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Good afternoon, everyone. We're so glad that you could join us, those of you here in person and those of you online. We are grateful for Dr. Keller, Dr.

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Tides, for everything that you have shared with us. And we are equally excited for what Dr. Gushy brings to us to these lectures. I can say, echo what Sean said personally coming out of an evangelical background, how grateful I am for Dr.

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Gushy's work and presence and voice in the Christian Church in the U.S. which, as we know, needs repair and reform, which a lot of his work has been rooted in for a long time in speaking that into Christian communities and into the church, the need for repair, for reform. And so a return to kingdom ethics, as it were, If you didn't know, Dr.

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Gashi is a leading Christian ethicist, and he serves currently as professor at Mercer University and Fierde Universidad Amsterdam. He's a fellow at the International Baptist Theological Study Center, the past president of the American Academy of Religion, and the Society of Ethics. Most recently, he is the author of Christianity and Democracy Today, International Perspectives, or editor and contributor to that volume.

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But if you also didn't know, he has been a contributor, author, editor of more than 30 books. And so we give thanks for your work, Dr. Gushy, and that you are speaking to us today. I do want to say a little bit about your journey, which I am going to boldly say, I believe, shaped the work that you do, which I noticed in your biography that you talk about, you wanted to do your PhD in order to talk about what we do, what ethics do.

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And so that you continually call Christians in the church so that we are grateful that it is not just an intellectual exercise, that what we talk about, reflect on, pray on is what we do, which echoes, I think, also what we were hearing in Dr. Thires' lecture earlier. And so I'm grateful for that and for your journey, which if you didn't know, Dr.

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Gushy was at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for his BA and then went and got his master of philosophy from Union and his MDiv Also, your BA is from William and Mary, but your MDiv is from Southern Baptist, where you were also formed and before converted to the Baptist tradition and went to Union. So such a formative journey that has continued to inform your work and to inform the church and Christian communities. And for that, we give thanks, and we are honored to have your voice and presence with us today.

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Let us give them a round of applause and gratitude. hello, everybody. It is good to be here with you and to join this distinguished group of learners and lecturers. Let me first say, the last week in January every year, I'm usually in Europe,

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at the annual meeting of the International Baptist Scholarly Colloquium. And I said, when this invitation came along, Europe will have to wait. I'm going to be in Austin, Texas. And so I am glad to be here.

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And it's an honor to participate in these midwinters as your Jones lecturer. There are very few lectureships of this vintage and quality in American theological education, few if any. And so it's an honor to be included and to share the platform with Catherine Keller and Chris Tierrez is amazing.

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And to be here with you. Thank you for braving the roads for those of you who are here in person. I hope that you're all still in one piece, no broken elbows or knees or ankles. And for those who are at home, it's good to have you on board.

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President Irizarry, thank you for the invitation. Thank you for the hospitality. Crystal, thank you for the very kind introduction. So I've done different things in my career, in my writing, but I'm at a moment in which I'm kind of making a biblical turn or a kind of return.

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My last book was on the moral teachings of Jesus. That one I saw forlornly for sale, lacking buyers earlier today. However, you might consider buying it after this.

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But the manuscript that I have just completed, you're seeing the first glimpse of the cover art. Nobody has seen it yet. It's going to be called Job in Exile, a Guide for Spiritual Refugees. It is a post-evangelical reading of the book of Job that follows from my years of fascination.

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I was a born-again Southern Baptist when I was 16 years old. I wandered into the church uninvited, and four days later I was dripping, you know, not dripping wet, That took a couple weeks, but I had prayed the sinner's prayer. And early on, they put a Bible in my hands.

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They said, just read it all the way through. And good idea. Leviticus was tough, but actually, it was really Job that transfixed me pretty early. I had never really read the Bible before that.

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Job struck me as a remarkable, astonishing thing to be in the Bible. And so that was that many years ago. And now, finally, I have written a kind of a post-evangelical commentary on the book of Job.

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It'll be coming out with Orbis Books in September. And I hope you'll be interested after you have heard this talk. So I'm actually going to read to you from some of the manuscript of this book. You'll be the first human beings to hear any of these words.

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So try to contain your excitement, okay? All right. The Book of Job tells the story of a fabulously wealthy, morally upright, religiously devout man whose glorious life is shattered with God's permission as a test of his character and devotion. Violently and rapidly losing his possessions, servants, children, and health, Job suffers catastrophically.

