John Bytheway: 00:02 Welcome to part two of this week’s podcast.

Hank Smith: 00:07 Let’s get into the dialogue now of chapters three, through what? This goes on for quite some time.

Dr. Adam Miller: 00:15 My understanding is that it goes all the way up to the final two or three chapters where God arrives on the scene, and then we get the little bit of a narrative closure again.

Hank Smith: 00:26 But we have bookend chapters. We have verse chapters one and two, and then we have the chapters that the last three as the two bookends and in between is this conversation.

Dr. Adam Miller: 00:36 God, I think arrives as part of the conversation.

Hank Smith: 00:38 Okay.

Dr. Adam Miller: 00:38 He enters into the conversation. He also speaks in a poetic register. And then we get the bit about Job’s fortunes being restored again in terms of prose narrative. I think it’s probably right to see God’s theophany as part of the conversation. His contribution to that conversation.

Hank Smith: 00:55 And then just a little bit of a narration there at the end to close it.

Dr. Adam Miller: 00:58 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:58 Okay. It seems the Book of Job needs to be felt. As I’ve been reading this so far, just these opening chapters, if you just read, you’re not going to get it. It was William Tyndale who said, “We must not read and talk only, we must understand and feel.” And this book, don’t you think Adam, needs to be felt. That chapter 11, why died I not from the womb, you have to feel how excruciating this must be for Job.

Dr. Adam Miller: 01:29 Yeah, I think that’s right. I think the Book of Job wants us to feel along with Job what he’s feeling. It wants to put us in his shoes, it wants us to wrestle with the thing that he is wrestling with. And I think that part of why we get so much of it written then as poetry is for this very reason, because if you can get your head around it, if you can just follow what’s being said on a sentence by sentence level, the poetry is designed to be felt more than understood. Poetry is the perfect vehicle for generating those kinds of emotions, if you can get into the spirit of the poetry itself.

John Bytheway: 02:08 We emphasize empathy and feeling a lot in the church. We’ve already talked about, if you mourn with those that mourn. I’m always intrigued with that idea of Jesus wept just before he raised Lazarus and knowing what he was going to do. However, he must have been feeling what they were feeling. And I suppose that’s why he wept, which I’ve always thought was beautiful that he was feeling what they were feeling on such a level, even though he knew what was going to happen. I look at chapter 13 and the title of our chapter is Yet Will I Trust, look at verse 15 of chapter 13, though he slay me yet will I trust in him. It sounds like it took him a while to get to that place. Would you say that Adam? Through the previous chapters to this place?

Dr. Adam Miller: 03:00 Yeah. I think part of what we see, if you track where Job is at throughout the discourse, you see him constantly wobble back and forth between these different positions between this despair and these almost spontaneous exclamations of trust. Nonetheless, it’s not like he’s only in one place or the other. You see him constantly in the tension between those two positions.

John Bytheway: 03:24 For him to say, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him, what does that mean? His love, his motives, his care for me, I will trust him. There must be a reason?

Dr. Adam Miller: 03:34 I think usually in the scriptures, what we primarily mean by the word faith is trust. Usually in the scriptures, we don’t mean by faith a willingness to believe things that we don’t know for sure. Right? Usually what we mean is something much more like my willingness to place my trust in another person. And I think that’s the kind of thing that you have here, where Job expresses his trust in God as a result of finding himself in this place of tension between his despair and his willingness to bear up under it. Faith is that kind of tension between the two. That willingness to stick with it in relationship with another person, even though things haven’t gone the way that you wanted.

Hank Smith: 04:17 Adam, you mentioned the wobbling between, “Why was I born,” versus these declarations of faith. Is that not being a human being? To me, I have friends and me myself have lived that wobble. These declarations of faith, and you mean it, you really mean it. And then the times of the day or the night where you think, “I can’t live this anymore. I can’t keep going.” There’s a point in chapter three where Job says, “Which long for death, but it cometh not,” I just can’t keep doing this.

John Bytheway: 04:53 Yeah. I can’t live like this. If this is what life is, I don’t want this.

Hank Smith: 04:58 I like how you called it the wobble between declarations of faith and declarations of just pain.

Dr. Adam Miller: 05:05 I think it’s important to see even his declarations of despair as part of his religious journey, as part of his religious commitment. That what has to be done with that despair, it’s not the case that he has to avoid feeling it. It’s not the case that he has to avoid feeling sorrow or mourning or being filled with this kind of despair. It is the case that when he feels that what he needs to do with it is give it back to God. He needs to express that despair to God. And if he’s bringing that despair back to God, then he is in the process redeeming even that experience of despair.

Dr. Adam Miller: 05:43 When we get in trouble is when things implode and we stew in that despair and we don’t make that despair itself part of our relationship to God, we refuse to acknowledge it or refuse to deal with it or refuse to think that it might be part of what a real relationship to God looks like. But I think that Job is a really good example of this, the Psalms in general in the Bible are a really good example of this, of the way that kind of despair is the material, it’s the raw material for prayer. It’s the stuff out of which our relationship with God is made. Not the thing that you have to get rid of before you can have a relationship with God.

