Job’s God is a Glitchin’ God
The Glitch Paradox is known here in Blunt Apple parlance as the primary paradox of self-reference in consciousness. That is to say, there is surely some proper philosophically grounded term of art for it, but we here will refer to it b the term Glitch. To us, the word “glitch” sounds like the thing it represents – a brief interruption in the regular flow of whatever has been flowing. We are old, around here, and cannot help but think of the image of like a power break to one of those old rabbit-ear antenna TVs where the screen fritzes out and goes black for a moment before resuming the prior picture.
Here, we do our best to define “Glitch” by means to paths to glitch by:
- Negatively – the Universal omniscient/omnipotent entity must be able to completely negate itself and know what that is like.
- Affirmatively – the Universal omniscient/omnipotent entity must be capable of creating something external to it that is more powerful and/or more intelligent that it.
- Internally – if I am observing my consciousness, who or what is doing the observing; The subject and the object of the observation are the same thing.
The Affirmative path is, we believe, the path revealed by the Book of Job. Job, himself the creation of a superior God, is revealed by the narrative to be in a superior position to God via a completely arbitrary experiment initiated by God.
- Antinomy = a totality of opposites; a fundamental, seemingly irresolvable contradiction between two principles, laws, or logical conclusions, both of which may appear reasonable or valid.
The idea of suffering is associated with a state in which opposites violently collide with one another.
Job’s suffering reveals his superior position in terms of knowing the reality of God’s nature (that God Himself did not have the capacity to realize).
God’s suffering is in the revelation of His perspectival limitation – He cannot directly understand (cannot Himself perceive the qualia of Job’s experience) what He has done to His emanation, Job.
JOB COMPELS GOD TO CONFRONT THE ANTINOMY OF HIS RELATIONSHIP TO HIS CREATIONS/HIMSELF.
That relationship is premised upon a covenant between entities (God and Man) of asymmetrical knowledge/perspective/ability where ethical behavior toward an arbitrary God is (until Job) rewarded with success.
Job has to remain steadfast and to protest his innocence to preserve his integrity. For Job to capitulate would be a fabrication, a falsity to appease God and stop the test. In maintaining his innocence, Job challenges God to explain the circumstances – a challenge that is purely verbal.
God responds, verbally, by completely evading the topic of what it was Job had done to receive punishment. (That is, God speaking through the pen of the human author.). God does not provide any explanation to Job. God does not offer evidence for Job to accept or dispute. Job constructs a case with his life, and with his pleas to God for a chance to at least review why events were unfolding for Job the way that they were. God makes an ethics bet with Satan that He never discloses to Job, and when confronted, pivots the focus to His creation of everything underpinning existence. Job, stunned into humility that God addresses him at all, recants. God then gives Job twice the family and twice the possessions and land than all the kids, grandkids, and farmland that had been annihilated at the start of the bet.
Is the READER of the Book of Job now caught in the glitch of Antinomy now having read all of it?
Job is vindicated – he kept his integrity even throughout the unjust tribulations he underwent.
God prevails in His bet with Satan – His creation remains steadfast, notwithstanding being mightily fucked with just for the sake of seeing if…
Both Job and God are fundamentally altered at the end of the Book. God seemingly intentionally blunders into it, and Job is unwittingly dragged into it, where “it” is their mutual evolution.