5 BEST MEMOIRS THAT I’VE READ

I ENJOY reading books and read a lot. When I have this craving for reading, I succumb to whatever book that is available, so that qualifies me as a bookworm. My choice of books is eclectic, so I read everything that piques my interest.

I have my preferences, though, as an order of priority whenever I have given so many choices at one time: historical novels, award-winning books, and books that are made into outstanding movies.

But lately, reading narrative non-fictions, or first-person accounts that read almost like a novel, is an added delight. I’m always thrilled by personal truths written not only by famous writers, thinkers, and celebrities, but also by ordinary persons who examine themselves as they navigate through life, or ones written by those who can honestly talk about themselves in a purposeful way. And I am equally amazed by those who mythicize themselves, unraveling their exploits or histories as only they know them, and by those who start as a total no-gooder, but ends up as a total expert.

I am referring to memoir, which is different from an autobiography, though both words are sometimes used interchangeably. Unlike autobiography that is laden with dates and facts of the author’s entire life, a memoir does not delve too much into life details. It only provides a record not so much bound with timelines but of a random set of events that occurred and influenced a person’s life.

According to some authors, a memoir is a self-written account of selected events and phases in life that stands out in the memories of a person. It is a true story with a real-life plot, characters, setting, a couple of sub-plots, focusing on the part of the writer’s past that has universal appeal. It should be interesting in itself, as a novel might be.

The best memoirs, for me, should contain witty, interesting short stories and feelings or events that I can relate to in my own life. It should follow a story line or compile several anecdotes, such documents of honest thoughts, with a related theme, touching a subject that is either transformational or inspirational. It should have some kind of emotional impact that an ordinary reader like me should care. And finally, the writing has to be good.

There are five captivating and awesome memoirs I have read over the past few years. I picked up these memoirs because I believe they have permanently changed somehow the way I think about certain things, and gave me the idea that all lives worth living are interesting to read.

My list here was arranged in the order when I read them.

1.      Out of Africa by Isak Denisen

      When I first got hold of the book, I thought it was a novel, which is the basis of the Oscar Award winning movie of the same title   starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. But  the book is actually   a memoir written by a Danish baroness (real name: Karen von Blixen) who took over the management of a coffee plantation on her own in Kenya after she and her unfaithful husband divorced. It’s a vivid snapshot of her life in Africa, or rather a lyrical expression  of her love to the wonderful people and nature that touched her life there. But more than that, I was touched by her relationship (though she did not clearly define in the book the nature of such romance) with Denys Finch Hatton, the British farmer and hunter whom she met in the country. The pair had a tender affair, but not that of a “permanent partnership” that Blixen would have loved to happen. Hatton would use Blixen’s farm as his home base. And they would fly over her farm and some parts of Africa using Hatton’s biplane. The relationship ended when Hatton died in a plane crash. I feel for Blixen in her anguish and infinite longing, for the loss of a person she adored so much like a soul mate, and the loss of the coffee farm due to low yields. The book is a slow read; for it’s also an account on the charm, the majesty, the beauty of the vast continent, and the culture of the tribes therein; but it’s definitely a worthwhile read. 

2.      One L by Scott Turow

This is a journal-like narrative by Scott Turow, telling his experience as a first-year student at Harvard Law School where freshmen are dubbed One Ls. I first heard about this book when it was recommended by one of our speakers during our orientation as first year law students in a premier university. But I was only able to read it when I  was already in third year, or after I got kicked out and transferred to another school. Still, it was not a totally waste of time. I came to understand where I failed or what I lacked in my freshman year. I realized that first year in law school is the most critical in the life of a lawyer. Early on, you have to survive the terrors, depressions, hazing, compulsive work (e.g. reading up to 20 cases for a two-hour long recitation in class!), and very intimidating professors. One memorable account in the book is one that deals with the Socratic method of lecturing, where there were no clear answers. It was a familiar experience in my first school to be grilled with questions by the professor using that method. I suffered anxiety over a single exam that may determine my future in law school. The book narrates not only about law school but about being human in an intense, often grueling, situation. It is a must-read for first-year law students and law school applicants, or by anyone who has ever contemplated going to law school. 
                                                          

