Conflicting Moral Imaginations: Job, His Friends, and Suffering, Part 4

If you haven’t been reading this series of posts, then this one might still be interesting. I try to interact with popular culture and the recent Batman movie’s portrayal of suffering.

Recently on the History Channel, there has been a television show entitled, Batman Unmasked: the Psychology of the Dark Knight. Various psychologists and experts debate the response to suffering and trauma in the fictional life of Bruce Wayne, the alter-ego of Batman. Bruce Wayne, as a child, experienced the death of his mother and father before his eyes. Somehow, as a result of that tragedy, he focused his life and became a vigilante of sorts with a desire to channel his fears and suffering into a positive good. He thus becomes Batman, and takes on the role of defending Gotham, the city where his parents were killed.

On the other hand, this special also portrays the Joker, Batman’s archenemy. The Joker too has experienced great suffering. In various versions of his origin in the Batman comics, the Joker is portrayed as someone who was unjustly horribly disfigured and driven insane. However the Joker’s response is quite different than Batman’s. Taking a seemingly opposite approach to Batman’s teleological view of suffering as something that builds character, the Joker reasons that if life is unpredictable and characterized by suffering, then life is utterly meaningless.

The modern moral imagination regarding suffering is the response of Batman. Many people tend to idealize suffering in such a way as to lift up the teleological “benefits,” at the expense of fully understanding the difficulty of those who suffer. For most of us, suffering is only tolerable if it makes us better people. Suffering is acceptable because it supposedly makes us stronger, holier, or wiser. Strangely enough, most of us seem to agree with Job’s friends!

In that version of understanding suffering, it is either caused by something or intended for something. The idea that suffering could be pointless or meaningless, which Job seems to embrace, is a moral imagination that is demonized and parodied in the character of the Joker. In the popular moral imagination of our day, and perhaps of Job’s day, if suffering is meaningless or pointless then life is meaningless as well. In that way of imagining reality, insanity and destruction are the only possible outcomes.

Job’s position then, offers a totally different way of looking at the world than common wisdom, both in his day and in ours. In Job’s moral imagination, the meaninglessness and pointlessness of suffering refuses to suggest that life itself is meaningless. Instead, it suggests that something is utterly wrong. In the face of that “wrong-ness,” those who suffer unjustly are called to bear witness and give testimony to the reality of their experience.

Conflicting Moral Imaginations: Job, His Friends, and Suffering, Part 3

Job responds out of a moral imagination shaped by the bitter and difficult experience of crushing suffering. The sheer terror of these events shakes Job’s moral imagination to its core. We might even ask whether Job’s moral imagination was the reason he was chosen or if it was shaped by the sheer force of his suffering. In other words, which came first, the suffering or the moral imagination that enabled and shaped his response?

Instead of being able to easily embrace the friends version of what is happening, Job begins in Chapter 3 with a profound lament, cursing the day of his birth (3:1), longing for non-existence (3:13-15), praying for the grave (3:21-22), and utterly lamenting the omnipresent nature of his groans and sighs (3:24). He responds first to Eliphaz as he reminds him of the realities of his suffering: worm-eaten flesh (7:5), swift days that end without hope (7:6), and even utter hopelessness in the face of his suffering (7:21). He then replies to Bildad desperation over being unable to even communicate or perhaps even contend with God (9:3-5). He despairs the invisibility of God’s movements (9:11), and he is filled with bitter loss when he looks at himself in comparison to this inaccessible and overpowering God (9:15-21).

However, in Chapter 10, Job begins to shift from lament over God’s inaccessibility to give free utterance to his complaint (10:1). Somehow, he begins to form a complaint and argument against the unfair treatment he has experienced. He asks God if he oppresses (10:3), he asks if God can see (10:4), and he begs God to leave him alone and allow him to depart to the land of gloom and deep darkness (10:18-22).

Finally, in response to Zophar’s accusation, Job comes back with sarcasm, in effect saying, “You guys are so brilliant. When you die, wisdom will die with you (12:2).” Job then restates his innocence (12:4) and describes God’s power once again (12:13-25). Finally, we see him resorting to the only recourse he can imagine. As Carol Newsom so helpfully points out, Job can only imagine justice and accountability through a divine court of law. Job’s only recourse that doesn’t effectively diminish the suffering he faces is by telling his broken testimony in front of witnesses.

