People who are good, kind, and honest deserve happy, successful lives, right? That's only fair. But what people deserve and the way things turn out are sometimes in conflict. Bad things happen to good people, and vice versa. How can this be?
That's the theme of the Bible's book of Job. A man described as "perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil," Job 1:1. Job suddenly found his life in ruins his property destroyed, his children wiped out in an accident, his health deteriorating. Anciently, the story served as a starting point for a discussion of the view that those who obey God prosper, and those who disobey suffer a conviction that was deeply ingrained in Hebrew thought. In fact, it formed the backdrop against which much of Old Testament history was recorded. From this perspective, life was supposed to be fair, not arbitrary or capricious.
As a righteous man, Job expected his life to be prosperous. He wondered if God, whom he had scrupulously served all his life, had let him down. And he demanded an explanation.
