We aren’t very good at handling poetry in the church; most of the good stuff goes way over our heads.

We look at Song of Solomon and try to squeeze it into a Bible study about a good marriage. If King Solomon put on a Marriage Retreat weekend, it would be the laughed out of town. Who is he to teach us about marriage? But if he published a poem between he and his lover, we would be all ears and would walk away learning a thing or two.

Or what about the Psalms–a horrendous place to create our theology, especially the kind we like–crisp, clean, simple. Good luck with that. Kill my enemies, don’t let me be put to shame, great are you. I’d hate to see what kind of theology develops when someone tries to take the average of my best and worst prayers. If the Psalmist wrote some systematic theology, it might be the worst book ever.

The writers were sharing an experience they thought others might benefit from by hearing; they weren’t there to teach with a three point outline and an application at the end.

We miss the point all the time in poetry. Poetry is meant to help you experience something, not teach you something.

Take Job. All in all, it does a terrible job of teaching someone about the meaning of suffering and the problem of evil. Especially if we try to approach it like a historical guide.

Was Job really a person? Where does this book fall chronologically? Where did Job live? Does Satan really go in front of God all the time? Does God really ask him, “Whadda been up to?”

All of that misses the point. There’s an experience we are meant to share in and we lose it when we ask these questions too much.

I mean, for starters, it’s a story that starts off with a bet between Satan and God. This seems like a pretty good clue how much we should care about the historicity of this story (and if it proves the existence of dinosaurs in biblical times).

Satan shows up in God’s office one day on roll call, obviously in a bad mood. God asks him what he’s been doing.

“Little of this, little of that.”

“Hey,” God says. “Would you get a load of Job? That guy is great; he is killing it right now.”

“That’s because you go so easy on him,” says Satan. “He’s just in it for the perks. He’s a moocher. Take all that stuff away and you’ll see what he’s really made out of.”

“Ok,” God says. “Let’s see. Just don’t kill him.”

Then we see Job’s life crash before his eyes and he and his friends stand up like Shakespearean actors and offer their soliloquies. His friends inform Job why this is happening to him. Job defends himself. Then a young man named Elihu shows up and adds his ideas.

I haven’t for the life of my found a single person who can answer the question of “who was right” among the five speakers. We have a bias against Job’s three friends, but a lot of what they say sounds a lot like what we say in churches today. Elihu remains a significant mystery. Is he a prophet? Is he dismissed? We never really know.

What we do know is that the story keeps moving on and the argument gets more and more heated. The audience is on the edge of their seat as Job gets closer and closer to toeing over that edge, completely unaware of the cosmic wager he’s a participant in. Is he finally going to curse God? Surely not, right?

But the worse things get, the more Job’s selfish core starts to take over. He’s asking for vindication. He’s asking for God to bring these accusations against him so that he can defend himself. At any moment, we just know he’s going to turn around and flip the bird toward the sky and be done with it.

One man, split to his core. No family, no money, no health. He’s down to his very essence. He’s at the edge of his life and he’s calling for God to show up and prove to all these other fools that there’s been some mistake.

Job has been put through the ringer and is fighting back like a trapped animal. “Why me? What did I do to deserve this? You have the wrong guy. I followed the rules.”

You see where he’s going. The words are nearly on his tongue. He’s almost gone through with it.

Then, in the climax of the story, God comes to the rescue (although it may not have felt like a rescue for Job). He doesn’t save him, but puts him in his place. “Where were you when I created the earth?” is not exactly the “Well done, good and faithful servant” that Job was probably looking for. God shuts him up and says game over.

One piece of this story that seems the strangest is that despite our best expectations, Satan nearly won the bet. Had God not shown up, wouldn’t Job have continued on the path he was walking? Would he finally have cursed God and died? We don’t know for sure and God didn’t let it play out all the way to the end. He restores Job’s health, family, and possessions and the story ends.

In my mind, Satan comes back to God with a bit of a smirk on his face and claims victory, at least in principle. “You and I both know what was going on there. I told you this would happen. They don’t really love you. They just like the things you give them.”

God comes back to Satan and says, “Ok, double or nothing. But this time, I get to pick.”

And God starts the process of preparing his own son to go into the world. He is boiled down to his essence. Everything is stripped away from him: his family, his friends, his religion, his health, and even the presence of God is removed from him. Won’t he just curse God and die?

But this time, he’s faithful to the end. No cries for justice. No demands for a recount. No one asks him where he was at the beginning, because he remembers it like it was yesterday.

Then he dies. He sees it through. And Satan finally loses the bet. What Job, who represents the best of us couldn’t complete, Jesus does.

Poetry is meant to be experienced. Don’t bother with the easy applications and key takeaways. Just get wrapped up in the story and walk away changed.