Lucretius And Job's Suffering

Like diamonds, we as humans succumb to great amounts of pressure (suffering).
Pressure can cause us to break, fall, or die. When we suffer it causes us to be weighed down if we allow our suffering to control our lives. With all of the misfortune in everyday life, sometimes it just adds on to the backs of individuals making it hard to move forward, the pressure brings new meaning to the phrase “no pain, no gain.” Once the pressure ceases we are unearthed as glorious diamonds that the pressure of long suffering has created, and we become jewels in God’s mine. I want to present a question about whether Job and Lucretius both argue that incredible human suffering means the existence of (g)God is justified. First, the suffrage of
Job, Job was a man who was blessed as well as faithful, who lived to serve Yahweh. Due to the grace Yahweh bestowed upon Job it motivated Satan to challenge
Yahweh to present Job’s faith and loyalty to determine if Job was truly faithful, or that he was faithful because of Yahweh’s protection. Job’s protection was removed, and this gave Satan the opportunity to take all that was precious to Job, including: his wealth, his family, and his physical health, but not his life. Through the suffering Job endured he did not renounce Yahweh, and stopped short of accusing Yahweh of being unjust. Yahweh is actually defined to mean, “I AM that I AM”, which was what Yahweh told
Moses in Exodus chapter 3:13-14, to tell the Israelites when Moses asked, “Whom should I say has sent me?” Yahweh being who He is has a divine right not to have to justify His actions to the likes of man.

With Yahweh’s authority over creation, His actions should not be judged by man because Yahweh is Yahweh, and He is just. Job had suffered a great deal, but Job being as faithful as he was never denied Yahweh praise or harsh criticisms. Job never denied Yahweh’s existence, but three of his friends came to Job due to his recent misfortunes. They argued with Job, on whether or not Yahweh’s existence was justified due to Job’s suffering.
Job did not listen to their argument or reasoning, and told them that they spoke no knowledge or wisdom, and while he suffered he faithfully believed in Yahweh. In the end, Job was rewarded double of what he had before his troubles. Job’s family and land were restored to him because of his faith Job received extended life and lived to see four generations of his beautiful family. He was tested and had to endure so much, and through the pressure thrown upon him through the pain and fear, in the end he was able to shine. In Job’s case human suffering is justified through the existence of God. Secondly, Lucretius the poet philosopher, Lucretius held to his belief that all things happen by natural causes without any involvement by the gods, and that humankind could be free from fear of the god(s). Lucretius wrote the epic poem, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of
Things). It was a poem written in six books that explains life and the world of Epicurean principles and atomism.
To clarify, atomism was the attention that was not focused on detailed explanations of many phenomena, but on general aspects of these occurrences and on the basic lines
agreeing that a rational explanation of these aspects was possible. Lucretius believed that the universe functioned without the aid of god(s), that the fear of religion was harmful to human life, and anything that took up space was made up of unseen particles that would collide together and swerve in new directions eternally.