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At first, Job responds with perfect submission. His friends come from afar to comfort him, sitting with him on a dunghill or ash heap for seven long days and nights in complete silence. When Job speaks, his submission turns to protest, a protest which in steps graduates into a direct challenge to God's justice. While the friends likewise gradually intensify their efforts to defend God,

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and to implicate Job as the ultimate source of his own miseries. Job and his friends end up at a bitter impasse, with Job defending his innocence and demanding to hear directly from God. God finally does appear, many, many chapters later, with a response whose relevance to Job's plight has been debated ever since the book was written. After his encounter with God, Job appears to be humbled and satisfied.

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God then declares Job vindicated and his friends repudiated. The story ends with Job getting new children. After all, if you lose your children, replacement kids will do just as well. And being blessed by God with exactly double the number of his earlier possessions.

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The book of Job evokes the most intense questions, just to begin with a few of them. The story opens with an angelic being convincing God to allow him to orchestrate extreme suffering for Job. Is this how we should understand the source of Job's suffering in our own?

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Job initially responds with perfect acceptance and submission, not uttering a word of protest. Is this what God expects of believers who suffer? Job rapidly shifts from submission to angry protest. Does this protest make Job less admirable or more?

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Is protest an expression of faith or a violation of it? Job's protests offer the most sustained critiques of the character of God that we see in the whole Bible, in my view. Is Job an over-the-top heretic, or is he raising legitimate questions? Job's friends constantly defend a doctrine that the good prosper and the wicked suffer, and that this must explain Job's plight.

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What are we to make of this ancient claim, which sometimes seems to fit with reality, yet more often turns out to be deeply unbelievable? Job constantly defends his innocence. The text itself begins and ends with the narrator and God affirming that Job is upright, a person of integrity, innocent. But is any human being truly innocent or blameless?

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During the book, Does Job reveal himself to be a person who has anything to learn, any growing to do? When God finally appears, God takes Job on a tour of the creation. You may remember it.

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Were you there when? Were you there when? And asks Job whether he understands any of it, how it is sustained. Is this an answer to Job's tormented questions?

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The story ties neatly in a bow as Job is vindicated. He's clearly vindicated, but which Job is vindicated? The submissive Job of Job 2, the protesting Job of Job 3-31, or whatever Job is doing at the end of the book in Job 42, 1-6. Were Job's friends wrong to defend God from Job's attacks using their traditional moral order of the universe claims?

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If they were wrong, what do we make of those claims when they appear not only in the book of Job, but also elsewhere in the Bible? In the end, what is the book of Job attempting to teach us? Why was it included in the canon to torment 16-year-old converts like me? There are few biblical texts that provide as many head-snapping contradictions and interpretive challenges as the book of Job.

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There is no book that is as morally and theologically complex. There are great reasons why many are so deeply drawn to this maddening, amazing book, which Martin Buber called one of the special events in world literature. Robert Gordis, a brilliant 20th century Jewish biblical scholar who devoted decades of study to Job and multiple books, said this. Some years ago,

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An American scholar declared that just as the humblest actor harbors a secret ambition to play Hamlet, so every biblical student nurtures the hope of someday writing about Job. The truth, says Gordis, is that Job is a perennial challenge to every reader and biblical scholar. This Mount Everest of the human spirit continues to defy even the most intrepid and confident of climbers, and probably will never yield all its secrets. For every aspect of the book poses problems that each reader and student must solve for himself or herself.

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I am now joining the intrepid climbers on Mount Job. Yeah, that's the quote. This Mount Everest of the human spirit continues to defy even the most intrepid and confident of climbers. And I get that.

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Having finished it, the book, I get that. Job is a book that belongs first to the Jewish people and the Hebrew Bible, and anyone venturing a serious examination of the book must first read it within its original literary and communal context, and also must attend to its long history of interpretation within the Jewish community, and that's quite a job. Job is also part of the Christian canon and has attracted 2 millennia of Christian interpretation. But like any truly transcendent work, Job also belongs to the world,

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It is not only rabbis and theologians, philosophers and biblical scholars who've been drawn to the book. The more I read in the Job literature, the more I discovered all kinds of random people turning up as having written about Job. Carl Jung, of course, he wrote a monograph on Job. Soren Kierkegaard wrote treatments of Job.

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Archibald MacLeish wrote an award-winning play about Job. And that's just beginning to scratch the surface. I'm going to quote Immanuel Kant a little bit later. He talked about Job as well.