3.      I Know the Caged Bird Sing by Maya Angelou

       I didn’t hear about Maya Angelou until she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of US President Bill Clinton in 1993. So when I read her memoir more than 15 years later, I was amazed at the kind of life    she had endured and how she overcame her inferiority complex, trauma and racism, to become what she is now, a self-possessed, dignified young woman, and a multi-awarded poet and author, and playwright. I have read    fictions and stories about the origin of slavery of Negroes in America, the courage of black men and women, proud and strong under oppressive circumstances, and issues of rape, molestation, lynching and racism in their quest for independence and personal dignity. I read them from Alex Haley’s Roots, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Beloved, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and Richard Wright’s Native Son to name a few. And Angelou’s memoir covers topics common to these stories, particularly the era following the civil rights movements. I was no longer shocked and saddened by them. But it was a new experience reading this autobiographical story, written in the perspective of a young girl, as a three-year old then up to her early teens in a small, rural community during the 1930s. I admire her strength, her candor, poignancy and grace, all told in her powerful language, vivid scenery and emotions. It is a good book but not recommended for young readers.  

    

4.      Red Azalea by Anchee Min

My love for historical fiction leads me to Katherine, a novel about a Chinese girl and a seductive American teacher,  and aroused my curiosity of what was life in Mao’s China during the Cultural Revolution, and to Anchee Min, the author of  the book. And this has inspired me to pick up Red Azalea, her honest and frightening account under the shadow of Mao. It is her own story of inner strength and courage as she grew up in the rigid context of Communism, and living up with ideology and gender issues, sex, suicide, humiliation and political subterfuge. The drama unfolds like the convoluted plot of a telenovela. As a child, she was taught to be a good communist and was sent to a labor camp to work in the rice fields. Consistent with Communist dogma against any type of individualism or expression of emotions, communal laborers like her were forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased. She entered, however, into a secret love affair with her female supervisor at the labor camp. Later on, she was selected to be trained as an actress for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas. But Mao died before the film was completed, and Madame Mao was sentenced to death. It was then that Min realized that she was just a victim to the craziness of the culture like anyone else in her country, and that life might be better elsewhere. With the help of a friend, she left China for America. It is an interesting book.

5.      Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

      I have so little knowledge about the book or its author when   I picked it up in a bookstore. Without the gilded seal bearing “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” on its cover, I wouldn’t have taken a second look, and wouldn’t have the chance to experience glorifying this gem of a book. This is an honest narration of a young Irish-American boy, crushed under the oppressive conditions of impoverished childhood, heartbreaking struggles with his father’s alcoholism, and his mother’s attempts to keep the family intact, the death of three of his siblings, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, but narrated by him with eloquence and remarkable forgiveness, and in astounding humor and compassion. That’s a big wow for me. The story happened in the Depression-era in New York and the war years in Ireland, where the family moved after they left America. The story, seen through the eyes of the author’s younger self, makes you laugh and cry with his heartbreaks and near-starvation, and keeps you rooting for his family’s survival. It highlights abject poverty and unemployment, those devastating conditions faced by millions around the world, but as a whole, it tells a story of hope and triumph rather than one of misery. Deserving of my five stars.

Just to round up my top ten, I must also confess an appreciation for the following autobiographical books: From Barrio to Senado by Juan M. Flavier, Nothing Is Impossible by Christopher Reeve, The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier, America is in My Heart by Carlos Bulosan, and Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic.

I would love to write one of my own someday. I will definitely make one if only to help me make sense of my life, confront the truth, and provide myself new perspectives in life. But for now I just enjoy finding pieces of myself in other people’s lives revealed through their well-written memoirs.    