In comparison to Job, Lucretius believed that the deities had no sway over the natural world. If pain was an issue in an everyday situation it wasn’t the god(s) doing it, but instead it was a natural phenomenon. Lucretius would say that it was the involvement of atoms constantly moving and crashing into one another causing random events to happen by chance.
Lucretius, I believe sways more to the non-existence of deities, but Lucretius himself was not what we call an atheist today, but he argued the gods didn’t create the universe, nor did they even know we existed. They were limited in awareness, power, and imagination, and Lucretius saw them as ungodly. He exposed god(s) as frauds by questioning assumptions like: the earth was made for us, when in reality it was aggressive to humans, they answered our prayers, rewarded our virtue, and punished us. All the assumptions Lucretius kicked under the table with wordy and logical rebuttals, and expressed how he thought we should not fear the god(s) punishing us. The false supposition generates paralyzing fear of death and natural phenomena causing humans to fear life. Natural disasters and disease become agents of divine retribution, but according to Lucretius nature is a law unto itself. Nature has no masters, and nature is doing what nature does without help of the god(s). To summarize the comparison between Job and Lucretius, I would like to point out that they are both faithful. Job was faithful to Yahweh, and Lucretius faithful to his beliefs and strong individualism. Without faith both men would not have made it as far as they did. Job’s faith rewarded him with everything he had lost during his suffering, and Lucretius’s faith in his theory allowed him to become an very influential philosopher who has had several individuals pick up his ideology. In my opinion, Lucretius was a man that did not like the idea of not having control over his life, and tried to grasp control over it by renouncing his cultures deities. I believe that
Lucretius was the most faithful because of the lack of a spiritual foundation in his life, and of course caused him to lash out at the possibility of divine intervention. Job of course suffered, but I believe his experience was easier because he already had a rock solid spiritual foundation in Yahweh. When it comes to my faith, I strongly believe in God. Not because it is something I’ve been told to do from a young age, but because I have witnessed and have gone through many trials during the twenty-one years I have been on this earth. I relate more to Job than I do with
Lucretius not because I do not agree with atomism because honestly God made atoms, and it’s hard to agree with something that was thought to be concrete and turned out to be just another creation of God, but it is just the experiences I have had that has strengthened my faith. God has been a great asset in my life. At first I did not always believe in God because of that very question I introduced Job and Lucretius with. If God existed why am I in this situation? After I established my faith I found the answer to that question. The situations or problems I have are all there to help me learn. God does not put us through anything we cannot go through without Him. If I am in pain I have to fight because if I don’t then I will be in pain forever, and I strongly believe God has something big planned for me, and all the painful and frightening situations I have been in will help me fulfill that calling He has on my life. In 2007, I witnessed my grandfather cast a demon out of my sister Taylor. My grandfather was the preacher of Gobblers Knob Church of God, in Cohutta GA. It started off as any other day. My family and I were sitting in the living room, of the house we were renting from my dad’s boss at the time, and during that year my dad and Taylor’s mom were fighting for custody of her, and for a while Taylor had not been the same girl she used to be. She was distant, secretive, and just the opposite of what I had grown up with.
As the day went on everything was normal until later that evening around 6:12pm my siblings and I were outside playing, including Taylor. We were chasing each other back and forth playing tag, or hide and seek. We were all having a great time until Taylor started acting very strange. She was just mean and not like herself at all. She would call us inappropriate names, and badmouth family members, and suddenly had a very colorful vocabulary for a seventh grader. Being as young as we were we told on her, but it was dismissed by our parents because we had company over. My grandfather and grandmother, and both were strong in their faith. When our parents sent us away my grandfather stopped us before we made it back outside and asked us what was wrong, so we told him. The way he looked at us after we told him about Taylor scared me. It was like he saw someone die right in front of him. My grandfather told my dad that he needed to pray over her, and my dad knowing what that meant quickly rushed outside where Taylor was sitting underneath a near-dead willow that was on the bank of a small creek that ran by the house. My grandfather, grandmother, and dad all called Taylor to the front porch of the house, so they could begin praying. Taylor did not resist the prayer, but after a few moments of praying in tongues. Taylor started to dry heave and then eventually threw up, and when she did I saw this small white ball the size of a big marble fall to the ground with the vomit.
It had a white burning glow, and it made this hissing noise like a snake, but as fast as it hit the ground my grandfather and dad already had it set on fire, and it hissed loudly.
After that ordeal, Taylor was back to normal for a while, but the point of this portion of my life is that, I had witnessed a miracle of God and that was not the first or last. I have seen healings, miraculous occurrences, and I have felt the love of God once before when I was prayed over and felt the Holy Spirit. What we must realize is that there are so many things in the world that can hurt us, or even kill us, and when it does we need to realize that without God we cannot overcome something that truly means us harm if we do not have faith. It is crazy to think anything without God’s help is possible.
In relation, If Job did not have God he wouldn’t have had the chance to get his land and family back, and I really think if Lucretius would have had a stronger belief system he would have been a happier man that would have lived passed forty-four. I believe that what makes humans doubt God is fear. I do not mean the fear
of
God I mean average fear. Fear will cause us to turn away from what frightens us, and God does not deserve to be turned away from. God is perfect and God is love, and in the Bible it says that perfect love banishes fear, so what I am proposing is that if an individual has God they will never feel pain because the perfect love that God is will keep the fear that causes us to feel pain at bay, and the pain that is always a creation of fear will be cast away. In conclusion, Job never argued that since pain existed that the existence of Yahweh was unjustifiable. Job had always been faithful to Him, and even when it seemed like Yahweh abandoned him. Job faithfully waited until it was over not knowing when that would be. Lucretius on the other hand argued that natural law overruled the existence of any deity; even if they existed or not.
My faith has not changed since I’ve began this essay. If I hadn’t gone through pain then I wouldn’t have chosen this topic. I would honestly place myself in Jobs shoes and would have tried to walk a mile because I know he had the worst experience, but that is what it is all about, experience. If humans didn’t experience pain then God would not be needed because with pain we learn, and through learning we can teach, and Jesus Christ is probably the best example of that message.