A First Story

Fire in the Soul: A New Psychology of Spiritual optimism
by Joan Borysenko

(Page 2 of 4)

A First Story, as I presented the idea in the parable that opens this section, is an archetype-a master story-that each person must live through in the process of growing their soul and finding their way back to God. For anyone who has ever read the Old Testament, the story of Job is certainly the archetype of "Why me?" It asks the question why, if there is any fairness in the universe, do bad things happen to good people? Job's is one of the oldest stories on record. Scholars believe that it was written between 800 and 300 B.C. and is based on a much older Sumerian version of the legend dating back to about 2000 B.C.

The story of Job concerns a righteous man, according to the Bible the most esteemed man on earth in God's sight. Job is suddenly beset by terrible suffering when Satan asks God to test Job's loyalty. In one day God arranges for all Job's ten children to die, for his vast herds of animals to be killed and finally for Job to be stricken with hideous, painful boils. Job then sits with three friends for a week, fruitlessly debating the question of why bad things happen to good people. As with many biblical stories, the answer is not immediately obvious. It is up to the reader to ferret out the teaching, a process that is very valuable because it makes you think.

After years of thinking about the story of Job, I believe that the parable is best understood not in terms of the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" but in terms of the question "Do the trials Job suffers deepen his understanding about the nature of God?" According to both the King James and Revised Standard Bibles (the excerpts below are from the Revised Standard version), Job learns nothing from his suffering except that he must repent of even complaining. This thoughtful, righteous man ends up groveling in shame before the awesome power of a tyrannical God. But according to the more meticulous translation of Hebrew scholar and poet Stephen Mitchell, Job instead has a wondrous, freeing revelation about the true nature of the divine.

Once Upon A Time There Was a Man Named Job

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants; so this man was the greatest of all the people in the East.

The Old Testament narrator's prologue next shifts to God's yearly gathering with the angels, a conclave at which Satan is also present. In the Old Testament, "Satan" is only rarely used (four times, to be exact) to mean a divine being with evil intent. Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst John Sanford, in his excellent book Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality, discusses the more common use of "satan," a noun meaning "adversary" or "accuser"; as a verb it means to "persecute by hindering free forward movement." In the secular sense, any kind of pain, illness or loss is a satan with which we must wrestle to discover our wholeness, our authenticity as creative, self-aware human beings.

Sanford points out that in the Old Testament God himself sometimes functions as a satan, performing the necessary job of obstruction so that we must pause to consider our lives in a new light. In the story of Job, Satan and God are two beings on good terms, in collusion with one another. The "Accusing Angel," as Stephen Mitchell translates "Satan" from the Hebrew, informs God that he's been walking around the earth "here and there" checking out what's happening. God immediately wants to know if the Accuser has seen his marvelous servant Job, for "there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil."

Satan then lives up to the literal translation of his name. He ponders an important psychospiritual question, really the most important question there is about a human being. Is Job really a holy man, one who knows the completeness of himself and therefore knows God. Or is he just a goody-goody, invested in looking holy, singing God's praises only because his life is sailing along so smoothly? Satan is not suggesting that Job might be evil but rather that he might be unconscious.

Satan is posing the same question that a depth psychologist might ask. Is Job using his talents, expressing his feelings and living his life authentically, or is he simply identifying with an idealized notion of what he thinks a good person is? In the unthinking desire to be "good" we risk disowning all the parts of ourselves-including healthy emotions and talents-that were ever shamed by parents, teachers, clergy or society. Our uniqueness gradually gets relegated to the unconscious, to what C. G. Jung called the shadow, and in the course of growing up we get progressively more identified with the mask or "false self" we wear to get other people's approval. (This process of losing ourselves is discussed in depth in my second book, Guilt Is the Teacher, Love Is the Lesson.)

So, Satan's accusation of Job puts his authenticity-his wholeness-to the test, as life does time and time again for each of us. Satan asks God whether Job doesn't have good reason to sing his praises:

Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face.

God replies to Satan: "Behold, all that he has is in your power; only upon himself do not put forth your hand." That same day, Satan arranges the theft and burning of Job's herds, the slaughtering of many of his servants, and the "accidental" deaths of all Job's ten children. Job is the very model of patience and forbearance in the face of this enormous suffering. His only comment is: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return: the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Job's initial attitude of surrender has given rise to the common expression "to have the patience of Job." An erroneous expression, if you read the rest of the parable.

God is smug with satisfaction at Job's meek response. He says to Satan: "He still holds fast his integrity [Mitchell translates this as innocence], although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause."

But Satan is not at all impressed by Job's initial show of faith. As a well-trained depth psychologist might do, he muses over whether Job is acting from his integrity-his wholeness-or from a false mask of goodness. He presses the question and says to God:

"Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But put forth thy hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." And God said to Satan: "Behold, he is in your power; only spare his life."

Satan then covers poor Job's whole body with boils. Job, still manifesting the patience he is unduly famous for, simply sits in the dust, scratching himself with a pottery shard. His wife is less patient: "Do you still hold fast your integrity [innocence]? Curse God, and die."

But cling to his innocence Job does for seven days and seven nights while three friends sit in silence to console him for his terrible losses. Finally Job cries out in anguish;

Let the day perish wherein I was born and the night which said, a man-child is conceived. . . . Let the stars of its dawn be dark . . . because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes . . . . Why did I not die at birth? . . . Why did the knees receive me? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? . . . For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.

Stop for a moment and let the power of those words sink in. Have you ever felt this way? If Job's poetic lament awakened the memory of a dark night of your own, where do you think your suffering came from? Did you ask and answer the question "Why me?" You might like to take a few minutes to reflect upon your experience in writing. We will return to the parable of Job together later in the chapter, after we have had a chance to position, in both a psychological and religious framework, the question of why bad things happen to good people.

Copyright © 1993 by Joan Borysenko