What seems incomprehensible to reason is why God, an almighty and good being, would let Satan freely oppress Job, an innocent man. Despite the loss of his livestock and children, Job still displayed confidence in God’s will even though his gracious creator had let him suffer for no apparent reason. Disappointed and beaten, Satan, requests God to let him test Job once more. To let Job suffer in the first place seems unrighteous, however, God allows him to be tested again, even though Job still remained faithful to God after losing his children and means of living. In his second trial, huge and painful sores spread over Job’s body, but he continues to be loyal to God, in spite of his own wife suggesting to curse God for his suffering.
God eventually talks to Job making it clear that his actions need no explanation. The book of Job brings up the ever-present question of why bad things happen to good people and answers that question by saying God is above justice. When Job’s friends — Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar — hear of his calamity, they come to visit him and begin to argue their “theology” to him. Their theology is that a man’s suffering is always the result of his personal sin. Further, the more one has sinned, the greater one will suffer.
Jesus Rodriguez English 4th block October 11, 2010 To Hell or To Veil After reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” and Jonathan Edwards's “Sinner’s in the hands of an Angry God” the differences are punishment, damnation, and who the sinners are, while the similarities are focused on their strong believe in God. Edwards’s` depiction of God frightens the congregation through his extensive talk about God, while Mr. Hooper’s service hardly ever mentions God, the fear of his parishioners draws them towards the black veil. Over all Mr. Hooper would be the best and more efficient preacher than Edwards because he does not uses hell as a final damnation for the sins that are committed by human beings. Instead he uses the black veil to show punishment and to repent from you sins.
His puritan worldview led him to believe that “God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell” (Edwards 175). He thought that one should live his life fearing the Lord, and fearing hell even more. Edwards tries to convince his listeners of life's uncertainty: death is always but a breath away, and for the wicked that meant that perdition was always but a breath away. This sermon was intended as a wake-up call for those in the audience who underplayed the greatness of God and overemphasized their own worthiness. In opposition to Edwards beliefs, through his work Thanatopsis, Bryant portrays an acceptance of death.
Job 4: 7-21 is taken from Eliphaz’s speech to Job. After undergoing immense suffering for no apparent reason, Job curses his life and birth and seeks comfort from his friends. Although Job is a good and holy man, Eliphaz states that suffering is the result of sin. He is implying that Job’s suffering is a result of a sinful life, although we already know the true reason for his pains. In verse 7, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished, or were the upright cut off?”, Eliphaz basically says that the good do not suffer.
Through the characterisation of the Reverend, his narrow mindedness can be seen when he says “lord, we ask the same curse for those who ask grace for this sinner”. Kramer is trying to show that even highly regarded religious figures can be blinded by faith and have double standards, which is evident when the Reverend disagrees with his daughter about differing opinions on religion. However, Kramer does not want to be seen as anti-religious “religion’s supposed to comfort
“God must be Evil” The question “is God evil?” is asked very often with both sides of the question offering different answers to this question with no definitive answer coming about but in both cases people coming out with very convincing arguments for both sides of the story. Some people argue that God is indeed evil because he is omniscient and because of his omniscience he knows that from the moment he decided to create us maybe even before then he knew which of us would reject him thus securing a place in hell for them or would sin again securing them a place in hell and yet does nothing about this. This is a major contradiction to his supposedly being omnibenevolent and some people even go so far as to use examples of murder and rape which are horrific events which they then use to say “how can a loving God allow such a thing to happen?” They then go further into it saying how as God is omnipresent and can see everything that has happened, will happen and is happening he must take some sort of sick pleasure in watching these events occur and so is evil. Or at the very least by allowing such a horrific event to happen without some form of justice or stopping them then he has to be evil as only an evil person would let evil acts go unpunished. Sam Harris uses this idea in one of his quotes saying that “Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes or he doesn’t care to or he doesn’t exist.
What was jobs response? All of their points of view were that he was guilty of some sin and that God was not pleased with him (p.295). Eliphaz felt like Job brought trouble on himself, Bildad felt like anyone that pursues wickedness (like Job) shouldn’t be surprised of the punishment it brings, and Zophar stated that Job was getting what was no less can be reasonably expected (p.295). Jobs response to their entire verdict was that he was not guilty of any of their accusations; therefore he was going to wait on the Lord to vindicate him out of it all. (p. 296).
In the world today, there is appalling devastation, pain and suffering endured by millions of innocent people. Most view them as unfair trials; they ask, ‘If there is a God, why does He allow it?’ Although pain and suffering are viewed as unnecessary and unfair trials executed by God on sometimes innocent people, they’re a necessary way in becoming more Christ-like because it is a way for sin to be explicated and for God to be revealed to the lost. From the biblical point of view, there is no intrinsic value in this suffering. Akin to the evil in the world, suffering is a perversion of what should be, which was caused by the disruption of the relationship between mankind and its Creator; it has no value in and of itself. That’s not to say that there can’t be any value whatsoever in pain and suffering.
Later on, Silas even believes that god has betrayed him as well and believes that there is no righteous god. “There is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a god of lies, that bears witness against the innocent” (Elliot 18). Silas says this out of anger, yet there is no doubt that he feels neglect from God. Silas is a very religious man, so it is much unexpected that he pushes God away in such a manner. Feeling neglect and betrayal from god, Silas becomes lonely internally and also becomes depressed.