Yes this is coming from an atheist but one that was religious and understands religion, so bear with me! Lets say for argument's sake that this IS a true story; God used Job as an example that one should not be led into tempation against the Lord, regardless of all of the hardships you endure. One; God knows all and so one shouldn't question him, full stop! Two; if one does as God commands throughout one's life no matter what is thrown at you, you will still be rewarded in Heaven. Life has an end, eternal joy in Heaven has no end. All that you endure will end, if you live your life right then you shall be rewarded for all time.

I think that a reading of the book will reveal that it was not God that tested Job, but Satan. God allowed Satan to see that Job's faithfulness was not for material or physical comfort, but was a real faith. It is a mistake to attempt to find some fault in Job which brought the trial about. In fact, God's assessment of Job at both the beginning and the end of the book is that he is unlike anyone else for righteousness. It was precisely because of this righteousness that Satan targeted him. God allowed it because He knew what His grace had accomplished in Job, and that it would be a great encouragement and instruction to His people for all time. Job was bewildered by it all, but did not sin in his attitude toward God. His friends were wrong, in sometimes subtle ways, about what was happening, but Job was not decieved. Job was refined through the trial, and in the end learned remarkable things about God, which were not shown to lesser men. He is, in my mind, in a class with Abraham and Moses. Job teaches us that there is much more going on than just what we can see in our lives, and that God does oversee it all for His own glory. Job's suffering ultimately formed an important part of our understanding of God and His ways, and I think that Job now counts himself honored to have played that role.

It may well have been because Satan was not yet fallen, that Satan was allowed to torment Job. Notice it wasn't God doing the testing but Satan, and Satan has a peculiar tie to humanity. It seems he gained power over those who die when humanity rebelled (Heb. 2:14) and also has some power over those who sin, and they are considered his children, not God's (John 8:44). Only through faith in Jesus can we be adopted into God's family (Gal. 3:26). As Romans 5:9-10 says, before salvation we are enemies of God and as such, under His wrath. Job was probably the first book of the Bible written (given his great age-Job 42:16, and the lack of mention of the Law or tabernacle yet). Jesus in Luke 10:18 says He saw the devil fall as lightning which seems a reference to Revelation 9:1, which would mean... Satan STILL hasn't fallen from heaven. To be honest, I'd always said Satan had fallen before but it just now hit me... maybe he still hasn't fallen. In John 12:31 we see Jesus saying that NOW will the prince of this world, Satan, be cast out. I just now thought of Revelation 12:1, where it calls Satan the accuser of Christians. So, then he is given the power to stand before God as with Job and accuse Christians. I'd always assumed that Satan being cast out of the garden and being cursed meant he was cast out from heaven, but... what if that's not the case? What if his relationship to fallen humanity means he couldn't be cast out of heaven until Jesus came to earth to destroy him and take his power of death from him? Hebrews 2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he [Jesus] also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; This definitely raises some interesting questions for me

God tested Job because God wanted to show Satan that Job would NOT sin against God and to test Job's faith as God had tested Abraham's faith. It wasn't because Satan hadn't yet fallen. Clearly, Satan and his legions of demons; specifically, only 1/3, but still a legion of them, fell from grace when Satan rebelled against God by wanting to take God's throne away from Him, God. Satan took on the shape of a snake and that's why God cursed the snake to slither and eat dirt. See Genesis for complete details about Satan and how the snake became a cursed animal. Why snakes have become cursed right now, they're not inherently evil. God doesn't create evil. Snakes are simply a cursed animal due to Satan's wickedness that was performed in the Garden of Eden by tempting Eve. In the New Testament, snakes are no longer cursed and are in Heaven along with us, who are fellow believers in Jesus as our Saviour. For more information about Job and HIs situation, see the Book of Job in the Old Testament. I hope this helps to answer your question!

