Job’s 3rd friend, the young one, intervenes and suggests who are we to say we can ever comprehend God’s justice? Who are we to hubristically ask the question, “Why me?” and expect an answer? I believe a culture that doesn’t expect an answer, is a culture that is failing. I believe Job was right in asking why me. Jung believed this was a turning point for god. I believe this is where the god image found a reflection, and started to go through a cultural shift. In contrast, this is like natural law versus a seatbelt law. It’s tougher to discern natural law and certainly natural rights. Antigone sees something more ancient than kings, and pays for it with her life. Little Antigone spoke to mighty king Creon almost as if out of the whirlwind, speaking natural law, and he disobeyed it and experienced harsh justice–he lost his son and his wife. It ends with:
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;
No wisdom but in submission to the gods.
Big words are always punished,
And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
Through pain comes suffering; it’s as if divine justice, in the ancient Greek world, is to hurl a thunderbolt into our hearts, searing a scar there to remember it by, and by studying that scar, by shining reason onto it, we are forced to grabble with what the lesson was. When a religions can’t answer a question it loses power. Christianity, by leaning on science, that’s when the snake bit its own tail, and that’s why Nietzsche claimed God is dead. There’s a metaphysical difference between causes and reason, one being due to physical changes, while reasons are mental. So, with illnesses being corporeal, we seem them as causal. Therefore, we don’t ask the reason god gave us these illnesses, that would be absurd to ask. And the further we see things merely causally the more absurd life is. The building of the nuclear bomb, and the landing on the moon showed the power of science, but WW2 didn’t just give rise to that, it also gave way to a holocaust, and philosophers all in unison asking why, and a burst of existentialism gave way, and its very compatible with science. Nobody in their right mind would scorn science, but I still think we need spirituality and ask big questions like Job asked, like the Greek tragedians attempt to answer. The Greek way of life is richer in some ways, because it always looks with reason, and the tragedies are a lexicon of how men must suffer to gain wisdom so not to pass on their mistakes. I don’t think it appeared absurd to the Greeks. They were religious without having a religion, i mean, they didn’t have a formal religious text which always surprised me, so this allows them to be more critical and more flexible with reason. I’ve had three tragedies in my life now, (hoping the next one is a satyre play haha!) But by searching for a reason, and finding one, that’s how suffering becomes wisdom, maybe? And that’s finally when justice has been meted out to its completion. Just midnight ramblings tonight, brought on by a friend’s interesting words.
Stephen C. Pedersen 