"Job, I have to start this conversation with a confession. Oh, I don't think I have done anything wrong, necessarily. I just want to say that I have rarely found someone who can challenge me at so many levels as you can. Let me tell you what I mean. When I was a teen-ager (about 17 or 18) I began to memorize. Why? Well, I became an Evangelical Christian and learned that the Bible contained THE TRUTH about God. So, what did I do? I decided to take that statement seriously. I therefore thought as follows: 'If the Bible is really God's Word, containing the actual thoughts of God, then it is more relevant and powerful for daily living than today's newspaper or any book or article that I could read. In addition, since God was a God of TRUTH, I could get more truth from reading a verse from Obadiah than a volume of Plato or Hegel or Locke or Jefferson. That is what I thought, Job. I am being very honest with you, because you have been very honest with God and with your readers.
Now just think for a moment what that insight did for me, Job. If God is TRUTH, and the Bible records those precious morsels of divine TRUTH, then I could do no better than spend my time mastering the Bible. It really was as simple as that. So, what did I do? For the next three or four years, I set out on my quest to master the Bible. Fellow Evangelical students at Brown mocked me because I was going to "know" the Bible better than any living person. But I read it, I studied it, I memorized it, I learned Greek and Hebrew, I began to memorize in Greek and Hebrew. I had my 8 year-old brother read the Psalms onto a tape, and I would go to bed each night listening to that tape until I fell asleep. On one occasion I recall awakening in the middle of night to a thunderstorm. Instinctively the words of Ps. 29--"The God of Glory thunders" came to mind and I "recited" the Psalm while half-asleep. I wanted to be awash in Scripture, to have it shape every waking and sleeping thought. I began to compose letters to friends, using as a literary model Paul's letter to the Philippians or Colossians. Everyone thought I was a bit daft, I believe, but I did it because that was where TRUTH was to be found. I never understood then, and I never understand it now, why people who say they love the Bible don't immerse themselves in it. Why not? I didn't have a teacher. I taught myself. What is the matter with people?
So, Job, I immersed myself in the Scriptures. Not only did it give me the highest score ever recorded on the Bible Content Exam, when I was studying for the Presbyterian ministry, but it really cowed my professors into not challenging me in class (I switched my major from math to religion at Brown in my sophomore year). That is, I so knew the text that if they made a point challenging me, I could cite several other texts that would seemingly confirm what I said or at least would put them on the defensive. I never realized that other people's minds didn't, as it were, see the text on a page when they recalled it. And, because of my math background, and my obsession with memorizing stastistics as a youth, Job, I had a precision in my memory that was daunting. So, if the professor would have thought of challenging me, I could quote chapter and verse, and probably even the language of the original text right on the spot. I don't think they wanted to be embarrassed to have to look up the text when I was quoting it from memory.
Oh, Job, I was rewarded amply for this focused commitment for three or four years about the Scriptures, but I paid a steep price for it, too. I don't want to tell that story here, Job, because I want to get back to your story, but I will indicate only one thing. The price I paid was in the area of personal relationships--especially relationships with women. I was completely blind and, like the proverbial blind man in Scripture, I would fall into the ditch--but there were asps and spiky, poisoned stakes in the ditch--but I don't want to talk about that now, Job.
So, to return to my point which started this out, Job, I learned early that Ivy League professors wouldn't challenge me on my knowledge. I sailed through school like the Australians used to sail through those international competitions that ran on Sunday afternoons in the 1970s on "Wide World of Sports." Thus, over the years I got used to realizing that no one had a mind with the precision, scope, variety and generativity as mine, Job. In addition, beginning in my 30s, after some distresses met me, I started to think deeply on the human condition, the emotional side of life, the historical nature of our pain, and the literary images we use to express it. I searched literature fairly widely, but landed on your book, Job, as the truest and most powerful statement of human loss that I have discovered. So, I began to study it in earnest, even more than I had studied it when I was in my whirlwind mastery of Scripture phase from about ages 19-23.
And then I realized, Job, that you are a man who brings me up short. No one else, with the possible exception of Shakespeare, has ever been able to do that to me. Oh, Homer and Dante have their moments, I admit. Aeschylus may yet claim me. I used to like Augustine, but he has faded from my mind. Calvin and Luther just have a few catchy statements and then they disappear. But you, Job, persist. You, Job, have sunk yourself so deeply into my consciousness that it both humbles and empowers me at the same time. You are a man to whom I can bring not simply my knowledge and my psychological insight, but my heart throbbings as well. You are a person, Job, who I think, more than anyone else, understands. You will hear me and understand me, and give me the kind of wisdom that I simply cannot get anywhere else. You are the one who can give me language to put on the pre-feelings of my heart, before even I know whether I am feeling something. You hear me, Job. You are one who has captivated my whole self.
I know that this will not go to your head, Job. And, the reason I know this? Because I cannot get out of my mind your words in the first few verses of ch.42. I think I need to go back there again, Job, both to review what I have said and to ask you some more questions of what it felt like after Elihu and God had stopped talking to you.