---
title: Serving an Absent God
date: 2011-10-17
techne: :wip
episteme: :believed
---

Live as if you've been damned to hell, into eternal isolation from God.

http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.com/2011/03/empirical-nature-of-meaning.html

>> It seems to me that the Book of Job lacks the courage of its convictions: If
>> the author were really committed to the idea tha virtue isn't always
>> rewarded, > shouldn't the book have ended with Job still bereft of
>> everything?
>> -- Ted Chiang
>
> Absent a translated reading copy of the text, I can only speculate as to what
> exactly Job's retention of faith in the alternate version looks like - it
> seems wholly implausible that it would be the kind of faith one sees being
> sold like a drug at the tax-exempt megachurches that hawk drive-thru
> salvation. I imagine Job would feel something like the Zen master who finally
> woke up one day and burned all his scriptures and cursed the day he heard the
> Buddha's name, after wasting decades trying to square the spiritual circle.
> Your enlightenment may come, that is for sure, but it won't be the cheap
> dopamine perma-fix you thought it would be. Happiness is a high, but Truth is
> Truth. And the handmaidens of Truth are disenchantment, disillusionment, and
> death-awareness.
>
> I say that for the truly faithful, God must be seen as nothing other than a
> yawning void in place of an answer, an untouchable mystery which for no reason
> at all churns out gasping life, then drowns it in final eternity. This is not
> the God that anyone would ever go looking for, but the ones who look, who
> *actually* look instead of just trying to trap their cognitive dissonance in
> yet another layer of spiritual nonsense, will find this one. Only seek this
> God if, like Job, you have absolutely no other choice - if you're not ready to
> throw your entire terror management apparatus out the window, with all the
> suffering and despair that entails, you're better off at the megachurch. 
> -- Chuck G.

> It's also interesting that many scholars consider Job to be the oldest book of
> the bible. Satan seems to be God's official prosecutor and right-hand man. The
> happy ending does seem tacked on, even more so when considered in the
> philosophical context of Ecclesiastes, whose message boils down to 'life
> sucks, then you die, so you probably ought to go ahead and worship God... just
> in case'. 
> -- metamorphhh