Monday, December 21, 2015

The Unthinkable Thought

I am a slave to ideals.  I have been for a long time.  And for most of that time I have confused my position with Christianity.  But let me back up a little.

There are two kinds of people in this world.  Slaves to circumstances and slaves to ideals, in religious terms we might call them slaves to sin and slaves to the law.  The Slave to Circumstances lives his life in the immediate.  When things go his way, he is happy.  When things don't go his way, he is sad or angry or whatever.  He lives his life like a boat carried by the waves and he is wherever they go.  When I say the immediate, I don't mean that he doesn't make plans or have goals, maybe even "spiritual" goals, but his thoughts are all consumed with obtaining good and avoiding bad, meaning good circumstances and bad circumstances.  Good things and bad things, good places and bad places, good people and bad people.  Using good to refer to things that please us or make us happy and bad to refer to those which fail to do so.  In other words, making ourselves the standard by which the world is judged.

I have looked down my nose at the Slave to Circumstance for a long time.  You see, by the power of ideals, the concept of right and wrong, of justice, of appropriateness we can free ourselves from our circumstances.  When something makes me unhappy, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that even if it doesn't please me it is right.  I can sink all of my pain in the knowledge that a good God rules the universe and makes all wrongs right.  And I mistake that for faith.  The eternal is a pretty good comfort for the loss of the temporary.

And that is the way the world goes.  The slaves of sin are carried about on their miserable destiny and the slaves of the law look and say "I thank you God that I am not a sinner like this publican."  And as far as they go they are right.  Slavery to the law is infinitely preferable to slavery to anything else.  At least the law is just and good and holy.  It will always look out for what is best for everybody and when that isn't what is best for me I can comfort myself by what Kierkegaard calls letting the particular(myself, my feelings, my good) find its expression in the universal(what is good for everybody).  I can be happy under the law, as long as I am content to be happy in this way.  I can watch the good things in my life go away and I can have peace and comfort.

And there is basically nothing in the world to contradict what I have said.  Only a few tiny objections remain to be disposed of by the Slaves to Ideals and we can all go to our own Hells peacefully and quietly.  If only Isaac hadn't come down from that mountain.

When someone chooses to follow the Way of the Law, they need to understand that it is the way of deadness, of sacrifice in the literal sense of killing.  First the law killed my pain, then it killed my sadness, then it killed my happiness, then it killed my joy.  I am left with a still deadness in the core of my soul, as ultimately I became dead to the law.  Eventually the Way of the Law will require me to be dead to my family and even dead to myself.  This might seem strange but the Way of the Law is the way of sacrificing the less for the greater.  I sacrifice happiness for goodness, fun for peace, friendship for truth, my will for God's will, eventually I walk straight into Hell content that it is where I belong, having felt my sinfulness to its utter depths.  When I say I do these things, understand that that is eternity's perspective.  I can do these things if I have the courage to walk the Way of the Law.  But when we see that the last term is the sacrifice of ourselves, we must learn from this that to follow the Law requires ALL that is in a man.  There is nothing left to do anything else.  I believe it was Robert E. Lee who said, "Do your duty.  You cannot do more.  You should not wish to do less."
And so we explain everything in the world with a few principles.  And are left with a single unexplainable prodigy, a miracle in the fullest sense of the word, when Abraham gets Isaac back.

I haven't gone that far, who has but Abraham?  But anyone who has sacrificed for the Law can imagine what it would be like.  To sacrifice what is loved for something that is greater is a path I know very well.  If Abraham had murdered Isaac, had sacrificed not only his love and his son, but his righteousness, his justification by murdering his own son the Slaves of the Law could well admire him.  He would be the greatest of us.  To sacrifice even justification because it is God's will is the highest expression of the ethical.  As I said before, it is to walk into Hell with a just contentment.  It would be on a level with Paul who would give up his own salvation for the salvation of his countrymen.  But what actually happened I can't understand.  I can't admire.  I can't even accept.

 "Resignation[what I have called the Way of the Law] by itself does not require faith. It has only to comply with the eternal. It renounces, but does not gain. Faith, however, does not renounce anything. On the contrary, in faith I receive everything. Herein lies the crucial difference. It takes a purely human courage to renounce the world of temporality in order to win eternity; but it takes a humble and paradoxical courage to take hold of what is temporal and to do so for the sake of the eternal. That courage is the courage of faith. Through faith Abraham did not renounce his claim on Isaac. No, through his faith he received Isaac"

So we have seen that the highest and best a person can reach is slavery to the Law, to eternal ideals.  And I want to point out again, that slavery to a good and righteous master is far preferable to the situation most of us are in.  And slavery to an eternal good doesn't sound so bad at all.  But the Slave of the Law has to give himself entirely to that Law.  There is nothing left.  It requires all of his heart and soul and mind every second of every day.  Therefore faith is a paradox.  It is just when Abraham is saying with his whole heart and soul, "I will plunge this knife into Isaac."  that he does something more.  He says, "But I will get him back, even from the dead."  But he can't.  Every part of him is strained to the breaking point just to be a slave to the law, and at that moment the unthinkable occurs.  There is something else, some alien presence, which is Abraham and is not.  It is Abraham because it is his very heart, the true core of his being, that believes and not another, but it is not because if it was Abraham, that is any man, it would have to subject itself to the Law, it would be under the curse.