The friends, unlike Job, simply can’t imagine a suffering that is not for the good of the righteous sufferer. They seem to have no difficulty imagining suffering that wears down the unrighteous and grinds the unjust into dust, but they are struggling with the picture of the righteous sufferer. One can easily see that this is a common theme in exilic literature. If we did something wrong, then exile is punishment for that wrong. However, if we have been righteous and we’re still in exile, then what is the response.

I think there is a definite tension between the moral imaginations of the friends and Job that can be extrapolated to the national level of exilic suffering. I would suggest that the friends are saying the suffering necessarily suggests there has been a serious breach of relationship with God, whereas Job seems to hold fast to the idea that he is suffering unjustly. In the face of utter injustice, the only response his imagination will allow is the recitation of his suffering in such a way that God hears as if through a court of appeals. Somehow, the only response he can imagine is the spoken testimony of what is taking place.

Conflicting Moral Imaginations: Job, His Friends, and Suffering, Part 2

Job’s friends, in Newsom’s argument, aren’t simply the “bad guys” who come in from the outside to blast Job with accusations of wickedness. They are, like us, holistically formed by the stories and narratives of the culture in which they reside. Newsom shows how they seek to resist turmoil by imposing very particular narrative structures on reality as they experience it: 1.) These friends introduce narrative structures that seek to find teleological resolution in the turmoil that Job is facing. In fact, they hope the “good” that comes from Job’s suffering can somehow transcend the utter suffering he experiences in the beginning. 2.) They urge Job to seek God through particular religious practices and traditions, in the hopes that Job can resist and be transformed by the turmoil that he is facing. 3.) Finally, they offer poetic “iconic narratives” that will give a narrative structure to the moral order of the world in such a way that turmoil and suffering are weakened.[1]

Job’s friends use the skills of persuasive speech, embracing and offering powerful metaphors to help Job “wade through” his suffering. In chapter 5, Eliphaz seems to assures Job that in spite of his suffering, he will see redemption from death (5:20), rescue from war (5:20), hidden from the scourge of the tongue (5:21), and eventual restoration including safety, many descendents, and old age (5:23-27).

In chapter 8, Bildad too offers a hopeful future, including hope for a great end (8:7), the acceptance of God (8:20), and triumph over enemies (8:22).

Zophar then responds with chiding. He suggests that Job deserves even more suffering than he recieves (11:6). He is confident that God knows iniquity when he sees it, and that our stupidity regarding our iniquity is no excuse for avoiding suffering (11:11-12). Altogether, Zophar’s moral imagination comes across as the culmination of the common wisdom of the friends.

Again and again the friends are unable to embrace the possibility of meaningless suffering. They are convinced of a causal relationship between sin and suffering, and they believe that suffering is purposeful. If, as David Clines suggests, Job is a book written by the privileged for the privileged, then the friends are the epitome of those who seek to legitimize suffering for others.[2]

Presumably, this moral imagination also serves as a defense mechanism with the friends thinking, “If we can diagnose Job’s problem, we can then avoid it in our own lives!” At this point, I want to propose a dual-level theodicy. Those in positions of power should not be able to force meaning on those who are suffering. Yet, those in power should also give a privileged place to the theodicy of those who are suffering, because meaning might just be the only thing they have left.

In this dual-level theodicy, the suffering are privileged to either make meaning or not, but it lies in their hands empowering them in the midst of their despair. The privileged are thus given a burden to alleviate suffering, not to ignore it by imposing meaning from the top-down.

It seems that if we follow the friend’s example with the sufferers of our world, we are tempted to act as people complicit with the suffering. In effect, we are tempted to say, “It’s a mystery why you’re suffering, but it’s for your own good. Trust God and stay strong, but keep suffering.”[3]

[1] Newsom, Carol A., “Job and His Friends: A Conflict of Moral Imaginations,” Interpretation. (1999), p. 240

[2]David Clines, “Why is There a Book of Job and What does it do to you if you Read it?” in W. A. M. Beuken, ed., The Book of Job; BETL114 (Leuven: LUP, 1994)

[3] This follows the thinking of Walter Brueggemann, “Theodicy in a Social Dimension,” JSOT 33 (1985): 3-25

