Here’s a question: what do you believe in first and foremost? What has the final say in your life when everything boils down to the rock-bottom heart of the matter? Since this question is primarily aimed at a Christian audience, I’ll frame it this way: Do you believe in God, or do you believe in your beliefs about God? 

It may seem obscure at first, but trust me when I say there is a wonderful point to be made here. Is there a creed, a standard, a ‘rule-sheet,’ so to speak, that you believe God must act by? Are there ways that he ‘must’ act? Is he predictable in this sense? To make this a bit more clear, let’s examine the story of Job. Much of this analysis has been taken from Oswald Chambers amazing book, Our Ultimate Refuge. 

The Bible tells us that Job was the most powerful man in the east. He was blameless and upright. How many people does the Bible accord those adjectives? Not many. And yet, despite his goodness, calamity befalls him. To make matters worse, once everything has been stripped away from him, three friends come to ‘comfort’ Job. 

Spiritual physicians

When Job’s friends initially see him, they sit in silence for days. When one of them, Eliphaz, finally finds his voice, he does not speak kindly to Job but instead ridicules him. Eliphaz claims that Job has done something wrong. Otherwise, this sort of tragedy would never have happened to him. All of the friends agree, and it is implicitly noted that prior to these events, even Job himself believed in such a creed. God punishes the wicked, and prospers the righteous is what their belief claimed. Anything outside of this was not allowed for. Eliphaz, the others, and possibly even Job for a time, believed their beliefs before believing in God. 

The postmodern connection

What does this have to do with postmodernism? Everything. The creed that Job and his friends lived by dictated the actions of God. To use a phrase currently popular in the contemporary church, it put God in a box. Any way of thinking that puts God a box is unhealthy–our beliefs cannot attempt to dictate or even predict what God might do in a given situation, because honestly, what answer could we ever arrive at? How could we ever know? Beyond personal affirmation, there is not much hope for a leaflet dropped from the sky. We will not get the kind of hard-and-fast, black-and-white answer we would like. 

And yet, this is the way in which a great majority of modern thought operates. In coming posts, we will explore the ways in which this happens, as well as what thinkers such as Soren Kierkegaard have to say about believing our beliefs before believing in God.