It is clear in the Book of Job that satan was having to give account of his activities to the Lord. One subject that satan did not bring up was Job! It was the Lord who threw up to satan Job: 8 And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil." 9 Then Satan answered the LORD, "Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 "Hast Thou not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 "But put forth Thy hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse Thee to Thy face." 12 Then the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him." So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD. satan is the one who attacks Job. But Job is put to the test to settle an argument between satan and the Lord over Job. satan thus tempts job, but by removing the hedge around Job, the Lord is allowing it; thus it seems valid to me to say that the Lord also put Job to the test. The purpose is 1. to show up satan and bring glory to God by showing that Job loves God for Himself, not just for what God does for Him. However, since all things work together for good to those who love the Lord (end of Romans), there is a purpose that God has for Job in this testing. Since I don't think these are directly stated by the Lord in the Book of Job, some of these are inferences. 2. Job is tested (and put through suffering) to teach Job about the resurrection. We have to remember that much of Job is a series of episodes in a great debate between Job and his 3 friends. At the end of the book we are told that Job said what was correct about God and his friends were wrong (beware of quoting Job out of context! However, I don't think that every detail that Job uttered is correct -- just that the general gist of what he said was correct about God. Job learns about the resurrection by the debate. If you take a highlighter and mark everything Job says about eschatology, something becomes clear. (By eschatology I mean "last things," which includes "life after death.") If you mark those passages you will see that Job changes his mind on what happens to man after death. The debate teaches him that there must be a resurrection so that justice can be done. The debate develops the truth that if this life were all there were to life, the wicked would be seen to prosper and the righteous to suffer in many cases. Thus a resurrection is required for justice to prevail. Job learns by 19:25-26: "And as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. "Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; " Now this is an inference that I make based upon the evident shift in Job's mind on what happens at death, which you can confirm for yourself by marking the passages on eschatology leading up to chapter 19. 3. Job's friends learn about the nature of God. 4. Job probably learns that suffering is chastizement leading to education. By "chastizement" I don't mean punishment. Job did nothing before the debate to merit punishment. Chastizement, in this sense, is "child-training." This inference is strengthened if one considered Elihu (the 4th and youngest "friend" of Job) a prophet. This is a major problem in interpreting the book. After the 3 friends debate with Job, and Job whips them soundly; a young man who had been silent joins the debate and emphasizes chastening. Job has no answer for Elihu. This could be interpreted as disdain for Elihu, being inept at theology (see original Scofield Reference Bible) or as Job being whipped by Elihu in the debate. Unfortunately, while the book of Job tells us that basically Job was right about God and his 3 friends wrong, the book gives us no evaluation of Elihu; simply God Himself enters the debate after Elihu. 5. Possible purpose:??? to relieve Job of his sinful children and awful wife , who told Job to curse God and die, and possibly something like: "Your breath stinks." At the end of the book Job has 7 sons and 3 daughters to replace his first 7 sons and 3 daughters. The originals appear to be adult children in the Job 1 and they die during Job's trials. Now if they are adult children, and his wife started having kids at age 20 and had one every 2 years, that would make her 40 years old when they youngest was born. And then around 60 years old when they all became adults. Now barring a miracle, as with Sarah, Job should need a new wife to produce 10 more children, methinks. (At this point someone will play "Stand by Your Man," which Mrs. Job did not do, so far as the record is concerned. Now to me these verses do not look good for Job's first kids: " And his sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And it came about, when the days of feasting had completed their cycle, that Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, "Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually." (1:4-5). Now Job appears to have been a King or a quasi-King (mark the passages on that to prove it to yourself as you read). The land of Uz is the land of Edom (or the 2 overlap at least -- check Uz in your concordance). I would like to think that Job = Jobab, a ruler in a godly line of Esau -- see Genesis 36). Problem is that Jobab and Job do not look that much alike in Hebrew, as they do in English. Now with Job being a King in Edom, one could suppose that possibly he got saved after he became king and did not marry a saved woman. So his children may not have been good eggs. So, perhaps one blessing that came out of this was losing his lousy kids and the removal of his yucky wife. Then he got a young chick to replace her, a woman who made him happy with some good kids (includig Keren-happuch and Jemimah, who invented pancakes) but this is speculative.

