I have always been mesmerized by the book of Job. It was the first book of the Bible I ever started trying to read by myself, when I was about 8 and had just gotten my first ever little pink Precious Moments Bible. I picked it, I think, because the name was easy to read. Except I mispronounced it, like every child does the first time, and I’m sure when I told my mother what I was reading she found that endearing. I remember she said to me, “The book of Job can be kind of hard to understand.” Misunderstanding her, I said, “I understand it!” I thought she meant the words were hard to read. But of course, she was speaking theologically. And she was right!

I think that’s why Job has ever since been my favorite book of the Bible, although it’s not something I like to say. It sounds arrogant. It sounds like I’m saying I identify with the main character; that I, too, feel righteous and wronged. Quite the opposite, my dears, quite the opposite. I find Eliphaz the Temanite and Zophar the Naamathite far more relatable. I wish I was more like Job, but he’s absolutely baffling. I’ve returned to the book several times over the years, puzzling over the back-and-forth conversation, trying to understand what was so wrong about what Eliphaz and Zophar had to say. Why were they rebuked? I wondered. Weren’t they defending God’s justice as they had always known it? Aren’t their arguments echoed in other places – in the Psalms, in Kings and Chronicles, in Exodus, in the gospels and epistles? Doesn’t Job himself echo what they have to say? Where is the divergence of their beliefs and the truth?

Job is my favorite book because it is so nuanced, so unflattering to me, so difficult for me to wrap my head around. There is something here – it may not be something easy and it may not be something pleasant, but this little book is important, so I cherish it. In it, I find my errors. There is some mysterious truth in these pages I desperately want to understand. The heart of God is here, and I want it.

So yesterday I started reading Job again. I thought I’d just read a little, maybe a little more each day. No one else was home, a rare quiet moment for me, so I read it out loud. I feel like it hit differently that way. The emotion of the characters began to hum, to jump out of the pages. This is how the book was probably first recorded, orally, and how it is meant to be heard. It is one of those stories older than even the written word itself: some part of it dies on the page, I think, but speaking it revives it. The more I read, the more compelled I was to keep reading, to understand what on earth these people are saying. I read the whole book, 42 chapters. It upended my plans for the day, but I could not let it go. What did they say that God rebuked them? So many of their arguments are voices to my own beliefs, past and present. And God rebukes them:

After the Lord had finished speaking to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “I am angry with you and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has. So take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer on your behalf. I will not treat you as you deserve, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7-8)

His rebuke seems wholly unconnected to their arguments in my mind. Clearly my mind is wrong. I do not like to be wrong about God; it scares me. So I dig in harder, ask the God who is never wrong to open this mystery to me. Help me, Holy Spirit, to understand things you said to men so much wiser than me!

To understand the end, we go back to the beginning.

The book of Job begins by setting the scene for a complex set of poetical, philosophical soliloquys that compare and contrast the widely held theological beliefs of the time. It asks a “what if” question, the basis of all fine literature: what if Job does not get what he wants? Does his faith, does his righteousness dissipate if he does not get his reward for it? Will the good cease to be good if justice ceases to appear just?

I don’t know a lot about a lot of things in this world, but I know something about stories. I come at everything in this world from that angle because it’s the only one I’ve got: I’m not a theologian, I’m not a historian. I’m not a scientist, an engineer, or a mathematician. I’m a word nerd story lover with an obsessive streak and a keyboard. Sorry if you’re getting tired of it, but it’s what I’ve got. This is something storytellers say in the story-making world that I carry with me into Job: “Plot reveals character.” I’ve probably said it here before. We read, we listen, we absorb stories not because we really care about exactly what happens, but because we care about how the characters will respond to what happens. We care about what it reveals about who they are. The Bible is, in my eyes, the finest piece of literature in existence in this way; it lays out the pattern clearly to show us how God has written, not fiction, but all of nature and history to reveal character – his and ours. Like a pair of good glasses that bring the world back into focus, the Bible sharpens the edges of what has happened in our past to allow us to see our God and ourselves, maybe for the first time, clearly.

Then the Lord asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil.” (Job 1:8)

This is where Job begins: God and the Accuser are discussing who Job really is. God claims there is no one on earth as righteous as Job. The Accuser says, “You get out what you put in, God. He’s only good because you’ve given him good things.”

Satan replied to the Lord, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!” (Job 1:9-11)

God, being the scientist that he is, allows this hypothesis to be tested. He knows what the result will be. But knowing that others will eventually reach the same upside-down conclusion, ready to demonstrate once and for all the error of the claim, he allows the scientific method to reveal it.

Here is the scientific question: is goodness a result of gratification only, or does it exist independently? Separated from its reward, will Job’s righteousness cease to exist? Why does he do what he does?

What – in short – is Job’s motivation?

The Accuser thinks it is health and wealth, external goodness that manifests by internal goodness – material possessions, comfort, success, honor, ease and plenty – if you would just give us all what we want, Lord, we all would be as good as Job. (Go on, tell me you’ve never heard that argument.) If, then, Job’s actions get him what he wants, only if they get him what he wants, he will continue doing them.

But God thinks there is something more. God thinks there is another reason Job does what he does. God thinks Job’s motivation is anchored in something firmer: conviction in God’s existence and consequent right to do as he chooses, and complete, pure, unshakeable trust in his Master God. Job, simply put, has real faith. Faith not in the circumstantial outcome, but in the character of God.

There is only one way to test this. They must separate the man from the reward. For the sake of clarification, for the sake of revelation, to silence the Accuser and all who would follow in his thinking, for the good of even us who would read it forever after, for a depth of just, perfect reasons beyond these, beyond what our human minds can even hold – God allows Job to be tested.

This is where we first trip.

Is this just? God allows Job to be tested. God allows Jesus to be killed. Who is this terrifying God, and what does it mean to serve him?

Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship. He said,

“I came naked from my mother’s womb,
    and I will be naked when I leave.
The Lord gave me what I had,
    and the Lord has taken it away.
Praise the name of the Lord!” (Job 1:20-21)

Don’t worry. This is the pinnacle of literature, the story we wait on baited breath to hear. All will be told in due time.