Dear Brother Job ...

Dear brother Job,

Your cries of suffering and protest have pierced our bones. We haven't been able to sleep. Blood flows from our ears.

Your hands move in all directions: They signal to us, they beat us, they inquire of us, they stroke us. Where are you taking us, brother Job?

Your stench of death has penetrated our nostrils; we smell you everywhere. Your bony body goads us. Pieces of your wormy flesh cling to our own. We have become infected by you, brother Job. You have infected us, our families, and our people. Your eyes searching for justice and your breath saturated with fury have filled us with courage, tenderness, and hope.

How brave you are, brother Job! How strong is your resistance! You are, like us, a ghost: sick, abandoned, rejected, and oppressed. You are sickening (are we sickening?). Your friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar haven't ceased to torture you and give you poor advice.

They say that you should silence your protest and stop defending your innocence. They say that God has punished you and that you need to repent. And you, brother Job, in spite of everything, haven't given up. Rather, your shouts have become louder. You don't believe them, and you fight against them.

What's more, you dare to argue and fight against Almighty God. You blame God for your sorrow, and you blame God for being silent while you suffer. You have every right to defend yourself because you're human. It is the right of every man and woman to protest against unjust suffering.

Your friends have stopped being your friends because you have protested, and because you have dared to touch the untouchable: God. You have dared to touch the perfect God, the Totally Other who ordains the world without error; the God who distributes justice left and right.

But you don't see it. You see the suffering of the just and the innocent, and the joys and the pleasures of the unjust who pile up wealth. Your friends, with their beautiful speeches, affirm the contrary.

Let God talk! Let God explain the silences, the unbearable silences. How unbearable are God's silences. God's absence invokes death. Our God, our God, why have you abandoned us?

Let God talk now, and let your friends keep still. They deny with words the pain and suffering they see with their own eyes. Empty theology! A theology closed on itself! A theology that tries to defend God with incredible lies! They are defenders of God at the expense of human beings; they should be defending human beings in obedience to God.

Let them be quiet! Let them go back to the trash heap with you, and let them cry and tear their robes for another seven days and nights. Let them unite with you and your pain without speaking a word. Maybe in this way they will come to understand why the innocent have a right to protest and to rebel. Maybe in this way they will be converted.

But let us be still as well, Job. We have complained enough. Your wise words silenced the lips of the wise. They have no more arguments. No god exists who will back them up. Let's allow God to stand before us and explain the silence.

God's silence is mysterious. Sometimes it fills us with fright and paralyzes us in the face of the legion of devils that squeezes out the life of the people. But without this silence of God, we can't become men and women.

When God speaks all the time, people become deaf. They don't hear the cry of the poor and of those who suffer. They become full; they no longer walk and hope. They don't dare to do anything. They no longer endure.

God remains silent so that men and women may speak, protest, and struggle. God remains silent so that people may really become people. When God is silent and men and women cry, God cries in solidarity with them but doesn't intervene. God waits for the shouts of protest.

Then God begins to speak again, but in dialogue with us. God shows us how the mountain goat casts away her new born, who find their way on the rocks and don't return looking for her milk, God teaches us that the wild mule is free, that it laughs at the noise of the city. It doesn't hear the mule driver and looks for its own food. The buffalo refuses to spend his nights in a stable; the ostrich scoffs at the horse rider who can't catch up with her; the Horse neighs majestically and doesn't turn away from the swords of war; the eagle flies to the highest mountaintop and takes in all the world with the sweep of his eyes. To all of these, God gave this strength and freedom.

Let's arise, brother Job, because you can't catch Leviathan with a fish hook nor the monster Behemoth with a smile. Only the strength of God in our strength can defeat them. The Lord is challenging us.

Now, brother Job, you have come to know God. You'll never again be that rich gentleman who had all his wants and needs taken care of, and who gave of his surplus to those who had nothing. You've had the intimate experience of being wretched, and no one can erase this experience from your personal history.

God restored you because you struggled against and with God until you were blessed. What will you do now? God restored you, but what of us?

Hope to see you again here in the trash heap,
Elsa Tamez

Elsa Tamez was professor of biblical studies at the Seminario Biblico Latinoamericano in San Jose, Costa Rica, and author of Bible of the Oppressed when this article appeared.