A Weakness Stronger than Man

I

I notice we live in an age of many terrors.* Some might even argue, more than our fair share of hectic anxieties, fierce preoccupations, driven - and driving - obsessions. In other words, not just the sort of fear we tend to associate with some of our more cliche'd horror movies - the fear that panics or paralyses us, or keeps us from acting wisely. Or ensures that we always do the stupid(er) thing. But also the kinds of fear that goad us on, into further and more positive action. And perhaps even supply us with more solid incentives (that magical economist's word!) to do better, and be better. Leave it to our Great Global World to find both a productive and an edifying use for everything. And terror not least of all.

* And some of the strangest kinds too. One I find especially alarming - and that seems all the rage today in places like America, China and Arabia (and as I've been lately repeating ad nauseam in various quarters) - is the terror of not being terrifying enough. Almost as if any strength we have is wasted in being even slightly muted or held back, modulated or restrained; that all strength is only used adequately in being exercised to the nth degree. Which I suppose might be true enough when there's just one Giant in the room, with everyone else being pygmies, and he alone having that particular anxiety. But when you've got three or four Giants in the same "shrinking" room, and all of them like-minded . . . 

So again please note, when I speak here of terrors, I mean not just those we Global Moderns may be happy to inflict on other people, other religions, other countries. In other words, I don't mean only those terrors that some of us may use to intimidate people whom we deem, say, not holy enough ("we" in this case being, for example, any portion of Sunni Islam engaged in or highly supportive of jihadism). Or not efficient enough ("we" here meaning any really big employer, whether private or public). Or not progressive enough ("we" = virtually the whole of our current Western corporate-political establishment). I mean also the terrors we suffer - or even inflict on - ourselves. Yes, even we fearless Americans. Like the sheer terror, the horror of our being, you know, NOT Number One.

Indeed, I'm by no means convinced that these various fears don't in fact all come down to one and the same terror. That is, I'm not at all sure that the same nightmares with which we moderns systematically torment those who fail to meet our particular standards aren't also the same basic horrors haunting us. Somewhere, I suspect, there's a geostrategic-mastermind jihadist lying awake most nights in abject fear that his man-eating god is every bit as rabidly, bloodily angry with him as he himself is with his favorite collection of infidels and MINOs (Muslims In Name Only). Which is to say, if your chosen god basically is according to as he does - and what he does best is to consume without remorse every creature who fails to meet his most exacting standards of worship and fidelity - well, what else is there left for you his disciple, but to go and do likewise?

Not sure what I mean? Well then, let's try approaching it from another angle, one hopefully closer to home. Let's suppose that my particular favorite god is Efficiency. And that my aim is to terrorize my otherwise worthless employees into ever-greater amounts of it. So what does that leave for me to do - other than become that much more terrifically (if not horrifically) efficient myself? Goose and gander, you know.

Not that I make any serious claim to grasp what's "really" underlying all this, whether here in the US or in China, in Europe or the Middle East. But from where I stand, the general assumption seems to run as follows:

If there is anywhere in the universe an Ultimate Strength - something one might want to call, say, Allah, or Evolution, or Productivity, or Progress - the only hope we have of making ourselves able to endure Its challenge, censure, wrath, judgment, etc, is to make ourselves consistently stronger . . . and stronger . . . perhaps even brutally so . . .

Sort of a "Be ye powerful, even as I Am Power." 

The one common denominator I find in all this is a fear of weakness or unpreparedness of any kind, whether physical or technological, moral or spiritual. A dread that somewhere in the universe there's a challenge we humans aren't equal to; or an adversary to which we can't become morally (no less than militarily) superior; or an environment or other set of conditions which we're unable to stand up to, survive, overcome, dominate, and so reduce utterly to our own purposes and uses. Almost as if our whole career as a species, our entire sojourn in this universe were sure to be proved a lie and a fraud, except as we humans become the supreme, autocratic power in every corner of it. Again, even as our god is Power.

But now imagine my grossly amateur diagnosis to be more or less accurate. Suppose that our one supreme terror is in fact the fear of our own fragility. Then our most natural response, it seems to me, would be to want to terrorize - yes, you got that right - terrorize every ounce and hint of weakness out of everybody. Including both ourselves and each other. In short, our response would be pretty much exactly what I believe we've been doing with a particular vengeance these past thirty years or so.  And all in a massive effort to be equal to, ready for, worthy of, etc, the challenge or the "coming" of Ultimate Strength - whether our readiness take the form of being morally pure, evolutionally perfect, technologically all-powerful, or politically "all-enlightened" or "correct."

