Quote:
Originally Posted by Winston  Job's family did not do anything to deserve it. Then again neither did Christ or any of the other saints do anything to deserve the horrible deaths they suffered through.
This kind of reminds me of a story I read in the novel "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk. Allow me to share with you an excerpt:
"'In ancient history,' Tyler says, "human sacrifices were made on a hill above a river. Thousands of people. Listen to me. The sacrifices were made and the bodies were burned on a pyre.
After hundreds of people were sacrificed and burned, Tyler says, a thick white discharge crept from the altar, downhill to the river.
"Rain," Tyler says, "fell on the burnt pyre year after year, and year after year, people were burned, and the rain seeped through the wood ashes to become a solution of lye, and the lye combined with the melted fat of the sacrifices, and a thick white discharge of soap crept out from the base of the altar and crept downhill toward the river."
Where the soap fell into the river, Tyler says, after a thousand years of killing people and rain, the ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed at that spot. Cultures without soap, Tyler says, they used their urine and the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and hair beacause of the uric acid and ammonia.
"It was right to kill all those people," Tyler says. "You have to see, how the first soap was made of heroes."
Think about the animals used in product testing.
Think about the monkeys shot into space.
"Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice," Tyler says, "we would have nothing.'"
So you see, I don't claim to know exactly why Job's family suffered and died, but I don't believe that it was in vain. Without them there would be no story. The sweet can never be as sweet without the sour. There's just so much we don't know, and thats why I believe its so important to keep an open mind and not dismiss the story away as bullshit. I believe that there is more to reality than just being alive and pain-free. There are things worth dying for. |
This story though, if in fact taken literally, raises the nasty quesiton of why a "Loving God" would create a creation for the sole purpose of allowing his worst rival (Satan) to horribly torment it to death without raising a finger to stop it, simply to show off his own power over his creation.
If I were to go out and get two puppies or kittens, treat them well and have them love me, then later down the line show off my "power" over them by throwing one in the oven and slowly roasting it to death, while the other still happily played with me and licked all over my face, I would be seen as nothing but a cruel, sadistic, obscenely arrogant monster. IMO the Old Testament god acts like a spoiled, narcissistic bully.
I loved Fight Club as well btw
