The Tree of Life, and a Note on Job
This is another one cross-posted from my New Savanna blog. It’s old, 11 years (and most of it is even older than that). It’s an interpretation of the Book of Job, which is not at all the sort of thing I’d ordinarily post here. I certainly don’t see much of that kind of thing going on. But I’m in an experimental and playful mood, so why not?
FWIW and BTW, I’m neither Christian nor Jewish, so this post isn’t an expression of religious belief.
Here goes:
More or less on Michael Sporn’s recommendation, I’ve just seen Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. While I’m collecting my thoughts on this trying, tedious, and rewarding film, I’ll let Michael’s thoughts stand-in for many of mine:
The film starts with a vision of god that moves beyond to a patriarchal dominated family in Waco, Texas. The suggestion of a death leads us back to god and the creation of the earth. From protozoa to dinosaur to the birth of a child, this filmmaker exudes absolute love for every organism he can show us on screen. Yet, right from the dinosaurs onward he creates an ominous tone in this male-dominated power hungry environment. You’re always expecting something terrible to happen in the hands of the children who push the film forward. This is a film that technically has a new way of presenting itself almost through an impressionistic vision. The whispered narration and dialogue mix and blend into one; the sun streamed backlit late-afternoon interiors create a whispered visual to match.
It was the phrase “from protozoa to dinosaur” that got me.
The film is that of a mystic. I know nothing of Malick, though it seems he was born in the Bible belt and studied philosophy, so I don’t know if he is really mystic, but then, what’s really in that question? I once told my draft board that I was a mystic. Really? Really. That’s what comes through in the film: “exudes absolute love for every organism he can show us on screen.”
The film’s explicit religiosity bugged me in the beginning. Am I going to have to say something about this in my review? Am I going to have to declare, for example, whether or not I’m a believer? And then it didn’t bug me, not for the last hour or so. I just forgot about it.
I’ll have more to say about the film later, but I just wanted to dig out some old notes, from 25 years ago, on Job.
To understand the story of Job we must first reject the ending, in which Job regains all that he has lost, and more, for his possessions were doubled. The ending is known to be a later addition. We reject it, for it subverts the deepest significance of the basic story, which is that man and God are essentially and absolutely different, hence there can be no reciprocal contracts between them. The effect of that ending is to assimilate the story to an ethos in which such contracts are possible, in which it is reasonable for man to bargain with God.
The view of the relationship between man and God which is assumed, first by Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and later by Elihu (also a later addition), is basically a contractual one. There are rights and obligations on both sides of the contract and if either party breaks the contract he is liable to punitive action by the other party. God may be immensely more powerful and knowledgeable than man, but he is no so deeply different that he cannot enter into contracts with man. In this view God is assumed to be just and a man’s state is assumed to reflect his performance in carrying out his obligations to the divine contract. The basic contract seems to be: Man obeys God’s rules and is rewarded or punished accordingly. Prosperity is a sign of good performance while misfortune is a sign of poor performance. Job’s misfortune’s are taken as a sign of his poor performance.
However, Job rigorously examines his life and can find no instances of poor contractual performance. He has met his obligations. Hence he cannot understand why he is being punished. But, the text is careful to assert, “Throughout all this, Job did not utter one sinful word.” His friends insist that he must have done something wrong, otherwise God wouldn’t be punishing him. Hence he should look more deeply and continue to do so until he finds what he has done wrong. Job will have none of this. And so we face a dilemma. If Job is both just and the victim of misfortune, is God then unjust?
The answer indicated by the text is, in effect, that justice has nothing to do with it, that the relationship between man and God is not one of reciprocal contractual obligation. On the contrary, it is wholly one-sided. God begins his answer by telling Job to “Brace yourself and stand up like a man.” He then begins a long series of rhetorical questions:
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Tell me, if you know and understand.
Who settled its dimensions? Surely you should know.
Who stretched his measuring-line over it?
On what do its supporting pillars rest?
Who set its corner-stone in place,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted aloud?
The series of such questions amounts to a miniature encyclopedia of natural phenomena, one which emphasizes the absolute difference between God and man. For God has done and understands all this things while man, Job, has done and understood none of them. Job acknowledges this absolute difference, finally replying
I know that thou canst do all things
and that no purpose is beyond thee.
But I have spoken of great things which I have not understood,
things too wonderful for me to know.
I knew of thee then only by report,
but now I see thee with my own eyes.
Therefore I melt away;
I repent in dust and ashes.
The effect of the added ending, in which Job gets it all back, with interest, is to undermine this absolute difference between the human and the divine. If Job gets it all back, with interest, then the contract was not really broken at all. Job gets what is his due. That, however, is not what the story is about. The story is about absolute difference; it is attempting to replace the contractual view of the relationship between the human and the divine with a deeply ontological view, in which the divine is the underpinning, the ground, of the human.
