Alfred Romero
3/14/2023
Professor Frank
LIL 420
Why Them?
Why do tragedies happen to those who have done no wrong? Why would a just God allow for events like the holocaust to take place? To answer this question, it’s necessary to review the “Book of Job”.
And as the Lord came down from the heavens above out of a whirlwind, Job’s cries were finally answered. After losing his livestock, his servants, and even a portion of his children, Job broke down from his healthy state, both mentally and physically. At first, he did nothing to fight back against the Lord, but as the days went by, he started to question the Lord. Not to the point of cursing His name and dying, like how his wife wanted, but still questioning His decisions. Before his misery, Job was a “blameless and upright” man, “fearing God and shunning evil” (Job 1:1). So, Job’s question revolved around why these horrible things were happening to someone as innocent as he was. From an audience perspective, it is known that the real reason why these tragedies were happening to Job was because the Adversary, or Satan, made a wager with the Lord. The Adversary argued that the only reason why Job was so loyal to the Lord stemmed from the fact that he hadn’t had any major losses in his life yet, claiming that when pushed to his limit, Job would curse the Lord’s name. So, the Lord accepted this wager. In response to Job’s question of why this series of events happened to him, the Lord spoke of His creation and power. An example of this comes from the Lord claiming that it was He who pulled “in Leviathan with a hook” (Job 41:1). Job realized his inferiority and submitted himself to the Lord’s words. The Lord accepted this and replenished Job’s life with even more than he had before, giving him more wealth and children than he had previously. The story ends with Job dying after living 140 years past his replenishment from the Lord. Many questions arise from this ending, really the whole story in general.
From an essay I wrote in the class Wisdom Literatures, where we discussed this story, I came to the conclusion that while Job’s submission to the Lord was a wise decision, the Lord never really answered his question. The major question that Job has, not just for the Lord, but for the audience as well, was never truly answered in the “Book of Job”. So, why do the innocent suffer? To push it even further, one could ask why God, if there exists one, would allow for the suffering of the innocent. In the case for the “Book of Job”, we know now that it was a wager that initiated the story. But, is that the case for all tragedies? The “Book of Job” doesn’t answer this question well enough for me, but that’s where other works come in. I gathered three primary sources that would help me answer the question. These sources would include “The Grand Inquisitor” by Fyodor Dostoevsky (with the introduction being written by Charles B. Guignon), “The Trial” by Franz Kafka, and “The Portable Jung” by Carl Jung (edited by Joseph Campbell). While “The Grand Inquisitor” would provide some background concepts that may support in coming up with an answer to Job’s question, all three sources will be analyzed to hopefully be able to come up with an answer to his question. Though they don’t directly refer to Job’s story, they still touch upon the subject through their own individuality. With that being said, I ask the same question as Job. Why them?
The first source I chose was “The Grand Inquisitor” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The analysis of this source would come in two parts, with one focusing on the introduction and the other focusing on pages 14-17, where Ivan, a character in the story, provides answers to the question of the suffering of innocents. From the introduction, Professor Anderson wrote down three terms that may serve as useful background information in context of answering Job’s question. These three terms are Karamazov, Laceration, and the Enlightenment Paradox. Karamazov stems from the father character Fyodor Karamazov and his drive from “lust, endlessly pursuing carnal pleasures and acting impulsively” (Guignon xvii). Karamazov can essentially be defined as “the source of animalistic drives and passions” (Guignon xvii). This can be connected to the idea of humanity being naturally drawn to brutality and destruction, that it’s simply nature for humans to trace back to their animalistic origins. But, this force is also what drives humans to connect with life, possibly claiming that the suffering of the weak and innocent is a byproduct of others fighting with more will to live. Laceration is a reaction to Karamazov. While Karamazov is this dark natural force that lingers within the souls of every individual, Laceration is the attempt to rise above this force. By “recoiling in disgust from the primal evil in oneself, one tries to rise above such debasing and undignified tendencies by affirming oneself as a transcendent, more spiritual or noble sort of being” (Guignon xxiii). The last term, the Enlightenment Paradox, refers to a self-defeating cycle of human nature. Humans started out “from the ideal of realizing paradise on earth through the discovery of objective truth. Yet this quest for truth tended to undermine the evaluative commitments that motivated the Enlightenment project in the first place (Guignon xxvii). This can sort of be observed with the two terms mentioned before. It’s natural for humans to be brutal and destructive, but this nature can be