20 Points on Job and job as modern book and job and mediation theory

3. The Book of Job is also a very modern book. It is modern in that it is a study of the emotions attendant upon the experience of loss. It limns human emotions, calibrating them as if they were degree markers on a thermometer. It enucleates human feelings, drawing out all the marrow of them and testing them to see if the cancerous growth of loss has migrated into the very marrow of our lives. We live and we lose. And, when we lose we experience a flood of emotions that often is hard to understand and control. We are buffeted on the sea of feelings, thrown about under the tsunamic force of a wall of emotions that might overturn everything we have ever held precious in life. The Book of Job affirms, examines, probes, and re-probes these emotions. Even though on one level the Book of Job is a profound work of theology or doctrine, subjecting the wisdom tradition's beliefs to scrutiny, on a more profound level it searches out the way we respond to loss. Let me list some of the emotions or issues that will be considered in the Book of Job: denial, explosive undifferentiated pain, anger, bitterness, cynicism, sarcasm, grief, shame and humiliation, the pain of false hope, the changing nature of friendship, the basic justice of God.

Under the point of Job as modern book, mention should also be made about the Book of Job and modern grief research. The Book of Job explores grief in minute detail. So do modern researchers. Two of note are Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (On Death and Dying--1969) and John Bowlby (three volume series on loss; including Attachment--1969; Separation: Anxiety and Anger--1973; and Loss: Sadness and Depression--1980). Kubler-Ross talks about going through various "stages" in the loss process, from a denial that one is going to die to acceptance of that death, while Bowlby focuses more on loss as a continuing part of life. While Kubler-Ross uses a "stages" or "steps" approach, Bowlby envisions the loss process as rather cyclical or helical in shape. We finally emerge, he says, with some kind of restoration. I think that modern grief research would be augmented markedly if the researchers studied the Book of Job. Job's "theory of grief" is more sophisticated than either that of Kubler-Ross or Bowlby. While time doesn't permit an exposition of Job's "theory of loss" here, I would emphasize its "doubling back" nature, where the stabbing pain of loss comes back to reopen wounds that we thought were on the mend. Job, then, is a very modern book.

4. Job is also a modern book from the point of view of contemporary legal theory. One of the movements that has washed into American law in the past few decades has been the "mediation" movement or, in more sophisticated terms, alternative dispute resolution. Fueled both by aversion to the costs of litigation and dissasfaction with the rigid results of going to court, mediation and its attendant "tions"--negotiation, arbitration--assumes that given the right situation and the right parties, amicable settlement of disputes can happen. As a result, there has been a spate of literature appearing on how to conduct successful mediations. In short, how do you "get to yes?" The Book of Job is really a book that explores the mechanisms of dispute resolution. You have a dispute. That is the basic premise of the book. The dispute is between Job and the friends regarding the interpretation and meaning of his pain, but the dispute is also between Job and God on why Job has suffered so dramatically when he has done nothing to "deserve" this suffering.

The Book of Job contributes insights to mediation theory both in the conversation between Job and the friends in chs. 3-31 and the monologues of Elihu and God in chs. 32-42:6. For example, a close examination of Job's and Eliphaz's first speeches (chs.3-5) shows why conversation breaks down even among friends. Job has been overwhelmed by his distress and explodes in a torrent of emotions in ch.3. Though he doesn't assess blame in ch.3, he wishes that he had never been born, and he bemoans his current condition. When Eliphaz begins to speak in ch.4, he starts with apparently conciliatory language and understanding words. But, a close attention to his language shows that he uses double entendres throughout his speech, ambiguities that may reflect Eliphaz's inabililty to know how to relate to Job in his deep distress. We see in chs.4-5 how the subtlety of language creates an unbridgeable gulf between the participants. Careful attention to these speeches would attune us to listen today to the way language is subtly used to hinder "getting to yes."

Second, when Elihu and God speak after Job has finished speaking, they respond to what has been said in different ways. My theory, developed below, is that Elihu is the crucial character in the Book of Job for breaking the logjam and enabling Job to understand his distress from a different angle. Mediation theorists would be well advised to study the convoluted language of Elihu in trying to understand what is it in Elihu's speech that enables Job to listen to God when God begins to speak in Job 38. I think that Elihu demonstrates the skills of careful listening and creative reframing to bring Job to an openness to consider another explanation of his pain. He listens carefully because we see him quoting Job's actual words spoken earlier in the book. One of the things parties in a lawsuit need to be assured of is that someone is listening to them, hearing not simply the words spoken but also the hidden sighs of the heart. We know that Elihu reframes the issue because he gives three possible explanations of what is happening to Job through his distress before giving his preferred interpretation. That is, Elihu is not simply a listener; he is also an active reframer. Mediators today would be well advised to consider how this is so. So ends my fourth point.

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