I guess someone deleted my old answer. Here is an essay that I wrote for a philosophy class recently. Feel free to criticize it. It is on the 'problem of evil' and is a bit lengthy. The discussion over the origins of evil has long plagued Western religion. The Judeo-Christian conception of a god that is all good, omniscient, and omnipotent has become problematic when one also realizes the existence of evil. Many atheistic thinkers use this problem to argue that the existence of God is unlikely, but their argument is only valid as long as the Judeo-Christian conception of God is assumed to be necessary. A revision of the concept of God may very well solve this problem. The phenomenon called God may be amoralistic and therefore may require humanity for moral perspective. To understand and make any claim concerning the existence of evil, one must properly define the word “evil.” It may be supposed an action is evil when that action causes harm. It would be absurd to suppose contrarily that a thing might be evil when it causes absolutely no harm. Such a simple definition lends itself to criticism however, because what may harm one might at the same time cause a desirable effect in another body. However, for the purposes of this argument, it should be assumed that the causation of harm is evil. Upon this matter, it may easily be inferred that if an action causes any harm to any body, it may be considered evil. Consequently, it may be that an action is valued both good and evil to some degree at the same time when looked upon from the most morally inclusive perspective. In the Hebrew book of Job, Yahweh allows his faithful servant Job to suffer many great tragedies. Job’s peers assume that he has committed some grave wrong against his god; they see no other possible explanation. When Job finally implies before God that these evils committed upon him might not be justified, his god wrathfully explains at great length that he does not need to justify himself to his servant. It must be considered why it is that God should allow Job to suffer. According to Stump, Saint Thomas Aquinas says that man’s ultimate goal exists apart from this life, and that that goal is eternal. Therefore, Aquinas implies, divine providence and justice plays out in the next life, and since the next life is infinite, Job’s gain in that world infinitely out-weighs his loss in this world (Stump p. 50). However, Stump rightly points out that this still fails to justify the suffering of good people in this world; it only makes this evil appear smaller (p. 51). Furthermore, Aquinas’s claim is undercut by the fact that Job ultimately regains new fortunes, which are somehow implied to be better than the originals (Job 42:12). The passage implies that Job’s reward is on earth. Job himself questions these transgressions which his god has allowed to fall upon him, and more to the point, he wishes to plea his case before God (Job 13:3), explaining that even if He intended to slay him he “should still argue [his] case to his face” (Job 13:15). But indeed, Job is acquainted with the character of his god saying, “I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent” (Job 9:28). However, he also says “for look! my witness is in heaven; there is one on high ready to answer for me” (Job 16:19). But how could this be! Job seeks an advocate in God, but still expects God to be his condemner. If Job conceives God correctly, it would seem as though both his accuser and redeemer are contained within Him. This conception of God differs greatly from the Christian idea of a wholly good God. Perhaps entertaining such a notion is at least warranted. Throughout The Evidential Argument From Evil, all essayists presuppose that the term “God” refers to the Christian conception of an all good, omnipotent, omniscient deity. George H. Smith supposes that the supernatural and wholly traditional definition of God should be maintained for “clarity” and to maintain the historical dichotomy between theism and atheism (p. 36). This supposition however, implicitly allows neither the theist nor the atheist to grow or change. When redefinition of the term “God” is presupposed to be necessarily forbidden, then atheism could easily seem favorable. While it is perhaps unfair to contort the meaning of the word “God” reductio ad absurdum simply to maintain one’s conviction that God exists, it is also unfair to artificially maintain a, perhaps, archaic definition of the word when doing so almost exclusively favors one’s own argument. Surely however, redefining the nature of the deity is a grave step in attempting to acquire an appropriate theodicy. The consequences of accepting such an idea seem terrible indeed. And to base such a great redefinition on such an arbitrary interpretation of this single book may perhaps be unwarranted. It would need to be evinced independently of this book if such an interpretation is to be entertained. The