PO-ON: SELF-SACRIFICE AND NATIONAL UNITY

BEING an Ilocano myself, and having known much of our own history and language, I take pride of having read F. Sionil Jose’s Po-on (Dusk), the first in the five-book series The Rosales Saga. It’s the same feeling I had, as a Filipino and proud member of the Malay race, after reading the English versions of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, two classic novels of Jose Rizal.

The setting of Rizal’s Noli and Fili is a fictional town called San Diego (possibly in Laguna), but the issues transcend the locale of the novel. It depicts the general struggle of the Filipino against abuses by the friars and the ambivalence of the ruling class. It is set at the time when the Philippines was still a province of Mother Spain.

Sionil Jose’s Po-on, on the other hand, is set in Cabugao in Ilocos Sur, my home province, and ultimately in Rosales, Pangasinan, the author’s birthplace. It initially describes the plight of the Ilocanos at the hands of the abusive Spanish rulers during the later part of their rule in the region, and the start of the American conquest, following the Spanish-American war. But toward the end of the novel, it conveys a message that deals with nationalism or the question of our identity as Filipinos.

The novels of Rizal and Sionil Jose both deal on poverty, poor governance and human rights abuses during the Spanish time, with emphasis on the lecherous, potbellied friars who rule the land and oppress the people. But while Noli and Fili are seen through the eyes of an ilustrado (Crisostomo Ibarra a.k.a. Simoun the Jeweler), Po-on is seen through the eyes of a poor indio named Istak (Eustaquio Salvador/Samson), who went with his family in exodus from Ilocos to Pangasinan to escape from the wrath of the Spaniards after the grisly killing of a parish priest. The journey of the family filled with tragedies is comparable with that of Tom Joad’s family in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, who also got to their Promised Land but in the end, something had to be sacrificed in the name of duty.

Having moved by the powerful and intense narration of the Po-on, I felt a pang of conscience and regret for having read only a few emotionally charged fictions written by our own nationalist authors that really speak about us—our past, our present, and our future. Before Po-on and Rizal’s twin novels, I have read Gagamba also by F. Sionil Jose, Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco, and an anthology of short stories by Mindoro native NVM Gonzales. But none that I have read so far, other than Po-on, speaks the history of the resilient and frugal Ilocanos.  

We Ilocanos are well scattered to other parts of the country and to foreign lands, where we account for majority of immigrant Filipinos. They say it’s about our land. Ilocos Region, or Ilocandia, is one of the smallest regions in the country. Add to this fact that the region is sandwiched by the sea in the west and by the rugged mountains in the east, a condition that has made for a very limited amount of arable land for a very industrious people. It was a tough geographical location for us Ilocanos to live in. No wonder, we are stereotyped with regional traits vital for survival, such as tenacious industry, perseverance, resilience, frugality, and pioneering spirit. Because of so very little space in the region, Ilocanos seemingly are duty-bound to move to other places in search for better opportunities not only for their own sake but for the whole clan.

In Po-on, Sionil Jose shows us the other reason for this diaspora, which is the persecution of the Ilocano indios under the Spanish regime. But prior to Istak’s story, the Spaniards weren’t particularly lucky with their conquest of Ilocos. The Ilocanos were one of the first ethnic groups to revolt against Spanish officials. Two of the Philippines’ most notable uprisings were the Basi Revolt in 1807 and the one lead by the lion-hearted Diego Silang of Aringay (now part of La Union) in 1762-63, which was continued by his wife Gabriela Silang. The Silangs’ revolt, which is also well mentioned in Po-on, was fueled by the grievances against Spanish taxation and abuses. The uprisings were short-lived and never duplicated until the twilight of the Castilian rule during Istak’s time.

