What Is the Main Message of the Book of Job?
The story of Job, the biblical figure who suffered one blow after another, raises profound questions. Why do hardships befall us? Is it all random? What responses are most beneficial? The Book of Job raises the topic of good and evil and how we can take the reins of our lives into our own hands.
First, it is important to emphasize that chance does not exist in nature. There is a general force that operates and develops life. There are particular forces and laws that combine in various ways, and together they produce an evolutionary process. If something happens anywhere in nature's vast system, on the macro level, the micro level, in society, or in individual lives, it is certainly not accidental.
Unlike the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature, which operate entirely according to nature's governing force and therefore do not make mistakes, human beings seemingly have the freedom to do whatever they wish. This is the opening through which all the disorder enters our world, both globally and in human relationships.
Nature, as a whole, is unified. Humanity alone deviates from this unity and therefore becomes the source of evil. Hatred and division between people, the tendency to build one's success upon the ruin of others, and the ego games that threaten to destroy the world, all create imbalance among us and between humanity and the rest of nature.
In the natural world, we observe a constant tendency toward balance. We see it in the balance between heat and cold, in the regulation of pressures within the human body, and in countless other examples. We also see that life develops through the integration of opposites, through the complementarity of contrasting forces. The overall evolutionary trajectory creates an integral system, and consequently our world is becoming increasingly interconnected.
Yet our relationships with each other, from our thoughts and intentions to our actions and behavior, move in the opposite direction. The growing mismatch between our intensifying egoism within us and the increasing interconnectedness of the system outside of us causes us to experience suffering.
Instead of developing toward greater connection and mutual responsibility, instead of becoming the most advanced part of the system, i.e., the part that understands and senses what is happening and consciously organizes all parts of creation harmoniously, we rather act according to destructive egoistic impulses and create powerful collisions. The deviation from the harmonious direction of development accumulates until the system performs a course correction. This correction manifests as natural disasters, wars, epidemics, and personal hardships. If we fail to learn from these experiences and continue making the same mistakes, the imbalance will once again accumulate until it expresses itself through further disasters.
Every hardship, regardless of the level at which it carries out or whom it affects, points to a lack of alignment with the overall evolutionary direction that leads to integral connection among all people, to balance and harmony, like the functioning of a healthy human body.
As long as our response is, "It's fate; there's nothing we can do," it is likely that more blows will come. Ultimately, we will need to upgrade our attitude to life so that it aligns with the direction in which the evolutionary forces are pushing us.
Even saying, "Everything is in Heaven's hands," is insufficient, because it removes responsibility from the individual. Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk said, "Man was created to raise the heavens." The meaning is that we are meant to develop until we attain the level of the upper force, become similar to it and adopt its qualities of love and bestowal. This requires transforming our original egoistic nature into a new nature, that of love and bestowal. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is the formula for complete connection, and it is what will bring systemic balance.
"The inclination of a person's heart is evil from youth" is the fact that we are born as egoists, i.e., with desires to enjoy for self-benefit alone. We have it in our potential to derive a peculiar satisfaction from stepping on others, humiliating them, or causing them harm in order to feel better about ourselves and more satisfied with our own status. Animals have no such experience of each other. Egoism is a unique quality of human beings. However, we must begin progressing toward fulfilling the principle: "Do not do to your friend what you hate.”
In practical terms, until we feel responsible for the correction of the world, i.e., to bringing the world to a state of optimal, harmonious, and peaceful connection, we are not fulfilling what the system defines as correct functioning. This is, of course, a gradual developmental process, and at its culmination all human beings will be connected "as one man with one heart." Humanity will be integrally connected not only among itself but also with the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature. All of nature will function as a single whole, in perfection.
In our current state, it is impossible to look at someone's personal life and determine how a particular action they took brought a specific hardship upon them, because we do not see the overall network of connections or the larger system. What we can know with certainty is that we should focus on correcting human relationships within society.
What does this mean? To the extent that we move closer to relationships characterized by consideration and care, connection and complementarity, mutual responsibility, love, and giving, the root cause of all suffering will disappear from our lives, and we will enter a reality filled with goodness. I wish us all great success in this endeavor.
Based on “New Life 188 – Job, The Story Of Human Suffering” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.