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Job is not so much a book as it is a continuous tradition of reflection. In tackling Job, it might seem that I am working outside my field of Christian ethics, but hey, I don't care, I've got tenure, right? Now, it is true that I have found no other Christian ethicists in the Job literature. None, not A1.

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But this is odd because the book of Job is suffused with ethical themes as one would expect in a book long classified among the wisdom writings of the Hebrew Bible. While some biblical scholars have been raising questions about the very coherence of that category, wisdom, there are good reasons why the Jewish and Christian traditions have offered such a category and grouped certain books together in the canon as wisdom writings. Certainly the concerns addressed in the biblical texts that we think of as wisdom books are filled with ethical themes,

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not just moral exhortations, but also a vision of a divinely given moral structure to the universe and therefore to human life. And with the promise of reward for those who align themselves with the grain of the universe and suffering or punishment for those who do not. But the book of Job presents a profound challenge to this aspect of the wisdom tradition. one which contests a reliable, divinely given moral order, rather than proclaiming it.

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If we see Job as part of the wisdom tradition, then we can see that tradition was itself dynamic and contested, not static. The book of Job adds to the complexity of the wisdom tradition, and the book itself uses what Old Testament scholar, Hebrew Bible scholar Carol Newsome calls a polyphonic approach. to host within the book a variety of voices. Amidst his great and unmerited suffering, the character Job both defends his own moral integrity and attacks the idea that God reliably delivers justice to human beings.

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The book of Job therefore destabilizes one of the most important bases for historic moral exhortation and behavior. It is not the only biblical book which does so, but nowhere is the attack more sustained. As A Christian ethicist, I am drawn to take up this conversation. Ethics is not just about individual behavior, but it's also about community, as has been said today already.

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My reading is that the community around Job, which includes but is not limited to his three infamous friends, bonus points if you remember their names, right? The community turns on him when his challenges to their beliefs prove more troubling than they can bear. Job is a pious and respectful. respected member of a religious community until his terrible life experiences force him to consider disorienting challenges to that community's orthodoxy.

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I see in Job a pattern I have often seen in contemporary religious life, which also takes me into the zip code of the post-evangelicals. Defenders of, listen to this, send me if this rings any bells for you. Defenders of religious orthodoxy often seek to crush the dissent to tradition, that is offered by those whose life experiences ultimately lead them to challenge the claims of the tradition.

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That ever happened, right? Defenders of religious orthodoxy often seek to crush the dissent to tradition that is offered by those, including those who were raised in traditions, like evangelicalism, but whose life experiences ultimately lead them to challenge the tradition. As with Job's friends, when dissenters whose life experiences make the old orthodoxy hard to accept, when they articulate their doubts, the answer is usually, hey, we are the bearers of the tradition. We are the holders of fixed and certain truth.

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Under no circumstances will we allow your experiences to prevail over our tradition. No evidence that you might offer can count against absolute truth as we, the authoritative expositors, have understood it. The Book of Job is precisely about what happens when the defenders of Orthodox tradition encounter real life in the embodied suffering of a particular human being. What makes Job even more interesting is that the character Job himself, as depicted in the early part of the book and with evidence later,

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gives evidence of having been deeply embedded in the tradition which he must now challenge. I see Job as somebody who was not just a wealthy person, he was a religious leader in his community. And then, when he raises questions to it, he is therefore all the more threatening. Because I now write this meditation on Job, on the other side of having been pushed out of evangelical Christianity, see my sad story,

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otherwise described elsewhere, I am offering a post-evangelical interpretation of Job. I sense, though, that the vantage point that I take applies to people in other religious communities who find themselves heirs to a tradition that they love, but they must now leave or they are being pushed out of. That's why my book will actually be called Job in Exile, A Guide for Spiritual Refugees, and my publisher thinks that Jewish and Catholic and Orthodox and Protestant and Evangelical and many others will say, that connects.

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Just as spiritual refugees find themselves needing to reconsider everything, Job does too. He must reconsider what he believes about God, about reality, about morality, about injustice, and about tradition. And we get to watch him do it in the pages of the book of Job. close reading of the book of Job suggests that it is itself a kind of post-Orthodox writing, or at least a serious challenge to receive Jewish Orthodoxy at the time of its composition.

