The Story of God (11 page)

Still, guess what? Good news. The point that God had wanted to make? Well, it was made.
Job was still faithful.
(Job 1:22) God knew he would be, of course, but it felt good to be so publicly vindicated. “It will be interesting to hear what Satan has to say
now,”
God chortled. “I imagine he will be singing a slightly different tune the next time I see him.” God felt so good that he decided to throw another party. (“Given all of my responsibilities, do I throw too many parties?” he'd asked himself, then quickly answered: “No, I enjoy throwing parties and that is that.”)

Satan showed up again. God smiled as he saw him approach, looking forward to hearing his nemesis eat his words. “Oh Satan—where have you been?” God asked, goading him. (Job 2:2) When Satan didn't even respond, God decided to let him have it: “You see, Satan, you were
wrong.
Job still loves me, even though you incited me to destroy him for no good reason.” (Job 2:3) God quickly stopped, thinking about what he'd just said. Had he just admitted that there was no good reason for Job's life
to be ruined? He had, yes. That wasn't a smart thing to say, he felt. He was God; God was supposed to have good reasons—perfect reasons—for everything he did. He thought about correcting himself: “What I meant to say, of course, was that you incited me against Job exactly as I wished you to, in order to prove my point, Satan.” But he decided not to, thinking that it sounded somewhat convoluted.

Satan, that bastard, retorted with, “He still loves you, God, only because he's not in physical pain. Let me cause him bodily pain and
then
see what happens.” (Job 2:5) God was incensed by this. He'd won the wager, but rather than acknowledging it, Satan was challenging him again. He was not going to let Satan know he was annoyed, however. God feigned his most superior smile and shrugged: “Go ahead then, do whatever you want, just don't kill him.” (Job 2:6) As Satan nodded and walked away, God rolled his eyes at his angel party-guests, as if to say, can you believe this guy? But on the inside, God didn't feel great about what was happening.

Satan covered Job from head to toe with boils. It looked incredibly painful. Job's wife (what was her name? … oh, who cares?) was still alive. God couldn't help but chuckle at Satan's nasty joke: Job was worse off with his wife alive than dead,
ha,
exactly right! She told him that he should curse God. (Job 2:9) (“I'm going to get her for that,” God muttered to himself. “She
did
just lose ten children,” flickered across his mind but he dismissed it, mumbling “whore” to himself as he did.) Job, though, bless his soul, stayed strong and loyal to God. “One must accept the evil as well as the good,” he responded. (Job 2:10)

Even though God felt a little bit guilty about the way he'd let his favorite man's life be ruined, he felt great about being vindicated for a second time. Satan had said that Job would not love him if he was in pain, and he had been proven
completely wrong.
God was right. Job still loved him. God realized later that he should have called the wager over at that very moment. “I won, Satan,” he should have said.

Because the truth was, not long afterward, God's glorious victory started to crumble.

Job sat on the ground, mourning his existence, regretting that he'd ever been born. (Job 3:3) Hearing this, God seethed. Obedient, loving Job was suddenly and not-so-subtly criticizing him! When Job said that God had “hedged him around” (Job 3:23), God's insides churned.

“Hedged him around? What does that even
mean?”
he boomed. On some level, of course, he knew exactly what it meant, and it wasn't good. The wager—“Job will be faithful to me no matter what”—that he had so clearly won? Well, it began to look as if … hard to even acknowledge this … Satan had perhaps been at least partially right.

Satan didn't show up to claim victory, which God was thankful for. God decided to wait and see what would happen next. (He knew what was going to happen, needless to say: He was going to lose the bet more and more embarrassingly until, in the end, he was going to make a colossal fool of himself in an event that would haunt him for thousands of years to come.)

Job's friends showed up. God was hoping that they would argue on his behalf, but when they
did,
they were, to be blunt, such monumental dicks that he wished they hadn't. Zophar, Bildud, and Eliphaz traveled a distance to see their friend Job and, at first, they wept. (Job 2:12) “Fakes!” God practically yelled down at them. “It's obvious you're happy about what's happened to Job!”

