PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE
But there is another part of the answer, which comes not from the nature of Job but from the nature of God. Because of what God is, he cannot show up in answer to Job's questions, in function of Job's needs. God will not answer Job because God is not the Answer Man. He is not the Answerer, the Responder.He is the Initiator, the Questioner. He is not second but first, "in the beginning". His name (which reveals his essence) is "I AM", not "HE IS". God exists in the First Person Singular. He is Subject, not Object, not even object of Job's searchings and questionings.
Everyone who has ever met God at distinct from a concept of God, all the saints and mystics, everyone, in other words, who is like Job rather than his three theologian friends, has said the same thing: when you meet God, you cannot put the meeting into words, much less the God you meet. God cannot be an object of our concepts. Concepts shatter like broken eyeglasses- in fact, like broken I's. No longer and I I and God my Thou, my object; now God is I, and I am His thou, His object. Thus the mystics say strange things about the self, as if it were an illusion or destroyed in this encounter. The illusion that is destroyed is not the self itself but its usual standpoint in which I am I, the center, and God appears on my screen somewhere. THIS self is an illusion, and God shatters it by reversing the standpoint: we appear on his screen. We are his object, not he ours.
That is why Jesus manifests his divinity so powerfully by always reversing the relationship into which questioners try to put him. His enemies try to pin him down; he pins them down. They try to classify him; he classifies them. They try to judge him; he judges them. Even his friends try to unveil him, understand him, reveal him, get the mystery of who he is to come out of hiding; but every encounter accomplishes the opposite: THEY are unveiled, understood, revealed; the mystery of who THEY are has to come out of hiding when in the presence of the divine Light. "Shall we stone the adulteress or not?"-- "Let him without sin cast the first stone." "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?"-- "Give God what is God's and Caesar what is Caesar's." (They were robbing both.) "Who is my neighbor?"-- "Go and be a neighbor, like the good Samaritan." Whenever you try to test him, he tests you, for he is the teacher and you are the student, not vice versa.
... For the one thing you cannot light up is light. Light is the best physical symbol for God because it is the only physical thing that cannot be an object of sight. God cannot be an object of sight, physical or mental. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that we know God correctly only when we know him unknowable. Scripture says the same thing: "No man has seen God at any time; only the only-begotton Son, in the bosom of the Father, has made him known" (John 1:18). If God had not taken the initiative to reveal himself, there is no way we could know him. When we want to know a stone, it is passive, and we are all active. When we want to know an animal, it is a little bit active, and it can run away and hide. When we want to know another person, we are dependent on the other's free choice to be known, as well as our own free choice to know: the two roles are equal. Finally, when we want to know God, all the activity must begin from his side.
So God cannot show up to answer Job's questions as if he were a library book (which is the way Job's three friends treat God). Job pushes buttons, but the God machine does not work, not because it is broken but because it is not a machine. Job finally realizes this when God shows up in his true character as Questioner, not Answerer. That is why Job repents in the end (Job 42:6). What he repents of is not some specific sin he has committed and hidden, as the three friends suspect, but of his metaphysical mistake, his sin against the grammer of being, his playing the part of God. The best words Job uttered were his last: "The words of Job are ended." Only when Job shuts up does God show up.
Most of us talk too much. It is amazing how short Jesus' sayings are. When we pray, who does most of the talking? Is it the most important party to the conversation or the least important one? If we had the opportunity to converse with some great person, like Mother Teresa or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, would we want to do most of the talking, or would we want to listen most of the time? Why do we talk so much to God that we have no time to listen? How patient God must be, waiting until we get rid of all our mental and verbal noise and hoping that we do not then immediately turn from addressing him to addressing to the world. In that split second of silence between the time we stop talking to God and start talking to the world, God gets more graces into us than at any other time outside the sacraments.
--The Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft
Everyone who has ever met God at distinct from a concept of God, all the saints and mystics, everyone, in other words, who is like Job rather than his three theologian friends, has said the same thing: when you meet God, you cannot put the meeting into words, much less the God you meet. God cannot be an object of our concepts. Concepts shatter like broken eyeglasses- in fact, like broken I's. No longer and I I and God my Thou, my object; now God is I, and I am His thou, His object. Thus the mystics say strange things about the self, as if it were an illusion or destroyed in this encounter. The illusion that is destroyed is not the self itself but its usual standpoint in which I am I, the center, and God appears on my screen somewhere. THIS self is an illusion, and God shatters it by reversing the standpoint: we appear on his screen. We are his object, not he ours.
That is why Jesus manifests his divinity so powerfully by always reversing the relationship into which questioners try to put him. His enemies try to pin him down; he pins them down. They try to classify him; he classifies them. They try to judge him; he judges them. Even his friends try to unveil him, understand him, reveal him, get the mystery of who he is to come out of hiding; but every encounter accomplishes the opposite: THEY are unveiled, understood, revealed; the mystery of who THEY are has to come out of hiding when in the presence of the divine Light. "Shall we stone the adulteress or not?"-- "Let him without sin cast the first stone." "Should we pay taxes to Caesar or not?"-- "Give God what is God's and Caesar what is Caesar's." (They were robbing both.) "Who is my neighbor?"-- "Go and be a neighbor, like the good Samaritan." Whenever you try to test him, he tests you, for he is the teacher and you are the student, not vice versa.
... For the one thing you cannot light up is light. Light is the best physical symbol for God because it is the only physical thing that cannot be an object of sight. God cannot be an object of sight, physical or mental. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that we know God correctly only when we know him unknowable. Scripture says the same thing: "No man has seen God at any time; only the only-begotton Son, in the bosom of the Father, has made him known" (John 1:18). If God had not taken the initiative to reveal himself, there is no way we could know him. When we want to know a stone, it is passive, and we are all active. When we want to know an animal, it is a little bit active, and it can run away and hide. When we want to know another person, we are dependent on the other's free choice to be known, as well as our own free choice to know: the two roles are equal. Finally, when we want to know God, all the activity must begin from his side.
So God cannot show up to answer Job's questions as if he were a library book (which is the way Job's three friends treat God). Job pushes buttons, but the God machine does not work, not because it is broken but because it is not a machine. Job finally realizes this when God shows up in his true character as Questioner, not Answerer. That is why Job repents in the end (Job 42:6). What he repents of is not some specific sin he has committed and hidden, as the three friends suspect, but of his metaphysical mistake, his sin against the grammer of being, his playing the part of God. The best words Job uttered were his last: "The words of Job are ended." Only when Job shuts up does God show up.
Most of us talk too much. It is amazing how short Jesus' sayings are. When we pray, who does most of the talking? Is it the most important party to the conversation or the least important one? If we had the opportunity to converse with some great person, like Mother Teresa or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, would we want to do most of the talking, or would we want to listen most of the time? Why do we talk so much to God that we have no time to listen? How patient God must be, waiting until we get rid of all our mental and verbal noise and hoping that we do not then immediately turn from addressing him to addressing to the world. In that split second of silence between the time we stop talking to God and start talking to the world, God gets more graces into us than at any other time outside the sacraments.
--The Three Philosophies of Life, Peter Kreeft