As a group of editors, we find there are questions that have come up from our children, in talking about the scriptures, or imperfectly answered in Gospel Doctrine class, that continue to plague people. One set of questions centers on the story of Job as told in the Old Testament. In the introductory chapters, Job is described as “perfect and upright” and a man who “feared God and eschewed evil,” yet the narrator describes a discussion between God and Satan over what Satan is allowed to do to Job, as if it is some kind of senseless game to torment him, or perhaps that God is aloof from Job’s subsequent suffering. The epilogue also seems ludicrously unemotional, as if after all of that he suddenly has a rewarding mass of blessings summarily dumped on him for surviving.

We invite our readers to weigh in with their observations.

Does God bargain with Satan over our trials, was Job even a real person, and why in the world is such a horrendous story recorded in the scriptures?