The Old Testament story of Job has perplexed followers of God for thousands of years. Was Job’s journey one of suffering without reason, his life a tale of spiritual warfare?
Or is there another explanation?
Using exacting biblical exegesis in her award-winning book The Joy of Job, investigative reporter Maribeth Vander Weele challenges the belief that Job was a righteous man and God arbitrarily allowed him to suffer.
In an age where many preach only the concept of a loving God, Vander Weele, who says she feels like the book was “written by the Spirit,” challenges this assumption and says the Bible’s message requiring repentance and obedience to a holy God is often overlooked.
“God isn’t capricious. He’s loving, and when we don’t listen to Him, He does sometimes have to take drastic measures, like turning us over to Satan,” Vander Weele told Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of “Greenelines” on the Charisma Podcast Network. “The traditional interpretation (of the book of Job) makes God out to be a bad guy. When we look at it in another way, we fall on our knees in humility and say, ‘God, how dare I accuse you of wrongdoing?'”
“I believe that the Lord brought this out in this age because we are living in an age of humanism. Humanism is where everything evolves around us and human comfort and not God’s purposes. … This isn’t about us. It’s about God, and it’s about when we turn ourselves over to Him and allow ourselves to be used for His purposes, very powerful and miraculous things happen. But as long as we think that God is ‘Santa God,’ then we have an absolutely weak Christianity that no one from the outside is interested in following.”
To find out more about this different take on the book of Job, listen to the podcast below.
