Getting Biblical in Daily Life
Faith
Faith is a thorny, complicated topic to tackle, but we've got you covered when it comes to Job.
People have turned to Job over the years…ahem, millennia…because it asks a question that gets right at the heart of religious thought: why do bad things happen to good people?
This question is just plain old universal, and because of that, this book still has resonance today. For example, when tornadoes destroyed the town of Joplin, Missouri in 2011, one group staged public readings of the Book of Job to try to come to terms as a community with their loss (source). Because Job is about loss and how to deal with it, it's only natural that it pops up in settings of communal grief.
Unlike many other books of the Bible, the Book of Job directly tackles the issue of faith challenged by circumstance. Anyone who's experienced loss in their lives has to ask themselves why it happened. During times of trouble, many people turn to faith as a means of escape and hope; but others take the bad times as a sign that their faith has failed them.
Job personalizes this dilemma, but doesn't provide the most clear-cut answer. After all, we're basically told that we can't understand everything because we're not God. Our experiences are just too limited.
Great—now we're back where we started.