I Mined and Shared from Matchless Mines of Me: Two Sonnets of Job (Apology Box Additions)

In these days when some claim to follow so-called prosperity theology, it's of course good to remember the story of Job.  It is, in fact, impossible to claim that one follows the Bible literally and yet also claim that God will lavish health and material reward on those who follow him. Similarly, suffering does not in and of itself indicate malfeasance. Both experience and Job tell us just the opposite.  We see good people suffer, and we see people who do bad things prosper nonetheless.  Of course, this is not to say that we are not often rewarded for good and that we are not often punished for doing wrong.  Nor is this to say that at least some form of reputational "karma" does not exist.  We of course build and lose reputations based upon our voluntary choices and we reap and suffer consequences of those choices.  However, all this occurs in the context of a world coming at us in countless ways that are also beyond our control and that deliver both bounties and setbacks that we don't deserve.  The best of us can live in poverty and ill-health despite our best efforts and those of us doing the worst can live in great prosperity.  To claim otherwise (1) rejects both experience and the Book of Job, (2) rejects true humanity itself, (3) rejects the compassion and understanding true virtue requires, and (4) demeans grace which, frankly, we all need to appreciate and cultivate more.    

               Job’s Sonnets  

                       I.

I see we have due process after all-- 

We have it at the end though justice keeps 

Discretion and more distance during life

Allowing easy error judging men. 

Once haughty, I thought illness punished sin 

Before rank ulcers chewed across my skin,

Rewarding my own virtues with disease

While others sinned yet suffered no disease

And even prospered by their deeds.  I've learned

That earthly station often isn’t earned.

No earthly fortunes ever prove one's worth

Including, too, the final bounties God

Shared once the devil lost.  My merit's proof:
I mined and shared from matchless mines of me.

                         II.    

Despite false prophets of prosperity

That judge in terms of health and property,  

Fate traffics us in ways do not see.

Real profits can be false if given sense

To speak of character beyond mere cents

Where fortune was the active agent.  Hence:

When a serpent happens on a priceless bird

There is no merit in the profit past

The accident itself, no avian wrong

That justifies slow death within a gut

Corroding color and dissolving song.

Thus, too, the wealth that God returned to me

Proves nothing of that true prosperity

I mined and shared from matchless mines of me. 

These sonnets are continuing additions to The Apology Box found here.