Job’s Other Tribulations – Imagine Job (Poem)
- I.
Imagine Job with his every wish granted; not
The Job of the Bible who loses everything,
But a fatter, glad-handing Job who has the wealth,
The power, the prestige, the wives. Imagine Job
With his every whim and fancy become concrete;
Don’t piss him off, he’ll wish you dead. Oh! No problem!
He’ll wish you back to life again. Imagine Job
Made omnipotent. Now there’s a test of faith; could
He pass it? Could any human? The temptation
Of power is more seductive than survival;
The faith that survives deprivation, agony,
Terror – that is a strong faith. But faith to resist
Power, that is God’s faith; the faith to allow us
Autonomy, the faith to let the toddler walk.
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- II.
Imagine Job omnipotent but still human.
Who since Descartes has conceived a monster of such
Depravity? He could kill, resurrect, and kill
Again! Woe to the enemies of Job! But woe
Also to his friends who must think no thought unkind
Or critical, whose every smile must be sincere,
Who must never – on pain of torment far beyond
The thinkable – hide ulterior purposes
Lest they be perceived as deceptive and anger
The man-god Job. Woe to the men or women he
Finds desirable, who lose their virginity
Only to have it restored and lost again. Not
Even Zeus was so debauched. By comparison
Faust was an innocent and Borgia was pious.
- III.
Imagine Job morally impeccable but
Nonetheless omnipotent. The temptation is
Undiminished; what is omnibenevolent
Job to do? He cannot selfishly use his gift
For this would violate his true altruism.
Can he then use it for good, to eliminate
Evil and suffering? Behold! All disease is
Gone, all crime extinct, spears have been beaten into
Pruning hooks and heaven settles upon the earth.
Even all animals are vegetarians,
Predation haunts nowhere. The inhabitants live….
A weakness, I find, in most forms of theism
Is not asking what we do for eternity.
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- IV.
Imagine Job, omnipotent and morally
Perfect, reflecting his own perfection in the
World he has re-created. What now is this world
But a reflection of his own nature? Can he
Love this world, or anything within it, and that
Love be more than mere self-love? For if He’s perfect
Nature is perfectly reflected in all things,
Then all things are but Job’s reflection, his love is
Nothing but self-love, and indeed the worst form of
Narcissism: effulgent love before the glass.
If Job loves truly, he loves well, not because but
In spite of his power – a temptation were it
Succumbed to, emptying the world of otherness,
Leaving a shell void of meaning, value, purpose.
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- V.
Imagine Job back in his tent, suffering the
Deaths of his loved ones, the welts on his flesh. God will
Fix everything, perhaps because God’s wager had
Incurred a debt to him, but miracles cannot
In general be performed lest God succumb to
His only temptation. He has done this a few
Times, so the records say, but if He did it all
The time, for everyone, if He brought heaven to
Earth, ending all suffering, what would we be? So
Many glints in God’s looking glass, so many lights,
Fleeting, incapable of receiving true love;
Capable only of reflecting God’s self-love.
To be truly loved I must be autonomous
At the root of Being; error prone, and yet loved.
James Pearce
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