risen above in order to create peace and equality for all. But, when such individuals strive for that mindset, it only becomes discriminatory as they’re abandoning their true nature. It becomes prideful. So, with those terms in mind, how can Ivan’s answers translate towards Job’s question? Ivan’s stance is an interesting one. First, he mentions his place in the universe and how small he is. A bug such as him could never fully understand why the world was created the way it was, but that can’t stop him from thinking about the possibilities. So, he runs through the idea that the suffering of the innocent is a paving for the greater good, how suffering “may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else” (Dostoevsky 15). But, children become a crucial part of this argument. Why should children, the most innocent of them all, have to go through the same fate? Men would be more understandable as they’ve grown up enough to be able to take responsibility for their actions involving any sort of conflict. Children have their whole lives ahead of them, yet this potential is snuffed out from conflict in the name of harmony. A new question arises from this. Is harmony really worth it after this level of brutality? This is the point where Ivan takes his stance, stating that “it’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for”, referring to the tears of the suffered (Dostoevsky 15). There can never be true harmony on Earth as the innocent will always suffer for the benefits of another from the free world. While there is the idea of vengeance, this completely goes against the idea of harmony. From this, Ivan completely rejects harmony. He doesn’t want that paradise if it means standing over the bodies of the innocent who have suffered tragic fates. This stance can derive an answer to Job’s question, one more direct than the Lord made in his discussion with Job. If the innocent have to suffer, especially children, for the name of harmony, then that would go against the existence of a just God. Either God doesn’t exist because there is no justice within the situation, or God does exist, but can’t be accepted by humanity due to the injustice around the world. A very interesting take indeed, but as convincing as Ivan’s position is, I feel as though it doesn’t directly answer Job’s primary question. He does provide his opinion on God and whether a just God would allow for that suffering in the first place, but he never directly answers why the innocent suffer.
Job’s question can also be answered from a psychological perspective behind the spirituality of the topic. “The Portable Jung” by Joseph Campbell consists of many ideas behind the psychoanalyst mind and Campbell even confronts Job’s question towards the end of his work. The basis for his analysis revolves around the psyche of not Job, but God Himself. Job is an innocent man in the eyes of Jung and there was no legitimate justification for why he had to go through the tragedy he went through. When God finally confronted Job through His whirlwind form, “His thunderings at Job so completely miss the point that one cannot help but see how much he is occupied with himself” (Campbell 542). While Job did not directly curse God, making God win the bet, the focus can be shifted towards Satan’s intrigue, which “is deliberately overlooked at Job’s expense” (Campbell 542). Jung sees that God was the inferior character compared to Job in the scenario when it comes to morality. An idea that arises revolves around arguably the most prominent figure in the entirety of the Christian or Catholic religion, Jesus Christ. The primary view of Jesus Christ is that he was sent by God to pay for humanity’s sins. But, Jung proposes another “view, which regards the atonement not as the payment of a human debt to God, but as reparation for a wrong done by God to man” (Campbell 588). There’s this constant comparison between God and man throughout Jung’s discussion. As Jung’s approach primarily relies on methods of psychoanalysis, this comparison between the two starts to specifically trace towards the psyche of each. Job was innocent and God knew this as He was one of the two characters who placed a wager on Job’s loyalty. Towards the end of the story, where God is present through a whirlwind talking down on Job, it becomes questionable whether he truly answered Job’s question. The idea arises, then, that God really couldn’t answer the question due to his knowing of the injustice he has given Job. So, Jesus Christ became the hero, not to save humanity for their sins, but to pay back God’s sins towards the treatment of Job. But the underlying reason for Job having to suffer in the first place comes from this idea of God wanting to be human and how He “still wants to” (Campbell 632). Like the human psyche, it’s theorized that God has different dimensions of his character as well. Similarly in “The Grand Inquisitor”, it could be possible that God also goes through the same paradox that humanity does in terms of natural tendency competing with moralistic belief. Like humans, there is a balance, and the suffering of the innocent can be a byproduct of the shadow side balancing out the lighter side in life. In contrast to Dostoevsky, I feel as Jung does answer Job’s question. Why do the innocent suffer? Well, perhaps it’s the byproduct of God’s humanistic nature taking over, similar to Karamazov. Is God just for this? That I can’t fully answer, but it may be so considering it’s all just nature.
