Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2022 3:26:38 GMT
The Problem of Suffering:
An Exegesis of the Book of Job
By: Seth Garrett
Abstract
Job highlights a toxic Judeo-Christian principle - you don't deserve family, health, or happiness. If you lose family, health, or happiness, you are supposed to be content because you didn't deserve that stuff in the first place. Maybe if you grovel before the God who is abusing you, he will be nice to you again. Red flags of an abusive relationship all over the place. Aristotelian virtue ethics realized 300+ years before Christ that any virtue can become a vice when it is deficient or when it is taken to the extreme. A lack of gratitude is the deficiency of ingratitude. An excess of gratitude is the vice of obsequiousness - slavish servile debasement of self-worth.
Preface
The Biblical story of Job is often viewed through the lens of the philosophic problem of evil - the problem of how we can reconcile the existence of God to the existence of bad things happening. This analysis of the book of Job will address the problem of evil, but more importantly, it will address the problem of suffering - which I define as the problem of how to deal with (or endure) the existence of suffering. Different religions and philosophies have different approaches in how they view suffering. The way we view suffering can have a big impact on how we manage it. The existence of suffering demands a response, if not a solution. In this exegesis we will explore Job's response to the problem of suffering and try to discern whether or not Job's response contains the intimations of a meta-solution to the problem of suffering or if we need to look elsewhere for a more fulfilling solution.
NEXT: CHAPTER 1
An Exegesis of the Book of Job
By: Seth Garrett
Abstract
Job highlights a toxic Judeo-Christian principle - you don't deserve family, health, or happiness. If you lose family, health, or happiness, you are supposed to be content because you didn't deserve that stuff in the first place. Maybe if you grovel before the God who is abusing you, he will be nice to you again. Red flags of an abusive relationship all over the place. Aristotelian virtue ethics realized 300+ years before Christ that any virtue can become a vice when it is deficient or when it is taken to the extreme. A lack of gratitude is the deficiency of ingratitude. An excess of gratitude is the vice of obsequiousness - slavish servile debasement of self-worth.
Preface
The Biblical story of Job is often viewed through the lens of the philosophic problem of evil - the problem of how we can reconcile the existence of God to the existence of bad things happening. This analysis of the book of Job will address the problem of evil, but more importantly, it will address the problem of suffering - which I define as the problem of how to deal with (or endure) the existence of suffering. Different religions and philosophies have different approaches in how they view suffering. The way we view suffering can have a big impact on how we manage it. The existence of suffering demands a response, if not a solution. In this exegesis we will explore Job's response to the problem of suffering and try to discern whether or not Job's response contains the intimations of a meta-solution to the problem of suffering or if we need to look elsewhere for a more fulfilling solution.
NEXT: CHAPTER 1
