyway?hat right do you have to think you can know the answer, anyway? Who do you think you are, anyway?" Even an ordinary man would be disappointed at such an answer; how much more disappointed should this arch-questioner be?

Let us conduct a little thought experiment to find out why Job was satisfied. Suppose that G.o.d had given Job what job expected instead of what Job got. Suppose that G.o.d answered every one of Job's questions with total clarity and total adequacy. (G.o.d could certainly do that if he wanted.) Suppose G.o.d wrote the world's definitive theology book for Job. Now, what do you think would have been the result?

I think I know, because I think I know Job. Job would have been satisfied for about five seconds after he finished the book, or perhaps even five minutes. But then more questions would have arisen, like the Hydra's heads: questions about questions, questions about answers, questions about interpretations of G.o.d's answers. Every answer produces ten more questions to a mind like Job's, that is, the mind of a first-rate, honest, and pa.s.sionate philosopher. Then the intellectual warfare would have started again. The hundreds of little soldiers coming out of Job's head would have to be met by a hundred big warriors coming out of G.o.d. And, of course, they would be met. But then there would be another hundred, or a thousand. The human mind has an infinite capacity to wonder. Nothing can stop it, not even answers, for each answer elicits ten more questions. Eventually we would have an intellectual battlefield strewn to capacity with the corpses of slain ideas, refuted misunderstandings, a mile high. They would acc.u.mulate exponentially, and they would stand between Job and G.o.d, as they stood between Job's three friends and G.o.d. The danger of truth is that it gets obscured by truths. There is only one way to overcome that danger, and G.o.d took that way with Job. The way consists of two parts. The first part is negative: not to tell the whole truth in words, not to give answers, even true and adequate answers, not to cut off one of the Hydra's heads lest it sprout two new ones. Thus, G.o.d does not answer Job's question; G.o.d answers Job instead, and that is the second part, the heart part. Just as Jesus constantly answers the questioner instead of the question, since he sees that the real question is the questioner, not the question, the heart and not the words, so here G.o.d answers Job's deepest heart quest: to see G.o.d face to face; to see Truth, not truths; to meet meet Truth, not just to know it. Job is satisfied with the only answer that could possibly have satisfied him, in time or in eternity, the only answer that can satisfy us in time or in eternity, the only answer that can overcome boredom and eventual "vanity of vanities", the definitive answer to Ecclesiastes, as to the three friends: the Answerer, not the answer. Truth, not just to know it. Job is satisfied with the only answer that could possibly have satisfied him, in time or in eternity, the only answer that can satisfy us in time or in eternity, the only answer that can overcome boredom and eventual "vanity of vanities", the definitive answer to Ecclesiastes, as to the three friends: the Answerer, not the answer.

"I had heard of you with the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you." This is the climax to Job. This is the most important verse in the book. This explains everything that happened, why G.o.d brought Job through the whole dung heap: to this end. This is the end of life, the meaning of life, the purpose of life. This is the solution to the problem of evil, and the solution to the problem of the conflict between faith and experience, and the solution to the problem of the meaning of life, and the solution to the problem of my ident.i.ty, and the solution to the problem of G.o.d, of who G.o.d is for me. This is the answer to everything. No one, not even Job, can ever be dissatisfied with this answer. No one will have any more questions once he sees this answer. No one will ever feel let down, cheated, or disappointed with this answer, no matter how demanding and dissatisfied he is with everything else. This is the answer that fills the infinite, G.o.d-shaped vacuum that is the human heart. This is G.o.d.

div> The greatest question ever asked and the greatest answer ever given, in my opinion, are in an incident near the end of the life of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was alone in the chapel, he thought (but his friend Reginald was watching and swore under oath that he saw and heard these events), and praying before the altar. A voice came from the mouth of Christ on the crucifix: "You have written well of me, Thomas. What will you have as a reward?" It was the same question with which Jesus began his public ministry, in John's Gospel, the great question: "What do you want?" (Jn 1:38). And the equally great answer Thomas gave to G.o.d, the answer that puts a lump in my throat and a bird in my heart every time I say it, was, "Only yourself, Lord". The theologian who found thousands of answers-more answers, and more adequate answers, than any other theologian in history-wants only one thing, "the one thing needful" that Mary wanted and Jesus wanted Martha to want (Lk 10:42): himself. That is why even Job was satisfied. He did not get what he thought he wanted, but he got what he really wanted. He did not get what his head and his consciousness thought they wanted, but he got what his heart and his deep unconscious knew they wanted, the thing we all want. We cannot help it: G.o.d made us that way. Only one key fits that lock; only one Romeo satisfies that Juliet. "Deep calls unto deep"-only infinity can marry infinity. Just as no animal was adequate for Adam (Gen 2:18-24), no creature is adequate for the human heart, and a fortiori a fortiori no concept. Concepts are pictures, and men cannot marry pictures (though many of us try and relate more to the picture we have in our mind of what we dream our spouse or friend should be than to the real other who bursts the bounds of all pictures). Job is satisfied because all life is courts.h.i.+p, and now he finally gets married. The Beatific Vision that awaits all believers in Heaven is granted to Job for a moment on earth. no concept. Concepts are pictures, and men cannot marry pictures (though many of us try and relate more to the picture we have in our mind of what we dream our spouse or friend should be than to the real other who bursts the bounds of all pictures). Job is satisfied because all life is courts.h.i.+p, and now he finally gets married. The Beatific Vision that awaits all believers in Heaven is granted to Job for a moment on earth.

