Thanks for the detailed response Omar. Let me pick up on a few crucial themes.
Justice.
I agree with you that “the time of retribution can be anytime.” My points about justice were 1) that it is purely retribution, that is, justice is the moment when the righteous (at last) receive their reward and the wicked their punishment. And more importantly 2) that justice is not the end-all and be-all of God’s will.
When I say justice “comes after” my intention is not to pin it down but to simply say that it is retributive, where the ‘re’ implies an afterward-ness. Justice may come at anytime as you point out, but it must come after the good or bad deed has been committed. (As I tried to put it, justice is always a response to a human response to God’s original call.)
I think a better term for God’s will, or the end-all and be-all of God’s will, would be grace, or love, or something like that. Such a will can employ justice but it can also revoke or withhold it (primarily in the case of forgiveness and patience). I also very much like the term wisdom. Indeed, wisdom is with God from the beginning. She is the first of God’s ways…
Satan/the satan.
I think the scene between the satan and God is critical to understanding the book of Job, and that it is also open to vast interpretation. I also think it is easy to bring our preconceptions to the table, as you may do in your reading, and that these might mislead us. For instance, you seem to suggest without any real textual support that the satan is “a rebel at heart,” or that it is already engaged in a rebellion against God. I think such a move conflates the satan with Satan, and that this is a dangerous move given how it impacts everything else.
In fact, most commentators say that the satan here is a faithful servant of God. A divine functionary and not a rebel at all. I would be more inclined to this reading than to yours given how God responds to the satan and how the satan responds to God. (We can tell that the satan is bitter, but the bitterness is not directed against God. And God can almost be read as tender toward the satan. As trying to console… “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth! A good man, righteous and true…”, i.e., “Take heart in his example…”)
Natural ‘evil’.
I get your view now. It is not that evil is only in our perception, as I first construed it, but that evil can only be recognized once there is human perception. Is that correct? I still don’t think there is natural evil though. A lion eating a lamb isn’t evil, it’s simply being a lion. Same with the sea wiping out a village of innocents. It’s just being the sea.
Now if we define evil as suffering of innocents, pure and simple, then yes, there would be evil in these instances. But I’m hesitant to make that identification. I feel that evil isn’t just the fruit, like the suffering of innocents, but that it comes from an evil heart, you know?
Wildness.
I often wonder why this term doesn’t have a stronger presence in theology. All the talk is about freedom, yet the Biblical view is not that we are created free but that we are wild, and that we are to be subdued or cultured in our wildness (not oppressed, although it quickly becomes this in a fallen world). What is more, it is human beings who are tasked with the work of subdual.
Is the world wild by design? I don’t think so. In Genesis 1 God never says “let there be water” but rather the water is already there from the beginning. In other words, it is not creatio ex nihilo but rather God started with elements that were already there and that are wild. (Something akin to the chaos monster of other creation myths.)
God’s first words are words of subdual. They subdue what is there and harness the power of what is there to create. What is created is wild, yes, but not in virtue of its design but because of what it comes from, the material that it is made of (dust and water I would say). God’s words of subdual create a garden, or a cultured/cultivated space in the wilderness. They also create new creatures in that domain which can quickly fall back into wildness (plants, animals, human beings even). The ongoing work of humankind is to expand that garden space. To subdue everything that God created but that is or can always fall back into wildness.
This raises your point about how righteous ones are to be immune to the wildness of creation, e.g., to the venom of the snake. How so? It all comes down to our power to subdue, our potential to speak the word that tames, and that in taming brings creation under or into our control. The sea will part or calm itself at our command. The earth will rise up and protect us when we ask it to. Just as that originally wild, not creation but substratum (?) responded to God’s word and empowered it.
Now, there is an important difference. That is, it’s not the innocent per se that are immune, but the wise. The ones who speak words of righteousness and can subdue. The innocent, while innocent, may not have what it takes to subdue the serpent or the sea.
Problem of Evil.
What does all of this have to do with the POE?
It’s a wild world by nature, not by design. God is working within this context and so are we. It takes wisdom to subdue the wildness, to tame it, and human beings were made and called to do this work. But we also, instead of subduing, oppress. We have turned on the world and we have turned the world against us. We have turned on each other. We have turned on God. We have not just reverted back to wildness but we have become evil. With evil hearts committing evil deeds.
Can God subdue it? Can God get it back under control and back on course? God’s word has always been there, from the beginning. It seems to me that the onus is on us to empower it, to take the power away from evil purposes and return it to where it was always meant to be.
It seems to me that it has always been on us. We can’t blame God or wait for God to fix our messes. That’s not the way it works.
Anyways, just some thoughts for what they’re worth!