BACKGROUND - THE IMPORTANCE OF STORY AND HOW STORY FORMS WORLDVIEW
Worldviews are collective - they build up around common stories and experiences. In the U.S., we have many stories that are central to our common worldviews. We have stories of ancestors seeking freedom and a better life. We have stories of equality and possibilities, religious and political freedom, opportunity, and so on and so on. We also have stories of broken promises and genocide to the people who were here before, and stories of slavery and oppression to others.
Different groups of people have different sets of stories that are important to each group. Some stories seem to pass on better than others. Most groups hold on to stories of persecution and suffering, so that even the most dominant and most powerful and most privileged groups believe that they are persecuted and denied the rights that they deserve.
In the heights of the Evangelical Right' political power, when it was the single most powerful voting block in the U.S., and when Republican leaders sought out the Evangelical Right more than any other group; the Evangelical Right promoted stories and published popular books that claimed that they were going through a tremendous persecution. Their stories which were taken from small bits of redesigned history told them that at one time the country was at a template of Christian morality and godly Christian ownership, but because of liberalization, pluralization, the media and Hollywood; the country was slowly going downhill and being taken away from the godly. This entire story of losing the country is created and built up from many smaller stories through history and today.
Each individual story supports the overall story - which becomes a worldview. And each story takes on a life of its own, shredding real history and what really happened, becoming almost mythological in nature; so that complex human beings filled with virtues and faults become larger than life heroes or villains. Complex events are simplified to fit the story tellers' frame of storytelling and understanding.
Evangelicals are not the only ones who have hundreds of retold and redesigned stories. Every group does. Stories build the basis for our understanding of who we are in the world, who our enemies are, how we should live, how we should not live, what problems are and how to solve issues, and why things are the way things are. Stories which build worldviews explain all this and much more.
Worldviews are personal - On an individual level, we all have worldviews built from many stories. A 20 something girl has a hard time trusting men because she has had a few boyfriends that have betrayed her devotion to them. Another trusts men entirely and looks to them to solve her problems. Their individual experiences are filled with stories that told them that men were either good or bad.
One man trusts the government and police to help him when needed. Another has learned that the system favors people of a different race, color or economic status. Each person has individual and corporate experience that creates the trust or the distrust of the government and the police.
Worldviews tell us who we are - Both personal and collective worldviews tell us who we are. They define the world and they define us.
Worldviews justify what we do - Stories help tell us that we are on the right side of the world. We are the good guys, others are not. We are the ones who are moral, others are not as moral. We have done right in the world, others are only as good as they are like us.
Worldviews guide us - Even though we have a bunch of different and sometimes conflicting stories, our stories build up the worldviews that tell us what we can or cannot do and what we should or should not do. We may tell ourselves that the system will not let us get ahead or we may tell ourselves that anything is possible. The weight we give to our stories and the stories we hold dear will determine what we believe is true about life and how we can or should act.
Worldviews are by nature illusions - Stories that build our worldviews are rarely real stories - even stories from history take on a life of their own and change sometimes a little and sometimes a lot to serve their purpose as worldview builders. The stories that build our worldviews reform and become better suited to fit the purpose they need to accomplish - to justify, to identify who we are, and to guide us. As a result, the same story may be seen in different ways to different people.
The founding of America by European explorers and settlers was a wonderful event of a great beginning by heroes and iconic figures to many who followed. But to those who were here before, it was the beginning of sorrow, broken promises, and genocide.
Even though slavery is now condemned by most people, in its day it was seen as a great way to build the economy and provide a service to the country through cheap labor.
Worldviews are jealously guarded and protected - Even though they are by nature illusion, we guard and fight to keep the stories that build our worldviews. We believe the worldviews we have are the right ones and the best ones, and we will fight and even kill to keep our stories alive and make sure that they are the most important ones.
ENTER JOB
Job lived in a world of worldviews just like we all do, and until one day shook everything he held dear, he believed those worldviews because they explained the world to him better than any other worldview. But in one day, his worldviews fell apart and he was left in confusion. On the other hand, his friends who came to help him were not confused - Job's situation could be easily explained through the worldview they held (the worldview that Job himself believed before tragedy struck him), and the explanation given by the worldview provided easy steps to healing and solution.