It is the difference between secondhand knowledge and firsthand knowledge, between "the hearing of the ear" and "the seeing of the eye". Job had heard about G.o.d, but now he sees G.o.d. It is as if you had never met your father because he was away in the French Foreign Legion, and he sent letters to you that were transmitted and interpreted to you by your mother (Mother Church), and then one day he stepped through the door and said, "Here I am". Suppose the letters were perfectly accurate and adequate and interpreted perfectly by your mother. The difference would still be infinite between "the hearing of the ear" and "the seeing of the eye". One moment of his presence would be worth infinitely more than all the letters in the world.

Saint Augustine, in his sermon "On the Pure Love of G.o.d", imagines G.o.d coming to you with a question similar to the one he asked Saint Thomas. The point is a kind of self-test to find out whether you have "the pure love of G.o.d", that is, whether you arc obeying the first and greatest commandment, to love G.o.d with your whole heart and soul, in that deep, obscure center of your being where your "fundamental option" decides your eternal destiny. Augustine supposes that G.o.d proposed to you a deal and said, "I will give you anything you want. You can possess the whole world. Nothing will be impossible for you. You will have infinite power. Nothing will be a sin, nothing forbidden. You will never die, never have pain, never have anything you do not want and always have anything you do want-except for just one thing: you will never see my face." Would you take that deal? If not, you have the pure love of G.o.d. For look what you just did: you gave up the world, and more-all possible worlds, all imagined worlds, all desired worlds-just for G.o.d. Augustine asks, "Did a chill arise in your heart when you heard the words 'you will never see my face'?" That chll is the most precious thing in you; that is the pure love of G.o.d.

Job felt that chill throughout his sufferings. The thing he keeps talking about is not his sores or his lost possessions or even his lost family but rather his lost G.o.d. Apparently he was G.o.dforsaken; apparently he would never see G.o.d's face. That is the tiling he longed for most, even if it meant death. He said in effect what Augustine said in the Confessions Confessions: "Let me die, only let me see Thy face, lest I die with longing to see it." (Or, in another translation, "Let me die, lest I die; only let me see Thy face.") Only one thing in life is guaranteed: not happiness, not the pursuit of happiness, not liberty, not even life. The only thing we are absolutely guaranteed is the only thing we absolutely need: G.o.d. And wisdom consists essentially in absolutely wanting that which we absolutely need, in conforming our wants to reality. Job is incomparably wiser than Ecclesiastes because of that. We must identify with Job, not Ecclesiastes, for Ecclesiastes' vanity is the philosophy of h.e.l.l, while Job's search is the philosophy of Purgatory, and everyone graduates from the University of Purgatory with honors into Heaven.

SONG OF SONGS:.

Life as Love

Before I write anything about Song of Songs, I must confess and confront a problem: I am way over my head, out of my depth, playing Little League baseball in a major league park. This book has been the favorite of the greatest saints and mystics, such as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was writing a commentary on it when he died. (How fitting-G.o.d cut short the wedding photographer's work when the honeymoon suite was ready.) How can I play in their park?

I cannot, of course. I simply have no solution to the problem. So let us rush in anyway where angels fear to tread. Let us be fools together. We may not be able to play in their league, but we can play the same game. Song of Songs is about love, of course, and love is for everyone.

Another problem at the beginning: this is the only book in the Bible (except for the shorter version of Esther) that never once mentions G.o.d.1 How can this book be the saints' favorite? How can this book be the saints' favorite?

That question is much easier to answer: because G.o.d is everywhere in this book, symbolically. The bridegroom, Solomon, the Solar King, is a symbol for G.o.d, and his chosen bride a symbol for the soul, or the chosen people, Israel, or the Church, the new Israel. Symbolically interpreted, this book is the most intimate book in the Bible. It describes the ultimate purpose of life, which we found at the end of Job: the meeting and marriage between ourselves and G.o.d. This is the highest and holiest and happiest hope of the human heart, the thing we were all born hungering for, hunting for, longing for. This is the last chapter of life's story, the point and purpose of it all.

It is also the hidden key to the rest of the Bible. The Bible is about real life, of course-it is the most realistic book ever written. And the point of the real story of life is love. The whole Bible is a love story because G.o.d, the author, is love. Behind the appearances of a war story, a detective story, a tragedy, a comedy, or a farce, life is a love story. Thus Song of Songs is the definitive answer to the question of Ecclesiastes and to the quest of Job.

It is a double love story, vertical and horizontal, divine and human. The two great commandments are to love G.o.d and to love neighbor. Thus this love poem is to be interpreted on two levels, divine and human. The bridegroom symbolizes G.o.d, but he is also any man, literally; and the bride symbolizes the soul, but she is also every woman, literally. To interpret a book or a pa.s.sage symbolically is not to abandon the literal interpretation. There is a ridiculous, indefensible prejudice among most Bible scholars, both professional and amateur, that we must choose between the symbolic and the literal interpretations of any given book or pa.s.sage. Fundamentalists automatically bristle at the very word symbolic symbolic, and modernists automatically bristle at the word literal literal. I think it is high time we rediscovered the riches of the eminently sage and sane "fourfold method of exegesis" of Saint Thomas and the medievals and recapture the hermeneutical heights from which we have fallen.

Song of Songs uses romantic love and marriage rather than any one of the many other human forms of love as its chosen symbol for the love of G.o.d because romantic love and marriage comprise the fullest and completest of all human loves. One of the things we shall see in our exploration of the text