Word to the Wise
Friday, October 6, 2006 - 26th Friday in Ordinary Time
[Job 38:1, 12-21; 40:3-5 and Luke 10:13-16]The Lord addressed Job out of the storm and said: 'Have you ever in your lifetime commended the morning and shown the dawn its place for taking hold of the ends of the earth, till the wicked are shaken from its surface....... Then Job answered the Lord and said: Behold, I am of little account; what can I answer you?
The response of God to Job goes beyond the sublime poetry of the book and even beyond the profound mystery of suffering that is the principal theme of the book. It raises a fundamental question of faith. Who is in charge? In Western thought, until the "enligtenment," the beginning of which many historians of Western thought associate with Descartes, the human situation was much as described in the quote from Job above. Human beings were considered to be the creation of God and, as such, subject to an infinite and omnipotent Being that transcended all of sensory reality but which was concerned with that creation in an intimate and controlling fashion.. With the advent of "enlightenment," human beings were supposedly "delivered" from this subordination by a "scientific" revolution which supposedly revealed God as the creation of human beings! At the least, if God was acknowledged, it was in the form of a completely transcendent deity that has nothing to do with the affairs of human persons, let alone be a personal and loving God! In this "secular" and "scientific" vision, there is no need for Job to answer at all to a transcendent God. Job's situation is due to a combination of bad luck or scientifically explainable causes. Perhaps he may be the subject of human altruistic feelings of compassion and sympathy, but there is no reason for him to feel as if he has been "toyed with" or that he should see his sufferings as an opportunity to reaffirm a faith in anything transcendent. This "vision" is one that was brought into our very own American culture as a "secular" or "civil" religion. It has been reinforced under the doctrine of "separation of church and state." We, the people, reign supreme and are subject to no one other than our fellow human beings under the rule of law. Religion becomes strictly a private matter, much like a difference in tastes in food, dress, etc.. Christianity (or Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) are all relegated to the private sphere. It all seems in the end to come down to a question: Who is in charge? If our faith is a reliable guide, then all the secular and scientific vision becomes an opportunity to understand the creation of a loving God - a creation which occasionally suffers from a bad case of rebellious pride when faced with realities beyond its comprehension. On the other hand, if the secular/scientific view holds sway, we the faithful are all suffering from a huge illusion or even a huge delusion and our faith is a cosmic mistake. There is a big difference between saying, "WE, THE PEOPLE" and saying, "WE, THE FAITHFUL!" Do we stand, in mystery, with Job before God? Or do we look elsewhere? For me there is no "elsewhere." AMEN
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