Thinking It Over: Job and God’s...

Three well-heeled theologians walked into a bar to meet with a peer who had fallen on hard times and was facing a harsh legal sentence. It was the...
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The Peculiar Character of Seventh-day...

“Blameless and upright.” According to scripture (Job 1:8), Job was known as a person of good moral character. Of course, one can always argue about “...
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Job's Redeemer

In the last attempt to defend himself at the court case Job longs for perpetual and written evidence of his innocence. The unfairness of his...
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What DID God Say to Job?

Most readers of the book of Job find the divine speeches (Job 38-41) bewildering. (To avoid biblical references and footnotes, I merely direct the...
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The Enigma of Elihu

 Elihu, the fifth wheel, the young upstart, the babbler—he has been caricatured as all of these.  He has even been called a disguise for Satan.  Many...
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Tradition and Experience Prove...

It should not surprise us to realize that what we claim to know about God may very well turn out to be wrong. Coming to terms with the realization...
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Innocent Blood

Probably not as strange as it may initially seem, but comedians are the actors who most frequently play the part of God: George Burns, John Cleese,...
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The Tears on God's Face

The book of Job had never triggered this question for me before, but all of a sudden it came to me as I was working on this commentary: Where are the...
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Eliphaz

Wise Man Talking Talk about absurdity, that painful presence of meaninglessness! We bump into it everywhere. This morning, as I ran around Hamburg’s...
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Cursing the Day of One’s Birth

The concrete subtleties of Hebrew narrative can easily elude readers versed in theological talking points and religious "viewiness" (to quote...
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