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The book appears to contain challenges to specific biblical texts that by the time of the book's composition had likely already become recognized as scripture. It certainly contains challenges to broadly shared theological assumptions. Some scholars say it challenges the entire Jewish legal and covenantal tradition. I concur with the biblical scholars who placed the composition of Job late, probably during or after the exile, when the Jewish people were crushed by the Babylonians, the temple was destroyed, the monarchy was annihilated, thousands were murdered, and leading survivors were taken into exile.

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The idea that the author of Job reflects both personal and communal suffering is a compelling one. Gustavo Gutierrez, in his lovely meditation on Job, writes, the book of Job could have been written only by someone who had suffered in flesh and spirit. Job's protesting lament bears the seal of personal experience. Buber, Martin Buber writes, it is true, it is a personal fate that is presented here in Job.

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But the stimulus to speaking out, the incentive to complaint and accusation, are the fruit of supra-personal sufferings. Job's question comes into being as the question of a whole generation. His question is the question of a whole generation about the sense of its historic fate. Job connects powerfully with the questions being raised today by spiritual refugees.

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One reason I decided to write a book on this, check this out. I was in charge of a Sunday school class for a number of years, and I taught through every word of the book of Job with this group of long-suffering people. We spent about nine months in Job, verse by verse. And this church that I was in, this was a community full of post-evangelicals, about 40% LGBTQ plus, most of whom had the experience of religious trauma.

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and they said that Job was their book. One thing that drives spiritual refugees away is the idea that it is wrong to question scripture or tradition. Yet here comes Job in the canon, in the canon of all places, demonstrating that the best way to show respect to the Bible and to ancient ideas is to challenge them. So I want to join in that wrestling because I feel authorized by the canon itself to challenge.

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The canon. Love that. So what I do then in the conclusion of the book, after doing the whole exposition, which was a lot of fun, is I decide to distill lessons learned into three main categories. The ethics of the character Job,

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the ethics of religious community, and the ethics of God in the book of Job. And I'm going to give you a glimpse of each of these. For the rest of this lecture, I'm only going to talk about the ethics of the character Job, and then you'll have to come back tomorrow to get the rest, okay? So I consider the book of Job a realistic narrative, not a historical account.

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It's a story. It's a drama about a man who has everything and then has it all taken away. It's A narrative about the interaction of that man with his community, which begins with his three friends, but extends beyond them. And it's the anguished account of this man's wrestling with God, with an account of God's response to his wrestling at the end.

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George Lindbeck writes this. The primary function of the canonical narrative is to render a character, to offer an identity description of an agent, namely God, says Lindbeck. It does this not by telling what God is in and of himself, sorry for the older language there, but by accounts of the interaction of his deeds and purposes with those of creatures in their ever-changing circumstances. The primary focus is on how life is to be lived and reality construed in light of God's character as an agent, as this is depicted in the stories of Israel and Jesus.

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The end of the quote. So the book of Job renders the character of Job, and of his friends, and more broadly of his community, and more mysteriously the character of God, through the interactions between all of them and the words they speak to each other. If Lindbeck is right that the purpose of the canonical narrative is to teach believers something about how life is to be lived and how reality is to be construed in light of God's character, then we have to assume that this should be true of the book of Job as well.

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It's okay to go to Job and ask what Job wants to tell us about such questions. The wonder of the book of Job, though, is that what it seems to teach, or at least to suggest, is a heterodox or at least dissenting account of the human relationship to God, the proper behavior of the human religious community, and of God's interaction with the creation. So now let me turn to three takeaways that I would like to offer related to the ethics of the character Job, and they're actually already there on your screen, so just kind of follow along.

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Already by Job 4, Job's friend Eliphaz expresses the worry that Job appears to be weakening in his long-standing commitment to the shared communal, what I call just world theology. The world is just, and God ensures that it is that. is after only one speech from Job. Eliphaz is already worried.

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Job 4. Eliphaz, though, is seeing something real. Job's commitment to the old just world theology is not just weakening by Job 4, it has already been shattered. Apparently that was a theology that made sense only from above, not from the dunghill outside of town, scraping sores, mourning dead children.

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Especially given Job's former leadership position in his community, Eliphaz is concerned that Job is articulating views that will undercut communal religious beliefs and moral norms. In other words, Eliphaz is already by Job 4 saying, I'm concerned that you are threatening piety. The moral issue for Job at this moment is whether he will swallow his doubts, suppress his questions, silence his protests, under pressure from his community, or in fear of God's

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further disapproval or further punishment or something, we know that Job refuses to do so. The more isolated he gets, the more pressure he comes under to just ascent to their version of reality. It doesn't matter he stands firm. The question for the reader of Job, one of them, is whether the text is trying to teach

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us that Job is permitted to offer stark challenges to the tradition of faith. More specifically, is protest against God a sin against God? Catherine Lopez, biblical scholar, puts it this way, the book explores how we as believers can suffer with integrity. Suffering is inevitable, but how we live through suffering is our choice, says Lopez.