These three guys spent the next several days hectoring Job: “You must have done something wrong; Your children must have deserved it; You deserved worse than this,” things like that. God almost couldn't believe what shitheads these three friends were. So much so that when they kept pointing out how great and wondrous and just God was (Job 5:9, 8:3), he shook his head and muttered, “I wish they'd shut up.”

But they didn't shut up, they kept yammering on and on. And the more they talked, the worse God felt. Because the more Job responded to them, the worse things he said: “God is terrorizing me.” (Job 6:4) “I wish he'd just kill me.” (Job 6:9) God bristled. Maybe Job
did
have this coming. And it got even worse. Before long, Job was talking about suing God! (Job 9:2–4) “Even though I'm good,” Job said, “God would prove me bad. God mocks the innocent as they suffer.” (Job 9:23) (“The mocking part was untrue,” Satan would later say. “You don't mock, God, because you have absolutely no sense of humor.”)

As to the wager, why was it continuing? “I suppose I could end it now,” God thought—“but then I'd have to admit I lost.” An eternity of Satan gloating about his win? That was
not
going to happen. Satan was going to pay for letting the bet continue. At some point, Job was going to come back around and when he did, at
that
moment, God would end the bet, thus outsmarting Satan!

The one thing that God could cling onto was that Job had not, technically speaking, “blasphemed” him, so in
that
sense, he had not yet lost the wager. “But the only reason he's not blaspheming me to my face is that I'm not there!” God's nostrils flared as Job kept trashing him. “God is defrauding me” (Job 10:3); “God is a liar” (Job 10:7); “God is a bully” (Job 10:16); “I wish God would leave me alone.” (Job 10:20) God wanted to attack Job at that moment, kill him and send him to proto-hell. But he continued to restrain himself: How would it look to kill his favorite human, whose very faithfulness he had wagered on, in front of his angels?

God looked around, suddenly nervous. Where was Satan? Why
wasn't
he claiming his victory? Job was attacking him. Satan had won. It would be hard to argue that he hadn't, yet he was nowhere to be seen. Why would he be so foolish as to let the wager continue? Was he up to something? God suddenly felt very anxious.

After all three friends had spoken, God relaxed ever so slightly for a moment, hoping that perhaps the hideous, humiliating back and forth between them and Job was over. “Maybe things'll get a bit better,” God hoped to himself (knowing that they wouldn't; knowing in his guts that he loathed himself and had created this entire machine to punish himself for his bottomless, eternal, infernal wickedness.)

Job went after God yet again, demanding that he “take his hands off him,” as if he wanted to
fight him.
(Job 13:21) God trembled with rage. “Where are you, God, why don't you show yourself?” Job demanded, essentially challenging God. (Job
13:24) “I'll tear him apart, limb by limb!” God blurted—then looked around to see if anyone had heard him. He saw some angels a ways off and … wait … was that Satan? Was he here to end the wager? God wanted it to end now; this situation was rapidly becoming a complete debacle.

But it wasn't Satan. The wager rolled on. God shook his head, no no no, as the three friends started to hold forth
again,
telling Job that he was sinful, loathsome, and foul. (Job 15:5, 18:5) God, furious as he was, couldn't help but snicker. “With friends like those …” He was enraged at Job for his insolence, but these friends were just such monumental pricks! “You're the evil ones,” Job retorted (Job 19:29), before he started weeping.
Now
it will end, God told himself.

But of course it didn't. The friends started saying things that were simply idiotic: “You will die like your shit” (Job 20:7); “Food will turn to snake venom in your belly” (Job 20:14); “Anything that doesn't turn to venom, you will puke back up.” (Job 20:15) They were making things up! None of this was true! Job was being punished for “torturing the poor,” they said (Job 20:19), and God rolled his eyes. These guys were
unbelievably
horrible friends. They just kept topping themselves in the idiot department! “You're like a worm,” they told Job, “you're like a maggot.” (Job 25:6) (On some level, of course, this was basically true. Since God was pure good, all the evil in the world
had
to have come from mankind. The only thing that sometimes seemed odd: How had he created such vile worms in his own image?)