Conflicting Moral Imaginations: Job, His Friends, and Suffering, Part 1

In the next few posts, I’m going to post a paper I wrote as the final for my Job Exegesis paper at Drew University this summer. It will be broken into a series of posts over the next few days. Hope you enjoy a subject that really challenged and stretched my own imagination and understanding. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

We live in a world that experiences suffering on a global scale. Simply watching the news, reading the newspaper, and viewing online news content awakens one to the fact that there are terrible things happening around the world. Dictators seize power, ethnic and religious groups pose great threats of violence to one another, and unexpected tragedies fill our minds. It’s enough to wonder what to make of the world in which we live. The book of Job is an epic work for such a time as this.

Job’s story, his interaction with the divine council, his friends’ response, and even God’s final reply provide an incredibly vivid backdrop for exploring some of the most difficult questions we face.

One of the ways the book of Job interacts with the tough questions of life is by exploring a variety of traditions and cultural discourses. Carol Newsom does a terrific job describing the way that the difficult dialogue between Job and his friends is more than simple difference of opinion. Newsom describes it as a conflict between two spectacularly different moral imaginations. On one hand we have a presentation of the moral imagination of the friends,

“The imagination of the friends is anchored in integrative narrative patterns and practices of piety that allow one to experience not only a grounding sense of order and security but also the hope of transformation. A person who has suffered calamity even as great as Job’s can, without compromise to integrity, embrace the perspective of the friends for the work of rehabilitating a life.”

Then on the other hand, we find the moral imagination of Job

“At the heart of Job’s imagination lies the enigma of bodies broken for no reason. By insisting on speaking of and for such bodies, Job is drawn to the language of justice and accountability as it can be imagined in a court of law. From this perspective, the only narrative that does not falsely rehabilitate that brokenness is the narrative of testimony.”

These two approaches are diverse, and in Newsom’s words, incommensurable.[1] We not only have two different approaches to suffering, but two completely different ways of experiencing the world and thinking imaginatively about the moral consequences of suffering. The friends see the possibility in suffering of rehabilitating a life, while Job wrestles with the utter despair of bodies broken for no reason.

[1] Newsom, Carol A., “Job and His Friends: A Conflict of Moral Imaginations,” Interpretation. (1999) 239-253

Clear-Paned Missiology

At one of the congregations I serve, there are huge windows lining each side of the sanctuary. Without fail, every time we have guests come and speak from across the conference, they mention these windows. You see, they aren’t stained-glass. They are simply huge panes of clear glass, and they are indeed beautiful.

Out the north windows you can see the high school across the street, a small rental house, and a large wooded hill beyond. To the south, you can see the parsonage, several homes, and oftentimes people walking on the side street.

Apparently, in the past these windows were something like stained glass. They were thick, yellow, and had giant draperies hanging around them. However, when they were replaced the church bought the huge clear panes. Stained glass would have been nice, but it simply was too expensive. Little did they know, they were making a theological statement.

Far too many churches have a stained-glass missiology to go with their opulent stained glass windows. Rather than constantly looking out at the world beyond, people can only contemplate what’s on the inside. Today, in my sermon, I described the beatuy of those windows and the striking image they present of who we are called to be as a church. We gather together, worship faithfully, and listen to God’s call, ever mindful of the world outside the walls.

If we only care about what goes on inside, we’re like a sports team that only practices and never plays the game. We’re created to get in the game. We’re called to be formed in the faith and move to the other side of the glass, where we can live out the adventure of following God’s ongoing mission in the world.

Megachurch Musings

Since I’ll soon be beginning an appointment at a much larger congregation, I have found myself reading more about the unique opportunities and challenges within megachurches. Scott Thumma & Warren Bird have released a new study which you can find here (h/t Todd Rhodes @ MondayMorningInsight).

Todd summarizes several changes that have taken place over the last three years including:

Growth without adding seats
More satellite campuses and off-site worship
More intentional training for ministers and ministerial candidates
Growing emphasis on small groups
More interest in social justice and outreach

He also shares a few things that have remained roughly the same:

Contemporary worship styles
Strong outreach and programming
Continued growth
Continued strong finances

I’m curious what will change in the next three years in these influential congregations. Primarily, I can foresee the current financial situation in our country may start to have an impact on these congregations.

Holy Serendipity!

