Gustavo Gutierrez: Essential Writings by Nickoloff James B

Author:Nickoloff, James B [Nickoloff, James B]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2013-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

So too, in a second stage in which Job suffers from a cruel illness and is reduced to sitting on a garbage heap, he refuses to accept the impatient view of his wife who rebukes him: "Why persist in this integrity of yours? Curse God and die." He answers her: "That is how a fool of a woman talks. if we take happiness from God's hand, must we not take sorrow too?" The paragraph ends with the author of the book saying of Job: "And in all this misfortune Job uttered no sinful word" (2:8-10). That is to say, he did not speak ill of God despite his poverty, isolation, and sufferings. "He uttered no sinful word"; on the contrary. he voiced a deep sense of the gratuitous love of God. Everything comes from God and is God's gracious gift; no one, therefore, has a right to make claims on God.

Job's language is of a kind often heard among poor but believing people. On so many occasions I myself have heard unsophisticated people talking like Job: "God gave him (or her) to me, God has taken him (or her) away." The words do not express a mere resignation; there is something deeper here that an enlightened faith finds it difficult to put a finger on. The faith of the people displays a keen sense of the lordship of God; it has a spontaneous awareness of what Yahweh says in the Book of Leviticus: "Land will not be sold absolutely, for the land belongs to me, and you are only strangers and guests of mine" (Lev. 25:23). The faith of the people is marked by a profound conviction that everything belongs to the Lord and everything comes from the Lord. This conviction is finely expressed in a beautiful prayer of David: "Everything is from you, and we only give you what we have received from you. For we stand before you as aliens: we are only your guests, like all our fathers" (l Chron. 29: 15).

These initial reactions of Job contain, in inchoative form, the language of contemplation, which will take clearer shape as Job enters more deeply into his experience. It is certain, however, that if the language of the believing people remains at this inchoative level, it cannot successfully stand up to the onslaught of ideologized forms of talk about God. As a result, it is open to manipulation by theologies that are alien to the experience of ordinary folk. Furthermore, as in the case of Job, persistent poverty and suffering raise difficult questions; withdrawal and evasion in the face of these questions can end in an acceptance of evil and injustice, and even a resignation to it, which are in the final analysis contrary to faith in the God who liberates. It is necessary therefore to go more deeply into this intuition shown by the faith of the people and to strengthen it, but this process involves some ruptures.

These ruptures will come in Job's reaction to the efforts that his friends make to justify his sufferings.

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