Gary Hawk: Book of Job teaches endurance, surrender and empathy, lecturer says

Gary Hawk, a lecturer in the Davidson Honors College at the University of Montana, told an audience at the University of Montana Alumni Association Community Lecture Series in Missoula that the Book of Job helps readers endure suffering by moving beyond self-centered explanations and toward a wider moral imagination.

Hawk, speaking for roughly an hour and a half in a lecture titled "Starlight on Suffering and its Transcendence in the Book of Job," said the text is central to the Honors College's "Ways of Knowing" course because it forces readers to confront the limits of simple answers to suffering. "I am a man of faith," Hawk said during his prepared remarks, adding that faith for him remains "a bride married to amazement." He argued that Job's persistence in addressing God 'even angrily or accusingly'is itself a form of faith: "Job keeps God on the ropes, locks God in the dock," Hawk…