I think you will find that my basic stance is that we are called to know what IS, nothing more first of all, but that. It is about the Isness of experienced life and “God” is the ineffable aspect which surrounds and works through us (“For in him we live, and move, and have our being”). This is in my view the mystery behind all theistic religion. Job is a classic attempt to deal with basic questions of life, although there have been a number of editors working on the story, keeping it fresh and giving it more and more depth. The Book-Religions are primarily spiritual literature evolved out of verbal traditions and gathered in a way that a timeless story takes us through a number of spiritual experiences by which we come to be aware of what IS.
That is basically the “godlikeness” of humanity, but the clothing we give our gods is human. We are continually anthropomorphising phenomenon, whether its the behaviour of animals or the mysteries of nature, we assume intent in what we perceive as being “done to us” rather than understand that things happen, and that we can even work out the chances that they will happen. I remain by my stance that whatever challenges or breaks down our natural trust in life is “evil”, not whether children suffer or only adults, or even only men, or whether ten or ten thousand people suffer. It is what these things do to our basic and necessary faith in life, whether we are encouraged or disparaged by what we experience.
Whether there is another aspect to our awareness, that is something I’m not sure about. Some hope that our awareness will carry on after our body has perished, but we seem to be very much our bodies. There is a chance that our awareness or our soul/spirit isn’t in our cells but elsewhere – but where is proof of that? Our prime task is to understand what IS and to live NOW. That stands contrary to what you have written it seems.
I think we spend too much time worrying about our status without knowing basic issues like, who am I really? What is this “I” that I throw about and am so proud of? Is it more than a grammatical necessity? To what degree am I only a part of what is happening? These are old issues, I agree, but issues that haven’t really been cleared up. Western society seems in a hurry to get past them and move on to more important things which will please our ideas of individuality and grandeur, but we are trailing a tail of unsolved questions behind us over which we are continually stumbling, because our movements are necessarily spiral movements.
In so much as we can overcome the endless thoughts and our mediocrity, we could become aware that the Ineffable is indeed in what we live, and move, and have our being, and come to appreciate the nature of life as this planet, since that is what we are collectively. As such, we are all “God” disguised as single human beings, playing a game called existence. There is a lot of promise in this life, if we could overcome our preoccupations which are slowly taking the floor out from under our feet, destroying the shield in the stratosphere, and polluting the air and water we live off of. We seem to be struggling for survival, which means in a hierarchy of needs, that we are far removed from self-actualisation at present. However, awareness, waking up to reality, seems to be necessary in that situation and might even bring the quantum-leap with it.
I think that life does provide a basic law, basically the golden rule, and on that one can build the basic eight or ten commandments which ensure a collective existence. It is essentially the way it is. Without this basic law, there is no collective existence but only survival of the fittest. I have often spoken out in my “chamber experience” against the fact that it doesn’t always work out, but I have almost always found myself confronted with the role I myself play in the situation I am bemoaning. So I think it is important to have an address where we can bring these petitions, but I have to be aware that it may be thrown back at me.
I think that you are projecting something onto the story which may have substance, but I can’t see it at present. If the rule with our children or other relatives is the way we have described, then it is so in all stories, if they are to be true to life. Also, even if Job would have more children, the first are still taken from him. There is no magic here performing the reappearance of our favourite watch, believed to have been smashed but the magician. Those who are gone are gone forever – Job knew that and celebrated his new children, but the shadow of those lost still remains.
"So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.
He had also seven sons and three daughters (he previously had seven sons and three daughters)
And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren–happuch.
And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.”
Take care