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Does Job maintain his integrity by refusing to curse God and die? Or does he lose his integrity by his passively patient acceptance of everything that happens to him? Of course, that stops in Job 3. Does he lose his integrity by refusing to admit his sin as his friends claim?

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Or does he maintain his integrity by refusing to submit to a theology that has no room for his lived experience? I think Job is a hero of the steadfast dissenter type. Job 6.10 is translated in different ways. In fact, the translation issue itself is so fascinating with Job.

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Basically, I find even the NRSV, and in general, most Christian Bible translations, soften the edges of the book of Job. It's the JPS, the New Jewish Publication Society translation that is more brave. Here's an example. In Job 6.10,

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it reads in, I think this is the new JPS, then this would be my consolation as I writhed in unsparing pains, that I did not suppress my words against the Holy One. Many devout believers are reluctant to ever protest against God. They've been taught silent submission along with various unpersuasive platitudes. But Job does not submit without protest.

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While he never does curse God, Job does curse his life, and he does speak his truth time and again, even in the face of ever greater communal anger and rejection. Job shows that in times of horrifying suffering and injustice, protest is precisely how the believer's dialogue with God remains open. How we talk to God in such moments is protest.

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At least for some. My conclusion is that the book blesses Job's protest both by writing it and hosting it, and by the way God vindicates Job in the epilogue to the book. If anybody ever taught you that it is wrong to utter a word of protest against God, I think the book of Job itself stands as a contradiction. I noticed something significant also about Job 19,4.

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He says to his friends, if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. Many commentators note that the book of Job does appear to validate the legitimacy of protest, but few note that the journey of the character Job also teaches the value of moral agency, dignity, and courage. Job is protecting a space of moral self-direction, of moral dignity, that his friends and community are trying to annihilate.

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because they consider it both threatening to the community and an affront to God. Job is telling his friends to back off. If indeed I have erred, my error remains with me, it is not your business. Back off.

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That's what he's saying in Job 19. This is between him and his God. Even though he stands utterly alone, he will not allow his loneliness to weaken his moral resolve. In his appreciative treatment of

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of Job, Immanuel Kant of all people, weighed in this way. He said, Job's friends are speaking of things they don't understand as they try to defend God. They're trying to flatter God and stay on God's good side, so what happens to Job doesn't happen to them. Job alone, says Kant, quote, speaks as he thinks, and with the courage with which he can well afford.

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His friends, on the contrary, speak as if they were being secretly listened to by the Mighty One. As if gaining his favor through their judgment were closer to their heart than the truth. And then he says of Job, only sincerity of heart and not distinction of insight, honesty in openly admitting one's doubts, repugnance to pretending conviction where one feels none, especially before God where the trick is pointless enough. These are the attributes which in the person of Job

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have decided the preeminence of the honest person over their religious flatterer in the divine verdict. So Kant says, Job forever exemplifies the honest person telling the truth before God. The book of Job offers the most extended treatment in the Bible of a human being wrestling honestly and publicly with what is true and what is real and what to say to God and neighbor about his unjust suffering. It seems to me that Job is a model of moral agency, moral dignity, and moral courage.

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Risking both human and divine condemnation, Job will not deny what he knows and will not silence what he must say. Even if both God and friends turn their face away from him, he will speak his truth to them. I think that's admirable. I think of the many post-evangelicals who, for example, an LGBTQ teenager or an evangelical family,

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How much courage is involved to be 15 years old and to say to evangelical mama and daddy, I think I might be gay. And to not bend when every pressure of the tradition is brought to bear on that person. Pastor, youth minister, Sunday school teacher, all the authorities that are brought in. And the person says, I know who I am, I know what I am.

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You know how hard that is to do when you're 15? Think about how hard it is to do if you're Job in this situation, and I'll say a little bit more tomorrow, it looks to me like Job's life is being threatened by about two-thirds of the way through the book of Job by his community, who consider him a threat to piety. You might think of the fellow Socrates, what happened to him when he was considered a threat to piety, right? Okay, last point.

