People who talk to God i can understand. People who heard God talk to them are very concerning to me.
I just talk to myself. That way when I let myself down, I don’t feel like I’ve been forsaken.
Hail squid god!
Fuck I can’t even get a squid god to talk to me.
Everyone seems to miss the whole point of the story of Job.
The point is that he is pious even at the worst of times. His faith in Yahweh isn’t because his faith is rewarded, or that his life is good.
And that true faith overcomes and resists all temptation, even when times are at their hardest.The story is however a great example of the objectification of women though, when his wife is replaced by a younger, hotter, one at the end.
Everyone understands that, that’s a surface-level reading not some secret hidden meaning. The problem is if you take more than a second to think about it instead of just taking the story at face value you see the real relationship here.
You have one horrifically vile being ruining someone’s life even though the victim worships them. The victim continues to worship them in spite of their atrocities just because they’re powerful.
It’s touted as a story about how you should just keep blind faith in the powerful but that’s really the exact opposite of what it shows. And it’s more relevant now than ever, I’m sure it’ll take you no effort at all to think of another toxic parasocial relationship.
You have one horrifically vile being ruining someone’s life even though the victim worships them. The victim continues to worship them in spite of their atrocities just because they’re powerful.
You literally just perfectly described the entire MAGA movement.
This. ALL of this. I hate the story of Job because it just encourages people to accept abuse.
Unfortunately, this plays into why Christianity spread so far to start with. Storues like this reinforce class dynamics, which means ruling classes around the world want to implement them, and since they have more political power they have that ability.
This is a large part of why the vikings moved away from paganism to Christianity. It simply benefitted the rulers, from chiefs to kings. So they eventually forced their people to switch under threat of execution.
I think, and it’s hard for me as an agno-atheist to really put myself in a devout person’s shoes, making the religuosity too reward based.
Actually devout people aren’t that for an afterlife reward, they’re religious because of actual faith that it’s better for the world.
If anyone only holds to their faith for whatever it’s purported benefits are, they’re not pious, simply herd followers who would cling to whatever creed they were raised under.
I doubt this. Atheists (myself included) often get the frustrating question of “what stops you from harming people if you don’t believe in Hell?” when people learn about our lack of faith.
Many of them think that promises of reward and punishment are the only thing ensuring that people act morally.
If you’ve ever talked to a religious conservative American, many of them believe that religion, particularly Christianity, has a monopoly of defining what morality is.
Yes, and those are the people that I think are herd-followers and not actually devout.
Anyone who asks “why don’t you become a murder hobo if you don’t think there’s a hell?” is probably not a very functional being.
Their need for a patriarch figure to impose external order and validation on them explains a whole lot about US nuttiness.
Anyone who asks “why don’t you become a murder hobo if you don’t think there’s a hell?” is probably not a very functional being.
Funnily enough, this plays into a comment I made in a different thread that some people actually do behave like NPC’s
You just described every religious person. Christians especially, waiting for the kingdom in heaven.
Not all of them, though sure you Yanks probably have a much larger percentage of the nutty ones who need The Patriarch to impose order and moralitytm on Earth due to their own inability to do morality.
No, we got the point.
You missed the one where that’s the ideology of an abuser.
OK, maybe I missed the memo on that as I keep seeing it as a go to to show that “belief is stupid” , or that “religion is dumb”, which there are far better story picks to show.
Cause the comic here making Job’s faith about protecting his family is not what Bible Job would pray for. But I’m probably putting too much into a cute little gotcha! comic for anti-thiests.
Except that’s literally what the story says that Job would pray for:
Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom. Job 1:5b, NIV
His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.
Makes it seem more of a following their birthday feast custom than an everyday habit in context.
A response to feared decadence than a main goal of keeping family safe.
Also his kids are replaced too. Story is very fucked.
Yup. That too.
The morals of it are fully borked. Just don’t “at” it on the faith angle.
The most important part of the story (to me) is when his friends come and tell Job that he must be evil to deserve misfortune. Job knows he has been good and faithful and he is strong in that belief, so instead of accepting their backwards reasoning, he goes to ask God for an explanation.
(This actually shows his belief in his own faithfulness is stronger than his belief that God will be good to the faithful and he is justified by the next part.)
After much begging and pleading, God gives him an explanation, but it is “sorry bro, Gods don’t really care about mortal suffering”.
Then after God proved his point, he rewards Job after all, but it’s honestly a cop-out to let the story have some other ending than just “and then Job fucking died”. I think the story is older than the idea of heaven or Job could have had his reward there. Might have gelled better with the New Testament.
The point is that he is pious even at the worst of times.
that’s one take.
Another: the point is that if god will treat the most pious this way, when he likes job, what will he do to the nonbeliever? better have faith or else.
Except he spends 20-something chapters arguing the opposite, basically saying that he wants to argue his case against God in court (which is what finally happens, beginning with the “Speech from the Whirlwind” in Chapter 32). The Book of Job has been seen as incredibly problematic – not just from the view of “God as Cosmic Abuser,” but also from the perspective of “how dare Job challenge God”. The Elihu chapters (32-37) are clearly a later addition, created by some reader who was so offended by the lack of defense of God’s position by Job’s “friends” that he felt it necessary to add his own midrash in the middle of the book.
I personally do not believe that Job is generally interpreted the way that the original author intended; I think that a better way of understanding it is to see it as a kind of fairy tale – one that visibly demonstrates that traditional understandings of God’s righteousness (“Might defines right”) are morally bankrupt. I fully acknowledge, though, that most do not see it that way.
see it as a kind of fairy tale
uh thats the entire book bro
Capitalist myth that working makes you a more pious person, no, being pious makes you a more pious person
