Nobody understands

Archibald MacLeish started writing a play in 1953 -- the year I was born -- that won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 1959. Its title is J.B., a modern adaptation of the biblical Book of Job.

Carl Gustav Jung published his book, Answer to Job, in 1952. It was translated into English in 1954.

Both of these works take the view that traditional religion (Christianity especially, is being indicted, I think) offers inadequate doctrines addressing suffering, calamity and affliction. Jung depicts God as cruel and unjust on one hand, and on the other, a poor card player to Satan the shark by unwittingly letting him get the opportunity to inflict evil on such a good and upright man as Job. Neither author appears to see the connection between Job and Jesus, or if they do, it is to affirm their rejection of the fact that God has sovereign control over a universe that delivers such horrors into the lives of good people. I'll need to revisit both works, as it's been over 30 years since reading them. Maybe 40 since reading J.B. I don't want to wrongly interpret their works due to faulty memory.

But what's the main point here? 

  • God has ordained pain, affliction and suffering for those he loves. And because he loves all mankind, there is no one who escapes life without drinking of this cup.
  • Suffering is a critical pathway to wisdom, which God intends for us to grow into--hence our dunking in it here on earth.
  • God's intentional subjection of extra suffering on his most favored servants is evidence that he ordains more wisdom for them, and the opportunity for them to enter into an anointing of healing for others who are at risk for misunderstanding the meaning of suffering, or even the meaning of life.

These are just my organizing thoughts. 

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