I love the word serendipity and the concept of unexpectedly stumbling across something even though you weren’t really trying to find it. Back when I worked in a research lab, I always said, “If we don’t leave our work benches messy, we don’t leave room for serendipity. After all, we wouldn’t have penicillin if Alexander Fleming was more conscientious!” Supposedly Fleming had a notoriously messy lab, and left some bacterial cultures out only to find the growth of the bacteria was inhibited by…you guessed it…Penicillium mold! Others were skeptical of my logic.

I think this concept can apply to the Church too, even though we usually call it by more theologically sound words. Preparing for Sunday, I was in a hurry to finish the worship service. So, I just went through the hymnal and picked out several songs we haven’t sung in awhile. None of them fit the message especially well, but hey at least they weren’t repeats! We ended up singing, among other songs, “To God Be the Glory,” and “My Tribute.” No big deal, right?!

Lo and behold, holy serendipity! During our announcements and prayer requests at my first church service, a woman told the story of her daughter’s involvment in a car wreck that ended up as a huge pileup. She and her family escaped unharmed. The mother said her song all week had been, “To God be the Glory,” and she had planned on requesting it during the service. Not only did that song proclaim God’s glory, but “My Tribute” also sings praise to the glory of God. She couldn’t believe those were the songs for the day! How cool is that?!

Who is Jesus??

Andrew Conard asked an interesting question over at Thoughts of Resurrection a couple days ago. He heard someone ask, “Who is Jesus to you?” So, he wrote,

Jesus is my Lord and Savior. He continues to teach me about what it is like to live as one of his followers in a kingdom that is not of this world, but is coming into the world.

He then got an interesting response from someone who attends the church he serves,

I think this is very similar to what most mainline Christians (including myself) and especially those who grew up in “the church” would declare. However, I would throw out these questions:

What is a “Lord” in modern terms and vernacular? We don’t have Lords anymore.

What is he a “Savior” from? A big ravine? Democrats? Republicans? Stupid people?

So in short, perhaps this needs to be modernized. So we say that he is our CEO and saves use from our sinful wrong lived lives???? Just at thought.

Man, there are a ton of questions here that have been kicked around quite a bit in recent years. After the “seeker sensitive” movement, some have suggested that it’s more important to keep the Scriptural language and simply train people in that new vocabulary. Others have suggested that “relevance” dictates the need to modernize the language we use.

I would simply want to offer the reminder that relevance is relative. The word CEO, for people immersed in the language and world of business, makes a lot of sense. CEO, for someone in a remote tribe, probably would be meaningless. If that tribe had a chief, then perhaps Jesus as Chief would make more sense than Lord.

In addition to this question, we might also ask ourselves whether or not the individualistic language of, “Who is Jesus to you?” might preclude answers that include Jesus’ relationship to the Church. Then again, one could argue that we might just be who we are only in relationship to the numerous socially interconnected ties that we hold. In other words, maybe our individual subjectivity is more communal than individualistic thinking sometimes like to believe!

In any case, I agree that Jesus is Lord and Savior. I also believe that Jesus is the incarnation of God and the crux of the overarching story of the world: creation, fall, and redemption. I also believe Jesus is the Son of God who is always in a mutually self-giving and loving relationship with the Father and the Spirit.

BWIII on Viola’s Reimagining Church

If you haven’t, you need to go over and check out Ben Witherington’s comments on Frank Viola’s Reimagining Church. He really spends a lot of time interacting with Viola’s work, and I think you’ll find some interesting insights here.

On the first post, Ben indicates that Frank will respond to these comments, Ben will respond to the response, and then Frank will have a last word. I look forward to this conversation!

All’s Well that Ends Well

I don’t know much about Shakespeare, but I do know he once wrote a play with this as the title. Further, I’m really not sure what the play was about, but it popped in my mind as I was thinking about the next month and a half of my life as I prepare to change appointments.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what it means to “leave well.” As an itinerant pastor, I have a great responsibility to do my best to finish in such a way that it sets the congregation and the next pastor up for success. I haven’t been through this process before, and it has been a real challenge to discern what steps to take along the way.

Several good friends have shared advice with me, and I appreciate their counsel. This morning, I did some searching for resources online and came across a blog post from the Greater Richmond Area Christian Educators. The post is called, “Leaving Well (If you’re going to go, go!)” The formatting at their blog is a little wonky, so I’ll repost the major portion of it as I go.

