If you had your family blotted out of your life and swapped with a replacement set like how Job was handed, would you truly, honestly be happy?
Should remarried widowers go around with sad faces because of your pontifications on morality? Job’s life was never “perfect” on earth — just joyful.
If Job cursed God for what befell those he loved and was given to protect and care for, to whom or to what would he turn then?
The temptation as delivered through his 'friends' was curse God and die. Since Job loved God, he would not take their advice regardless of the crushing losses. I've been there, and life on the other side of such a clamatous thing is much deeper in spiritual growth.
Now, ask yourself how this works if there is no God but only your belief in God. If when crushed with loss you give up your belief in the nature of God, then what had you to start with before calamity struck? Well, you had a magical state of believing in soemthing nonexistent (Psychologists call it Magic Thinking, a characteristic too prevalent in democrts, BTW).
So you could replace that non-existent 'thing' with some other, like drugs or money or power to crush others or even service to humanity. But the issue of that non-exitent belief remains at the core of loss, not growth. If we do in fact have a spirit component in us, then that component will remain empty if we are not seeking God to'resonate with that core.
God grows us when we confess Him. As Paul put it, be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus ...
When we see a man like Jesse Jackson or Al Gore or Jimmy Swaggert or that guy named Baker, we see someone who was living on magic thinking, not on a resonance of God in the inner person, the spirit.
What happens to those like that when the magic is broken? well, Jackson became a proponent of abortion and a con man. Al Gore went from claiming to be pro-life to supporting and defending the slagughter of alive unborn as non-humans, and he too is a conman. What I see in Baker and Swaggert is very different, so far. They have turned to serving, with humility, rather than prideful manipulation of others and defending evil.
BTW, what defines happiness? How do we know what it means to be happy without the contrast of sadness? The issues really turn upon the tragedy of what happened to Job's family, not even his wealth or happiness. I know men who's families are their very life, above even a relationship with God. I know businessmen who have no room for a relationship with God because they are completely engulfed with their business life and all the trappings tied thereto. (Ted Turner ring a bell? The man has no time for 'godiness')
I always told my children that they were not mine, but God’s, and I was merely a vessel to help them on their way in His service. Jesus said that you cannot love family before Him, and we all strive to live that way. Blessings have abounded.
Indeed, as despite your scorn of their faith, Christians are taught to prepare for death, and know that this life is simply a speck in eternity, though it is to be taken very seriously, and it is here where we decide where we will spend the next life, and that there is eternity.
Thus Job would see his loved ones shortly if they were on the Lord's side, while the replacement family excelled that which was taken.
However, your objections are based on unbelief, but they do not apply when dealing with how a believer as Job would feel.
"11 Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.12 So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.14 And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren–happuch.15 And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.16 After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, even four generations.17 So Job died, being old and full of days." (Job 42:11-17)
"11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy." (James 5:11)