When discussing more with Professor Anderson, he mentioned a part in the “Book of Job” that I had forgotten about when I was reading the first few times. Before Job and God actually had their encounter, Job hit his lowest point after all the suffering God put upon him. This is when Job, while not cursing God directly, curses the day he was born. And from his confusion towards God’s decisions, he requests a trial with the “desire to speak to the Almighty” (Job 13:3). As an innocent man, Job pleads for a fair case, as he truly doesn’t understand why all his tragedies made their way into his life. Why would God do this to him? It’s only fair that he would be able to state his case as a defendant who’s been wrongly accused. This scene in the story specifically serves as a bridge to the final source Professor Anderson recommended for answering Job’s question. “The Trial” by Franz Kafka follows Joseph K., a man who suddenly gets arrested and is forced to defend his innocence against a charge that he has no information on whatsoever. The parallels to Job are already visible from the description of the story alone. Following Joseph in “The Trial”, we see him progressively go from actively questioning his wrongful accusations to convincing himself that he deserved the fate that was laid out for him, “like a dog” who’s being put out of his misery (Kafka 229). A question now arises towards what changed Joseph. How did this man, who fights for his innocence against unreasonable accusations, shift towards accepting his own murder as his underlying guilt of existence pushes him to an abyss of misery? The answer lies within the system he was exposed to as a whole. It then doesn’t become a matter of whether he was actually guilty of committing a crime that he was charged with. It more so becomes a matter of how his perception of himself and others’ perception of him changed after becoming the accused. Joseph didn’t even spend most of the story behind the traditional prison setting, as he wasn’t even “prevented from leading [his] ordinary life” (Kafka 14). At this point, everything’s against Joseph and anything he does to fight back against the system is immediately shut down. A subject, such as Joseph, would have no say, as the system “must be quite well informed about the reasons for the arrest and the person of the prisoner” (Kafka 6). With nothing Joseph could do, it only becomes a natural process for him to find himself guilty along the way through different events in the story, such as the whipping scene of the men who arrested him in the first place. Living in a society with this kind of system drills subordination into the individual’s mind, convincing them that no matter what they do, they’re always guilty of something. This guilt could break the spirit of the individual, where it doesn’t even matter whether they’re innocent or not. The true evil lies within the system convincing the individual that they don’t have any power over their situation. Everything against them would hold true because that’s just how the system works. Joseph’s character is extremely powerless in the same sense as Job is. Job didn’t do anything wrong, yet in the progression of the story, responses from his friends emerge with ideas revolving around Job’s guilt. Despite not only being an innocent person, but a righteous one who holds true to good morals, a character like Job was still met with accusations placing him along with the guilty. Although he stood strong against his friends’ claims against his innocence, he was still pushed to the point of requesting a trial from the Lord Himself. And on top of that, Job cursed the day he was born, and when confronted by God, he submitted, admitting that he was the one at fault and that God knew what was best. So, this is where an answer could be indirectly derived from “The Trial”. Why do the innocent suffer? Despite having done nothing wrong, certain systems can convince the individual that they’re the one at fault no matter the circumstance. The innocent suffer because the environment around them convinces them that they deserve punishment. Similarly to Dostoevsky, I found this take interesting as well. This position can also directly be applied to contemporary societies and societies of the past as well. But like Dostoevsky, it doesn’t answer the “why” portion of the question. I feel as if discussing how certain societal systems break down the individual psychologically would contribute to a “how” portion of the process, but not really contributing towards asking God “Why do the innocent suffer?”. Systems may be corrupt, such as the one behind “The Trial” and even behind Job’s situation, but why exactly does Job go through what he had to go through? We know, as the audience, that it was simply due to the wager between God and Satan, but this doesn’t necessarily account for other scenarios. Was the Holocaust a wager as well? Jung’s theory on God’s evil side would account for that note, but nonetheless Kafka still makes great points on how the “why” might not even matter. The fact of the matter is that systems do what they do and there’s no way getting around it as an individual who gets exposed to that.
