The Book of Job and the Modern Pharisees

The Book of Job has a lot to teach us today.  Yes, humility is part of the lesson, but I'd put it in a different way.

The story of Job is this:  Job was a pious and upright man, blameless before God, but misfortunes befell him anyway; and then an assorment of judgmental, hypocritical onlookers began preaching and moralizing that in some way Job deserved his misfortunes. 

None of those trying to draw a moral from Job's condition do so adequately.  They are all exposed more or less as blowhards. 

This was a shift from traditional Jewish thinking.  The traditional view was that those who were faithful to God would be rewarded here and now, on earth, not in Sheol or heaven or whatever.   That if you obeyed the law and sacrificed as prescribed, then you would be rewarded with if not wealth, then a reasonable measure of peace and prosperity.

Which is of course, absurd.  Doesn't happen in the real world.

Christians were typically poor and subject to starvation and persecution, and so early Christians could only hope for heavenly rewards, not earthly ones, and to them, the Book of Job was common everyday experience.
    
Christianity left that behind a long time ago, as it became associated with wealth and power.
 
The smugness of self-satisfied phariseeism is with us today in the doctrines of many churches and the quick judgments of believers.  In American churches today, there are so many who moralize about poverty or failure being self-deserved, the result of ungodliness or moral flaw.  Who believe and preach that wealth is a measure of spiritual achievement.  That if you are a good Christian, you will prosper.   Just read the newspaper comments to articles about the homeless.

This is why the Book of Job is so relevant today.  Time and chance happeneth to all.   Sickness, business failure, divorce, all kinds of personal tragedies happen without any necessary connection to one's faith or relationship to God.  And no one should have the hubris to preach or moralize over the misfortunes of another.  "There but for the grace of God go I."

In my opinion, Job and Ecclesiastes are the two modern books of the Old Testament.  They are works of philosophy, not law or prophecy.