Hank Smith: 06:20 I’m writing in my scriptures here. What a great statement. We shouldn’t see, correct, the feeling of despair and the expression of despair as automatically the antithesis of faith. It’s not.

Dr. Adam Miller: 06:33 Right. To whom are you expressing that despair? And if it’s to God, then you’re on the right track.

Hank Smith: 06:39 I’m thinking of a talk from Elder Cook. Do you remember? There was a little boy who was really scared during a snowy drive. And he called his mom. And the first thing he said is, “I hope you know, we had a hard time.”

John Bytheway: 06:50 Had a hard time. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 06:52 He wanted someone to know he was suffering. Maybe that’s part of what Job is doing here.

Dr. Adam Miller: 06:57 Yeah, I think so. If you think how it unfolds in testimony meetings, a lot of those really most powerful testimonies that are born on fast Sundays come when people share what they are suffering. And in that context express their faith.

Hank Smith: 07:13 Hope you know, I’m having a hard time. That’s a Elder Quentin L. Cook’s talk from October of 2008. It’s okay to express that. And maybe in the church, Adam, we get this idea that if I’m not cheerful, I’m not faithful. When the Book of Job says the exact opposite. If you’re calling out in despair to God, that’s an act of faith.

Dr. Adam Miller: 07:35 You should feel free to dance and shout and sing like David as well. But you should also feel free to cry out in despair if that’s what you’re feeling.

Hank Smith: 07:45 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 07:46 President Packer used to quote a little poem, I walked a mile with pleasure. She chattered all the way, but left me none the wiser for all she had to say, I walked a mile with sorrow and not a word said she, but oh, the things I learned from her when sorrow walked with me.

Dr. Adam Miller: 08:05 Poetry, there it is.

John Bytheway: 08:07 Yeah, there it is. Did you feel that?

Dr. Adam Miller: 08:10 I felt that.

Hank Smith: 08:10 That’s awesome. John, you mentioned chapter 13, verse 15. And I wanted to share a story that has stayed with me ever since I heard it. It was told to me by a BYU Idaho religion teacher, his name is John Parker. He’s a fantastic teacher. Fantastic man. When John was just in his late teens, 18, 19, 20 years old, either just before his mission or just after, he and his family were getting together on a Sunday afternoon to take family pictures and his little sister, Michelle, 17, didn’t show up. She was late and John was, “Why is Michelle not here?” Family pictures is something you’re not generally this late for when the news came from the police that Michelle and her best friend had been out to sing a song at a sacrament meeting on the other side of town. And on the way back were both killed in a car accident.

Hank Smith: 09:09 John said his dad who’s also is his name is John Parker had been the seminary teacher in Rexburg for decades. It was one of those seminary teachers that you taught my mom type thing. And everybody came out to the funeral to support this family. And this is the story John told me. He said at the funeral, my dad stood up. He went to the pulpit. Couldn’t say much, obviously so much grief, so much pain. But the one thing he said was a quote of Job 13:15, having those thousands of students there listening. He said, Job 13:15, though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. John Parker told me, he said, “At that moment, I thought I knew what faith was. I thought I knew what belief was. But when my dad stood up there and quoted that verse,” he said that was seared into his memory as faith. Adam, maybe it is in our moments of suffering where we can have our finest moments of faith.

Dr. Adam Miller: 10:25 Yeah. I think it’s where the rubber meets the road. It’s where the relationship unfolds. It’s where we connect with God or not.

Hank Smith: 10:34 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 10:35 I think that we sing because I have been given much, I too must give. We say, I love God because he’s done so much for me. And I love the Book of Job because it says, “Okay, but what if he doesn’t?”

Hank Smith: 10:47 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 10:48 What will you do when you lose everything? That’s why I love the Book of Job because, because it’s a new thought that what if nothing good comes back or at least in the timeframe I expect it, then will I love God? And that’s why this, though he slay me, which sounds like to be slayed though, yet will I trust him. It sounds like he had to get to that. It took a while to get to that point where even if he slays me, I’m going to trust him. It shows that this is a process, I think, for Job.

Dr. Adam Miller: 11:21 This is the very thing at stake in what Jesus describes when he promises peace, but not necessarily in the way that the world gives peace. Maybe it will come in the way that the world gives peace. Maybe Job’s fortunes will be restored. Maybe though he won’t get his old children back, he’ll have new children. But regardless, the thing that God is promising is the kind of peace that operates at a different level than the coming and going of our fortunes in this world.

John Bytheway: 11:51 Great.

Hank Smith: 11:52 Wow. This has such a fantastic discussion.

John Bytheway: 11:56 Yeah, it’s true. When we come to expect a vending machine, I put this in, I get this out. When we come to expect that over and over, it can be frustrating. It’s so interesting to think of the Abinadis, who just did everything he was supposed to do and suffer death in a horrible way, who did everything right, and the Jobs and the Joseph Smiths and the Abraham and the Jesus himself. There’s a statement that I have from Elder Orson F. Whitney, that I’ve always loved.