Out of all the sources I’ve discussed, only one directly answers why the innocent suffer, and I’d say that goes to “The Portable Jung” by Carl Jung. Dostoevsky, or Dostoevsky speaking through the character Ivan, does answer the second question. Ivan thinks that no just God would allow for the suffering of the innocent. If such a God did exist, then that God wouldn’t be worthy of humanity’s praise. But what about the primary question? Why do the innocent suffer? Ivan says that no alternative would ever be worthy of the suffering of the innocent that happens on Earth, but that claim still doesn’t provide an answer to Job’s primary question. In “The Trial” by Franz Kafka, Joseph’s character exemplifies the claim that evil isn’t necessarily a force that fits the stereotypical villainous role. Evil can instead be a system that lays down unjustified guidelines that convince the individual that they’re the ones at fault for any certain scenario. Suffering happens because systems make it so that the general population will always be blamed. Job and Joseph did nothing wrong, yet these characters are convinced by the end that they were the ones to blame because their environment made it seem that way. Job’s friends were against him and even the Lord Himself made Job feel inferior by even asking his question. Joseph went from an innocent man who was ready to fight the system who wrongfully accused him to willingly laying his life down at the end due to the fact that he was just over the whole case. But using the system still doesn’t answer all the dimensions behind Job’s question? To say the innocent suffer because systems cheat seems almost too broad. Are starving children in Africa convinced that they’ve been the wrong ones the whole time? And even then, their guilt doesn’t exactly answer why they’re in their position in the first place. So, that leaves the last source. “The Portable Jung”. While it’s a theory that doesn’t confirm an answer through facts, it provides the best explanation. God knew He made a mistake with the wager, so He pays by providing Christ as a sacrifice. God wants to be human and has characteristics that support that desire. Similar to the intro of “The Grand Inquisitor”, God would have an evil side like humans have with Karamazov. This comparison in the psyche could provide an answer to Job’s question, as the suffering of the innocent can relate from God’s evil side. But this is just a theory. All of these answers, in fact, are really just speculation. Kafka’s work can be applied to real life societies, yet his story still doesn’t directly answer Job’s question. While ideas can be generated outside of Job’s question that initiate the discussion for other topics, no true answer can be derived for Job. I feel that a connecting factor behind all the sources traces back to our humanity. Ivan knows he’s just a human and that he doesn’t know the answers. Jung’s idea is just what it is, an idea. Kafka doesn’t directly answer the question as he just provides external context relating to the systematic environment that surrounds the story. As humans, we’re extremely limited with these kinds of philosophical questions. We can generate ideas and have them form bridges towards other concepts, but at the end of the day we can never truly answer the question for ourselves. And that’s okay. While we can’t come up with a definitive answer, we can learn from the sources we do have and come up with possibilities that may open up the door for another topic that we may actually derive an answer to. Learning doesn’t always have to have an answer. It can bring us together to form new questions that we didn’t even know we could come up with.
Works Cited:
Job 1 BSB, https://biblehub.com/bsb/job/1.htm.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The grand inquisitor / [by] Fyodor Dostoevsky ; Introduction by Anne Fremantle Ungar New York 1963
Jung, C. G., and Joseph Campbell. The Portable Jung. Viking Press, 1971. Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Schocken Books, 1999.
