I've been trying to read Job. That's a good one Read Job while looking for a job.
I'm was quite interested in Job's responses at the beginning.
The first one when he'd lost all his belongings and children
The second one (to his wife)
And then
hmmm
I wonder. Is the first response just an automatic response? Just a habit? Is it that only a while later the enormity of it hits him and then he truly responds? Which is by the way spread across quite a few chapters. The first time he blesses God. The second time he seems quite irritable and there is no blessing. Yet he holds on. And then the curse...
So question.
Are we running on autopilot?
Are we just salivating on stimulus and seamed into a habit?
I'm was quite interested in Job's responses at the beginning.
The first one when he'd lost all his belongings and children
Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has take away; blessed by the name of the Lord.(NRSV: wish I could say translation mine but 10 years in Bangalore didn't help my Kannada)
The second one (to his wife)
You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we recieve the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?
And then
Let the day perish in which I was born... (rant rant rant)
hmmm
I wonder. Is the first response just an automatic response? Just a habit? Is it that only a while later the enormity of it hits him and then he truly responds? Which is by the way spread across quite a few chapters. The first time he blesses God. The second time he seems quite irritable and there is no blessing. Yet he holds on. And then the curse...
So question.
Are we running on autopilot?
Are we just salivating on stimulus and seamed into a habit?
3 comment(s) to... “Pavlov and the nun”
3 thinks:
We've had similar conversations before :) But thirty years of this kind of thing can wear on one's 'natural' responses ;)
It's one of those things I don't think we can really analyse. We all have our own processes of handling things - and this will impact our faith, and expression of it.
However, it seems to me that as human beings there is only so much we can bear before we crack. And continual difficulty is much harder to handle, by its constancy, than one major crisis (perhaps). We cope better when we see an end in sight.
That is why, I think, crises of faith are particularly hard on us - we can't see the end of them. People can say 'there is light', but all we see is dark. Will we ever emerge from the darkness? (I appreciate I am going off the subject and context of Job here!) The last few years I really, really struggled with this. I honestly didn't know how I would emerge from it. I would go into a Christian bookshop and walk out again, unable to cope with all the book titles and Christianese. I was far too raw. I have, in a sense, come through it, but it shaped me. Not necessarily in a bad way, though. I had to learn to be utterly real, in whatever way that meant at the time.
Meh, I must stop before I waffle you to death :)
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