"One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the Lord, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." The Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil." Then Satan answered the Lord, "Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face." The Lord said to Satan, "Very well, all that he has in your power; only do not stretch your hand against him!" So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. -Job 1.6-1.12
i promise you. i'm the last person you need to worry about gettin' preachy. bare with me. let's look at this story as a piece of literature.
in my spiritual lit. class this morning we discussed the book of job. focusing on the beginning of the story, a huge part of the class was dedicated to discussing what it meant for god and satan to be hanging out, talking to each other as equals; the whole idea really hit a nerve with most people. i heard the words "ultimate good" and "ultimate evil" being thrown around. the idea that god and satan could ever be walking around together, looking down at earth and talking about who's life to impact together did not sit well with most. thinking of god as the ultimate good and satan as the ultimate evil; binary opposition, no? god and satan = good and evil = opposites.
someone in class then mentioned that the definition of "satan" at the time that job was supposedly written was not exactly what the rest of us have been accustomed to. in the footnotes of the first chapter it reads "In the book of Job, Satan is not yet the personal name of the devil, as in later Jewish and Christian literature. Rather, the Hebrew (with the definite article) simply means "the adversary" or "the accuser", a reference to one of the members of the divine council who served as a sort of independent prosecutor. " this explanation of was meant by "satan" in the story did not change the class from talking of "good" and "evil".
what does it mean that god is good? what does is mean that satan is evil? assuming that at the time the book of job was written, satan was an associate force of god. this force served on a panel of judges, regardless of how it judged. the way i'm reading it is that at this point, satan was just the otherworldly force looking to pick apart the faults and shortcomings of the earthly world.
i really am trying to make a relevant point, so i'm going to work myself through this based yesterday's lecture.
i read the story of job as being about a ("good") man who's life is constantly afflicted by an agreement of sorts between god and satan. no matter how badly life gets, job's loyalty to god remains strong and true, although he has no answer as to why god is allowing these things to occur in his life. job has three friends; eliphaz, bildad, and zophar argue that the reason for job's awful, afflicted life must be the fact that he is a sinner. job and reader know this is not true. eliphaz, bildad, and zophar represent the status quo of the time. they humanize the belief that god condemns the lives and souls of those who scorn him.
let's think about the story being about morality. since good and evil are words that are juxtaposed as binary opposites, i think its safe to say that good is generally favored over evil... naturally and universally. since good is favored over evil, one could say that good is the center of the structure of morality; good being present.
i must point out that good would not exist without evil. the idea of "evil" is not necessarily less present than the idea of "good", rather its simply socially accepted as the better half. the idea of evil defines the idea of good, and vice versa. and what does it mean to place the name evil on something? as i found out today, the fact that most people have this association with satan as evil is completely irrelavant in terms of the book of job. this force is not mentioned as evil, rather - to humanize the force, he was just doing his job (no pun intended). that job's friends were chalking the unfortunate events of his life up to his sin implies their belief in the center of morality being good. assuming they represent the belief of the general population at the time, the belief is that evil breeds immorality.. which is also saying that good breeds morality. but you can't have one without the other, right?
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3 comments:
At the end you said you cannot have one with out the other. It is interesting to see the views in which people see things...that is the structuralist view. I am sort of in the frame of mind of the post-structuralistI where there is no real stable ralationship between-'good vs. evil'. The post-structuralist think that with such direction binary oppositions the meaning itself become tainted...post-structuralist use binaries but at the same time know that there is no central meaning (there is no essential).
bravo for bringing up the good v. evil binary, as well as the history of the development of "Satan" as a figure and concept, particularly in christian history (which is something which I have personally become increasingly interested in--the meaning of "Satan" seems so fixed, but it, like most things, has actually transformed dramatically over time from questioner, accuser, opposition, like you said, to trickster, and finally to the embodiment of evil).
I think your example is incredibly relevant, but I think you might not only expose the imbalance of privilege in a moral system towards good in the good, evil binary, but rather, look to Nietzsche and throw out the whole binary altogether. Expose that as the false center of the structure which governs so much of our thought.
i also studied this story in a religion and totally agree with you when you say, "that job's friends were chalking the unfortunate events of his life up to his sin implies their belief in the center of morality being good." I also agree with you when you say that good and evil are binary oppositions. I think that things are identified by thier opposites especially these two terms! without good there would be no evil and without evil there would be no good.
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