cause of evil is the ultimate question. Lawhead evaluates two theodicies in his textbook. He quite rightly avoids the argument that evil is not something in itself, being simply a privation of good (Lawhead p. 361). Adherents of the free will argument conclude that evil arises from our own free will, and that if God did not give us the ability to commit evil, we would therefore lack free will. Aside from the rebuttal maintained by many that we do not have free will, there are other problems with this theodicy. Most who argue from the basis of free will also believe that there is a heaven, and that it is completely good, and yet those who are in heaven also have free will; however, if one is to accept all these premises then that one will have already accepted the possibility that humans could be both absolutely good and absolutely free. Also, it is difficult to understand how free will could have purposefulness or meaning in a realm where only good can occur. Furthermore, if we are to assume that omniscience means more than super-intelligence, than an omniscient god must have at least been aware that natural evils would occur; therefore he created the world knowing full-well that it was inherently evil. The second theodicy that Lawhead explores is the “greater goods defense.” This argument purports that God allows evil’s existence because it is necessary to achieve a greater good (Lawhead p. 362). It claims that ultimately the goods they produce outweigh these necessary evils. However, an inference that may be made concerning this claim might very easily be overlooked. If God allows evil to create a greater good, then it could very easily be inferred that God is only ultimately good; that is to say, he is good only because his goodness outweighs his evilness. Such must be at least a reasonable plausibility. So one has again arrived upon the conclusion that within God exists evil. It can most simply be argued that if God truly created all things, he must have created evil, if evil does indeed exist. Accordingly, the creator of evil must himself be valued as evil, at least to some degree. Job’s sense of morality is superior to that of Yahweh. If God knows that Job is perfectly righteous and still condemns him, God is himself amoral (Jung p. 369). Even if Yahweh is in fact ‘supramoralistic,’ such could quite as correctly be termed amoralistic. In this story, morality, as a human conceives it, is absent from the actions of God. But if it were that God’s actions are necessarily more moralistic than that of man’s conception of morality, then it would mean nothing to say that a man was moral. If we cannot know what true morality is, then we would be unable to make any moral judgment. It could be guessed at this point that only man knows morality. If this is so, then the unconscious mixture of good and evil in God could only be differentiated by man. If God wished to be moral then he could only find it in man. To believe this much one clearly must also assume that God is capable of changing himself or being changed, and such an assumption will not come easily to all. But perhaps it is possible for some. It is a great and terrible thing to change one’s beliefs. Concluding that God is natively incapable of rendering truly moral judgment is a huge claim. Perhaps the conclusions of this essay are incorrect. However, the fear of reorganizing one’s views, while such a fear may perhaps be valid and completely warranted in the interests of mental tranquility, is ultimately an unreasonable justification for maintaining one’s worldview. In <i>The Creation of Consciousness: Jung’s Myth for Modern Man</i> , Edward F. Edinger presents a new, adventitious myth for Western society in which “each individual is a crucible for the creation of consciousness and a vessel to serve as a carrier of that consciousness” (p. 32). He claims no less than that the coming purposefulness of man will be found in giving God what he does not have on his own: awareness of his conflicted nature. If God is indeed incapable of this sort of consciousness, then perhaps purpose for humanity may yet exist.

God didn't test Job. Satan inflicted suffering upon him to try and prove that God was a poor judge of character (because Satan expected Job to curse God). If he could have proved this then that would mean God was not omnipotent and that he had made a mistake in creating the world and it should be destroyed. Basically it was an attempt at a vote of no confidence - a challange for the throne. God stood to loose everything by accepting the challange, but could not really refuse. To prove that humankind was not a mistake, God had to prove that we are capable of love without reward. That's why when Job asks "why me" God doesn't give him a straight answer, but says "you couldn't begin to understand how complicated running the world can be, so don't try." Of course we still do, which is why someone asked this question.