John Bytheway: 12:26 He said no pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, see, and it gets even harder, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, here’s my favorite, expands our souls and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God. And it is through sorrow and suffering toil and tribulation that we gain the education that we came here to acquire, which will make us more like our father and mother in heaven.

John Bytheway: 13:07 I love the phrase soul expanding. It doesn’t say it’ll make us happier. But when we come across somebody who’s having a trial and we’ve had one, there’s just something about knowing someone else has been through this that can be a comfort.

Hank Smith: 13:25 Yeah. You call that same boat therapy,

John Bytheway: 13:28 Same boat therapy. That happened to me to be able to say, “Oh my goodness, that happened to me,” and put an arm around or whatever. But I like that even though we’re talking about this senseless suffering that I like that Orson F. Whitney would say, “This isn’t wasted. This can be soul expanding.”

Dr. Adam Miller: 13:50 Yeah. I think for me, another one of the big takeaways of the Book of Job has to do with how we think about the relationship between morals and commandments and suffering, right? It’s tempting to think about it in the way that the natural man does and to see suffering as a punishment for failing to keep the commandments.

Hank Smith: 14:14 Right.

Dr. Adam Miller: 14:14 But I think we’re probably better off thinking about it from the other direction, in terms of thinking about the commandments as God’s remedy for suffering. Morality, commandments, God’s law. Those are a response to suffering, right? Not an explanation for suffering. And I think Job really drives home that point.

Hank Smith: 14:34 Wow.

Dr. Adam Miller: 14:34 You can’t use morality to explain suffering, but you should and must use morality to respond to suffering.

Hank Smith: 14:41 That is fantastic.

John Bytheway: 14:43 That’s a great way to put it.

Hank Smith: 14:45 We come to a verse in Job 14 that I almost can only read in President Monson’s voice. And that is Job 14:14, if a man die, shall he live again? The only reason I know that verse is because of President Monson quoting it over and over. And as I’ve read it, I’ve often of course talked about resurrection. But today Adam, as we’ve been discussing, it almost seems to me that Job is asking if I suffer this much, can I ever be happy again?

Dr. Adam Miller: 15:19 I’d encourage us to read the Book of Job in a pretty open-ended way, because I think it’s designed in that way to allow for a richness and complexity and a range of possible meanings. I quite like what you suggest though, Hank. As best I can tell in the context of ancient Israel and in the context of the Book of Job, resurrection is not something that’s on his horizon. Right?

Hank Smith: 15:42 Right.

Dr. Adam Miller: 15:42 It’s not dead center on his radar. And instead, these other kinds of live questions about whether or not it’s ever possible for him to be happy again, that’s much more in tune I think with the general vibe of what the Book of Job is after.

Hank Smith: 15:54 That’s why I think so too. I have no problem with that because resurrection is a true principle that we believe in. But as I read it in its context, I’m going, “Yeah. This isn’t something he’s saying, ‘Am I going to be resurrected?'” It seems that he’s just going, “Can I ever recover from this?”

John Bytheway: 16:12 I really like that, Hank. I’d never seen it that way. To restate if a man dies, shall he live again? If a man goes through lots of trouble, if he has lots of troubles in his life, will he ever be happy again? Or can I ever enjoy life again? That’s a really good way to put it. If you look at Job 14, verse one, it’s an interesting comment, man that is born of a woman is a few days and full of trouble. That’s one way to describe life. It’s short and it’s full of trouble.

Hank Smith: 16:40 I like that. Someone who is born of a woman, I’m pretty sure that’s all encompassing, right?

Dr. Adam Miller: 16:45 Yeah. That covers everybody.

John Bytheway: 16:45 Yeah. Pretty sure it comes down to it, yeah.

Hank Smith: 16:48 That covers everyone.

John Bytheway: 16:50 I like that you’re addressing maybe his development through this wrestling because he does sound like a real resurrection type expectation he has in Job 19. Do you want to take us in there?

Dr. Adam Miller: 17:03 Yeah. I think especially if we give the verses a little context in pick up in verse 23 in chapter 19, we get Job saying, “Oh, that my words were now written. Oh, that they were printed in a book.” He got his wish, I guess.

John Bytheway: 17:18 They are.

Dr. Adam Miller: 17:20 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever. For I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh, shall I see God. Whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold and not another though my reins be consumed within me. Well, it’s that line in particular, in verse 25, that’s most famous. Right? I know that my Redeemer liveth, yet in my flesh, shall I see God.

Dr. Adam Miller: 17:53 I think we’re right as Christians here in the context of the New Testament to read that in light of what we know about resurrection as a type of the doctrine of resurrection. Though I think also in the context as Hank was just pointing out with the previous example, in the context of this chapter itself, what Job has just said fits in very neatly with his general project of trying to layer by layer, conversation by conversation, build a case against God. To get God to come and account for why he has suffered all these things. And partly what he’s expressing here then is the confidence that God will show up at some point and explain himself, that God’s going to stand in front of him at some point at the last days and give an explanation for why all these things have happened to him.