And yet notice how often, time and time again, history proves itself to be nothing if not ironic. And even bubble-bursting. So wouldn't it be something if it should happen that all this time (c. 1995 - ?) we've been rehearsing for the wrong show? What if it turns out that we cutting-edge moderns - Superwahhabis, Superchinese, Superamericans, Superisraelis and all the rest - have all along been preparing for the wrong god, the wrong strength, the wrong crucible, the wrong judgment?

II

But now let's pause for a moment. And pardon me if, once again, I seem unduly hard on our nothing-if-not-wildly-ambitious Post-Cold War Era. Certainly we humans in any age have seldom been less than ambitious, restless, even champing at the bit. At the same time, it's no less true that we have always been far more fragile - at least when measured against what might be called the great sweep of universal time and space - than most of us would surely ever want to imagine, or concede. For my part, I can't think of any period of Western civilization - not even the Middle Ages! - when it was exactly the fashion to stress the marginality, weakness or insignificance of Man vis a vis the cosmos as a whole. And yet, all the same, doesn't it seem that certain Acts of Concession - to our essential cosmic frailty, I mean - have been much harder to manage in some ages than in others? But especially in times like these past three decades, when we superhumans have been blithely contemplating "coming into our own" - coming into a dignity at last commensurate with our true importance - and so finally beginning to exercise our full and rightful lordship over the whole creation. In any case, let me be last to suggest there won't come a time when Man has succeeded in colonizing - and so by implication conquering - just about about every corner of the galaxy, if not the universe.

And yet I wonder: As strong as we succeed in making ourselves, both individually and as a species, so as to endure and prosper in the most extreme outer-space conditions and environments, can any of us ever make ourselves strong enough within time - within history -  to endure the fullness-of-presence of a God coming to us from out of eternity?  Of course, here I mean not just any old god of our brilliant devising, but One who reveals Himself most intimately in our Scriptures, both Hebrew and Greek. Consider it carefully. Suppose He were to make Himself so palpably real as to silence the grumbling of all but the stupidest (or most suicidal?) of our atheists. And not just palpably, but brutally evident, to all of us, all the time. In much the same way that we humans are screamingly evident and crushingly real to so much of the sentient lower creation. Pity, in any urban area, the poor bird or rodent who happens to be an atheist or agnostic: who disbelieves in, or even dares to doubt, the existence of the Great God Man. Even at their most cautious, one false move, one chance miscalculation and these creatures are easily enough crushed under the weight of our glory. So what of it? Are we supposed to imagine any of us would fare any better - however "spiritually" - under the full weight of Glory Himself?

And so, when it comes to how ready even we Rapturously expectant Christians can be for the fullness of a conquering God, I'm moved to say,

First things first, and Last Things Last.

Better, I say, first to steep ourselves in that peculiar, lowly Divine presence with which we're already most familiar, and whose familiarity is often most apt to incite our contempt, if not outright disbelief. Better to be imbued with that, if you will, gentler glory of God that imbeds itself - even now - with and in and through time, before we go and try to brave that other kind: the all-conquering glory of God as it breaks in upon us at the end of time, and from outside of time. Better to submit to, better to imbibe and fully absorb first the weakness of God, as it continues to weave and entwine itself like tendrils into the stones and friezes, sculptures and cornices of our human history, than to presume that - even because we've worked so hard, and disciplined ourselves so thoroughly! - we're now ready to endure, much less welcome and embrace, that fiery strength of God which can only consume the entire structure, which can only be the end of all human history as we've known it. Better, in short - and for now - to be weak as only He is weak, that we may in due season be made strong as He alone (and not we ourselves) can strengthen us. Better for now, surely? - a patiently "weak" God, than a prematurely, impatiently strong Man.

Lastly, do you think maybe it's high time we put our fears "back where they belong," and where they can be put to most fruitful and productive use? I.e., not to make us terrified of our own fragility - such that we succeed only in becoming Holy Terrors, both to ourselves and to each other - even as we await the appearance of one more final god of terror to end 'em all. What I mean rather is to prepare, this time in earnest, for the real coming of the real Christ. To make ourselves reverent in the old-fashioned way, minus the military swagger and bombast: to be still, and knowing, and in awe. And most particularly to be in awe of what is in fact most worthy of our fear - namely, the holiness, judgment and mercy of a God who finds in our human weakness nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, precisely because He has already, and in His own human flesh, endured and redeemed it to the utmost?