“Blame not the victim”. It’s become a secular creed these days, and with such force you might almost think it had biblical authority. Search both Old and New Testaments from cover to cover and you will not find those exact words anywhere, but would you find the message?
Yes, and no.
One of the most difficult parts of the Old Testament is the book of Job. The message is profoundly disturbing and for that reason most people prefer to skim over it. I believe the more difficult a biblical passage is, the more important it is, so today I will consider the book of Job.
The book of Job begins with a meeting between God and the Devil (the latter having been walking back and forth on the Earth). They discuss God’s servant Job, a pious man who has been blessed by God, both with material wealth and with sons and daughters. God praises Job’s faith, but the Devil argues that Job only has faith in God because he is happy and prosperous. God and the Devil make a bet; God allows the Devil to take away Job’s material wealth and kill his sons and daughters. Then when Job doesn’t abandon God, the Devil is allowed to inflict Job with painful diseases. Shunned by friends and neighbours, Job is barely able to rest night or day, scratching himself with a potsherd in a vain attempt to relieve his suffering.
The first temptation of Job comes when his wife tells him to shake his fist at God and die. Though the bible doesn’t say so, we can probably assume the Devil put the thought into her head in much the same way he did with Eve. Job’s response is that this would be sheer foolishness. Despite his affliction, he refuses to abandon his faith in God.
Soon, Job’s three remaining friends come to commiserate with him. For a while they simply sit in silence while Job speaks in his anguish. Job is a good man; he cannot understand why these things are happening to him. He cries out to God, not cursing him but asking “Why, God? Why are you doing this to me?” We cannot help but sympathise, which of us has not been in the same position at some time or other? In this case, we too know that Job has done nothing wrong. Job’s three friends, however, do not know that. One after another, they accuse Job of being sinful and call on him to repent.
The attitude of Job’s friends is understandable in the context of the time and culture. Misfortune, especially sickness was seen as a punishment from God. God is just, Job is obviously being punished, so it stands to reason that Job must have sinned. They heap accusations on Job; he has turned widows and orphans away unfed and unclothed. There is a certain truth to this, after all, rich as Job is it would be impossible for him to feed and clothe all the widows and orphans, but Job is a good man. Job defends himself, answering every charge bought against him. Eventually, Job’s friends fall silent, seeing that Job is “righteous in his own eyes”.
Then a young man called Elihu speaks up, and though he chides Job, he does not accuse him as the others have. Most of his speech is praise of God and his unknowable majesty.
Finally, God himself speaks. We might have expected him to say “Well done, good and faithful servant, he instead thunders at Job in a most memorable rebuke. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?...Have you seen the storehouses of the hail?...Have you seen Leviathan?...can you draw him out with a hook?” Essentially, God says “Who are you to question me, the creator of the universe?”
Job repents, and God forgives him. God expresses his displeasure at Job’s friends and tells them that they must repent but that Job will pray for them. God does not rebuke Elihu, however. Finally, God promises to give Job even more than he had before.
So, does the Book of Job essentially say, “Blame not the victim?”
I have not finished wrestling with the Book of Job, I have barely started. I still can’t quite get my head around the reason God did not condemn Elihu when he condemned Job’s three friends, but I think I can say no, the message is not simply ‘don’t blame the victim’.
Throughout history, the Jewish people have been disproportionately successful. There are many reasons for this, but I believe a major one is that when things go wrong, the Jews are more likely to say “We have sinned” than to blame others. What Job’s wife suggested, to shake your fist at God, is the first and most human impulse. In these secular times, shaking your fist at God is not an option, so instead we shake our fist at our secular idols and devils: society, systemic racism, big corporations, the state, the patriarchy. That is what is meant by “Don’t blame the victim,” and it is the first thing the Book of Job condemns.
But the Book of Job also warns us of the equal and opposite error; that of saying to someone who is suffering “It’s all your fault, you brought this on yourself.” God was right to rebuke Job’s friends when they insisted (no doubt with a certain amount of smug, self-righteousness) that God was punishing Job for his sins. If a woman is raped while out jogging in the morning, it is cruel to ask, “what was she wearing?” If a friend is diagnosed with cancer, it is cruel to say that God is punishing him or her, and equally cruel to suggest the secular equivalent that the cancer was the result of eating the wrong foods or living the wrong style of life.
When bad things happen, either to ourselves or others, it is worth asking questions. What could I have done differently? What can we learn from this? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, languishing in the gulags had every reason to shake his fist at God, or certainly at Hitler and Stalin. Instead, he looked within himself. He discovered that without the compliance of millions of ordinary people like himself, there would be no Hitlers and no Stalins. Why shake your fist at the state? In the end you are shaking your fist at yourself. The line between good and evil runs through every human heart. When we say, “Don’t blame the victim,” or shift the blame, either from ourselves or from those we see as victims, we deny agency to the victim and eliminate any chance of learning from the situation. And with no learning, there will be no change, no improvement.
Bad things happen to good people, it has always been this way, and it always will. How can a God who is just allow these things to happen? Because God has his own reasons which we do not understand. God made that clear in his message to Job. When bad things happen to you or someone you love do not assume it is a punishment. John 9, 2-3 tells the story of a man born blind.
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
You could argue that it was the same with Job. Not only was he no more sinful than any other man of his time, he was an especially righteous man. What happened to Job was not punishment for sin, but so that the works of God might be displayed in his forbearance and his eventual success. We do not become strong by sitting in a chair enjoying the easy life, but by exercising or through hard work. God inflicted the suffering on Job not because he was bad but because through adversity he could become even better. Eventually, Job became far richer than he was before, and that has been the case so many times in history. So many times, people have lost everything, suffered terribly, but gone on to great success because they refused to ‘shake their fist at God’ and give up.
It may seem disturbing to think of God and the Devil having a bet for the soul of Job, but the fact is, God makes the same bet every day for the souls of each and every one of us. The Devil is cunning, he doesn’t use the same tactics every time. Sometimes he says, “Let me fill his pockets with money and he’ll claim it all for himself and deny you had anything to do with it,” or “Let me give her a million likes on social media and she’ll sell me her soul for a million more.”
When anything happens to you in life, good or bad, don’t assume it is either a reward for virtue or a punishment for sin. By all means ask yourself, have I done anything to deserve it? but remember that in the end God’s ways are unknowable. Instead of praying for relief, ask God “what are you trying to teach me, Lord?” in time he will reveal it to you.
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