Fear and Trembling in the Postmodern World: Part Five - YHWH
It is time for us to stop playing at religion.
Note: This is the latest in a series of articles. It is recommended that you read the previous articles first.
Do you remember a time in your youth when you were faced with the hard truth that this world is a chaotic and evil place from which you are not fully protected?
For me, this occurred on the day of the 9/11 terror attacks. It was the first time I felt a substantial threat against the country in which I lived. I was fourteen at the time, and the sense of security I had enjoyed throughout most of my early years was effectively shattered. I continued on with life, but I felt a shadow hanging over me, as if the dread of that day had left a mark.
I visited New York City for the first time seven years later. The former World Trade Center site was under construction, and the new buildings had not yet come to fruition. Instead, I looked into a gaping hole: an apt symbol of the wound to the nation’s heart that had not yet healed.
In 2014, I returned to the city with my husband. We stayed at a hotel in Lower Manhattan, and the first item on our agenda was a visit to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The main exhibits are underground, where the parking garages used to be. I took the escalator down into the darkness and walked into a large open area. My eyes were immediately drawn to a huge concrete wall, and upon reading the placard, I learned that it was a slurry wall: a portion of the original foundation complex intended to prevent seepage from the high water table. Although the towers above it were destroyed, this wall still stands as a testament to what came before it and what occurred on that fateful day.
Upon viewing that wall, my mind was drawn to something from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In the second book, The Two Towers, the wizard Gandalf essentially returns from the dead. While the other characters had seen him fall into an abyss after fighting a balrog, Gandalf tells them of an epic struggle in which he wrestled with the fiery monster as both descended into darkness.
Long I fell, and he fell with me. His fire was about me. I was burned. Then we plunged into the deep water and all was dark. Cold it was as the tide of death: almost it froze my heart…Thither I came at last, to the uttermost foundations of stone. He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake. We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted.1
Gandalf then describes their rise to the summit of the mountain, where they battled to the death. The struggle irreversibly changed the wizard: he was brought back, but carried the terrible memory of his struggle. When another character mentions the balrog, the text says of Gandalf that “for a moment it seemed that a cloud of pain passed over his face, and he sat silent, looking old as death.”2
As I stood before the slurry wall, I too felt a cloud pass over me. This was the uttermost foundation of stone. Here the memory of dread remained in the darkness, hidden from the eyes of the watching world. Here some poor souls had lain, pinned under the wreckage, clinging desperately to life, with only the slightest bit of hope. A few were rescued, but the memory of those hours likely still haunts them, even as it haunted Gandalf.
There is some debate over the degree of similarity between the character Gandalf and Jesus Christ. One of my pastors happily pointed out shortly after the release of the film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring that Gandalf sacrificed himself to save the other members of the fellowship, and his body made the shape of the cross when he fell. I have no idea if the filmmakers were trying to create a Christian image, but it is true enough that the fiery balrog Gandalf battles in that film looks rather like Beelzebub, and the wizard essentially rises from the dead. Like Jesus Christ, he faces his greatest test on behalf of those he loves, and he must descend into the depths in order to rise. Indeed, Gandalf’s descent in flames to a lowest level of icy cold is equally reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno.
Postmodern society is uncomfortable with the fiery imagery of the Bible, which frequently speaks of wrath and judgment. Some biblical scholars have objected to the notion, long central to the penal substitution understanding of the Christ’s atonement, that the Son of God was made to bear the wrath of his Father upon the cross. They tend to refer to this idea as “cosmic child abuse.” Others repeat the common refrain, “How can a good God allow so much evil in the world?” This is one of the chief accusations made by the so-called New Atheists: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens.
Everything from the violent acts of religious extremists to the terrible diseases afflicting young children are held up as evidence that if there was a God, he could not be good. The sins of Christians—e.g. the Crusades, anti-Semitism, and sexual abuse scandals—have caused many to doubt the God they claim to represent. Then there is a large group of people who are offended by the notion of a place of eternal punishment. They are happy enough to accept the biblical concept of heaven, but chafe at the idea of hell.
