Subject: Poetic Justice?

Dear Rob,
By the time I had finished reading the second chapter of your commentary
on the Book of Job, I knew that I would most certainly be writing you to
express my gratitude to you for having committed this masterful treatise
to e-paper. I am writing you a tad sooner than I would have expected
however, and I hope the irony will not be lost on you when I tell you the
bad news that has forced me to write you ahead of tentative schedule.

Forgive me for starting off in a manner that may appear to be negative on
its face, it's really a positive negative, yes, I'm about to complain
right off the bat, but only because I'm so enthralled with the text and I
CAN'T GET BACK IN. Am I screaming? Yes, I'm very frustrated and can't
help wondering, can it be that the curse of Job is upon me? Because
that's how I'm feeling at this moment having read up through and
including Job as Natural Scientist, and then "That's all you get today,
Lady". An hour I could have understood, but I'm starting to think maybe
my faith in ever being able to reconnect is being test. Is it just me? is
it just murphy's internet law? or has the rest of the immediate online
world been tipped off to the existence of your Multiperspectival Approach
to Job at the exact same moment in time when I accidently stumble upon it
myself? In which case, of course, I totally understand what's happened
here: Massive Scale Spiritual Awakening. And that's no exaggeration of
this volume's potential, provided of course that the masses knew of its
existence.

Question number 2, why haven't you published this work? Outside the
e-realm, I mean. It is profound, on top of which it is witty and personal
in a way that scholarly works of its nature rarely are. Your writing is
so fresh, and your style is so unique that I can honestly say I can think
of no other written work to compare it to. I laughed out loud countless
times, and in fact, I laughed all the way through your oral exam in the
whirlwind, it's classic. I must confess that I am somewhat of a black
hole myself where the natural sciences are concerned, but even so, I have
not yet encountered a single passage in your Approach where I felt as
thought you were talking over my head or out of my own sphere of
knowledge. You have a gift for contextually filling in the gaps. And your
writing never turns that pedantic corner that is unfortunately so
characteristic of all too many theosophical texts, yours is so authentic
and fresh that I'm practically as astonished by the style of your prose
as I am by the message and vision of the text itself. Your Approach reads
like a really gripping novel, the kind I would not have been able to put
down until finishing every last word of it. But alas, my very gripping
book put ME down. In effect. But of course, I should have known. You've
been taught *how* to think, and that analytical approach is just the
ticket. This is a job not meant for theologians, this is a job for a
physicist. And you have driven that point home with crystal clarity.

Okay, but I'm feeling a little sorry for myself having lost my access for
no apparent reason whatsoever, and nearly eight hours later, I'm having a
pityfest on that account, I admit it, I am becoming Joblike (in my
suffering, not my patience), and yes, I might appear to be ungrateful and
focused on the half-empty glass. But it's only because, similar to Job,
there I was just coasting along enjoying the bounty that appeared to be
mine, and then *whack*, everything was ripped right out of my grasp
before such a possibility had even crossed my mind. If I had been
thinking about the randomness of the internet, I would certainly have
cached all the pages the minute I said to myself, "Okay, this is the one
out of every 30,000." And maybe then I would not be blaming myself right
now for the randomness of virtual life. I'm joking of course, but I could
extrapolate these parallels on down to the part where my prosperity is
returned which I have all faith that it will be. I could even predict
with total confidence that God will be making an appearance before I
finish The Verdict. As indeed He has already shown Himself to me in the
pages I have read thus far.

When I was a small child, I have memories of being very troubled by the
story of Job. Of course, in retrospect it wasn't the story of Job that
frightened me, rather it was the interpretation of Job's story that
scared the bejeebies out of me. It made no sense whatsoever, and I think
what was so scary is that it actually worried me about the adults who
seemed to find so much joy in such a joyless tale, as told. Of course,
I'm remembering through the eyes of an adult and it may be that I was not
as spiritually superior to them as I may be presenting my childhood self
(ha). But I mention this at all so that I can share the important part of
this anecdote, and it is a part which I'm sure you will agree is a
child's perspective. As the fractured wisdom tale was told (and I'm sure
you've heard this version before), the story goes that God tested Job's
love and devotion, and the way He did this was by making a bet with the
devil, and then totally destroying everything Job cared about in life (in
fact, the wife even died in one of those windstorms, to hear certain
people tell it to this day). The peer pressure and the pain and misery
come down pretty hard and heavy on poor Job, but Job stands fast (and
never waivers) and Satan loses this bet he has going with God. And so,
God rewards Job for being His faithful servant by restoring all Job's
wealth, health, property and happiness, etc. and so forth. And Job even
"remarries" and has another huge family, and (hang on, this is the tough
part) depending on who was telling the story, Job either loved his new
family even more than the old dead family, or "not more but as much."
They were an adequate replacement in the very least.