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There is one last point I want to raise in this lecture, and then I'll stop. The book describes Job as a man blameless and upright who feared God and shunned evil. The prologue has God describing Job as the best of all the people on the earth. Of course, this language has a kind of epic, legendary quality that can be partially dismissed as an effort to heighten the drama, but still it seems right to establish as a baseline that Job merits praise for his piety and integrity.

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Okay, we grant that. But there's a catch. I think we see in a close study of the text that Job's integrity was that of a man who lived within the very privileged upper end of his society. He was a kind of prince among people.

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He had vast wealth. He commanded a large servant population, at least some of whom appear to have been enslaved. He had social and even juridical power in his community. He exercised religious and moral leadership.

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The impressive moral code by which he lived, as outlined in Job 31 especially, was closely tied to his high position in his social order. But it had the blind spots associated with privilege, wealth, and power. As is especially clear in Job 19, the suffering that comes upon Job is of a particular type tied to his social location. He was not one of the kinds of people who live on the margins of society and had experienced misery every day.

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He was instead the kind of person who was used to having power, security, and status. And then all of that was taken away in one moment. And it is this kind of person who has now lost all his privileges and status. He's lost his power to command respect.

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And this bothers him along with all the other more obvious losses. So, yes, Job was a man of integrity. He was honored as such by God in the text.

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But it is also true that Job's suffering became an occasion for growth. We see as early as Job 3, Job's starting to notice and then to identify with the truly miserable ones of the earth. We see it again quite powerfully in Job 24, where Job demonstrates a deep, descriptive paying attention to and empathy for the suffering of the most destitute.

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He offers realistic assessment of the gross injustice that causes human suffering. Even though at the beginning of the story, everyone is convinced of Job's blamelessness, I think the book teaches us that there are some aspects of moral maturity that can only be learned through suffering. And there are distinctive things to be learned when part of the suffering one experiences is the loss of social standing, privilege, and power. This is a reminder that there is more to morality than obeying rules, more to piety than following the proper rituals.

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There is more to religion than practicing heartfelt worship in the ways prescribed. Innocence and guilt are not the only way to understand the human moral condition. Human beings are shaped by their social location. Those who live at the very top of the social pyramid can blamelessly obey all the rules, meet all the expectations, avoid all the obvious sins, and still have some things to learn and some ways to grow.

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The claim made by several of the friends that Job is being disciplined through suffering is kind of a half-truth. Since Job has done nothing wrong within the terms of his religious and social world, The suffering that comes to him should not be viewed as discipline, but it should be viewed as a shattering experience that rocks him to his core and begins to work a change in his way of looking at the world. He now catches A glimpse of life from the ash heap, from the margins, from below.

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In other words, Job is of no relevance to a liberative theology until he has been shattered of his social power. But then after that, he sees the world from a new angle of vision. This is quite good for him in a moral sense. He's a better, more compassionate, and more empathetic human being afterwards than before.

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No one wants to suffer like this, but many can attest that grave suffering is a school for growth if it does not destroy us. The interesting question morally for Job is, if you kind of take the character seriously, is what's next after his restoration in chapter 42? Does he retain his identification with the poor when his wealth is restored to him? Does his ethic remain deepened by his suffering?

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Will the reborn, resurrected Job with his wealth restored, a bunch of beautiful new children, now a happy old man, will he retain his identification with the poor? I notice that looking at the epilogue, which is often dismissed, Job no longer has servants in the epilogue. And he offers his daughters A portion of inheritance, and that was not mentioned before. Maybe Job has learned some things.

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Job's suffering had been inscribed in his scarred skin. By the way, there's also no mention in Job 42 that he is all the way healed of his various maladies. If he's restored, he's still been scarred and carries those scars with him for the rest of his life. Are it's lessons inscribed on his heart and practiced in his life and not just inscribed in his skin.

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Concluding, I contend that there is much to learn, obviously, from examining the book of Job, but now specifically the ethics of the character named Job in the book of Job. And here are my 3 takeaways. Job teaches the permissibility and sometimes the necessity of protest as a form of talking with God. He teaches the sacredness of integrity, not understood as rule-following innocence,

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but as protection of one's moral agency and dignity, and the courage to speak the hard truths that one has learned. You may press me to say it your way. You may press me to reaffirm the old truths. I will not do so.