This last objection was on the mind of Martin Luther when he wrote his longest work on the topic of predestination and divine sovereignty, The Bondage of the Will. In his response to another work by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Luther argued that the deep things of God are beyond the power of human comprehension, and our reasoning cannot always grasp his intent. Indeed, what God declares good may seem abhorrent to us, and therefore to truly love God is an act of faith. In one particularly hard hitting passage, he writes,
This is the highest degree of faith, to believe him merciful when he saves so few and damns so many, and to believe him righteous when by his own will, he makes us necessarily damnable, so that he seems according to Erasmus, to delight in the torments of the wretched and to be worthy of hatred rather than of love. If, then, I could by any means comprehend how this God can be merciful and just who displays so much wrath and iniquity, there would be no need of faith.3
The God presented in the Bible possesses many characteristics that postmodern man struggles to accept. He specifically and repeatedly claims to be a supernatural actor. He is wrathful toward evil, yet allows that evil to occur. He demonstrates his love, yet allows his own followers to suffer immensely. He says he is unwilling that any should perish, but he also says that none can come to him unless they are drawn by his Spirit.
“I AM WHO I AM,” he declares.
Many people have attempted to get around this, particularly in the past few centuries. They have assured us that God is so loving that he would never send people to hell, any suffering is beyond his control, he has a very minimal moral code, and we can understand him easily enough with our mental faculties. The odd thing about this postmodern God is that he seems very…human. He does not seem supernatural at all, but entirely natural, unlike the God of the Bible.
Yet the God of the Bible declares, “I AM WHO I AM.”
It is exceedingly clear to me as I examine the religious landscape in the postmodern West that many of us are simply playing at religion. We are not approaching God as if he were an objective reality. We are seeking to define him rather than allowing him to define himself. If God exists (and I realize for many this is a big “if”), then he must exist in a certain way, even as humans do. And to repeat Descartes’ point, the source of our existence must be more real and perfect than we are. Why then do we seek to dictate to the ultimate reality? Surely it will dictate to us.
“I AM WHO I AM,” he declares.
That phrase was the name by which the God of the Bible revealed himself to Moses: YHWH in the Hebrew language, usually written in English as Yahweh. It was not given to him by Moses, but revealed from heaven. It speaks to an eternal, unchanging, uncompromising nature. You cannot make this God into whatever you desire. You must simply take him or leave him. He is real as revealed or he is nothing. As C.S. Lewis famously said about Jesus Christ,
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.4
Too many people now are attempting to take the option not left open. They seek an ultimate reality that is too distant, tame, and compromising to harm them. Perhaps you are one such person. You looked in horror upon that God who judges, damns, and seems altogether evil, and deemed him a phantom of an earlier age rather than a deity for the postmodern world. If we need a deity at all, you say, it is one that is altogether tolerant of everything: loving and gracious without exception, bestowing every kind of gift on every kind of person.
And so you tell yourself that all is well, and perhaps you will make it to the end of life untroubled. “I have lived!” you declare. No, my friend. You have not lived. You have merely passed the hours.
Life calls us to a struggle: a going under. It calls us to consider our origin, our purpose, and our end. It calls us to seek out the ultimate reality, and a cursory examination of the world around us reveals that the ultimate reality is not all cotton candy and lollipops. I would assume that only those who have never suffered could imagine the world to be altogether good, but all creatures suffer. I am therefore forced to conclude that the greater part of humanity lives by means of constant distraction and denial, fearing the truth. They whisper words of false comfort to themselves, for they dare not undergo the Anfechtung that leads to true comfort.
Yes, the greater part of men live in denial, unwilling to endure the fear and trembling through which true faith is created. They do not understand that one must doubt before one can believe in anything—that existential despair is the path to life. They live for comfort and therefore disdain suffering. Because of this, they cannot comprehend the good that may come from trial. They dare not descend into the depths to arrive at the foundation of stone.
