Why Did Job Suffer?

[Blonde]

Would you guys talk to me about why Job suffered......?

 

[Ortho_Cat]

God chastens the righteous "in order to raise them to a higher state of purity, and delivers them over to various trials the He may purge away all their unclean thoughts...and may thus transmit them like pure gold to the judgment to come" (St. John Cassian)

commentary on Job 40:8 (OSB)
"Do you not reject My judgment? Do you think I have dealt with you in any other way Than might appear to you to be righteous?"

"The Lord at last tells Job why he has suffered. "This is the balm for Job's wounds. This is the crown of the contest. This is the reward for his patience" (St. Gregory of Nyssa) St. John Chrysostom writes that all that has gone before is now justified. Indeed, Job's remaining righteous in the midst of affliction perfectly demostrates Christ, who suffered without sinning in His humanity that He might be made known in His divinity.

 

[truthseeker32]

Because he is human.

The story is a refutation of total retributive justice. Job's friends tell him that God is punishing him for his sins. However God intervenes and chastens Job's friends for such an opinion, and it is revealed that sometimes suffering just happens, even to the righteous. In the end Job is rewarded two fold and dies a happy man.

 

[rusmeister]

GK Chesterton's "Introduction to the Book of Job" is considered to be one of the great commentaries of our time.

Introduction to THE BOOK OF JOB

The story of Job can be understood on many levels, but it was probably best said like this:
"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man".

 

[icxn]

So that his virtue be manifest and so that he will be an example of patience to those who suffer.

 

[icxn]

So that his virtue be manifest and so that he will be an example of patience to those who suffer.

 

[rusmeister]

Because some people do not like to read more than short posts, here is the conclusion of GKC's essay:

But in the prologue we see Job tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best. It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes. Here is the very darkest and strangest of the paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring. I need not suggest what a high and strange history awaited this paradox of the best man in the worst fortune. I need not say that in the freest and most philosophical sense there is one Old Testament figure who is truly a type; or say what is prefigured in the wounds of Job.

 

[lautze]

i think the TEST that GOD gives us in order to make us stronger.
we should believe in GOD whenever we do anything.

i always think i didnt do my best in my TASK that our GOD give me,so i feel upsat.

 

[Blonde]

Thanks everybody. I'll read the intro Rus and look for the book.

 

[Ortho_Cat]

here's another book on the Orthodox perspective of the trials of Job:

http://www.amazon.com/Trial-Job-Orthodox-Christian-Reflections/dp/1888212721

 

[Blonde]

Thanks Ortho Cat.