Hank Smith: 18:41 Yeah. How fascinating. He’s almost saying, “I want answers. In my flesh shall I see God. I am going to get my answers.”

Dr. Adam Miller: 18:49 Yeah. And what he once printed in the book, what he once graven with an iron pen are the list of complaints that he has about all the things that he has suffered without any justification. And he wants a permanent record of the lawsuit that he’s bringing against God though. Though also expressing confidence that God will answer at some point for what he has suffered.

Hank Smith: 19:11 I don’t mean to laugh, but man, that is so human. Right?

Dr. Adam Miller: 19:15 Yeah. Very human.

Hank Smith: 19:16 I have some complaints.

Dr. Adam Miller: 19:18 I have a list of grievances. May they be written in stone forever?

Hank Smith: 19:22 Yeah. Is there a suggestion box in the spirit world where you say, “If you have any suggestions?” “Yeah. I have some suggestions.”

John Bytheway: 19:32 Have you ever had a time, I think I have, where I quoted my patriarchal blessing back to God wondering, “Hello, I’m waiting.”

Dr. Adam Miller: 19:42 That’s a great example.

John Bytheway: 19:43 I have this written in a book that’s printed right here. It ain’t happening.

Dr. Adam Miller: 19:47 Yeah. You said.

Hank Smith: 19:48 Yeah. You said this. That’s a great example, John of, “I need some answers.”

John Bytheway: 19:56 It says right here in this contract.

Hank Smith: 19:59 I love that we quote this, verses I know that my Redeemer lives where Job is saying, I know that my Redeemer lives and he is not answering me.

Dr. Adam Miller: 20:07 Right.

John Bytheway: 20:07 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 20:07 Right. Where is he? Why has he not answered my questions and acknowledged? Or is he also saying Adam, that one day I will get my answers?

Dr. Adam Miller: 20:17 If you dig into the commentary a little bit on the verses here, you discover that the Hebrew is really pretty garbled. The Hebrew is very hard to parse here, even if you’re an expert in Hebrew. And so it’s very hard to make out exactly what he’s saying, which in some ways gives us more room, more freedom to look at it from these different angles.

Hank Smith: 20:35 I wanted to ask you, does Paul borrow from Job? Do any New Testament authors lean on Job? Because I’m noticing some Doctrine and Covenants phrases like strengthening the feeble knees.

Dr. Adam Miller: 20:47 Right. You are right that suffering is in many ways the central question for Paul too, right? For Paul, the whole business of faith of learning how to live under the law of grace rather than the law of works, turns around this same basic question, about whether or not morality is the thing that you use to get what you want and avoid suffering or whether morality is at the end of the day, a grace filled response to all suffering.

Hank Smith: 21:11 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 21:11 That’s Paul’s same basic question.

Hank Smith: 21:13 In Romans eight, Paul says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword?” He goes on down a little bit further to say in verse 38, “I am persuaded that death, life, not angels, not principalities, powers, nor things present, nor things to come nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” That seems to be the Christian version of what Job is going through here with God.

Dr. Adam Miller: 21:49 I think that’s right. And in the context of Romans eight, this is in the context of Paul’s discussion of how the whole world groans under the weight of sin, right? That the earth itself is crying out with this un-articulatable amount of suffering under the weight of sin. And it’s in that context that Paul makes that declaration. For me, the Book of Romans is like the parallel case to the Book of Job in the Old Testament. What strikes me about the Book of Job as being special in the Old Testament is the fact that it’s a really long argument slash explanation.

Dr. Adam Miller: 22:25 That’s also, I think, what singles out the Book of Romans as really, really special in the New Testament is that it’s a long, clear uninterrupted explanation of what Paul thinks the gospel of Jesus Christ is about. And he doesn’t tell us any stories. We don’t get any poetry here, but we get an argument from Paul. And I think it’s really powerful. And Job and the Book of Romans. I think if I were to pick just two books from the Bible to take with me to a desert island, those would be my two.

Hank Smith: 22:52 Well, how exciting then we might as well just put you on the schedule for next year.

John Bytheway: 22:56 For Romans. Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 22:57 Sign me up.

John Bytheway: 22:58 There you go.

Hank Smith: 22:58 Because you wrote a book on that one as well. What’s that one called?

Dr. Adam Miller: 23:01 Well, I’ve been writing about the Book of Romans since that dissertation I worked on in John’s office in the testing center.

John Bytheway: 23:08 Do you use my notes?

Dr. Adam Miller: 23:09 I’ve been writing about Romans.

Hank Smith: 23:10 Yeah, sure.

Dr. Adam Miller: 23:11 Anything and everything, I was happy to. Stuff I found in your drawers, whatever. But yeah, I have a little-

Hank Smith: 23:20 A little book, right?