These abuses by the Spanish rulers subsist in the province up to the last decade of the 19th century. Although one exceptional friar is very kind to young Istak and takes care of him like his own son, that is, teaching him how to pray, write and speak Spanish and Latin, Istak and the rest of the indios are not generally allowed to become priests. So Istak, in spite of his advance education, has to go back to his family and help in his family's farm. Ba-ac begs the new priest to send his son to the seminary, and while they are arguing, Ba-ac realizes that the priest is the one who ordered him to be arrested and hung up by the arm because of an accusation that he was malingering from the duty to offer compulsory road building work for the Spanish. In a fit of fury he kills the priest with a crucifix. Ba-ac’s family has to leave hurriedly, taking the back roads to avoid the Spanish guards. They go with other relatives who have also been expelled from their lands. So the families escape like fugitives and along the way, they encounter the much feared tulisanes and the atrocious Spanish officers. Amidst their adventures are poignant episodes of love and devotion, particularly between Istak and Dalin, his devoted wife and savior, and family solidarity and values.

At the end of the story, we see Americans now taking over but, soon the Filipinos found out that they are as bad as the Spanish. American soldiers would torture and rape the poor natives. Don Jacinto, the local landowner who helps them set up a small village in Rosales town, is very much involved in the independence movement and Istak soon starts helping him, particularly when a man known as the Cripple (Apolinario Mabini) stays at the house of Don Jacinto. Finally, Istak is sent off on a dangerous mission to take a message to President Emilio Aguinaldo but ends up at the last brave stand of El Presidente's loyal soldiers at Tirad Pass, where Istak was shot dead by the Americans.

Istak, a martyr in a very real sense, is aglow with patriotic fervor until his death. He understands that love for country, which involves sacrifice, is essential to discovering the meaning of his own existence. And true enough, he gave honor to the country by proving to the white invaders that Filipinos are capable of offering their dear lives, not only for their clan, but for our country's freedom. Sadly, this is all in the past tense. We now live in a curious era where most Filipinos wanted to be Americans or Europeans, and most of our politicians are bereft of patriotism in their service to the nation.

The Cripple in the novel says it with fire and ice: "There is so much that the past can teach us… Diego Silang—more than a hundred years ago, what did he prove? That with a brilliant and selfless leader, we can be united the way he united the north. And united, we can then make Filipinas strong, formidable…”

Of course, today there are no more colonizers to contend with, but we still have many wars to fight. There is the war on poverty, rampant corruption in government transactions, poor governance, and the never-ending struggle for national unity. Po-on clearly tells us that our dream to have selfless leaders, who know the value of self-sacrifice, and citizenry that is truly united for the country remains a dream.

I must say, Po-on is a must-read for every Filipino if we only want to educate our countrymen about our glorious past.   

THE TRUE MEASURE OF A MAN

WHAT is the measure of a man?  

This is a question I haven’t bothered to ask myself until I came across the book The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography by Sidney Poitier. I chose to read it not with the fact that he is very famous being the first African-American leading actor in Hollywood (I haven’t seen any of his films though), but simply by the appealing title and with the Oprah’s Book Club logo on its cover.

I had expected that this legendary movie icon, one of Hollywood’s most admired actors, would share in his book some insights to the kind of scale he used to measure the true meaning of his life, and what it takes to be called a real man.

Oprah Winfrey, in picking this book for her eponymous book club, states that the Poitier “is the measure of one of the greatest men I think who has ever been on our planet.”

Poitier, who was 73-year-old when the book was published in 2000, provides reading to his fascinating personal and public life, filled with ruminations and insights on some spiritual aspect of life; commentary on poverty, black prejudices, integrity, and the film industry; and lecture on family values and upbringing—“like having a conversation with a revered older relative,” as one reviewer says on the back cover. His ideas and thoughts are easy to understand, and he doesn’t expect readers to agree with him.

Looking back on his celebrated life and career, Poitier delves into the elements of character and personal values to measure himself as a man, as a son, as a husband and a father, and as an actor. He talks about the lessons he has learned on tiny Cat Island in the Bahamas and that “feelings of groundedness and belonging” which has been woven into his character there.