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And he teaches that while there is a kind of moral exemplarity available at every stratum of society, Job's descent from the richest man in the east to the ash heap outside of town shattered the complacency of his aristocratic moral vision and moved him into empathetic solidarity with the destitute of the earth. This was growth for Job. In fact, one commentator says that Job is the only character who learns anything in the book of Job.

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Think about that. Not even God learns anything in the book of Job, according to this commentator. Job learns some things. And this learning made a blameless man into a better person.

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The question for us is what path we will take to empathetic solidarity with the oppressed. In one sense, it doesn't matter what the path is as long as we get there, because that is what we are called to. But Job models a specific path, the shattering experience of dispossession, of going from the heights to the lowest point of holding on to one's integrity, but also learning a very great deal.

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In my next lecture, I will consider the lessons to be learned for the ethics of religious community and, dare I say it, the ethics of God. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Gushee.

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We've got time for some Q&A. So as always, there'll be a QR code on your screen momentarily. It also is in front of you as well. If you've got the registration document that I've been referencing all morning, there's a QR code there for you to submit your questions through Slido.

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And so I want to dive right in just for the sake of time. My first question as folks are preparing and generating their questions, One of my preaching mentors is the Reverend Dr. Joel Gregory.

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He's a professor of preaching at Truett Theological Seminary. He said, as we get older, we have to shift from simply doing Bible studies to doing character studies, studying a person. Or in this case, the book represents the entire life of Job. Talk to us about how you arrived on this journey of Job being a biblical character worth studying.

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as folks navigate both being post-evangelicals and just this season of exile that Christians find themselves in. How did Job come alive for you and that to be the prophetic text that you're using for this time? Well, man, as I said, I kept coming back to Job. High school, they put that living Bible, remember the living Bible?

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They put the living Bible in my hand and there was Job, right? And that was rough. And then college, I did a wisdom lit class and came back, a Jewish studies professor, that was helpful. And then Job shows up a lot in Holocaust theology, post-Holocaust theology.

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There's a lot of ways in which Job spoke to the post-Holocaust Jewish community. And so that was there for me as well. And I quote some of those voices in the book. But it was teaching through Job, because I mean, okay, you're going to meet every Sunday.

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I was in charge of the class. We're going to study something. We did this, we did that, Hebrew Bible, New Testament. Let's try Job.

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But it was the way Job resonated with this class. And though I myself am not LGBTQ plus, I'm an ally. And hearing variations of this story, I was a leader in my community until, beloved and honored, I was a pastor, I was a musician, until I came out. And when I came out, they said,

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You cannot be a part of our community anymore unless you renounce everything you just said. Unless you renounce your identity and the learning that you're doing in this identity. And the pressure brought to bear. And Job spoke to this class of exiles in his own isolation and also in his own unwillingness to say, okay, sure, I accept that I've sinned, that's why I'm being punished.

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If he would have just said that, everything would have been fine. We love you, Job. Here's the brownies. We'll bring you the brownies if you just say you sinned, you know?

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But he wouldn't do it. He had integrity. So he became a model. And I thought, wow, I need to dig further into this.

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And I really do think that the book speaks to spiritual refugees coming from that kind of background. goodness. Thank you. It's very helpful.

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We've got a litany of questions. Let's see if we can get through them here. How does the Hebrew word tamah indicate Job's sense that integrity from God to the human is an ultimate gift of humanness and relatedness? I'll say it again.

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Does the Hebrew word tamah indicate Job's sense that integrity from God to the human is an ultimate gift of humanness and relatedness? I would have to look at that Hebrew again to see what the reference is. Yeah. Thank you for the humility of saying let me do some more research as opposed to making something up.

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All right, that drives me nuts at conferences. I greatly appreciate this. Thank you. And we're back.

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Sorry. Appreciate that. I was Sean so box. Whoops, we're back.

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All right, so Will Decker asks, how do you respond to evangelical leaders that cite Job 42 and 6 as justification for God's actions and the condemnation of questions of Job, asking for a friend? Yeah. Asking for a friend, love that. I spent more time examining Job 42.6 and the dozens of different readings than any other single verse.

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And the predominant interpretation is that essentially Job says in Job 42.6, okay, I repent and retract my questions And I humble myself before you in dust and ashes. And that is why, and God is happy with Job after that. But that's not the only possible way to read the pretty open-ended Hebrew there.

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And I think it is at least ambiguous. And it is also possible that what Job is saying is, I acknowledge that This is the human experience that I have had, and it's not only my experience. And I accept that we are but dust and ashes.