Dr. Adam Miller: 23:21 I have a little paraphrase of the Book of Romans where I try to render the epistle into contemporary English in a way that makes the logic of the argument as clear as I can.

Hank Smith: 23:32 Yeah. What’s that called?

Dr. Adam Miller: 23:33 It’s called Grace is Not God’s Backup Plan.

Hank Smith: 23:36 So Adam, let’s jump back into the Book of Job. Where do you want to go from here?

Dr. Adam Miller: 23:40 Well, I think a lot of the rest of what we get in the cycle of conversations that Job has with his friends and the center of the book, very similar to what we’ve already discussed. Job protesting his innocence, making his case against God for having made him suffer anyway, and Job’s friends attempting to argue instead that Job must deserve his suffering if he is suffering. And that conversation builds in intensity and complexity. But ultimately, I think it’s the points that they’re making are very similar to the ones that we’ve already seen.

Hank Smith: 24:10 Okay. And that leads up to where?

Dr. Adam Miller: 24:12 Until God shows up and changes the nature and scale of the conversation altogether.

Hank Smith: 24:17 Tremendously.

John Bytheway: 24:18 I love that it’s out of a whirlwind. It’s not a still small voice here. He comes out of a full gale tornado.

Dr. Adam Miller: 24:27 This is something like God showing up in the form of an enormous roiling boiling lightning filled storm cloud. That’s the guise in which he appears here to Job.

Hank Smith: 24:39 Is this the part where it says, “At this also my heart trembleth.”

Dr. Adam Miller: 24:43 We get a little bit of Job’s reactions here, are spliced in a little bit into the theophany.

Hank Smith: 24:48 Yeah. He shows up and, “You’re looking for me?” And it’s, “Oh, wow.”

John Bytheway: 24:52 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 24:52 There’s one thing to call God down. There’s another when he actually shows up and says, “All right.”

John Bytheway: 24:57 Oh my gosh. I think so.

Dr. Adam Miller: 24:57 Be careful what you wish for.

John Bytheway: 24:59 First three. “Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee and answer thou me, where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” I mean, whoa, this is so …

Hank Smith: 25:08 This is great.

Dr. Adam Miller: 25:10 I think it’s worth getting a feel a little bit here, especially for those opening verses in chapter 38, when God arrives on the scene. In verse one, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, “Who is this? That darkeneth council by words, without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee answer thou me,” right?

John Bytheway: 25:32 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 25:32 Job’s been demanding answers from God. And God’s first move when he shows up is to demand answers instead of Job.

Hank Smith: 25:38 This is beautiful.

Dr. Adam Miller: 25:40 Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding, who has laid the measures thereof if thou knows, or who has stretched the line upon it? Where upon are the foundations thereof fashioned? Who laid the cornerstone thereof when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” And it largely goes on in that vein.

John Bytheway: 26:01 It’s so great.

Dr. Adam Miller: 26:02 For two whole chapters, God laying out all the things that Job’s not in a position to understand. And it’s quite powerful. It’s worth noting here I think that in the Bible, depending on how we count, maybe in restoration scripture, but in the Bible, this is the longest sustained first person discourse from God.

John Bytheway: 26:19 Oh, that’s a really cool insight.

Dr. Adam Miller: 26:20 Those two chapters.

Hank Smith: 26:20 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 26:23 This is the longest we get God speaking of the first person to anybody, anywhere in the Bible,

Hank Smith: 26:28 Adam, this is fantastic.

John Bytheway: 26:30 Job’s friends have been going on for 30 chapters here. When he gets ready to answer, he’s going to let him have it with both barrels. Right? And that’s what it sounds like. Say that phrase again, the longest …

Dr. Adam Miller: 26:41 Longest sustained first person discourse from God that we get in the Bible.

Hank Smith: 26:47 The reason I’m loving this is that Job had so many questions and God comes with questions. His first statement is a question.

Dr. Adam Miller: 26:55 Yes. It’s basically nothing but questions for two chapters.

Hank Smith: 26:58 Yeah. I’m highlighting all the question marks here.

John Bytheway: 27:01 Yeah. I love the idea of teaching through questions too, because I just imagined you’d have to be speechless after hearing all these questions. Don’t you think? And I think Hank, you gave me a nice compliment at the beginning. I think I am described in verse two, words without knowledge. That’s pretty much me right there. All of these questions and no chance to answer them but it gets to the point where, “Okay. Okay. You’re right. I don’t know what I’ve been talking about.”

Hank Smith: 27:27 Adam, is the Lord talking to Job and his friends here?

Dr. Adam Miller: 27:31 I’m hesitant to say a hundred percent for sure. My impression is that God is speaking directly to Job and that his friends are overhearing.

Hank Smith: 27:39 Okay.

Dr. Adam Miller: 27:39 Because when you get to the end of it, God has instructions for how those friends are supposed to repent. And so they may be in some sense, witnesses of what’s going on here.

