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    The Job Sessions: Why Do The Innocent Suffer?
    The Job Sessions: Why Do The Innocent Suffer?
    The Job Sessions: Why Do The Innocent Suffer?
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    The Job Sessions: Why Do The Innocent Suffer?

    By Shireen Jeejeebhoy

    ()

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    About this ebook

    People who suffer deeply often turn to the Book of Job in the Bible. This book is about an innocent man who underwent great suffering: first he lost his assets, his children, all the things he held dear but his wife. Then he lost his health. He, once a prosperous pillar of the community, a faithful man of God, was reduced to sitting in the dust, covered in boils, helpless to help himself. Hearing of his great suffering, his friends came to sit with him. And there begins the real tale of Job.

    And that is why people who suffer a crisis for no reason and then suffer cascading consequences from that crisis look to the Book of Job. They look there for an answer to that tough question: why do bad things happen to good people? It is unflinching in its answer.

    But this book of prose and poetry is a long read and sometimes hard to understand. It's helpful to have a guide with you. This is mine for you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShireen Jeejeebhoy
    Release dateMay 22, 2011
    ISBN9780987711038
    The Job Sessions: Why Do The Innocent Suffer?
    Author

    Shireen Jeejeebhoy

    I write a mix of books: novels, biography, short nonfiction. I set my novels in Toronto, my home for most of my life, a city of contradictions and ripe with conflict possibilities. My debut book, LIFELINER, is set in Ontario, but also travels down to New York and across the pond to Sweden. My life is one big question mark, has been ever since I sustained a closed head injury (or mild traumatic brain injury or concussion, whichever moniker is fashionable) in a four-car collision. But my writing keeps me grounded, my photography takes me to other places. I wrote about it and treatments I discovered in my revised memoir CONCUSSION IS BRAIN INJURY: TREATING THE NEURONS AND ME. When I'm not writing, reading, taking photographs, I'm hunting for good coffee and sensational chocolate.

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      Book preview

      The Job Sessions - Shireen Jeejeebhoy

      THE JOB SESSIONS

      Why Do The Innocent Suffer?

      by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2011 by Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy

      Discover other titles by Shireen Jeejeebhoy at Smashwords.com

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ~~~*~~~

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      Session One: God and Satan, Job’s Lament

      Session Two: Job’s Three Friends

      Session Three: Job’s Response

      Session Four: Elihu

      Session Five: God’s Answer

      Session Six: Epilogue

      About the Author

      ~~~*~~~

      The Job Sessions: AN INTRODUCTION

      PEOPLE who suffer deeply often turn to the Book of Job in the Bible. There they look for answers to their suffering, suffering that is often seemingly for no reason. But this book of prose and poetry is a long read and sometimes hard to understand. It’s helpful to have a guide with you. This is mine for you.

      I wrote this guide because as I myself read through Job, I looked for good outlines and articles to help me interpret the poetry, and I could not find any. Too often what I saw was superficial, seemed to have nothing to do with the actual text, and were often outright stupid. Luckily, I was reading Job under the tutelage of my Pastor, and our back-and-forth e-mails helped me think through and understand this beautiful book. Out of those e-mails, I created a series of presentations for my bible study group. And then I refined those presentations into a guide, this guide. I could not have done it without the generous help of my Pastor and the great discussions in my bible study group.

      What follows are six sessions on the Book of Job to help you, either alone or in a group, study, learn, and most of all feel transformed when reading this wise text. You can read them in order or go directly to the one that discusses the issue uppermost in your mind using the Table of Contents. I hope you find this eBook empowering and uplifting.

      Why Did I Read Job?

      Back in January 2000, I was in a multi-car crash on a local highway in Toronto. I thought I had only physical injuries: whiplash and shoulder sprains (from the seat belt). But eight months later, an abnormal SPECT scan confirmed that I’d actually fared much worse, that I had suffered a closed head injury.

      A closed head injury (aka mild traumatic brain injury or concussion) is when the brain bashes around inside the skull, tearing neurons and blood vessels. There’s no physical breakage of the skull, no other dramatic sign of injury; the signs are all cognitive, emotional, behavioural, sometimes speech, and perhaps subtle physical signs. And so people see what they want to see. And when they want to see nothing wrong, they see nothing wrong. The human being’s ability to rationalize obvious signs of distress into nothing is profound.

      I began years and years of rehab, therapy, and finally real treatments, and things got pretty bad along the way. At one point, I heard that a man who’d suffered two traumatic injuries, which put an end to his passion or purpose, read the Book of Job ten times to find out why all that had happened to him. After the tenth read, he suddenly realised God loved him. It transformed his whole outlook on his injuries and his life. I wanted to experience that. But I had one problem: trouble reading and learning from reading. Trying to read Job on my own was a mug’s game.

      In the fall of 2008, I got some help. My Pastor worked with me to help me read and understand Job. It was difficult, and it was transformative.

      We test ran a bible study based on my studies for six weeks. This eBook is a product of those lively six weeks and includes the handouts I created for it.

      Choosing the Best Bible

      Plus a suggested reference

      Many years ago, I asked the experts I knew which translation of the Bible was closest to the Hebrew. Hebrew is a very old language that is not as precise as Greek, the language of the New Testament. Also, scribes centuries ago may not have been too accurate in their transcriptions, and so perhaps a letter got lopped off, which would change the meaning, and, as well, verb tenses aren’t always a given. Several times my Pastor and I would discuss at length just what a certain passage in Job meant because translations would differ or standard theological understanding would differ from my knowledge of how the English language works. For example, a pronoun doesn’t generally refer to two names back but to the directly preceding one. Luckily I don’t believe that the key theme of Job, the deep understanding the text provides, is greatly altered by translation differences. It’s more what people want to see or don’t want to see in the text that makes the difference.

      I used the HarperCollins Study Bible with the New Revised Standard Version translation. Another good translation is the New International Version. The King James is beautiful to read, its language melodious, but its translations are a bit off at times.

      I recommend reading the whole of Job as you go through the sessions. But I will give specific passages to read, and it’s helpful to have your own Bible at hand. As for references, I have only one to suggest, for I found unhelpful all but one that I was either referred to or found myself. The one I found fascinating is by Robert Sutherland. It’s a complete analysis of the book by a Canadian criminal defense lawyer and is called Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job.

      Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job

      by Robert Sutherland

      The Job Sessions was published originally on a website called Squidoo. It allowed one to create interactive modules, and it encouraged reader feedback and participation. (HubPages bought it and shut it down in 2014.) At the end of each session in this eBook, I include the reader feedback I received. I would love to hear what you think as well on my website or the review section of this eBook’s Smashword’s page.

      Reader Feedback on Squidoo, most recent first:

      Light-in-me May 21, 2009 @ 12:09 pm

      Very interesting, I am going to check out the other one now.

      Great job !!

      Take care,

      Robin

      ShireenJ May 21, 2009 @ 9:11 am | in reply to spirituality

      Thank you for the invite! It looks like a great group!

      spirituality May 21, 2009 @ 4:09 am

      http://www.squidoo.com/groups/Christianity-religion — please submit this lens to the group too :)

      ~~~*~~~

      Session One: GOD AND SATAN, JOB’S LAMENT

      SESSION One covers Chapters One to Three in the Book of Job. It will include discussion questions, a handout, and my original artwork to illustrate the characters and/or feelings found in Job. I hope you will find this guide helpful as you read the Book of Job, whether you’re reading it on your own or with a group or friend. I invite you to download from my website the related handout in PDF format to assist you. Questions in italics are for you or your group to ponder and discuss. It doesn’t matter if you come up with answers; the journey is in the

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