Despite being an atheist, I have embarked upon the potentially insane task of reading the whole bible. I haven't set a timescale for this but it's something I've been thinking about for some time. A few things have made me want to do this 🧵

So, the Book of Job is an interesting one. The popular image of the book is that the devil screws over Job, and God doesn't intervene to show how strong Job's piety and decency is, and Job is basically "shit happens", but really that's only the first two chapters of it. Most of the book is a few

Assholes who know Job mocking his misfortune while Job responds in absolutely beautiful and poetic verse about his torments. It really doesn't do what it sets out on the tin (address the problem of evil and suffering) and God does not come out of it well, but as a work of literature, it is fabulous.

Just very beautifully written and expressed, with imagery and phrases that we have all probably read of heard before without even realising this is where it comes from. It's problematic in the way it portrays God, even in the context of the OT, but it is still engaging and challenging

On both an emotional and intellectual level on a way I absolutely was not expecting. As a theological statement about God I think it actually makes me more likely to be an antitheist (God in this is a massive dick), but as an almost proto absurdist statement on attitudes to misfortune