The Beginning of the Ways of God

Question: Are there any happy-go-lucky saints? Any great artists who are thoroughgoing optimists? I can’t see that.

I’ll take a pass on the saints, and I’ll take a pass as well on “optimistic” because that’s a very shallow word – as is pessimistic. But Dreher is telling himself a story about the relationship between suffering and meaning, or about the transcendent value of a radical disconnection from ordinary modes of being (manifested by saints and holy fools and such). And I’ll nominate two artists who don’t, I think, fit the picture Dreher paints of the relationship between suffering, meaning and the divine: Henri Matisse and Samuel Beckett.

I like picking Matisse because his career proves you can make profoundly beautiful work that really is about nothing but being happy.

And I like picking Beckett because his career proves you can live what must be accounted a deeply meaningful life while not only staring into the abyss, but setting up house there.

And I like pairing them with each other because their moods could not be more opposite, and yet both are plainly comfortable in the world, this world, the word of sense and feeling that anyone can participate in.

At the end of the Book of Job, God speaks to his faithful servant out of the whirlwind. He does not tell him that his suffering had a transcendent purpose – we know it didn’t; it was inflicted on Job because God made an absurd bet with Satan. Nor does he (contra Archibald Macleish) simply browbeat Job into submission by showing him how much he doesn’t understand, and how much more powerful God is than a puny mortal man. Instead, God calls Behemoth his chief creation and lavishes line after line in praise of the wondrous Leviathan. That’s the climax of God’s message – that these wondrous monsters are what God is most proud of.

Then, of course, God tells Job’s comforters that they were wrong and Job was right, and gives Job back everything he lost – new house, new cattle, new family. But what does Job do? He names his three new daughters Jemima, Kezia and Keren Happuch – roughly, sunshine, perfume and eyeshadow.

Which, when you think about it, is not so far from “luxe, calme et volupte.”

“Any great artists who are thoroughgoing optimists?”

Unless you’re restricting “art” to meaning the most high brow, over intellectualized stuff, the question is ludicrous. There’s been plenty of great art produced by reasonably happy, optimistic people. The idea you need to suffer and be tormented in order to be an artist should get filed away alongside the “I have to get drunk and/or high in order to be creative” conceit.

Mike

— MBunge · Dec 5, 05:06 PM · #

The idea you need to suffer and be tormented in order to be an artist should get filed away alongside the “I have to get drunk and/or high in order to be creative” conceit.

Do you like popular music, Mike?

— Freddie · Dec 5, 06:02 PM · #

“Do you like popular music, Mike?”

What does that have to do with anything? There’s been great music made by tortured souls and great music made by their jolly old counterparts. As I said, the question only makes sense if you restrict the definition of “art” in a very narrow way.

— MBunge · Dec 5, 07:46 PM · #

Noah:

One of my favorite vignettes from Mary Tyler Moore was when Lou Grant excoriated Mary for sending him a birthday card—he said something like: “This guy from Hallmark writes these cute little ‘Hippity-hoppity birthday bunny’ cards and then goes home and kicks his dog through a hedge.”

What does the fact that Matisse painted Luxe, Calme et Volupte tell you about his life?

Do you know he didn’t “curse God and die?”

— jd · Dec 5, 08:19 PM · #

Nor does he (contra Archibald Macleish) simply browbeat Job into submission by showing him how much he doesn’t understand, and how much more powerful God is than a puny mortal man.

Wait, what? Are you sure that doesn’t happen? Because my Bible says:

4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?

It’s hard not to read that as sarcasm – God basically saying “Hey, raise your hand if you’re the creator of all existence. Oh, funny, nobody raised their hand but me.” It’s a giant “fuck you” from God, and the bit about Leviathan and Behemoth are just more of God’s arrogant boasting.

The Book of Job is like a 4th century Advice God. God’s trolling Job. God’s just being snotty. Your response is to pretend that it never happens, I guess. Maybe your Bible is missing some pages?

Lastly I think the notion that new children can seamlessly replace old is transparently false. It’s the weakest point of Job – the notion that everything is back to normal. It’s not at all back to normal – Job’s children are still dead. Killed for a supernatural bar bet. Job is just a gross book, in general.

— Chet · Dec 5, 10:05 PM · #

The Book of Job, which the author borrowed from a popular tale in the Levant, deals with the classic question of theodicy: how can a good God permit evil? There is a constant tension between God’s promise of reward for good behavior and punishment for bad (“I set before you this day life and death. Choose life.”) with the recognition that not all evil is punished or even understandable. How much simpler to say that if something bad happened to you, you must have sinned. Big change in Ezekiel that the sins of the father would no longer be visited on the sons. The profundity of the Book of Job is not the nonsense bet of Satan vs. God or the smarmy ending of the book. The profundity of the Book of Job is realizing that we are never going to understand what has happened and all that is left to us is faith and trust. The saints used to call this holy indifference. What that means is that God is a constant in our souls, as if he were a passacaglia and fugue forever playing in our souls, and, no matter what happens, we believe because we cannot be anything other than faithful. Job was the only honest person among his friends, but God brought him to another place—realized eschatology—the wonder and amazement at being in the presence of God.

— LDM · Dec 6, 02:50 AM · #

What that means is that God is a constant in our souls, as if he were a passacaglia and fugue forever playing in our souls, and, no matter what happens, we believe because we cannot be anything other than faithful.

You can, actually, be something other than faithful to your abusive-boyfriend god.

— Chet · Dec 6, 04:12 AM · #

Echoing what Mike said, the music world is full of happy people. Read Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The most common trait of all the creative people he profiles is how deeply satisfied they feel when doing the creative process.

— Derek Scruggs · Dec 6, 05:33 AM · #

But Dreher is telling himself a story about the relationship between suffering and meaning, or about the transcendent value of a radical disconnection from ordinary modes of being (manifested by saints and holy fools and such).

You seem to be implying that the story of a life made meaningful by suffering is the same story as the one of a radical disconnection from ordinary modes of being. Do you mean to imply that they are interchangeable stories?

If you are then I believe you are probably mischaracterizing the story that Dreher is telling himself.

— jd · Dec 6, 04:40 PM · #

I thought all those passages about Behemoth, and Leviathan (and didn’t you expect Moby Dick to make an appearance?) were meant to teach Job the greatness of God.

— Joules · Dec 18, 06:17 AM · #

It’s not at all back to normal – Job’s children are still dead. Killed for a supernatural bar bet. Job is just a gross book, in general.

Not an unreasonable description. So what’s your theory as to why it’s included in the canon?

— The Reticulator · Dec 18, 06:42 PM · #

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