The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job and the Scale of Creation

The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job and the Scale of Creation. By Bill McKibben. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 2005. Pp. xii + 73. Paper, $11.86.

McKibben's book is an extended meditation on the Book of Job and how the message of the book may contain some wisdom in thinking about how to respond to the environmental crisis.

McKibben begins by summarizing the theme and plot of Job prior to chapter 39. He correctly understand that Job's friends represent the conventional covenantal theology in which if someone does good he will be rewarded (in this world) with material well-being. In this theology God is always just and is also omnipotent. If Job is suffering then under this rubric, he must have sinned. We as the readers know this not to be the case: Job is the victim of a bet between God and the Accuser (Satan in Hebrew) as to the nature of faith. God is trying to show that Job is a faithful servant but the Accuser claims that Job's faith is shallow and depends on his material wealth and good life. By taking all this away from Job, the Accuser hopes to show that Job is really not as pious as he seems. Thus the book already has set up the reader to see that Job's suffering is not based on any supposed sin of his and that his friends' arguments are specious. In any event, during the long confrontations between Job and his friends, he demolishes their arguments and demands justice from God. As McKibben rightly points out, the stage has been set for a new paradigm of God and God's relation to the world.

McKibben then tries to show how the Western economic and value system is at a similar place where an old paradigm is being shattered and a new one is necessary. The old model asserts that unlimited economic growth fed by unlimited consumption is "good." According to McKibben, this model is creating the environmental crisis: resources are being depleted and the waste products from such a system threaten the biosphere, especially in the form of climate change. McKibben very rightly calls this growing crisis which has ignored "the fundamental biological and chemical facts of creation" as "decreation" of the natural order. He also sees a direct parallel between the old religious paradigm that Job challenges and the economic paradigm that environmentalism is now challenging. Both models stem from an essentially anthropocentric understanding of Creation.

Mckibben focuses the rest of the book on the speeches by God to Job from the whirlwind and the implication of their message along with other biblical and environmental texts. He rightly deduces that the whirlwind speeches give an entirely different view of the relationships between God, creation and humanity. In these chapters of the book of Job, humanity is not the only center of God's concern. In fact one can argue that in the book of Job, God reveals that humans are not even particularly important in the grand scheme of things. This is in contrast to Psalm 104 (which McKibben also quotes) in which God shows equal concern for both human and non-human life.

McKibben finds in the whirlwind speeches two important values, humility and joy, which he applies to environmental ethics. Humility in the face of the majesty and complexity of the natural world forces us to be more restrained in our manipulation of creation. Joy in the beauty of the natural world brings us deeper satisfaction than mindless consumerism.

McKibben's book is a kind of homily, albeit a very good one. He offers a good analysis of the biblical text, draws out its theology, and then relates the book of Job to a modern problem. He is able to show how the one can inform the other in an inspiring way. In a very succinct but inspiring way, McKibben has provided an ethical and moral guide to goad us into rethinking our relationship with creation. Indeed, if we still want to consider the natural world to be creation, we must do so in a deep way, and this book is a good guide to a new kind of spiritual attitude.

Rabbi Lawrence Troster

GreenFaith: Interfaith Partners in Action for the Earth

New Brunswick NJ 08901

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