Job: Mr. Korah, has it come to your attention that my whole body is one huge scar, and that, though still of a hale age, I have not one hair left remaining that is not ghost white?

Korah: Oh yes, yes.  But I mean, people always thought of God in negative, nasty ways: as if the Almighty were a giant killer lion or a black sucking hurricane or something.  That’s why your experience is so important.  We can finally have done with all that tough talk about God and can acclaim Him as the sweet Creator of all things nice.

Job: Tell me, Mr. Korah, have you ever seen Leviathan?

Korah: Who?

Job:  Behemoth?

Korah: What?

Job:  They’re just two sweet creatures of your “sweet Creator”.  The one is a sea monster of such titanic proportions as to seem a very island vomited out of the sea.  His eyes are torches, his teeth are swords, his mouth is hellfire, and his appetite all the men of Israel, their maidservants, menservants, she-asses, he-asses, and yoke of oxen put together, would not suffice to glut.  The “sweet Creator”, it would seem, is a most savage artist.  He thunders forth monstrosities at the rate of fourscore an hour.

Korah:  Oh, ah, yes, ahem.  And this Behemoth, what’s he like?

Job:  You really want to know?

Korah:  Heh-heh... maybe some other time.  But returning to my main theme: I have here with me my latest book, “God is luv” (in bookstores now), which talks about how all this ghastly nonsense about God being angry and sending floods and all is just old men’s humbuggery.  We are not to fall on our faces anymore or kneel in slavish fashion to some ill-defined, ill-tempered “God”.  Instead, we should merely indulge a sense of supplication to the spirit of sweetness and tolerance and light in our prayers, seeing the Higher Power

not so much as Master, but as dialogue Partner, or Friend.

Job: Tell me, Mr. Korah, have you any acquaintance with my recent history?

Korah:  Oh yes, something about disease and death.  Really unpleasant.

Job:  That’s right.  God let Satan crush the house where my children lived.  They are all of them dead.  My wife then cursed God and begged for death.  Shortly after that my whole body broke out into ulcers.  My house and property were then destroyed by fire from heaven, so that I could do nothing but scramble onto a dungheap and scratch my sores with broken pottery shards.  Then my friends blamed me for everything that had happened, and I waited for a seemingly deaf God to answer the question “Why?”

Korah:  How very negative!

Job: How very unlike your God.

Korah: But why would God do that?

Job:  You will have to read my book to find that out, and even it is only a preview for what’s going to happen in about 2000 years.  Then the question will not be “How could a God

Korah:  This is too much talk about suffering.

Job:  That’s because you live in a bubble.  Look at the world around you: see those scars, taste those tears.  Death is.  Evil is.  War is.  Disease is.  The lions are eating, not lying down with the lambs.  Nature’s temple will have Leviathan in her pews, and yet you cannot account for it.  Your God of sweetness and niceness and light is a sham.  God is not nice.  God is not an uncle.  God is an earthquake.

Korah:  But… this is terrible!  It can’t be true.  The beauty of the sunset refutes it.  The sweetness of falling in love refutes it.  The melodies of music refute it.  God can’t be like that.  Creation is too lovely.

Job:  So lovely it hurts.  So poignant it kills.  Life is a rose-garden, as you wish, but those roses have thorns, as you ignore.  We go, in life, from insect to beggar to son to saint: but there is no going at all without the martyrdom, without the daily death.  The sunset, too, will die.  The music will cease.  The lovers will perish.  Put your stock in these, and when the worm is on your corpse’s cheek, where will they have gone?  You will be nothing then but a ghost licking up the spit of sweet memories past.  But if you give in to the God who kills to make alive, then you will have those gifts restored again, and better than that, the Giver of the gifts.  That’s how my story ended.  But first, you have to shut up and let God show up.  Let Him tell you your story, but Thou shalt not tell Him His.  When God is present is no time to speak.  Better just to lay your mouth in the dust and let your painter paint you.

Korah:  Hmm, I still think love is the better way.  I don’t understand why God wants to break heads.

Job:  At least you know now that He does want to break heads.  In a world where floods kill and leopards maim, a God of sweetness is damned fools talk.  God breaks heads, dashes skulls: the world burns.  But a God of love, if He were to permit suffering, would do so for the very sake of love.  For if there is anything that we are unwilling to do, it is to suffer, and if there is anything that makes us willing to suffer, it is love.  That’s why God destroyed my fortunes: to save my soul.  Suffering is therefore love’s proof, and love is why Creation exists: Leviathan and all.

Korah:  I’ll try to remember that the next time I take an arrow in the chest.

Job:  Good!  Hand me a bow.