If last week my theme was Forrest Gump meets Henri Nowen, this week it seems that Forrest is an observer in a chat between Job, Charles Ives and Lieutenant Dan. I am serious.
Davis in the movie Grand Canyon sets the stage for the statement of the human condition: “The point is there's a gulf in this country; an ever-widening abyss between the people who have stuff, and the people who don't have [anything]. It's like this big hole in the ground, as big as the … Grand Canyon, and what's come pouring out is an eruption of rage, and the rage creates violence, and the violence is real, Mack.” We read that and we think of stuff as things but it could be health, status, or a thousand other possibilities.
A few weeks ago I spoke with my church about how we had domesticated Jesus and forgotten Jesus Wild and Wooly. I suggested that some appropriate anger where people just “don’t get it” might be a Christ-like thing to do. Today, it was about the rage or anger directed at God.
The music of American contemporary composer Charles Ives in The Unanswered Question speaks to this discussion. The strings play their music with a detachment to what is going on in the rest of the piece. The trumpet asks the perennial question [fill in the blank for yourself what that question is]. And the woodwinds try to answer in simplistic, human, proverb-like fashion, increasing in tempo, intensity and dissonance. The last time the trumpet asks the question, it is only the sound of the strings playing their constant, slow moving pattern. The question is unanswered, thus the name of the piece.
Job is a lot like the Ives piece. Job is a drama. We have been provided the program notes, and we understand what is going on, but Job, and his friends do not. At its core, Job is a critique on the simplicity of proverbs. Israel was living out Proverbs, and Job stands in stark contrast to the simplicity of that message. Job is almost like trying to solve differential equations within calculus when all you know is two plus two equals four.
Job has friends I hope you never have. They are operating in a Proverbs world: it is simple to them: Job is suffering, therefore Job did something wrong. Repent, and all will be restored but Job, while not arguing the framework of that world just wants a piece of the evidence that suggests what it is he needs to repent about. Job is a good man, and a serious theologian. ‘Show me the evidence, and I will repent.’
This debate between Job and his “friends” goes on for most of the book, and then finally God answers from the whirlwind.
If you can call what God speaks from that whirlwind an answer: Job is asking questions of justice and God answers with some ‘where were you when’ kinds of questions. God isn’t answering Job’s question. Not even close. It is like Job and his friends are asking questions that God has no intention of answering directly.
But getting his confrontation, Job suggests he is satisfied. And life is now happy ever after. There is a restoration, and everything back like it was – sort of.
Four giants of Old Testament Scholarship, Birch, Brueggemann, Fretheim and Petersen, suggest that at the end of the play we should be more than just a little bothered about a couple of things.
One is now that Israel has heard the blasphemy of asking is God really just, how does one go back to the simple aphorisms of proverbs. The world is more complicated than that, we see that complication in terms of wars, genocide, and the ultimate question, the Holocaust: having heard Job’s blasphemy debated, can proverbs still work? The question is unanswered.
More deeply, while Job gets children back, the original ten children are not who are restored, it is ten new children. What was lost [taken?] is lost forever. They make the point that “Rachel’s children have returned from the exile, but they are not the same children [who were exiled].” Restored in this case isn’t the same as those who were lost, is it? The question is unanswered.
In Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan’s plans to be either a hero or a martyr were thwarted by Forrest who saves him. Lieutenant Dan sees the world in terms of Proverbs: ones and zeros; on and off; black and white; yes and no; good and evil. He is clearly angry at Forrest for saving him, but near the end of the movie, in the midst of a hurricane, Lieutenant Dan goes up into the crow’s nest on the shrimp boat and Job-like has it out with God [isn't a hurrican a form of a whirlwind?]. After it is all over, Gump tells us that he thinks ‘Lieutenant Dan made his peace with God.’
What are we to make of this on this Sunday [or whenever you might be reading this]?
Rage against God has a fine biblical tradition. The Psalms, Job and possibly Jesus on the cross as he gives us Psalm 22 are examples. It might be therapeutic. Lieutenant Dan is the better for it but how things really are with Job at the end is less than crystal clear. But for us as wounded healers (Nowen’s term for all of us), maybe the role we are called to perform, as opposed to Job’s “friends”, is to silently be there and not try and explain the world in simplistic, linear aphorisms. Forrest, in spite of his propensity for aphorisms, understands that aphorisms break down in the face of life.
Our role might just be to understand that God chooses not to answer Job directly but hold and love those who are raging anyway. Let them rage and love them. Forrest just let’s Dan rage, and his raging is surely an element, along with Forrest’s agape love, of Dan’s ultimate restoration.
Selah.
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