Emotional Atheism

Job has not had time for intrapsychic reorganization.  He has lost all of his possessions, all of his children, and his bodily integrity as a healthy person.  For seven days he sat in silence with his friends—and probably much longer before they arrived on the scene.  For a time, he could do nothing more than scrape his sores and swat the flies.  

We might describe this in modern terms as a kind of depression.  Krista Tippett describes her own experience of such depression in this way.  “For me, depression was not so much about being without faith or hope or love; it was rather not being able to remember knowing those things, not being able to imagine ever experiencing them again” (Einstein’s God, page 224).  For a while Job simply had to resume breathing.

Perhaps Job’s first speech comes after he awakens from exhaustion-induced sleep.  I wonder how much Job slept during those seven days of silent waiting with friends.  Again, I’m not creating history here.  But we can still think about this character as a person.  The trauma of loss can interrupt or completely disrupt our normal sleep patterns.  Mark Umbreit notes this phenomenon in the experiences of crime victims.  They may experience sleep as a betrayal of those loved ones they have lost—those who cannot awaken from sleep again.  

“Many victims feel that their first sleep violated a living connection they had with a person or a situation that died in the crisis.  It is not unusual for people to wake from the state of exhaustion and become overwhelmed with grief and guilt because they have been separated from the immediacy and the intensity of the event” (Victim Sensitive Victim offender Mediation Training Manual, page 45).

Then he opens his mouth to speak. Job’s spouse has sealed the deal by inviting him to “curse God and die.”  In his first speech—completely disoriented and cut loose from any sense of himself—he is ready to take her up on that proposition.

That loss of self, even for a little while, shakes one right down to the marrow.  If I can no longer find my place in the universe, perhaps that is because I no longer have such a place.  If I can no longer find my place in the universe, perhaps the simplest response would be for me to exit the stage and be done with all this trouble.  That sentiment is a common response to significant loss.  As we read Frankl’s firsthand report, it was a typical response to the Radical Loss experienced by the death camp inmates—a response that many of them carried to conclusion.

I want to be clear here.  I am not suggesting that taking one’s own life is something anyone ought to do in response to Radical Loss or any kind of personal loss.  I am suggesting, however, that Job’s response to his situation in chapter three—shocking as it is in the raw despair of those lines—that response is the common one.  It is not surprising that Job begins with such an outburst.

The book of Job is not a psychological treatise, and we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that we can analyze Job’s emotions either as a character in the drama or as an historical figure.  However, the book of Job can serve as a kind of template or analytical tool for examining and integrating my own experiences of pain, loss, grief and disappointment.  So it feels like Job’s first response to Radical Loss is to turn those feelings inward and against himself.  

Job sounds a great deal like the prophet Elijah, on the run from Queen Jezebel in 1 Kings 19.  “It is enough now, O Lord,” Elijah laments, “take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4).  Elijah has taken his fear and disappointment and turned those emotions inwards.  That emotional pressure leads him to consider ending his life.  Job also sounds a great deal like Jonah, disappointed that God has decided not to obliterate Nineveh.  “Is it right for you to be angry?” God asks Jonah.  “Yes,” the grumpy prophet replies, “angry enough to die” (see Jonah 4).

This anger is more than surrender.  Novotni and Petersen write in Angry with God (page 27):

“Despair and serious discouragement might best be thought of as quiet rebellion.  People are afraid to raise their voices against heaven.  Instead, they sink into frustration, bitterness, and anxiety, withdrawing from the community of faith and drifting away from any meaningful relationship with God.”

My experience of life in the church certainly matches that assessment.  I think that half of all long-term inactivity among church members is the result of unresolved anger and disappointment produced by significant losses.  Rather than becoming actively and visibly angry with God, people simply stay away from the place where they have encountered God most often.  They give God the “silent treatment.”

Novotni and Petersen use a powerful phrase for such behavior.  They refer to it as “emotional atheism”—rejecting the notion of God’s existence as an emotional response to a perceived injustice (page 38).  In response to terrible loss, a person may reject God’s existence as a passionate choice rather than an intellectual calculation.  

Many who claim to no longer believe in God spend a significant amount of time and energy expressing profound disappointment in the God in which they no longer believe.  I know that my own flirtation with atheism was (in the hindsight of thirty-five years) much more emotional than intellectual.  It was much more about disappointment that decision, so my response was much more about rebellion than reason.