Job is the story of how God cut a no-bid contract with Blackwater CEO Satan to lay some progressively greater hurt on the man until he squealed and cussed God out. It was a test of faith.
So first Satan sent in a platoon of Sabeans to take Job’s asses and oxen and kill his servants. Next Satan dropped some napalm which took out all of Job’s sheep and even more servants. Then Satan sent in three platoons of Chaldeans to take all his camels and kill the servants tending those. Finally Satan sent an air squadron of angels to buzz Job’s flimsy little house at supersonic speed. The shockwave flattened the dwelling and killed all of Job’s children.
But Job just shrugged and said he came into the world with nothing, and he would go out of the world with nothing. So Satan tried chemical warfare, which raised big ugly boils on Job. That didn’t do it. Then some of Job’s “friends” came along and counseled Job to curse God, but he wouldn’t do it. But he did go into a long diatribe about his miserable lot in life which would have made some great lyrics for the 12-bar blues:
“Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley.
Ohhhhh, let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley.
The Lord done turned his back on me, the words of Job are ended.”
Finally God himself showed up and outlined Job’s ignorance of the physics behind a planet and its biosphere operating as a thermodynamic engine.
The point of the story, as it turns out, is that God had to make certain engineering compromises when he created the Earth, and sometimes, unfortunately, human beings get caught in the wringer. If God answered a prayer that there be no more hurricanes, for example, then the infrared thermal photons in the ocean would never be transferred to land and ejected into the night sky, so the oceans would heat up, altering the world’s climate and killing the fish. If God answered a prayer that there be no more earthquakes, then erosion over deep time would bring all the mountain ranges down to the level of swamps, there would be no more arable land, and many species would go extinct, including man.
So Job goes, “Nevermind!”
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