Hank Smith: 27:47 What do you think the point is of all these questions, to show Job all he doesn’t know and can’t do?

Dr. Adam Miller: 27:53 Yeah. I think that’s part of it.

John Bytheway: 27:55 Like, “This is bigger than you imagined.”

Dr. Adam Miller: 27:57 Yeah. I think part of the experience of grappling with suffering as a human being has just to do with the scale of the world in relationship to you as a human being. Part of what it means to suffer as a human being is to be confronted with how little you have control over. How little power is at your disposal, how little change you can affect, how few outcomes you are able to determine. And that’s a big part of suffering, right? Is to be confronted with the limits of your own power and your own knowledge as a human being. And God puts that center stage here for Job.

Hank Smith: 28:33 Is this the point where the Lord says, “All right, now it’s your turn to talk back.” This is chapter 40. The Lord says to Job, verse two, “Shall he that contendeth with the almighty, instruct him? He, that reproveth God, let him answer.” And Job responds with, “I don’t want to say anything. I am vile. What shall I answer?”

Dr. Adam Miller: 28:55 I lay my hand upon my mouth. Job essentially responds by zipping his mouth shut.

Hank Smith: 29:02 Which is probably a good idea. “I will proceed no further,” he says.

Dr. Adam Miller: 29:06 There’s intentionally here a comic element with the degree to which God shows up in this overwhelming blustering expression of his own power in response to Job’s questions. There’s a comic dimension to that. But I think it’s really important to keep what God has to say here to Job in the context of two things. One of the fact that Job cried out for God to come. And he came.

John Bytheway: 29:34 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 29:35 He doesn’t address Job’s questions.

John Bytheway: 29:37 But he’s there.

Dr. Adam Miller: 29:38 But he does address Job. Yeah. He’s there with Job. And I think the other thing to put this in the context of has to do with the fact that once God wraps it up, once he’s schooled Job in the limits of his own understanding and power, God says to Job and his friends that Job was right to have asked all those questions and Job’s friends were wrong. It’s easy to get the impression as you go through God’s discourse that God is in some sense chastening Job.

John Bytheway: 30:05 Right.

Dr. Adam Miller: 30:05 And telling him, “But you shouldn’t be asking all these questions.” And he does that, but once he’s done, God says, “Job was right to ask all those questions. And you friends were wrong for telling him not to ask them. And you better repent.” It’s just a remarkable layering of all those different dimensions into this experience here with God at the end of the Book of Job.

Hank Smith: 30:27 Yeah. Wow. This has just become so beautiful in my eyes. He told him not twice. Gird up thy loins now like a man, I will demand thee, declare thou unto me. And then he goes on again with more questions.

Dr. Adam Miller: 30:39 We get long descriptions of the amazing creatures that he’s made.

John Bytheway: 30:43 The creations.

Dr. Adam Miller: 30:44 Especially of the amazing mythological creatures, like the Leviathan and the behemoth.

John Bytheway: 30:49 Right.

Dr. Adam Miller: 30:50 That represent chaos writ large, and how God tamed them and made them and controls them. And it’s pretty extraordinary stuff just in terms of poetry and literary quality.

Hank Smith: 30:59 I’m reading here, Job’s response in 42. Then Job answered the Lord and said, “I know that thou canst do everything. And that no thought can be withholden from thee, who is he that hideth council without knowledge? Therefore, have I uttered that I understood not. Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”

John Bytheway: 31:18 I can’t wrap my head around it and now I get that. But the trust is still there.

Dr. Adam Miller: 31:25 Then we get in verse seven when we switch finally back here to the narrative, to the prose, and it was so that after God had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath has kindled against thee and the two friends for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right as my servant Job hath.” All Job’s friends thought they were defending God. Job’s friends thought they were defending God, but God says to them that Job who was complaining about God, he was the one who was right.

Hank Smith: 31:55 He was right. What was it that they were wrong about, if you had to sum it up? Was it the idea that you must have sinned Job, you must have sinned.

Dr. Adam Miller: 32:04 Yeah. I think they were wrong about that natural human tendency to draw a straight line between suffering and punishment.

Hank Smith: 32:13 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 32:13 Right? They were wrong to think that suffering is the kind of thing that can be deserved.

John Bytheway: 32:19 There’s always a cause or an effect.

Hank Smith: 32:21 That’s great. So now we come to the conclusion and it ends up being absolutely beautiful. John, you want to read a couple verses from chapter 42?

John Bytheway: 32:31 Yeah. The closing verses of Job 42. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning, for he had 14,000 sheep and 6,000 camels and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. Verse 15 says, and in all the land, there were no women found so far the daughters of Job and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren. After this lived Job 140 years and saw his sons and his sons’ sons, even four generations. So Job died being old and full of days. That’s how it ends.

Dr. Adam Miller: 33:09 We do get the happily ever after note here though. I think it’s worth noting that the only time you get happily ever after is when you stop the story in the middle. Job’s fortunes are restored here. His wealth is restored. He and his wife have new children, but he still lost his previous children.

