Making a deal with Satan?

[tbbeer]

My best friend and I have recently made a pact to read the bible every day and bought a bible that spreads out over a year. We just finished reading the book of Job. Something that is confusing to me is that God is making a deal with Satan. What’s that about?

My thought is that perhaps this isn’t like a face to face meeting where they’re sitting up on a cloud and God is saying - let’s just make a deal then… But rather, Satan is perhaps taking the form of creepy-crawly stinking evil thoughts entering Job’s mind and that the “deal” is just a set of tools God is giving to Job to help him realize the love of God?

I’m just a little confused. Can you help?

 

[Zooey]

First, I think you have to realize that Job is not one of the historical books of the Bible; it’s included in the “wisdom” literature like Proverbs & Psalms. It’s a teaching story about the mystery of suffering…We aren’t to judge (like Job’s so-called friends) that people who suffer are evil, or are being punished by God.
Also, the way it ends, you can see that God does not offer the “big answer” as to why the good suffer right along with the evil.
God is shown in Job to permit evil, rather than to cause it–especially as a punishment.(Which is a pretty timely subject, now that I think about it.)
I am ***not ***saying that there was no such person as Job. I am saying that his story is in the Bible to remind us that everyone suffers, and that there are no neat and tidy answers for why, & who, & when.
I would say that the author of Job is using this form to teach us that satan is real, & that he is the source of suffering. God allows this, insofar as it is in some way part of His eternal plan. We are not to blame or attack God when bad things happen–but we are also not to suppose that God is not in charge of all things.Quite the contrary: He is aware of each one of us, & all that happens to us, & He will not permit us to suffer more, nor to be tempted more, than we are capable of bearing.(Even though, sometimes, it doesn’t feel that way…).