This is the point at which he might, seeing this preferential treatment for none, fall away from faith entirely: a vanishing point of least faith. His friends have done their best to convince him that faith is interested: surely, he must have done something wrong. Seeing that he has not, he might give up on God.
Or he can take up the path of Qohelet: yes, all may be meaningless, a chasing after the wind, but is there not also beauty in life? There is folly, yes, but better, there is also wisdom. There is toil, yes, but better, there is joy and celebration. There is grief, but there is also standing beneath a tree after your spiritual transformation, instruments in hand, singing with your family in a glowing life.
None of this is written, but such is the way of a text like this: it does not do the work for us. We must do the work. We must read between the lines and between the letters, and we must pull together this meaning from fable and verse. We must elevate the unknown things. After all, if we fail to do that work, we fall upon the simple terrors of phrases like “bad things happen to good people” or, worse, “bad things happen to sinners, and aren’t we all?”
+((Chesterton: It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes.))
We must imagine his choice. We must imagine that Job, too, can be happy.
I’m Madison now. I’m no closer to defining what it means to be transgender. Were I pressed to describe what it feels like, I may have the words — it feels like an oscillation between dys- and euphoria as I move further away and closer to this sense of identity — but I don’t have the connection to those words that makes them feel real, feel true.
@@ -51,7 +52,7 @@I was young, once, and dumb. I can hardly say I’m any smarter, now, but at least I’m Madison. At least I’m not that angsty, angry asshole who thought to himself he needed to come to terms with being a terrible person.