I have a dear friend at work. He is my age, a huge teddy bear of a man. He is an elder in a black evangelical church and his life is defined by his relationship with God. He is nearly my only progressive ally at work, it is Virginia after all. We get away by ourselves and commiserate over the latest atrocity by the Administration. He is my life support.
He sent me a lovely text message today, a prayer that was quite nice, blaming us all for our faith in ourselves, in our abilities and our mastery of the universe, when in fact it was God that had always deserved our allegiance. Humility in our own capabilities was the better part of wisdom, and we were being taught this lesson in a very harsh way.
I thanked him and said I hope it brought him comfort. He texted back and apologized for sending it to me, knowing as he does that I don’t share his faith. He promised not to send any more. I assured him that I loved it and he should not hesitate to share what brings him comfort. I am truly glad it does. I don’t resent his solice, I simply don’t share it.
Psalm 91 has exploded on the scene, probably the most succinct group of verses that let you know if your faith is right you don’t have a thing to worry about. A progressive Christian friend posted an apologetic regarding the psalm, showing it was out of keeping with the rest of NT scripture and therefore misunderstood. He never shared how it SHOULD be understood. It was still pretty easy to follow, at least in English. Sharing it with evangelicals and fundamentalists will kill some people. They will find out that faith is not a vaccine, just like poisonous snakes can kill them and prayer doesn’t cure cancer. An entire civilization’s worth of data show the absurdity of the dependence on prayer to a supernatural being as a curative protocol, that it has little effect on the natural world.
People have been arrogant forever. In April of 1912, the Titanic went down to the depths of the Atlantic. She was unsinkable, a technological miracle. So much hubris was invested in the ship that it was equipped with fewer lifeboats than were needed to take the passengers and crew to safety. Fifteen hundred people went to their death within mere hours of striking an iceberg.
In the 40s we created a weapon so powerful it would be the bomb that stopped war forever. When it was detonated, there was awe. They had not understood what they had unleashed. It was magnitudes more devestating than what they had imagined. And they used it, twice. The world erupted in horror having seen what the mind of man could conceive.
In the 80s, Challenger sat smoldering on the launchpad, never to return from its truncated flight. They knew they had problems, but thought they had nipped it in the bud. They thought the O-rings would hold. They didn’t.
Man’s hubris is thoroughly documented. The prayer my friend sent me was related to these examples, though it took it further. These events point out moments in our history when human arrogance was fatal. This was taking the next step in saying that the state of self-exultation that led to these disasters was our natural order. It had led to this one, too, though in a less direct way. But it was still the result of thinking we could control the world, that we were in charge.
For him, this had a simple solution. Faith in God was needed, not faith in man.
What he didn’t understand is that I envied him. I have no such worldview to help me cope. There is no fallback position to me. Mankind was our hope, and it failed nearly from the start. Of all the gods inhabiting the heavens and the depths, none of them ever fixed it. Being on your own, as many of us are finding out now, is hard. I would love to have a way to mitigate my fears and concerns, but that passed some time ago. Faith is not an option for me, even when reality sucks.
Part of the premise of the missive I agree with. General arrogance is at the forefront of almost every horrible decision that man has made. It would be very hard to argue otherwise, I think.
But I see dependence on a supernatural being as the solution is more of the same miscalculation, at least for those that are confident of the object of their faith. It is frankly more hubris to think that you have somehow been fortunate enough to be born in a place where they worship the “real” deity, the one that is actually the answer, the one deserving of your fealty, instead of “there” where those poor buggers believe who knows whatall.
Better to be lucky than good, they say.
Terry is a lovely man, and his faith is part of what makes him so, a great part of his strength. His lament is that we (me, him, you, all of us) have been guilty of the basic building block of all sin. Pride. He is saying that we must take the responsibility of all this, each of us individually, as we took life very much for granted.
But faith will be used in other ways as well. Psalm 91 will be the reason some parishioners will be encouraged to attend services, and the reason they will go and then die.
Others will try to punish sinners that are responsible for this pandemic, like Chinese people, or gays, or Jews like that Fauci guy. I bet he isn’t even a doctor.
People will die of hatred during this outbreak.
Too much? A man stabbed a 2 year old Chinese child at an airport along with the child’s parents, because they had been justified as an enemy. Dr. Fauci’s protection detail has doubled due to a sudden increase in threats on the virologist. Gay and trans people always get blamed, along with abortion doctors, so they need to duck. This is another whole wing of faith, characterizing Christ as the great Avenger. Conveniently, He always comes back and smites the very same folks you would have smote if it was up to you. Falwell blamed 9/11 on abortionists, feminists and gays. The trifecta.
That isn’t what my friend’s text was about. It just was suggesting a little less self adulation and a bit more love of God.
If God is love, than it suggests we should have had more love of Love.
Maybe that prayer is on to something after all.
More Love.
Amen.