That is so utterly cruel to do that to yourself, let alone a child. And
I'm laughing out loud as I write this, but in all seriousness, it's so
Kafkaesque now that I think about it. Because the adults telling this
story were Job's counselors themselves, in effect, they were the
characters in the very same biblical story they were misinterpreting. And
I say that because they were ignorantly content with a god who was not a
personal god at all, a god who did indeed dish out favors and punishment
with equal abandon, and if you got one or the other, you deserved it,
period, don't ask any questions, take it but whatever you do, do not
question it. Theirs was a god whom their peers expected them to worship,
a god made of straw and feathers. I say this as an observation, not as a
judgment: They were like Job's friends in their unwillingness to
"challenge god". "Show me your face," was blasphemous, and never mind
that they couldn't explain how Job got away with blasphemy himself, minor
details, that's part of what we're not supposed to understand. But of
course, their fears were as real as Job's boils: Because if you question
it, it's probably not gonna stand up to any tests, and there is a gnawing
sense of confusion as it is, so don't push your luck. That's the answer.
You cannot question it. That's the story of Job.

I did ask an adult my scary question about Job, I asked once, and I never
asked again. My question was, "If all of Job's children were killed, how
did he ever just forget them and start over like his new family could
replace the first family?" When I was met with blank stares and stunned
silence, I probed a bit farther... "It just doesn't seem like an even
trade, and it really doesn't seem like a reward at all." I really thought
I was about to get some answers when I heard her say, "There are a lot of
things we're not supposed to know. And we're not supposed to second-guess
God either." So you can see how it was that I didn't even ask the next
question about why was God making bets with the devil anyway.

And yet, here is the beauty of Job's story as you have so eloquently told
it... There is within us this spark of the Infinite, that revelation that
is available to all humans, that healthy suspicion that even a child has
access to, that even a child can carry like a talisman into adulthood,
and if we hang onto even so much as the possibililty that God is The God
of your Approach, and it we do that just long enough to finally SEE it,
we will see it, we will see the Face of God and live. And if we expect to
find Him, we will find Him in unexpected places. Like for instance,
little virtual corners of the Internet where grabbing a single straw out
of a stack of 30,000 yields a true hit. Can that be pure chance, luck of
the draw?

The story of Job is about Choosing Life. Thank you for telling it so
poignantly, Rob, and for making it public so that there was a chance for
me to find it and read it.

And now, could I please get back in? hah Okay, maybe an approximate idea
of when all the co-eds might log off and take some pressure off the
server? And thanks for reading this if you made it this far, I hope I
haven't yakked your virtual ear off. It's joyous, what more can I say.

Best wishes and many thanks,
donna

Donna Erickson
Los Angeles, CA
 
Dear Donna,
 Thanks for your most encouraging e-mail! I can honestly say that you have
been the first to report that my writing was not in vain, that the message
got through.  I wish I knew how to publish this as a hardback book, but
the two publishers I approached brushed me off. (Their responses can be
seen in the "Mailbag" on the home page.)
  The server has been going through some ups and downs unrelated to
massive favorable response from co-eds. In fact, I have been fired from
UAH, in part for teaching a science & religion course that irritated the
Department Chairman. While I am pursuing every appeal known to man, the
department has begun a campaign of harassment, which among other things,
involved entering my office in the evening, tampering with the server and
turning the box off. This led me to install higher security measures on
the server, (though of course this cannot prevent vandalism), but while
applying higher security, the web server has been acting flaky. I hope all
the server ills are behind us, but eventually I will need a permanent
location to host these pages, seeing as my tenure at UAH is very much in
doubt.

  - yours truly,
    Rob Sheldon