Poitier credits his parents and his childhood for equipping him with the uncompromising sense of right and wrong and of self-worth that have been his companions on his life’s journey. He narrates how he made his way from his beginnings, marked by poverty, in the Bahamas, his turbulent teens in Nassau and Miami, how he ends up in New York, and his triumphs in the stage and stardom in Hollywood. He tells us of the civil rights movement in the US, the changes that brought in the acceptance of the colored race, and the influence of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi on his life. He has helped to break the color barrier in films and theater by his outstanding achievements.

He has overcome incredible odds to find his place in American cinema. He has starred in over forty films, directed nine, and written four. His landmark films include The Defiant Ones, To Sir, With Love, and Lilies of the Field where he won Academy Award for Best Actor in 1963, the first ever major award given to a black actor.

The book covers only a small portion of his failed marriage and how it affected his relationship with his children. His parenting techniques as an estranged father are instructive and very inspiring. He shares points of wisdom that can only come with age. He writes about forgiveness (“should be a sacred process”) and his mistakes as a father. It is an admission of imperfection and he risked being regarded as too inane and unsuccessful, but it highlights nonetheless his honesty and purity of intention in writing his luminous memoir.

We must understand that every man at some point in life endures ill luck or some unhappy event. However, these challenges of life offer men the potential for great good and happiness. This must be the true measure of a man that was enunciated long ago by Martin Luther King Jr., whom Poitier also admires in this quote: “The true measure of a man is not how he behaves in moments of comfort and convenience but how he stands at times of controversy and challenges.”

In the book I didn’t find Poitier saying that you can measure a man by his physique, the fierceness in his tone, and the words he chooses to influence others. He also doesn’t say you can measure a man by his bank account, the size of his house, the model of his car, the number of people who will give in to his wishes, or his college degree. To him, the real measure of a man is his ability to provide for his children. This was actually an advice given to him by his father.

Obviously, family was, and continues to be, the most important thing to Poitier. He wants to maintain his dignity, honor his parents, and become the best father he could be. This is possibly one of the most profound themes of the book.

I agree with him because I think a person, who is a good father to his children, is a man of immense measure.

Being a good person is a way of life. But being a father is something that everyone strives to do. And a really good father has a deep spiritual understanding that everything he does in his daily life is beneficial to his family.

How can I raise my three children to be the kind of man described with such conviction by Poitier in his book? What is my own personal measure of myself, especially as a father to my children?

Now that my wife is gone, and I am left alone to attend to my three kids, I needed some good stuff to reflect on, some lessons on how I should be a father to my kids. And I think a memoir of a successful family man such as Poitier is absolutely helpful.

For me, the most important thing about being a good father is being one. It’s who I am, what I do, and how successful I am at what I do. The proverbial expression, “you are only worth as much as you have” is also very appropriate in my lifetime role as a father.

My children need a doting and loving father—a father who can fill the void left by their mother, which is a very formidable task, I should say, for any ordinary man. They need a trusted confidant, a caring and benevolent father who is in their life, who pays attention to them, who is interested in them, who does things with them, and asks about them.

I often hear parents say they absolutely don’t want their children to go through the same hardships that they experienced, and so they end up protecting their children from any risk or danger in the best way they can. For whatever reason, I wouldn't let my children suffer. I cannot leave my family vulnerable in their own crowded universe. But even with my protective wings around them, I wouldn't deprive them the opportunity to learn, to unlearn, and relearn lessons in life on their own.  As a single parent, this is the biggest challenge that I must face for the rest of my life.    

Two of my three children are boys who could someday be real men in their own right. They should learn what it takes not to be a barako (macho) but to have the true character of a man. They should know how to speak the truth and honestly convey their feelings.

In addition to Poitier’s scale, a real man must be secure in himself; unwavering in the face of challenges in society concerning manhood and personal convictions. And more importantly, he will be measured by the manner he treats the women in his life, how he keeps his promise, and values palabra de honor (word of honor).

That to me is the real measure of a man.

