For a while, in exasperation after my teenage opposition, my father would say, “Just do it because I said so!” As parents, we’ve likely had occasional recourse to that approach. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers have that understanding of God in common. “Do it, because I am Adonai, your God!” But parents soon learn that, as our kids enter adulthood, they want and deserve a deeper explanation. “I’m asking you to do this (or more strategically: “suggesting that you do this”) because these will likely be the consequences of you not following this particular path.” That is the tone of Deuteronomy and many of the Prophets. Of course, just like parents, those who embraced this consequential view of God quickly discovered that even the promise of rewards or punishments brings unpredictable results! Like many of us, our ancestors longed for an ordered world where behaviors had reasonable and just consequences.
Significantly, the Bible includes a book that challenges that aspirational idea of a world where consequences are appropriate and immediate: Enter the book of Job. Job is good, he’s righteous, and yet he suffers merely because God and Satan have a bet of sorts (in the Jewish Bible, “ha-Satan” is not the Devil, but rather God’s antagonist). “Will Job remain true to God even if things don’t go well?” Satan says no, yet God has faith in Job’s virtue. In this powerful parable, God speaks from a whirlwind and says: “Would you impugn My justice? Would you condemn Me that you may be right?” (Job 40:8) Part of a lengthy speech that ultimately says, Who are you to question me? My ways are beyond your comprehension.
Many of us either embrace or reject notions of God that imagine every action as having a consequence. We often look for divine order behind events in our lives. How well has that idea of God served you? Does Job’s position that God’s ways are beyond our understanding satisfy you? How might you modify your understanding of God as you recognize the Bible’s own variations?
—Rabbi Ron Stern