Hank Smith: 33:28 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 33:28 They still died. He still lost them. The open wound of them would remain, having new children wouldn’t have erased that from his heart or mind. And Job like everyone else here, while he may not experience the loss of these new good fortunes in instantaneous and dramatic fashion like he did previously, he will still lose all these things. Again, his life will still pass away. He will still get old and sick and die. His children will still get old and sick and die. He will still lose his fortune again. And the key point, I think, perhaps being, not that he lived then happily ever after, but that he learned something crucial in his interaction with God about how to handle life’s passing away. And I think that’s what the gospel’s about at the end of the day.

Hank Smith: 34:15 I love that Adam, perhaps he was so full of days because of what he went through.

Dr. Adam Miller: 34:20 Yeah. It’s a beautiful line, full of days. That’s what you’re looking for.

John Bytheway: 34:24 It seems to me that Elder Neal A. Maxwell talked a lot in his life about suffering and making sense of suffering and things like that. And he made a comment that makes you smile about Job in this chapter 38 that we just read. He said, “While most of our suffering is self-inflicted, some is caused by or permitted by God. This sobering reality calls for deep submissiveness, especially when God does not remove the cup from us. In such circumstances, when reminded about the premortal shouting for joy as this life’s plan was unfolded, Job 38:7, we can perhaps be pardoned if in some moments we wonder what all the shouting was about.”

John Bytheway: 35:06 That would’ve been in April 1985 conference. When I was reading about Job, I read a comment from a biblical scholar named Moshe Greenberg. He wrote this, “A pious man whose life has always been placid can never know whether his faith in God is more than an interested bargain, a convenience that has worked for his benefit, unless it is tested by events. The terrible paradox is that no righteous man can measure his love of God unless he suffers a fate befitting the wicked.” So I see that idea, “Oh yeah. I love God. He’s been good to me.” But what if the life you think you’re living sounds like something that’s more fitting for the wicked? Will you still love God?

John Bytheway: 35:49 I think that’s what the Book of Job kindof pushes us against the wall. Will I love God when everything is going wrong? Will I trust him when everything is going wrong, and none of it makes sense to me? And that’s why this book is a wrestle as you put it so beautifully, Adam. I have always thought I love God because he blesses me. Well, what if there comes a time when the blessings aren’t there and they don’t come the way I think they should?

Dr. Adam Miller: 36:14 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 36:15 Then what will I do in those times?

Hank Smith: 36:17 I’m reminded of a thought from Elder Richard G. Scott from a talk called Trust in the Lord, October, 1995. And this goes right along with something Dr. Miller said earlier, Elder Scott says, quote, “This life is an experience in profound trust. Trust in Jesus Christ. Trust in his teachings, trust in our capacity as led by the holy spirit to obey those teachings, for happiness now and for a purposeful supremely happy eternal existence. To trust means to obey willingly without knowing the end from the beginning.”

Hank Smith: 36:56 He goes on and he says a little bit further down, “To exercise faith is to trust that the Lord knows what he is doing with you and that he can accomplish it for your eternal good, even though you cannot understand how he can possibly do it. We are like infants in our understanding of eternal matters and their impact on us here in mortality, yet at times we act as if we knew it all.” That sounds like the end of Job, right where the Lord says, let me come in and just remind you how little you understand. John, what does section 58, say, you cannot behold with your natural eyes …

John Bytheway: 37:34 Your natural eyes for the present time, things that God-

Hank Smith: 37:36 The design of your God.

John Bytheway: 37:38 The design of your God concerning those things, which will come here after. Such a great verse.

Hank Smith: 37:43 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 37:44 To me, the whole Beatitudes are blessed are the right now, which all sound at first glance negative, those that mourn, blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those that mourn. Those don’t sound blessed.

Hank Smith: 37:59 John, I remember you telling me in the process of writing your book, when it doesn’t make sense that you had a conversation with Dr. Robert Millet.

John Bytheway: 38:07 Called him at the time. And I said, “I’ve had this school that wants me to do some presentations on Job,” a private Christian school. And I said, “What’s our best book on Job?” Thinking there’s one of our colleagues or something. And he said, “We don’t have one.” Now, I don’t know if that’s still true. But he said, “Go get a book by Philip Yancey called The Bible Jesus Read. He was an editor of Christianity Today Magazine or something. And I read this and I thought this to me was such a great application of how do I apply this story of Job in not wanting to do what Job’s friends did? So this Philip Yancey used to write for the Reader’s Digest. Now that’s a magazine that my grandma used to read, right?

Hank Smith: 38:46 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 38:46 And you remember the series called Drama in Real Life. Somebody’s jogging and they get attacked by a bear or somebody gets caught in a natural disaster or something. Well, he used to write for that. And he said, he went to hospitals a lot. This is what Philip Yancey said.

