Don't believe everything you believe: the Bible has its skeptics in Job and Qoheleth, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and we shouldn't ignore their honest wrestling with the reality of evil in the world.

ARE YOU 100 PERCENT CERTAIN OF THE TRUTHS OF your faith? Do you believe everything the church teaches, even before you know what it is? Is God more real to you than the nearest object? Are you, in short, blessed with a rock-solid religious foundation that cannot be moved?

If your answer to any or many or all of these questions is a hearty "heck no," don't be embarrassed. You are not alone, and you even have a champion or two in the Bible. Let's be clear about this: Not everyone in salvation history has been having two-way conversations with God every morning before breakfast. Some are thoughtful to the point of doubtful about the business of religion altogether. Yet in the final canon of scripture the church included at least two of these naysayers alongside the testimonies of prophets and sages. These two minority reporters, the writers of Job and Ecclesiastes, were frankly unconvinced that "God's in his heaven/ All's right with the world!" as poet Robert Browning later phrased it. These biblical skeptics had no quarrel with the first part of Browning's equation. But their experience flatly contradicted his conclusion. Things are hardly all right with our world, they insisted.

When you find yourself of a perspective that is theologically variant from the orthodox position--a dissenter not by creed but by irrefutable life experience--then what do you do? Some will find it necessary to leave their mother creed behind and travel a new path, with pain and losses for the whole community. Others will remain, speaking their truth in safe or not-so-safe corners of the assembly, hoping for a hearing, acceptance, and validation. They may not live to see it.

Variants who stay may be surprised to find themselves in the canon of saints one day, like Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, perhaps even Pope John XXIII. Such people have the strength of conviction and, we may hope, the grace of heaven to help them boldly go where the church hasn't been yet. That variants might wind up in the canon of scripture, however, seems unlikely.

JOB, WHO TAKES AIM AT THE USEFUL BELIEF THAT SUFFERING is a direct result of personal sin, is rarely controversial nowadays. We've gotten used to him lamenting there on the ash heap. But in the popular mind, we've also repackaged Job as a sort of patient Griselda, a benign sufferer who bears little resemblance to the man who cursed his birth and demanded an audience with God to settle his grievance. Yet even after Job got his makeover and became a respectable citizen of the Bible, Ecclesiastes remained on the rabbis' short list of controversial writings. Their complaint: Why should religious orthodoxy sponsor the ideas of a writer so comprehensively critical of fundamental teachings?

The debate is hardly over. Most Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic scholars--all of whom count Ecclesiastes in their canons--still begin every discussion of, the book by asking: "How did this ever get into the Bible?" The implication being that, once included, we're forced to deal with it.

But we don't have to deal with it often: The minority reporters have limited exposure in the Sunday lectionary. Job appears twice every three years, Ecclesiastes only once. We don't have to listen often to that rant about vanity. If we don't care for the sage of pessimism, at least we can practically ignore him. This sage--called Qoheleth in Hebrew, Ecclesiastes in Greek, and "the assembler" in English--may be the patron saint of skeptics, but he's a mystery otherwise. Did he assemble people, as Jerome and later Luther supposed, both of whom preferred to call him "the preacher" for this reason? Or did he simply assemble the present book? Or is Qoheleth the assembler of dissenting opinions regarding the whole wisdom tradition, including books like Proverbs, Sirach, and Wisdom, of which Ecclesiastes is ironically a part?

Those who see Qoheleth as a champion of their own minority position like to point out that, whatever else he is, the assembler is not an atheist or even an agnostic. Qoheleth frequently maintains that he believes in God, a code of ethics, and divine judgment. He doesn't believe in an afterlife, but in that sense he was right in step with the orthodox teaching of his day. Qoheleth's insistence that death is the end of human hope and possibility made sense to his contemporaries and is consistent with most Jewish teaching today.

IT'S WHAT QOHELETH REJECTS THAT MADE THE RELIGIOUS world around him gasp. His basic quarrel is with those who prefer immutable religious principles that challenge human experience. The popular theology of retribution, for example, insisted that God champions the just and punishes the wicked. Qoheleth found no evidence for this, citing case histories of his acquaintance. While Christians will naturally say, "God rewards and punishes after death," Qoheleth's generation didn't go there, theologically speaking. But the same Christians will also cry out, "Why is God doing this or allowing that?"--a tacit denial that divine justice is supposed to come posthumously. We all want justice, and we want it now. Qoheleth was no different.

The assembler likewise rejected the basic tenet of the wisdom tradition: that the wise have an advantage over the foolish and will therefore fare better. As with the just and the wicked, Qoheleth found no absolute distinctions between the fate of the wise and the foolish. Either was as likely to wind up in the penthouse, and both were destined for the grave.

All the dualism so dear to religious folk--piety beats pragmatism; obedience to authority is better than thinking things through for yourself; even the delayed gratification of the beloved work ethic trumping the daily enjoyment of life--all of these either/or propositions appear as deeply flawed to Qoheleth. In most cases, he resolves the dualism of orthodoxy with an appeal to moderation: Why not labor with one hand and take gratification with the other?

Early rabbis mistrusted Qoheleth's sincere appreciation for the absurdities of the human condition. They argued against the divine inspiration of his work, saying his ideas "did not make the hands pure" and that they should be removed from use. The name "the assembler" might even have been a nickname students used for him, not necessarily kindly meant. He certainly asks more questions than he answers, and he does conclude that happiness is not possible in this world except in brief snatches that should be sought and treasured as gifts from God.

WHAT MAKES QOHELETH PRAISEWORTHY IS THAT HE, ore than many religious thinkers, took the mystery of evil seriously. He refused to mouth pious ideas that were categorically untrue. He wouldn't pretend that it preserved God's honor to hide the evidence that things weren't working out so well here on earth. Qoheleth didn't think lying about the nature of justice and wisdom did a service to either value. Qoheleth insisted on intellectual honesty along with reverence for divinity. Who knows but that his honesty might not honor God more than the polite fictions others hide behind folded hands?

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By ALICE CAMILLE, author of Invitation to the New Testament, and Invitation to the Old Testament, both from ACTA Publications.