If there is one thing that we are certain of it is that dead men do not rise.  The thought doesn't even occur to us.  If I were to suggest that you might see one of your loved ones who has passed on today, not "in Heaven" not in a dream or whatever but walking down the street like everything is normal.  I think you would freak out.  You would probably be pissed off at me.  It takes the distance of two or three thousand years and oceans of ink to make resurrection seem anything less than earth shattering.  It might be the closest thing to a thought that our minds can't think that has ever been found.  And so, when reason can find no place for hope, when like Abraham on Mount Moriah good has turned to evil, when God commands murder, when all the world is truly upside down, then and perhaps only then, are we ready for the foolishness of faith.

jc

When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to preach. Among “Christian nations,” however, the situation is different. What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be debunked. But since this vain conceit, this illusion, is to the effect that we are all Christians, it looks indeed as if introducing Christianity amounts to taking Christianity away. Nevertheless this is precisely what must be done, for the illusion must go.

--All quotations are from S. Kierkegaard, mostly from Fear and Trembling, which to a great extent is the inspiration for this post, the other quotes I will not trace their source right now.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Fear Not



Do not fear.  This command is found repeatedly in Scripture.  Almost every time an angel appears these are among the first words the angel says.


22 Now Gideon perceived that He was the Angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.”
23 Then the Lord said to him, “Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die.” 24 So Gideon built an altar there to the Lord, and called it The-Lord-Is-Peace. To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites. Judges 6


I don't remember where I heard it now, but someone once suggested to me that the reason for this must be because angels are very scary and they don't want people to be afraid of them.  I suppose it is that sort of thinking that leads to so many of the angel fetishes that are popular today and are perhaps the first root of idolatry.

But if that isn't the explanation then what is?  It is striking that this is the repeated message of the angels, and in that I think we have the key.  I don't know much about angels.  Neither do you, no matter what you think.  Is this some horrible defect in our theology?  It is an issue exactly on a level with the fact that I don't know the person who delivers the mail.

That is in fact what an angel is, a mailman.  And the only interesting thing about a mailman(considered as such, that is as a mailman), is the mail.  I submit that the "Fear not" we are concerned with is not a mark of the angels concern that we not be terrified by their awesomeness but is the very heart of the message that they were sent to deliver.


And God heard the voice of the lad. Then the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said to her, “What ails you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Genesis 21:17

If we look at what is actually said, we will see that the reason why the recipient of the message should not be afraid, is given in the message itself.  "do not fear, you shall not die", "Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad".  The message is always "Do not fear because God intends good things towards you."  The reason not to fear has nothing to do with the nature of the angel and everything to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I submit that the "do not fear, you shall not die." which was spoken to Gideon does not refer to His allegedly feared imminent death at the hands of the angel and everything to do with being reconciled to God.  I think that is what Gideon wanted us to understand when he marked that location with an altar called "The Lord IS Peace"  He wants us to know that God is not interested in carrying on the war with mankind.  He is offering us a peace treaty.

And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham’s sake.” Genesis 26:24

The message of Fear Not, has everything to do with the peace treaty that God made with Abraham, the Covenant of Grace.  Perhaps even more to the point, it has everything to do with the fulfillment of that covenant, the living, breathing, proof of God's intentions toward us, The Lord Jesus Christ.

 
28 And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” 29 But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. 30 Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Luke 1

To this generation of men it seems strange to connect a child with peace, or rather we can't see it the way generations of men before us did.  Our generation is just too far distant from the idea of personal government.  But for most of human history peace treaties contained with few exceptions- a marriage between the warring countries.  The closer to the crown the couple were the more sure the peace was considered.  The thinking behind this isn't obscure or complicated.  It is simply that no one wants to be at war with their family.  We go to war for our family not against them.  If the king of Country A is married to the princess of Country B then there will always be a reason for them not to fight.  But far more significant is the hope of children.  A child, who might be heir to both kingdoms.  For such a ruler to declare war on Country B would be like declaring war on himself-utterly ridiculous.

And this is the heart of God's Covenant of Peace with Humanity.  A child who is heir to both kingdoms.  As God, Christ is King of Heaven, He is life, and peace and righteousness, as the Son of David, He is King of Israel, and the heir to the Law, as the Son of Man, He is the heir to all of Adam's sin and death.  The God of All Peace and the Man of Sorrows are one.  The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.  Not a peace that is signed and then forgotten, an offer of peace continually extended and renewed, so long as Christ sits at the right hand of the Father, an offer of peace that can never be cancelled, annulled, or changed-the Last Will and Testament of Jesus of Nazareth, it became effective on the day of His death, an offer of peace available to us now by the power of His resurrection.


But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Matthew 28

 So, what is the message that I have for you?  Do not fear, because God is not against you.  He is not out to get you.  He is not setting you up to fail.  Perhaps more importantly if you do fail, even if you are a failure in every sense of the word, it doesn't affect His offer of peace to you.  Your life is not a conflict.  You are not in a competition with the rest of the world for God's love and acceptance.  So long as Immanuel lives there can be no doubt."

If the world you are living in is a world of fear and competition, a world where you have to go to any lengths to avoid failure, a world where you have to be successful, the Good News for you is that that is not the real world.  This is the world where if the good guy loses He rises again the third day, it is the world where you are not judged by your performance, the world of the Power of the Resurrection.