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That is, we are human, and we are vulnerable, and we can be hurt. So in a sense, I am no longer protesting that this is the human condition. And I'm going to now seek to live as a frail human being in the best possible way that I know how to do.

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So it is still the majority opinion that Job got smashed by God's whirlwind speech and that he says, okay, I'm so sorry. But it's interesting because also in the epilogue, God chastises Job's friends for speaking wrongly about God. So it isn't that Job spoke wrongly, it's that they did. It's very complicated.

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But anyway, I don't think Job 42.6 is an open and shut ending to the story. Absolutely. That's excellent. Yes, you're correct.

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Job's friends are trifling. They are not helpful at all in the entire book. Edward trifling is in the Hebrew. Oh, it's not trifling.

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Yes. Absolutely. We have some good questions here. My goodness.

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All righty. So What do you think a Palestinian Christian reading of Job might be or might teach the church in light of the church's silence or support of their oppression? What do you think a Palestinian Christian reading of Job might be or might teach the church in light of the church's silence or support of their oppression?

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I think that we have abundant resources throughout the canon to identify with a dispossessed, violated people. And I think that to me, the unique movement of Joe is his privilege being stripped from him and what he learns as somebody who had privilege and then loses it. which I think is not a perfect fit with the Palestinian situation.

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It's more of a fit for people, again, who once knew a position of privilege and have had it taken away from them. Yeah. That's helpful. Thank you.

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Absolutely, yes. What does it add to our understanding to recognize that Job does as protest, not really lament? What does it add to our understanding to recognize that what Job does as protest and not merely as lament? As we often highlight only the lament.

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Yeah, I mean, lament is expression of grief and sorrow over, you know, what is going wrong or over suffering. His is much more than lament. It is direct, straight out protest. Some of the language that Job uses is astonishing.

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You have fired poisoned arrows at me. You have surrounded me like an enemy. You have stripped me of everything. It's direct accusation.

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Lament is not as direct as that in my experience. And Job, it's not in the lecture here, but Job demands a hearing with God. He wants a trial. And that goes a long way beyond lament.

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I demand, you might say, my day in court. And he never gets it. But he demands it. Absolutely.

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Excellent. Let's see, we've got time for a couple of more here. And all of them have chosen violence. All righty, so let's see.

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What makes you post-evangelical? Why were we forced into that? I'll go from you to we in that question. Yeah.

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They chose violence, yes, absolutely. For me, and by the way, I, now, be a little more transparent, one reason I find Job speaks to me is that for a season, I was a very privileged evangelical scholar leader type. You know, come and speak at our conference, come and speak at our chapel. And so having that taken away overnight,

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is part of that kind of breathless, punch in the gut experience, right? Sounds like something about that. I overstand, yes. Absolutely.

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You overstand, yes. And so in one sense, the evangelical community in its leadership declared that I was no longer an evangelical. And so that's how I became a post-evangelical. Stay right there.

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Stay right there. Yeah. I got an e-mail one day. Yes, sir.

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That's right. It was after I wrote my book, Changing Our Mind, in 2014. But it did take me a few years to make a move that went something like this. I'm not done with God, and I'm not done with church, and I'm not done with Christianity, but I guess I'm done with this particular community over here, and it's okay.

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I'm going to find some new community. And now post-evangelicalism is not just like those people who've left have been forced out. It's actually a community that's growing and organizing. Creating churches, creating literature, creating art.

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And so people need community. And I have now found new community with post-evangelicals. Again, part of the astonishment of Job is he never finds community in the whole book. Only at the end.

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his family is restored. And by the way, all the cousins and siblings come out of the woodwork at the end. You know, hey, we love you, we love you, baby. You know, it's all good.

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You know, but they're not to be found anywhere in the book. At all. Right. So anyway, it was being forced out and then gradually finding, I like community on the other side.

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Thank you very much. It's fun. Excellent. Our final question, and this comes again from one of our seminary students.

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I've had this student in class before and they often throw grenades at the conclusion. So this is a great question, just to be able to land the plane here. Is suffering a necessary evil or simply necessary? What's interesting about the story of Job is his suffering is clearly gratuitous.

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And to get at Job, human beings are killed. His children are killed. His workers are killed. his animals are killed.

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So such suffering is used to challenge Job. But he learned some things through his experience of suffering that I'm quite convinced he could not have learned any other way. And yet that does not mean suffering is good. That is a perfect way to land.

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Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Gushee. Thank you. Thank you very much.