GRIEF IS NOT A FAILURE

(Published in The Philippine Star, Sunday, November 27, 2011. Weekly Winner of the My Favorite Book contest sponsored by National Bookstore) 

THIS one is a brief review of the novel Ordinary People by Judith Guest. It was a fairly quick read, but I still feel its lasting impression.  And here’s why.

I didn’t know anything about the book, its author, or its theme until I picked it up and browsed it. Upon reading the backside that its movie adaptation, directed by the legendary Hollywood actor Robert Redford, was highly praised and won the Oscars for Best Picture in 1980, I didn’t hesitate to buy it.

Why not? Choosing between bestsellers and award-winning books (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Awards, Nobel Laureates’ magnum opuses, etc.), I prefer the latter category. And books made into highly acclaimed movies have always been a good alternative. After reading Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, both winners of Best Picture in the Academy Awards in 1930 and 1996, respectively, I’ve been on a frantic hunt for novels whose movie adaptations won the Oscars’ most coveted award. 

Ordinary People is one of those novels (actually an old book from the ‘70s, when no cell phones, computers, or social networking got in the way of a good story) I didn’t realize was out there to be discovered or explored. Its theme is universal, which is the loss and the different ways people deal with it.

It is written from the perspective of a reserved teenager, Conrad Jarret, trying to tackle by himself the loss of his older brother. Out of guilt for not being able to do anything to help his brother in an accident while boating together, and feeling disconnected from his parents, he attempts to commit suicide, which lands him in the hospital for eight months. Later on, his father helps him find a psychiatrist.

The family the book depicts is appropriately “ordinary,” that is, they’re familiar to us. They could be your neighbors or relatives, or could be your own. The characters seem real: you hear them speak and you see their pain, and feel for them.
I can relate to the book’s compelling theme. I really felt for the surviving son and his father Cal, as he tries to reach out to him. I felt connected to both of them. I lost my wife last August, or barely a month before I read this book. With her untimely demise due to breast cancer, all my dreams of getting old, complete and satisfied, with her and our children sank into a black hole and I have yet to cope with the ordeal of being a shocked survivor. I had this uneasiness, however, in seeing my own incomprehensible emotions laid out before me page after page in this novel.

Reading through the struggles of the surviving family members, it brings to mind Hamlet’s affecting question: “To be or not to be?” You suddenly feel envious of the dead, because they are in peace while the survivors have to live long and deal with the traumatizing event, and suffer with more and more issues, like the idea of suicide, isolation, brokenness, deep longing for connection, and a cesspool of unwanted memories.

I’ve read some novels with the same subject—bereavement—and I can only remember Bag of Bones by Stephen King (a writer suffering a severe writer’s block after the death of his wife); The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (a father who is consumed with guilt at having failed to save a daughter and a mother who drifts away and leaves her husband after the tragic death); and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (a rich hunchback shutting off from his mind a sickly son and a beautiful garden after an accident killed his wife), but none had put more than the usual amount of emphasis on depression from a clinical standpoint. 

Ordinary People is a very psychologically astute book that tells us matter-of-factly that depression is, in the words of the novel’s psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, “not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling.” It’s your own choice why you feel numb or void of feelings, because it is your mind’s way of protecting itself. But it is the kind of isolation and being lonely and miserable that is unforgiving and cannot be forgiven when there are people who are more than willing to listen and patiently try to lift you up. I really like that shrink.

So for anyone who has ever struggled with similar loss or depression, this is an eye-opening book. It shows how grief may drive people away from the shelter of the family unit, and yet the same grief may also draw some closer together, like the son and his father in the story. Even “ordinary people” can overcome difficult and unthinkable circumstances all the time, and some handle these poignant and razor-sharp emotions differently, most of them with success. And some made good with the help of a counselor or a psychiatrist.

There is goodness about all things. The book tells us then that there is no insurmountable pain in bereavement. Life may be a lot of problems, yet it is full of hope. The good Dr. Berger has also remarked that after bereavement, “there is just Phase Two. Recovery. A moving forward.” That could be a guiding principle, a perfect mantra, in any depressing time or some shattered relationship.

