Relationship With God Essay

In the Catholic intellectual tradition, there are innumerable perplexing questions that humans have been analyzing for hundreds of years. Questions like, “what is our relationship with God” look to define as well as answer questions about societal culture and religious beliefs. This question can begin to be answered by reading ancient biblical texts like The Book of Job and The Book of Exodus. A dedicated servant to God in The Book of Job, Job struggles to understand why God would punish him even though he was never disobedient or unfaithful. In chapter 20 of Exodus, Moses goes to the top of Mount Sinai to talk to God. At this moment Moses receives the Ten Commandments from God, in which the LORD proclaims the importance of only having one

Man is expected to serve God and appreciate everything he does for them without questioning faith, his existence, or neglecting service toward their LORD. In Exodus, man’s relationship with God is based on the Ten Commandments that God presents to Moses; these are the basis of God’s expectation of man if they chose to follow him. Job follows Exodus in the sense that he chose to follow these commandments in hope that if he does not sin, God will allow him to live a healthy and fortunate life, but this does not occur. When Job is stricken with awful incidents in his life, he is confused as to why this would happen since he believed that if he followed the commandments closely, furthermore with all his faith, he would not experience serious plights in his life. These two stories intertwine seeing that Moses’ interaction with God and his expectations of man sets the story up for Job along with his struggle with why God would allow such terrible episodes to happen to him. The same God appears in both stories, a jealous and selfish God; therefore, in both stories man’s relationship with God is strictly service based in addition to being built around fear of punishment by God if man were to sin against his