Don’t plan for the congregation’s future. When it’s time for you to leave a congregation shorten your vision. Concentrate on leaving well and give the congregation’s future to the congregation—it’s no longer your responsibility. To be blunt, once you decide to leave your congregation’s future is none of your business.

To be honest, this one is a little bit hard since we are required to be working on the strategic plan for our conference. I’ve struggled to find a balance of promoting the strategic plan with the realization that I’m leaving.

If you’re going to go, go. You don’t need to burn your bridges, but you need to get clear about what leaving means. Most clergy seem to do well once they get clear. For example, they will communicate with their congregation that when they leave they are no longer the pastor. So they’ll not make pastoral calls, conduct weddings and funerals, or get involved in church business. Clergy who are not able to go tend to become the bane of the new pastor and often do a great disservice to the congregation. It’s amazing how many clergy have trouble leaving their congregations. Sometimes they try to come back as members. But I’ve yet to see a former pastor of a congregation able to successfully return to their former congregation as just a member. It seems hard for them to appreciate that they weren’t just a member before, and never will be.

This one is the most common piece of advice I receive from my friends and colleagues. Several have mentioned the shift from pastor to friend, and the need for a period of disconnect to allow the new pastor to join the new system. I won’t comment on the few examples I’ve seen of people who simply don’t get this, because I can see how this is a difficult process. However, because of those examples I think I’ll be more mindful of how I handle myself in this regard.

As you are leaving the function of your preaching needs to change. That change in function is primarily one of prophetic theological hope. This isn’t the time to try to plant insight into your congregation—if they didn’t get what you’ve been trying to say all those years they’re certainly not going to get it now. They’re listening to you differently. What they want to hear, and need to hear, is the affirmation of hope that they’ll be just fine without you! The second function of preaching at this time is to remind them of their story. Clergy often are the resident storytellers of the narrative history of the congregation. Too often a congregation experiences an episode of corporate amnesia when a pastor leaves. Now is the time to tell, and retell, the story of the congregation as a local people of God. Remind them of how they came to be, who they were, and who they are.

It has been more difficult than normal to preach the past few weeks, and I think this is helpful advice. The lectionary has been helpful in keeping me from the temptation toward “last-chance indoctrination!”

Stay connected. One common emotional response of clergy who are leaving is to emotionally defect in place and begin to disconnect from their congregation. That’s understandable and may be a function of anticipatory grieving. But clergy need to work at staying emotionally connected to significant persons in the congregation—its leaders as well as others worth investing time with. Work on your grieving. Leaving a congregation, under whatever circumstance, involves loss, and loss requires grieving. Own it. Find ways to mourn appropriately (mourning is the outward expression of grieving), but don’t confuse your grieving with that of the congregation.

These have been unanticipated challenges. As I said earlier, this is my first time to go through the leaving process. I grew up in a denomination that would often have months in between pastors, and the first pastor would often leave fairly abruptly. So, I’m experiencing a whole new system and process in that regard. I’m working on this one!

Focus on your own vision and work on your own self. I’ve mentioned that in the early stages of discernment it is difficult to sift the important from the insignificant. In the midst of the fog of discernment I’ve seen clergy get stuck by weighing in, with equal weight, issues like, the children (even when they are grown!), the house, their age, the spouse (his or her job, friends, hobbies, etc.), giving up a short commute, the club, the salary, a perk, their nice office, the computer the church provided, etc. To be sure these are all important—but they are not as important as pursuing your own vision, calling, and goals. Change involves risk and it involves loss. As someone said, you can have anything you want, but you cannot have everything you want. The question becomes, What are you willing to give up in order to pursue your calling, vision, dreams, or desires?

This final aspect may seem to have more to do with people who are discerning whether or not to leave in a more congregationalist setting, but I think it applies to United Methodists too. This paragraph helped me see that this next step in my journey is indeed something of a risk, but it’s also an important part of my attempt to pursue my calling and vision. Change is hard, but it’s worth it to follow God’s call.

Altogether, I have a lot more work to do. However, one of my most important tasks will be leaving well. I think this list has been fairly helpful in thinking about some of the issues. Any other advice or commentary on “leaving well” out there??