Except for the deterioration of the marriage between Cal and his wife, the novel ends on a positive note. Conrad Jarret slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger, and comes to terms with his feelings. The teenager becomes his own man and gets over wallowing in his intoxicating survivor’s guilt and identity crisis, thus resolving the internal conflict of the story.

People just need to learn to work with and around each other in order to live their lives and be happy. I would not have learned these things if I didn’t pick up this outstanding book. I am now well reminded of the reasons that life is still worth living in spite of some horrible things.

After all, grief is not a failure. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT JOB

AMONG the characters in the Old Testament, I am most fascinated by the story of Job. I haven’t read the whole text in the bible, but thanks to some abridged and comic book stories (I had plenty of them when I was a child), magazine articles and lately, websites, I came to know this guy whose name is synonymous to utmost patience, and his endless series of unfortunate events.

Job can be summed up this way: Satan tells God that Job, his most upright servant, only loves the Lord because he has given him so much wealth. God wagers Satan that Job will remain faithful even in the face of unending series of misfortunes. He tells Satan to do his worst to Job but not to harm him fatally. So Satan inflict Job with the worst beating you could imagine on a man—he loses his entire estate and his children, he suffers very severely with sore boils, and his friends shun him. But Job withstands the onslaughts. In the end, because he endures and never wavers in his faith in the Lord, his wealth, health and even his family are all restored by God.

But while not reading the prose and poetry about Job in the bible, I was befuddled by some issues: Why He lets Satan afflict Job? Or are our troubles really the idea of Satan and that God only concurs with them? Up to what extent God allows us humans to suffer so as to test us?

It was only when I read the book Understanding Job by Lim Kou, that I was enlightened about the meaning of the book of Job. The book was given free by those Christians from M/V Doulos, the floating bookstore which was docked in the port of Manila last December. Because it was free, and sectarian, I can only surmise its preachy contents so I wasn’t tempted to sit down and read it at once. I only retrieved it from my bookshelf, just after I have cited the story of Job in one of my earlier blogs.

True to its title, I was able to understand Job, and my queries were answered, with these insights from the author:

• God allowed Satan put Job to the test because He knew that there was substance in Job’s life; there were genuine, good qualities within him. So God knew too well He had a winner in Job.
• God has dual aims in allowing Satan to test Job: First, it was because of His love for Job and concern for his ultimate well-being. Second, it was related to the establishment of His eternal kingdom.
• Job faltered to some degree during the trials in spite of his moral and spiritual stature. Our hero claimed that God had wronged him and that is tantamount to saying that God is unjust. Such misconception, misunderstanding and an idea affected his confidence in God.
• God in His speeches didn’t directly answer Job’s perplexing questions. How God responded to Job’s situation was very appropriate, meaningful and effective in the context. Like Job, we must learn to trust God fully and without wavering while going through difficult and perplexing situations in life.
• God was satisfied with Job, and with how he went through the ordeal. Job basically remained true to God. Though he faltered, he still loved the Lord and sought to honor God and to abide by His words. With that, Satan was greatly displeased, and he lost the wager.

Let us learn from the story of Job, not so much on God and Satan “conspiracy” but on how Job endures in the midst of misfortunes. This lesson is very useful for someone going through suffering or distress when his or her understanding can easily get twisted.

What most of us have suffered in life is generally far less severe compared to what Job went through. With the Book of Job, and with pastors and theologians who have painstakingly explained its meaning to us, we now have a much fuller revelation and understanding of who God is, the realities in the spiritual realm and how we should live with our lives to the fullest. So it is expected that we are now in a better position to respond well.

One downside of the book though is that it bears the imprints of a pastor who has a whole day to belabor his point. A more rigorous editing could have eliminated some of the repetitions.

But don't let this discourage you to read the book and understand more about Job and learn the proper postures to take amidst life’s trials and tribulations.