Notice that the story is framed in such a way that the audience or the reader knows that Job did not do any wrong and that he is not being unjustly punished. We know that Job’s misfortunes have nothing to do with punishment. The real reason—that Job is being used to make a point to Satan—may not be much better from our modern point of view; but it doesn’t contradict the basic point. In fact, the frame reinforces the point. For Satan has argued that Job is good only because God has rewarded him well. “But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and then he will curse you to your face.” And so Satan is given permission to wreck Job’s life and Job does not, in fact, curse God. The story shows Satan, and us, that his view of the relationship between the human and the divine, which is the contractual view, is wrong.
Whatever the relationship between the human and the divine, it is such that Job was able to bear up under his misfortune without either blaming himself or cursing God. Could it be that he was able to do so precisely because God was Completely and Categorically Other?
The point of Job being that God has no obligations to man is an interesting one. But what does that have to do with the Tree of Life?
Oh, probably nothing beyond a mood.
Is the mood something like “you owe God so much so how can you possibly complain?” Which has a similair mood to the pair of beliefs: “life, with all its pain and suffering, is so fundamentally wonderful!” and “God gave us life”.
EDIT: No, that doesn’t fit with God having no obligations to Man because he’s fundamentally different. Hm, we are talking about moods though, so maybe it does?
Think somber and grim & it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the film. Also, mystical.
People like to talk about this in Job, but I very rarely see what I think is the corresponding point made about Genesis: God makes two beings who are incapable of knowing right from wrong, then punishes them and all their unborn descendants forever for breaking a rule he gave them. The story itself makes sure to tell us that pre-Fall Adam and Eve cannot understand that violating God’s ultimatum is wrong, that there cannot be a contract between the parties because they cannot actually understand the terms.
An ultimatum is a form of bargain as well, just one with very simple terms and no room for negotiation. So if there can’t be a binding agreement with God, that doesn’t look so good for all the later covenants and laws. It means Man has no obligation to God either. This is especially true since God is the one that designed our minds and what kinds of considerations would or wouldn’t drive our actions.
In other words, in some sense I think this argument gets it completely backwards. I think it shows that God has obligations to man, but not vice versa. I also can’t bargain with my cat, not because I can’t bribe or punish her, but because she lacks the capacity to bind her own future self to uphold a present commitment. She has no obligations to me, because how could she? But I chose to adopt her, and take responsibility for her, and so I have quite a lot of obligations to her. In the context of the Old Testament, I might say I cannot contract with her because she has the nefesh and ruach but not the neshama.
I also think it’s interesting because it’s not the usual presentation of God’s interactions with humans in the Bible. In the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Talmud there are lots of stories of covenants, bargains with God, and God turning authority over to humans. If the deeper meaning is supposed to be “Haha, actually, no, God is lying to you or misleading you and has no intention of keeping His word,” then… why have a religion at all?
This doesn’t make any sense. If one side has no say in the arrangement, then it’s not a bargain. “Take it or leave it” is not a bargain. It’s simply the way things are.
It’s not a single unified document, spoken with one voice from one point of view. There texts were written by various people at various times and then assembled. There is in fact quite bit of controversy over the true text of Job. I’ve given my interpretation by rejecting the ending, where Job gets it all back. Others would disagree, and that changes the nature of the story.
Of course it’s not a single unified document, which is why the individual stories are still worth considering on their own, I agree. But it has an overall approach that Job mostly doesn’t fit, which is also interesting in its own right. I also find the textual evolution interesting and very relevant, and I’m glad you posted about it.
I disagree. In your post you talk about both bargains and contracts, AFAICT interchangeably. For any possible negotiation, for each party, there is some set of possible contracts they would agree to, and some set they would not. Making offers from among possible contracts until there is one they both agree to is bargaining. Why should it be a special case if, for one of the parties, the first set contains only one element? Why should it depend on which party speaks first? And is it a special case only if there is literally zero room for negotiation, or is there some finite threshold before it can be considered bargaining?
If an ultimatum cannot be a bargain or contract, which (morally, at least) binds both sides, then that has some pretty serious implications for many transactions and interactions within the human world, without bringing God into it at all.
Or maybe I’m missing the point and it’s about enforcement power, where humans have no ability to compel God’s actions even if God makes a promise and later breaks it? This would seem to align well with the part where God talks about all the things he can do that humans can’t. But again, that’s a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind from contracts and bargains that happen in the human world all the time. And if it ever becomes known that God doesn’t keep his promises, then unless God explains and defends Himself, he loses all credibility, and humans no longer have reason to accede to His ultimatums. Which, he might not care about that, but then why issue them at all? So that leaves, I think, a trilemma: Either God doesn’t care what humans do, and therefore humans have no reason to obey God; or God does care, and so is willing to negotiate and bind Himself and changes His behavior based on human actions; or God does care, but due to his omniscience and omnipotence is already in complete control of all outcomes from all supposed bargains and therefore is solely responsible for all human actions.