COMMENTARY: Job: a biblical response to New Age pablum

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ New Age spirituality permeates American culture. Its gurus fill bookstores and TV screens with their theological pablum of personal fulfillment, pain-free living and infinite joy dispensed through sacred stones, astrological charts, aroma therapies, and murmured […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ New Age spirituality permeates American culture.


Its gurus fill bookstores and TV screens with their theological pablum of personal fulfillment, pain-free living and infinite joy dispensed through sacred stones, astrological charts, aroma therapies, and murmured incantations.

With its emphasis on human beings as the center of the universe, New Age spirituality offers its followers a comforting message _ all gain, no pain _ that is the direct opposite of traditional religion.

To achieve perpetual happiness, we are urged to rub the appropriate stones, carefully observe certain planets and stars, enthusiastically chant the right monosyllabic formulas, and reverently read the religiously correct texts. And in a spiritually restless America, where millions change religious identities almost as often as lovers and spouses, New Age thinking has caught on in a huge way.

Until recently, most Jewish and Christian clergy were oblivious to the New Age, minimizing its growing popularity by doing what smugly intrenched leaders have always done throughout history: stigmatize troublesome adversaries with derogatory labels like”pagan”or”idolatry.” There are, however, more fundamental problems with New Age theology.

New Age thinkers perceive a world cut loose from God’s moral judgments; a world whose definitive values and purposes reside solely in humans. In such a world we, and not God, are the true source of creation and existence.

Judaism and Christianity have a profoundly different take on the universe and human lives. Both affirm a First Cause, a Creator of the universe who demands ethical behavior from men and women. Indeed, the source of all moral authority is the Creator and not human beings. Jews and Christians further believe a covenant was established long ago permanently linking God and humans in a relationship that has ultimate meaning and purpose.

For believing Jews and Christians, God is the subject of the universe and men and women are the objects of creation, not the other way around. Unlike many of the New Age teachings I have encountered, Judaism and Christianity acknowledge the widespread persistence of pain and suffering in God’s world and have attempted to provide answers to Rabbi Harold Kushner’s haunting question,”why do bad things happen to good people?” One powerful response to New Age claims of a pain-free, human-centered universe is the biblical book of Job, composed about 2,400 years ago and one of the most profound religious works ever written.

Job _ the Hebrew word means”adversary”_ describes the immense physical and mental suffering inflicted upon an ethically upright individual who loses his family, property, and friends. Even in his utter despair Job does not accept the false solace offered by his highly judgmental friends nor does he seek the easy explanations for his suffering offered by the magicians and soothsayers of his day.

Instead, Job cries out in excruciating pain,”I am innocent … I despise my life … therefore I say: God destroys the innocent and the wicked.” Fully human in his lament, Job, however, does not abandon his faith in God:”But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives … and though God slay me, yet will I trust in him …” At the end of this literary masterpiece, a battered, broken, and bewildered Job is still not reconciled to God, the source of his suffering. The book concludes with God appearing in a whirlwind that overwhelms Job with the awesome majesty of creation:”… now it is My turn to ask questions and yours to answer me. Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundations? … Who decided the dimensions of it, do you know?” Job’s final response to God is filled with spiritual and psychic exhaustion.”… Having seen creation with my own eyes, I retract all I have said … I repent.”And the book happily concludes with Job, the faithful human, restored to his fortunes and his remaining family.


The book’s seemingly contrived ending is unsatisfying because although God has triumphed over Job, the cost to the man was high in physical pain and psychological damage. But as painful as Job’s story may be, it offers a far more realistic answer to human suffering than the mindless claptrap served up by New Age spirituality.

DEA END RUDIN

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