But this struggle and these philosophical considerations are what make our species truly unique! All creatures on earth suffer, but only humans derive any purpose from their sufferings. Only humans wish to know what came before and what comes after. When you ask why, you are doing the most human thing imaginable. The very youngest humans ask why, but no other creature does. Your going under on the path to life is what defines you most certainly as the highest of all beings on planet Earth. Are you willing then to seek out the first existence? Are you willing to wrestle with this God as he is revealed? My friend, you must. As Luther once stated,
That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.5
This generation is desperate for something real, but we are terrified of what will happen if we ever trip over the ultimate reality in our never ending journey toward “our truth.” We would rather create our own road to nowhere than walk the same path as our ancestors in fear and trembling. We are unwilling to strive with something that conflicts with our narrative, or at least we will only do so on our own terms. But this is not a game and we cannot write the rules. If there is a supreme being who created and governs this universe, then he is the one who writes the rules, and you must strive with him.
Perhaps you are not prepared to enter that battle. You do not wish to go under for fear of what you will find at the uttermost foundation of stone. Yes, this society is like nothing so much as the biblical King Ahaz, who proclaimed in false reverence, “I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!”6 Those who play at religion would loath this YHWH if ever they met him, but they will never do so. Instead, they enclose him in layers of psychological projection, until his image is so faint that it can barely be seen. “Now I am safe from you,” they think. “I need not strive. Let the zealots fear and tremble.”
To shun that battle to which YHWH himself invites you is to be guilty of spiritual cowardice. When Job questioned the Almighty, he was declared righteous. When his friends attempted to remove the problem of evil, they were rebuked. Even so it is with us. Only those who fear and tremble can make a strong claim to faith.
Perhaps you cannot accept a God who eternally damns his creatures. Very well. Abandon that notion, but know that when you do you abandon the YHWH revealed in the Bible. You can choose to accept some portions of scripture and reject others, but remember, this is ultimate reality we are talking about: it is not a game. How do you know which God is the true one? In your rush to free Christianity from the wrathful God, you may well have thrown out the loving one as well. The mercy of the cross would not exist without the wrath. Are you prepared to lose it?
Consider the words of YHWH to Job. He came to that old saint in the depths of his suffering, but he did not offer him simple explanations. He did not attempt to soothe away the harsh realities of the world or to deny his omnipotence. He called upon a man in utter desperation to “gird up your loins like a man,” and then he revealed his lordship over all: even the foundations of stone.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding,
Who set its measurements? Since you know.
Or who stretched the line on it?
On what were its bases sunk?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?7
Those are the words that YHWH offered to Job, and now he offers them to us. Are we prepared to hear them? Will we call the thing what it actually is?
You will know the real God when you find him because he will infuriate you. If your conception of God does nothing to challenge your comfort, then you must ask yourself if it is the true God you hear or simply the voice of your subconscious. The majority reaction of the saints of old when they encountered God was to bow in terror.
If you have never feared God, then you have never felt him as a real and active being. You have never wrestled with the paradoxes of Christianity. You have never questioned his goodness or your own. It is possible that you don’t believe in him at all—that you are still playing at religion. The true God can be known in part by the fact that he never lets you remain as you are. Yes, he must be real, or he is nothing. If you wish to know that God, you must go under. You must place your faith on the altar, believing that you will receive it back with a blessing.
Tokien, J.R.R. The Two Towers. The Lord of the Rings. 2003 film cover single volume edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994. 490.
Ibid, 490.
Luther, Martin. The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio). Luther and Eramus: Free Will and Salvation. Trans. and ed. by E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson. Ichthus Edition. The Library of Christian Classics. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969. 138.
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: Harper Collins, 2002. 50-1.
Luther, Martin. Theses for the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518. http://bookofconcord.org/heidelberg.php
Isaiah 7:12
Job 38:4-7
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PUBLISHED ELSEWHERE:
“Slaughter in the Nibelungenlied” at Mythic Mind