by Dongtini — Episode 40
April 18, 2012 in Podcast by dongtini
On this episode: Stephy and Simone talk about the book of Job and wonder if God is a dick, Simone is troubled by the helium shortage, Stephy has WordHate™ issues, Simone went to Radiohead, Stephy asked Dave Bazan to play “Stay For Awhile” by Amy Grant and he DID (see below), adventures in conflict resolution, faith needs questions, and Jones’ Good Ass BBQ and Foot Massage.
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David Bazan covering “Stay For Awhile” and reducing Stephy to tears. Click here to hear.
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Closing song: “God Will Fuck you Up”—John R. Butler
likadikaday!!!!
I heard this all the time growing up in Hawaii! Nobody I met in California had ever heard it.
It reminded me of this weird Hawaii kid thing and made me wonder if Australia kids did it too..
Taking a small lizard and letting it bite you like a clip-on earring. I was always too scared of the lizard getting in my hair to actually do it.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p-AYH9acoYI/Tc6pecqnpbI/AAAAAAAAGV8/omup5FUPo_g/s1600/Earring%2527s+lizard+accessories+01.jpg
Wow! This is the first evidence of it existing outside of Australia! I’m THRILLED! The lizard earring thing is fucking weird though.
In Primary School we did something similar with big termites, never with lizards though…
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I think the Book of Job makes God look like a massive dick!
1) First off, God decides to destroy the life of a really good man to settle a childish bet that the devil kind of tricks Him into making. Can you imagine if a human parent decided to abandon their family for a year just to test if their kids loved them unconditionally? Or if a husband decided to act like an abusive alcoholic to prove to his co-workers that his wife really loves him no matter what? That’s a serious dick move!
2) After destroying Job’s life, God finally shows up and acts like an even bigger dick, basically acting like school principal dressing down a first grader for asking the wrong question. He just uses His power and position to cower Job into silence basically. Instead of just offering some kind of comfort or explanation God instead taunts Job for having the audacity to even ask why this happened to him.
3) Then, after making Job feel like a total worm for even daring to question Him, God then goes on to threaten his friends – the ones who spent the entire book defending God’s honour by assuring Job that God is good and just and would never act out of petty spite.
4) Then there is the alleged “happy ending”. That is not a happy ending! Job lost ALL HIS CHILDREN! Children are not coffee mugs! You can’t just replace one if you broke one!
That’s valid. But it’s a myth that was created to create a space for people to wonder about the character of God and what it’s like to wrestle with him and with each other. It created a picture of people who are coming at Job and telling him why this happened to him, and how in the end God fucked those people up for acting like they had any of the answers. It paints G-d (I like to spell it the Jewish way sometimes) as a dick in the same way Greek mythology paints the gods as dicks. Their folklore went that there was a war between the Titans and Olympians; the Olympians being gods who disagreed with the ruler and his rules. The Titans were the rest of the gods, and they went at each other. The stories aren’t supposed to resolve, they just create space for conversation and imagination. I LOVE that.
I get that. I really love mythology, always have. One of the really fun things about it is to take a moment and go “This used to be THEOLOGY!”. I can’t help but feel like theolojizzing was a lot more fun in the BC days!
General dickishness aside, at least Yaweh wasn’t as rapey as Zeus & pals…
haha! I always kinda liked how Zeus would go around swallowing people who pissed him off. That seemed like a fun solution to me.
With regards to Job just being a parable, how do we know the parable is about questioning and God fucking people up for thinking they know anything? Isn’t it open to interpretation? Clearly the message isn’t clear! Isn’t is easily interpreted as “Don’t diss God, no matter what”? That seems like the more obvious explanation and the one most people draw from it. Parable or not, I don’t think the whimsical parable explanation is necessarily correct, even if it’s far more pleasant.
I think that’s where the disconnect comes in for me as an atheist with Bible stories – to me, they have as much value as Greek and Roman myths, which isn’t to say that I find them completely dismissible. It’s more that I read them, go “seriously, wtf?” at some of the moral implications of the stories (I mean…Leda and the swan?). So the Job story, to me (and Abraham/Isaac), is one of those stories that just completely blows my mind on its own. Then when it goes a step further and people are searching for the value in the story, I feel exasperated by it. Why spend so much time and energy trying to find value in something that’s so blatantly barbaric? Why not, as Simone mentioned this week, take a step back and wonder where and when this story originated and whether it’s actually valuable?
You can call Job a lot of things but I don’t think “whimsical” has ever been used before! Not even Job the Musical (real even which I totally attended) was in any way whimsical and it had dance numbers!
Myths and parables are open to interpretation. In this particular parable God did fuck up the people who thought they knew what God was on about, and from there we can wonder what the hell that is about. Clearly the message isn’t clear!
I don’t understand what you mean by “the whimsical parable explanation is necessarily correct even if it’s far more pleasant.” Do you wish this story tired up nicely and had a moral? I can relate to that.
I also want everyone to be clear that it’s okay with me if you just hate the book of Job and think that there’s no God and think he’s a dick and that’s the end of it. That is absolutely valid and I want people to be where they are, we all need space for that.
Sorry, I guess from your description of God’s “impishness” I have moved into “whimsy”. Here lies a perfect example of interpretations going haywire! As for God fucking up the people who thought they knew what was what, true, but he also fucked up Job who didn’t. Making it all better at the end is like a classic abusive relationship. “It’s okay baby. You know I love you and that black eye will clear up before you know it. Now get your fat ass over here and gimme a kiss.”
Well the message I get from this story is that life is unfair and cruel, often because we are at the mercy of those more powerful than us and their whims. I think that’s kind of a timeless message.
I don’t really like the book, not because of how God is portrayed in it, mostly because it is such a chore to read!
That resonates with me. I remember finding it such a chore. As I’ve come across scholars who can explain the the circumstances under which things were written, which it said in the original language and what the context was, that’s been really fascinating for me. The whole “wait, this isn’t what I was taught about this story. Why weren’t we given context? Why didn’t anyone talk about this part of it?” etc. It doesn’t have to be interesting to anyone else, but it is interesting to me.
Anyone a South Park fan? They recently touched on the “Is God a dick?” question in the Jewpacabra episode. Regarding the Exodus story, was God acting like a dick by constantly violating Pharaoh’s free will so more plagues could hit? Or did the nation of Egypt totally have that one coming?
I saw that one! Cartman was all “You’re wrong, Kyle! God is not a dick!”
South Park had an earlier episode with the story of Job, too: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104224/the-book-of-job
Pretty fun.
“Good Ass BBQ?” BBQ Ass?