The Dominant Worldview in Job's Day
Worldviews blind us to things that contradict. Worldviews tell us what to look for, and what we should look for is what supports our way of thinking. Experiences and stories that do not support or contradict our worldviews are either explained away or ignored. Experiences and stories that support our worldview add to our belief that our worldview is the best and the right one. In Job's day, they saw that good people prospered and evil people eventually fell into hard times. They saw that the world was just because God who created the world is just. They saw that the righteous may suffer, but will always be blessed in the end. They saw that the unjust my prosper, but it is only temporary and their sins would most definitely find them out and in the end they would die young or meet some sort of tragedy. To say that experience was anything but this was to say that God was not just. This is what they saw all around them, because this is what they were trained to see.
Most Christians today hold on to a very similar worldview. Like the world in Job's day, we believe that justice will come to everyone and that the Judge of all the earth will be fair, but we believe that justice will come after death. Any injustice in this world will be rectified in the world to come.
Job Challenges the Worldview
When Satan came before God in Job 1 and 2, he asked God to allow something unjust and unfair to take place. The consequences of that injustice would shatter a worldview turning it upside down. Suffering then became the best destroyer of this world's stories, leaving its story tellers looking like fools who build illusions and lies. Does suffering do that today? Or have we become so wise that we have the answers to suffering?
Job's friends were the story tellers and the builders and protectors of the stories passed on from generations. They were the godliest of their time. They were God' protectors and passionate warriors defending truth. Job was to become their enemy who challenged that truth. Job dared to put his personal life above the wisdom and the certainty of a worldview that defined life with such precision and such power as to never be doubted or questioned by good people - bad people? - maybe. But not good people who knew better and who loved God.
In a nutshell, Job's friends tried to explain to Job things he already knew, but was beginning to doubt:
1. Good people will be rewarded in the end.
2. Bad people will be punished in the end.
3. Truth is found in conventional wisdom and years of experience building a worldview that overrides all the personal experience of one person.
Job's personal experience challenged all this:
1. Good people are not always rewarded for the good they do.
2. Bad people can live long and good lives.
3. The truths that we have come to believe are filled with holes that are left unexamined, unstated, ignored, neglected, and dangerous territory to go near. The holes in the worldview are dangerous to go near because to examine too closely can tear down the entire worldview. And bringing down the system brings chaos and destruction, fear and terror, and a world of unknown territory.
In reality, Job's experience should not necessarily bring down the entire worldviews. Good people do generally prosper more because of their kindness and goodness. Bad people in general are cut down earlier than necessary and face more calamities in life. But Job shows us that these general truths are not universal by any means.
Today's Worldview
Today is no different than the day of Job except in this: Our wisdom passed to us from good people of the past has Bible verses to support the worldviews given to us. With individual Bible verses (often taken out of their original context) supporting good wisdom, the worldview itself can claim ultimate authority and perfection, never to be challenged and always to be protected. But at heart, it is no different than in Job's day. People still zealously protect the wisdom passed down to them from their spiritual fathers. People still see individual personal challenges to the worldview as threatening and evil.
Today's Job would challenge how much "God has a wonderful plan for each one of us - for good and not for evil." He would point out the tens of thousands of good Christians who are raped and killed in areas of the world that few of us care about. He would look at the tragedies from life and from nature and question where God's wonderful plan was in allowing evil things happen to good people. He would see holes in the worldviews that explain that all of this is due to Adam's sin and therefore somehow okay. In fact, he would challenge God Himself, calling God to justify Himself before a court of law - this is what Job did. Job would never had gone to such extremes when his life was good, but when he lost everything and life was so bad, he said things that he would never have allowed himself to say in his past. And the weird thing is that in the end God sided with Job who challenged Him and not the protectors of good and the guardians of "truth," who believed that they were the ones protecting God's honor and God's sense of justice.
In the end neither Job nor his friends had the answers to suffering. But in the end, Job was right in challenging the worldviews formulated and passed on from generations of good people. Job was right in finding the holes in these worldviews and pointing out those holes. In the end, there was and there is no known answer to suffering - it is hidden from us and wrapped up in the majesty of our God.
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