Bill McKibben, The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job and the Scale of Creation (Cowley Publications, 2005).

It is a narrative as ancient as the Old Testament itself: God blesses good person with riches, God punishes sinful person with poverty. We see the story again and again throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Yet the Scriptures offer a counter-narrative as well, one in which the innocent suffer, leaving us with the timeless question: why do bad things happen to good people?

Job was a righteous man and God blessed him with riches, health and family. Satan criticized Job, telling God that Job was only virtuous because he was blessed, and if his family, health and property were taken away, he would turn away from God. God disagreed, and allowed Satan to test Job by destroying his possessions and family. Job’s friends argued that he must have done something to deserve his misfortune. Though Job became increasingly desperate, he never turned away from God. He did, however, question God, asking why he was being punished when he did nothing wrong. God responded not to questions of Job’s suffering, but with a long, poetic speech, cataloguing the wonders of the universe and describing the marvels of the creation before humans were made. The message: Humans are not at the center of God’s creation, and the innermost workings of the world, including good and evil, are beyond our understanding.

In The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job and the Scale of Creation, author Bill McKibben argues that humans are easily deceived by conventional wisdom. In the case of Job, his friends were deluded into thinking that a sinless life was marked by wealth, health and family, and that God took away Job’s blessings because he had sinned. God rejected this misconception, arguing that the universe does not revolve around humanity, and that Job should stop thinking so small. God tends to the creation in ways that sometimes do and sometimes do not benefit humans, regardless of their virtue or sin. The true mark of Job’s wisdom and faith is that his righteousness gave way to true humility in the face of misfortune.

According to McKibben, the Book of Job can inform the way we face the challenges of climate change. Humans have fulfilled God’s command to “fill the earth with people and bring it under your control” (Genesis 1:28, CEV). Our over-zealousness in filling and controlling the creation is marked by unsustainable consumption that benefits a wealthy few while leaving the majority of the earth’s people impoverished. What’s more, we ignore God’s other directives for love, honor and justice when the earth is degraded and humankind suffers due to the radical effects of climate change. Conventional wisdom tells us that a growing economy is a sign that we are doing things right, and happiness comes through material consumption. Yet the Christian faith teaches that the true mark of the good life is an understanding of transcendent joy, and the humble recognition that we are stewards of the creation, rather than masters over it.

Americans pump heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through driving, the manufacturing and shipping of material goods, meat-heavy diets and more. Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than the earth can absorb it, and this trapped heat is causing the overall temperature of the earth to rise. Scientists expect that the impacts of this change will have many implications, including an increase in significant weather events such as Hurricane Katrina. McKibben argues that the appropriate response to climate change, in light of Job, is one of humility—a recognition that the earth is not centered around the fulfillment of human desire, and an acknowledgement that we must consume less so that we can live in harmony with God’s creation.

In his exegesis of the Book of Job and its implications for the global environmental crisis, McKibben glosses over an important point, one that is key in linking our interpretation of climate change to the Job story: those who are least able to cope with the effects of global warming are, in fact, the least culpable for climate change. People with limited means tend to consume less than wealthy people. They also have less access to the resources necessary to support themselves during severe weather events and landscape changes, as we saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Those who are and will be most hurt by global warming are like Job: they are not always to blame for their suffering. The challenge for individuals, governments and corporations of means is to witness and respond to the causes of such suffering with Job-like humility.

Jenny Phillips writes curriculum and resources on faith-based creation care. She has a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York, NY, and she lives in Brooklyn, NY.