While I wouldn’t classify myself as ‘goth’, I do appreciate the goth aesthetic. And it was both intriguing to attend church as a cultural ‘outsider’, and also to experience a service that didn’t require it’s congregants to reject their own culture before attending. In fact, it was perhaps the most accessible church event I’ve been to in a long time. I met people who described themselves variously as christian, agnostic and atheist, and yet everyone seemed able to engage with the service to the level they felt comfortable.

All in all a fascinating evening.

I’m wondering if the book is basically a warning about the dangers of acting as God’s spokesman. Job’s friends are not thanked for their efforts to teach theology to Job or for defending God’s actions. God, it seems, does not need apologists.

Is it ok for Job to ask the questions, but not for his friends to answer them?

I suspect we need to be very careful in rushing to answer this type of question. Maybe it’s important for each individual to wrestle with God and the problems of pain and injustice, and in our hurry to tie up theological loose ends we truncate this process.

I suspect that God is less interested in what we think about these questions, than in how we react to them. But it’s probably easier to explain suffering than try to alleviate it.