John Bytheway: 39:03 Quote, “Every single person I interviewed told me that the tragedy they had undergone pushed them to the wall with God. Sadly, each person also gave a devastating indictment of the church. Christians, they said, made matters worse. One by one, Christians visited their hospital rooms with pet theories. God is punishing you. No, not God. It’s Satan. No it’s God who hand picked you to give him glory. It’s neither God, nor Satan. You just happen to get in the way of an angry mother bear. As one survivor told me the theories about pain confused me and none of them helped. Mainly I wanted assurance and comfort from God and from God’s people. And almost every case, the Christians brought more pain and little comfort.”

John Bytheway: 39:47 That’s an excerpt from that, The Bible Jesus read. And I thought this is a wonderful way for me to apply this is be careful that we’re not like Job’s friends in trying to explain. Be the one who comes and not trying to say, “Okay, I’m going to make sense of this for you, why this is happening.” But the one who comes like your dad did Hank, who just comes and spends time with people, but can be totally silent. And I just thought that was, “Oh, I don’t want to be that person that actually comes and make things worse by trying to explain what God is doing.”

Hank Smith: 40:22 I think that’s excellent because that’s something that Latter-day Saints, I don’t know if other faiths struggle with this, but I think it’s something that Latter-day Saints struggle with is we want to come in and fix.

John Bytheway: 40:30 We want to make sense. I love what you said Hank about … I got to find just the perfect scripture for this. Sister Sheri Dew said once, “Although the Lord will reveal many things to us, he’s never told his covenant people everything about everything. We are admonished to doubt not, but be believing.”

Hank Smith: 40:47 Adam, before I ask you our last question, do you have any final thoughts on Job for our listeners? Any anybody who’s listening at home? Anything that you’d hope they take away that we haven’t hit?

Dr. Adam Miller: 40:57 I would hope that they would take away a sense of a hope and possibility that the Book of Job can be read by ordinary people without any special academic training.

John Bytheway: 41:10 Don’t skip it.

Hank Smith: 41:10 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 41:10 You can read it. Right? It’ll take a little time and it’ll take a little effort, like anything worth doing, but it can be read and the experience of reading it can be profound if we’ll let ourselves sink into it and sit with it and ponder on it.

Hank Smith: 41:24 Yeah, for me personally, there’s something exciting about becoming more scriptural literate. When the scriptures open up to you, what did Elder Maxwell say? It’s like a mansion with rooms yet to be discovered and fireplaces by which to yet warm ourselves.

John Bytheway: 41:41 I think about President Benson’s approach with the Book Mormon. Why did Alma or Mormon and Moroni include this? And we can do the same thing. The book of Job can bless me. This is not a trial. I want to read it. And why is this book here? And how can the Lord help this book bless me? So I like what you’re saying, Hank.

Hank Smith: 41:58 John, fantastic. Adam, before we let you go, I think our listeners would be interested in hearing your journey of your faith and your scholarship. You said early on that you knew books were for you. What’s the journey of your education and your faith been like?

Dr. Adam Miller: 42:14 It has been heart and mind expanding. It has been challenging in the ways that all heart and mind expanding are and worth all the more for it. I feel like I have become increasingly sensitive to the ways that books can be doors that open unto God, but I’ve also become increasingly sensitive to the way that books can be a way of avoiding God. Both of those are constant temptations. I’m interested in the Book of Job, especially because I’m interested in God. And a surprise turn of events that your listeners might find surprising, though I am a scholar of religion and specialize in philosophy of religion, I’m not especially interested in religion at the end of the day. What I’m interested in at the end of the day is God, that’s what I’m looking for. And religion, sometimes it can help you get there. And sometimes as Job’s friends illustrate, it can get in the way, as John was also indicating just a minute ago too.

Hank Smith: 43:28 Yeah.

Dr. Adam Miller: 43:30 There are a lot of things I don’t know or understand about my own religion or my own experience of religion. My sense for my own ignorance has only grown in that respect the more that I’ve studied in the farther that I’ve gone, but at the end of the day, that’s not decisive for me. Because I didn’t come to religion looking for religion. I came to religion looking for God and I am a Latter-day Saint and will till the day I die be a Latter-day Saint, because this is where God has shown himself to me.

Hank Smith: 44:08 What a fantastic day, John, this has just been. I love the Book of Job now, much more than I ever have.

John Bytheway: 44:18 And it’s so unique. I think Adam showed us how uniquely it’s an argument from start to finish. I’m never going to forget that idea.

Hank Smith: 44:25 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 44:25 A wrestle from start to finish, not just here’s some doctrine, here’s a story, but here’s a wrestle from start to finish.

Hank Smith: 44:32 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 44:32 And here’s the outcome of the wrestle. It’s really good.

Hank Smith: 44:36 We want to thank Dr. Adam Miller for joining us today. What a great day we want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen and our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And we hope all of you will join us on our next episode of FollowHIM.

Hank Smith: 44:54 We have an amazing production crew we want you to know about. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Nielsen, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts and Ariel Cuadra. Thank you to our amazing production team.