An Integral Approach to the Book of Job
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Summary
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the Book of Job, and try to make sense of what we learn from it. The Book is a fascinating artifact that stands out to us moderns, especially as it's such perfect material to illustrate Ken Wilbur's theory about the suffering of the righteous man.
Transcript
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My purpose in making this video is to help build a map of the different stages of moral
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development, of where we were at different periods in history, of how we ought to interpret
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historical and religious documents to properly understand them, to integrate them.
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And the Book of Job is a very interesting artifact that stands out, especially to us moderns,
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that it's such perfect material to illustrate Ken Wilbur's theory.
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And so my goal in making this video is to help you improve your own map.
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And in researching for this video, I came across a 700-page book that I'm never going to have time to read,
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even though it looks absolutely fascinating, and I'm going to link it down below if you're interested,
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contrasting the Book of Job to 3,000-year-old Babylonian texts about the suffering of the
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righteous man who, rather than engaging with Yahweh, was engaging with Marduk.
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It was, there's other Egyptian texts that it also compares and contrasts to quite vividly.
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There is so much literature, there is so much history, that I'm only barely scratching the surface here.
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So, take everything I say with a grain of salt, and please understand, I'm building a very
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high-level, bird's-eye-view map of what's going on.
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And I'll bet you if we could get a hold of that guy that wrote the 700-page book,
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he'd feel like he didn't know what he was talking about either, and was also only just scratching the surface.
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So, the deeper you go, the more there is, folks.
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But that said, even though none of us are qualified to talk about anything when you get right down to it,
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let's talk about something. Let's talk about the Book of Job.
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Now, I know you've all heard of this, but how many people have actually read it?
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And of the very, very small fraction of people that have actually read the Bible,
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how many of them even understood what they were reading?
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The Book of Job concerns the question of theodicity.
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Theodicity is the question of, if God, why bad stuff happen?
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when that's literally the whole point of the Book of Job.
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If your typical atheist redditor actually read the Book of Job,
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He does all the right things that a guy is supposed to do.
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And then one day, God is holding court with his children, his angels,
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and Satan is there, who has been back from going to and fro on the earth,
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I'll bet if I took away all of his wealth and his family,
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I'll bet if I took away his health, then he'd curse you.
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This is followed by 23 chapters where three of Job's friends show up.
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And Job never curses God, but he does curse his own life.
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where Job laments that wisdom is something that no man can discover.
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Then there's six chapters of a young man shows up.
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Job's friends were saying to him, come on, Job.
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You must have done something wrong for all this tragedy to visit your life.
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This young man that shows up is full of piss and vinegar.
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How dare you deny God by saying that you don't deserve this.
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And says, Job, were you there when I built the foundations of the earth?
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Can you go and hook Leviathan on your fishing lure and drag him to the surface?
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where Job's friends help him restore his riches.
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But if your goal, if religion is nothing but the opiate of the masses,
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if your goal is nothing but to tell people to sit down, shut up, and vote liberal,
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then this doesn't seem like the best way to go about it.
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The people that point out that God's kind of a dick in this book,
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You're really making the most use of that college education I can see.
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The two chapters in the beginning where God sets up a bet with Satan,
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And the one chapter at the end where Job's fortunes are restored,
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that comes about with God chastising his friends, saying, help this man.
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The fact of the matter is that it rains on the just and the unjust alike.
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This is the whole topic of the book of Job, that life isn't fair.
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In the past, I've discussed how the laws of morality are very, very akin to the laws of strategy.
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And I like using the laws of strategy because it's easier to abstract that.
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When you read the works of Sun Tzu, when you read any of the books on strategy,
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when do you attack, when do you defend, when do you retreat, when do you hold fast?
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There is this, when you have the momentum, you must keep pushing forward.
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There is this thing, there is this pattern that we can comprehend, that we can attain.
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And the laws of morality are the exact same thing, except they don't just apply to warfare.
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There's all these little holistic little remedies like that.
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Yes, you can benefit quickly in the short term by lying, cheating, and stealing.
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But you'll destroy your reputation in the process.
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The same way that depth matters in a military formation.
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That supply lines are more important than shock troops.
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And our early attempts to understand how to win were our attempts to understand God.
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And eventually our attempts to understand God became our attempts to understand what is good.
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When Job says, I don't curse God, but I curse the day I was born.
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Job is saying, I don't envy those that lie, cheat, and steal.
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However, we live in a world where far, far too often the thieves make off like bandits.
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I'm not saying that they're right to do what they do and I wish I'd done what they'd done.
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Why the hell do we live in a reality where bastards like that win?
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And yet I'm calling out God because God, you let these people win.
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What the hell is the good if the good doesn't win?
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Is them trying to point out, Job, there must have been something you overlooked.
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Clearly, if you followed all the rules, things would have turned out right.
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If you can point out a thing I did wrong, I'll acknowledge it.
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And then the point's really hammered home when you've got a young man.
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When you're 15, you're 20, you think you've got life really figured out?
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That good guys always win and only bad guys lose?
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You get that kid showing up and really going to task on Job.
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Starts off with the criticism from the wise old man.
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actually sometimes does the Bible a huge disservice.
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The earliest mention of Job, to the best of my knowledge,
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And it's probably about a real historical personage.
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But the book was written in the first millennium BC.
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it's part of a wider school of wisdom literature,
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that man is not capable of following the laws of God,
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Medea's the only one that comes to mind right now.
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Well, he does what your typical alpha male does,