Job was silent for a moment. Maybe it was over now? God prayed. Then Job spoke again: “God is cruel, our pain means nothing to him, less than nothing.” (Job 30:19–21) “Not true!” God thought. “I care deeply about my creations. Their pain affects me … you know … a lot …” He trailed off, knowing this wasn't true. He
didn't
care, it was obvious; he'd just allowed the destruction of his favorite man's life on a party bet. How could he claim to care?

The wager had blown up in God's face, humiliating him in front of all his angels; he wanted it
over
at this point. But Satan still did not show up to claim his victory. Why was he allowing the bet to go on and on? “Because every minute that goes by is worse for you,” popped into his head. “Because he knows you and understands your vanity and pride and is using them to make a complete fool of you.”

“
Wrong”‘
God shouted internally. “
Wrong wrong wrong!”
No one was making a fool of
him!
If Satan's plan was to draw the bet out to make God look bad (and by the way, it probably
wasn't,
that was probably giving Satan way too much credit; he was probably working on hell,
that's
probably what he was doing), if he was “scheming,” well, God knew how to throw it right back in his damned evil face!

“I will send another man into the conversation!” God exulted. “This young man will argue on my behalf with eloquence and passion. He will silence all the others and, yes,
shame
them. He will tell Job the truth about me and my greatness. After he speaks, Job will love and respect me again and I will win the bet!” It was a marvelous plan and it would work, God knew it would.

The only problem was that the young man God picked to be his advocate, Elihu? Well, let's just say he wasn't everything God might have wished for. He talked a lot, definitely—but he was annoyingly pompous and self-important. “What I'm about to tell you is quite important,” he kept saying, and God squirmed. (Job 32:18, 33:3) “Get to the point!” he practically yelled. But when Elihu finally
did
get around to making God's case, well, even then God wasn't pleased. “He doesn't make it sound any better or more convincing than the other guys,” God fumed.

“I'm going to have to do this myself,” God began to understand. “None of them is arguing my position correctly, I will have to do it.” He prepared himself to do so—then had to wait as Elihu blathered on and on. “I will teach you wisdom,” he said (Job 33:33), and God considered fire-blasting him from the sky at that moment. “Don't tell people how wise you are, idiot!”
he whispered harshly. He wished the other four men would kill Elihu, stone him, impale him, anything to shut him up. It had been a huge mistake to send this little twerp in his place. Elihu was insufferable; the other men obviously hated him and God understood why. “Shut up,” he began to murmur, “shut up, shut up, shut up.”

But Elihu didn't shut up. “A man of sound opinion is before you,” he yammered, and God shook his head in amazement. (Job 36:4) “I think he may be the single most irritating person I have ever created,” God said, “and that is saying
a lot.”
God could practically feel Satan's amusement by now. He felt hot, flushed, foolish. He knew that he had to step in and fix things, quickly.

Finally, Elihu finished. There was silence. “This is the moment,” God thought. “This is my time.” He began to speak extremely loudly and forcefully. God had a huge, deep, powerful voice, but heaven was quite a distance from earth, so he had to yell.

This was
not
how God had imagined the wager playing itself out, but what needed to be done needed to be done. God needed to straighten everybody out, and he was going to do so. Fine, he hadn't planned on this, he didn't have “prepared remarks,” but so what? He would speak extemporaneously. “The first thing I will do is put Job in his place,” God thought to himself. “How dare you question me? Did
you
make the earth?!” he bellowed. (Job 38:4) That felt good.

“Not only did I make the earth,” he continued, “I made it so well that my angels shouted for joy!” (Job 38:7) Which was true; they
had
shouted for joy when God had created … wait … were there angels present when he had made the earth? No, there weren't, this was a bad start. Also, was he bragging? Did he sound insecure? Should he stop right now? Was he about to go off a cliff? These questions flashed across God's mind, but he charged on: “There is no stopping me now!”