With Fear and Trembling

I have always been intrigued by a device featured in Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonymous work, Fear and Trembling, which re-frames the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. I share his fascination with the story itself and sense that the theme of faith as illustrated in the Torah is much more rich and complicated than the way it is traditionally told lets on. So, mimicking his project, I have layed out two aspects of the story that have haunted me of late. Kierkegaard's intention in his retelling of Scripture (and mine here) is not sacrilegious, but worshipful. My hope is that these alternate stories invoke contemplation on an often neglected aspect of faith which Kierkegaard sought to bring to light: The faith of Abraham is unique in that it allowed him to believe as true and act upon not only logical impossibilities, but seemingly oppositional commands, contradictory voices. He walked so closely with God that he was able to discern that the same voice which commanded him to love commanded him to sacrifice; the same God who told him to sacrifice was the same God who told him to spare. And in all this, Abraham's faith held fast. He was not shaken or disheartened or confused, and I believe all these things should trouble us to our core as we examine the role of faith in our own lives. 

Abraham, the old man, was awoken from a deep sleep by a familiar voice. The voice was יהוה‎ (YHWH) calling to him, "Abraham!" In the night, יהוה‎ delivered unto him a stern command. Our father Abraham lay perfectly still, eyes fixed, awake until the early hours of the morning. Gathering two young men and his beloved son of promise, Isaac, he set out for the land of Moriah. As the days passed, Abraham rode on in silence, unable to move his lips to confess to his companions his purposes in leading them across the desert. During this time his face grew ever darker, eyes deep and empty. On the third day, he looked up and saw the mount in the distance, cursing it from the depths of his heart. "יהוה‎, You have brought into existence everything that is; nothing is beyond the depths of Your knowledge or the breadth of Your power. You do not forsake your people, yet you ask this thing of me. From the dust I beg you, that it may not be so." When father and son came to the place God had shown Abraham, he built an altar to the Lord. Clutching the knife at his side, his arm shook violently. As Isaac gazed at his father, his heart trembled, "The fire and the wood are here, but we have brought with us no lamb for a burnt offering." Abraham was unable to reply. "Father?" Isaac cried. Abraham answered him, "And yet this is what our Lord has required."As Abraham took the weapon, reaching out his hand to slaughter his son, an angel of the Lord called from Heaven, "Do not lay your hand on the boy. I know now that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son." Abraham fell to the ground, gnashing his teeth with a loud moan. "You have counted my faith towards You as righteousness, and yet You see fit to test me and destroy my heart!" As they returned down the high mountain, Isaac saw a ram caught by the horns in a thicket. Gently, he placed his hand on the animal's head and set it free. From that day Abraham called his God אהיה אשר אהיה (Ehyeh asher Ehyeh), for the Lord stayed hidden behind Himself. 

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At night, the clouds hid the light of the moon as Abraham slept. A voice crept to his ear and spoke, "Abraham." The elderly man heard this as the voice of the Lord and, casting a protective arm across his wife, replied, "Here I am." And again God spoke. "Fetch your only son, Isaac, the one you love. Bring him to the land of Moriah, to a mountain that I will show you. There you will sacrifice him as a burnt offering to your God." In fury Abraham rose from his bed shouting, "Adversary, you are not the Lord, but הַשָׂטָן (ha-satan), come to oppose me! Has יהוה brought me out of Ur of the Chaldeans that I might curse my duty as a father and slay my child as the pagans do? Get behind me, accuser, for I will not allow you to obstruct the covenant the Lord has made with me for the blessing of all!" 

Raise High the Debt Ceiling, Carpenters

It pains me not in the slightest to open up this little discussion by entirely neglecting the point. I wish in the first place to apologize for its title. I suppose the apology should be squared directly at two people, really. First, J. D. Salinger himself. Mr. Salinger, I trust you will forgive the profaning of one of your perfectly good stories, as well as my voice, which, the more I write, seems more lifted from them all (although it really is a matter of debate whether I first heard myself through your writing, or if the writing taught me how to be heard). Courtesies aside, you are in fact dead, and if you were not, would certainly consider the benefits of being so if you found out anyone was blogging a word about you. Second, Mr. J. D. Weichhand. Josh, I'm going to be honest: I just really want you to read everything I write and give me your approval. You are the Seymour to my Buddy Glass. Having said that, I'm thinking about it more and it's remarkable how true that is in so many ways. Just don't kill yourself.

There is no political subject matter which consistently enthuses me less than finance. I think part of this is related to the fact that most financial issues deemed political, to me, should be more accurately classified as moral questions. Case-in-point perhaps being the classic: Is it okay for some hard-working people to be outrageously rich while others who work just as hard are in poverty? Does anyone have the right to tell the rich they are too rich? If this is a simple political question, then one's answer places him or her somewhere on a scale between Bleeding Socialist and Heartless Capitalist Banker. St. Paul perhaps urges us to expand the conversation. 

The other reason it is so hard to care about the debt ceiling, inflation, or the stock market is because the whole thing is so artificial to me. Wall Street invents money out of thin air by betting on a company's failure, literally getting paid for doing nothing. Meanwhile, the government is fighting a multi-trillion dollar war, and all that's needed for both absurdities to continue is the printing of more money. So why shouldn't the economic elite who know the game be able to amass personal fortunes like a slight-of-hand magician with an ace up his sleeve, when our entire monetary system is just as deceptive and slanted?

Let us also remember that this entire 'debate' is an ideological sideshow. The government spending in question has already been approved by the same phonies standing up on the Hill telling the other side to cut back. Having this debate now only determines whether or not the country will pay those bills. The only purpose of this whole charade of the Right's is to rub the bellies of their tea party supporters. Regarding these, a few words may be appropriate. In its current embodiment, the tea party movement is the worst thing to happen to American politics in my lifetime. It's not that I disagree with every single thing they stand for (which I do). It's not that people who tote guns, dislike foreigners, and hate the idea of everyone being able to go to the doctor scare me (which they do). It's not even that many of them lap up every word of a bona fide crazy person like Glenn Beck (which they do). (Dear reader, this is all starting to sound mean-spirited, but please remember that it's not mean if it's true.) (I apologize for the recent mean-spirited parenthetical disclaimer.)

What frightens me about the tea party is that they have successfully taken the entire Republican party by the throat. Any of us who follow Conservative politics for five minutes will know that the current modus operandi is: Raise taxes, you're gone. Spend money on any program but warfare, you're gone. I think to some extent all these Republicans are trying to do here is keep their jobs. What the tea party has created is a political system entirely contrary to what their dear founding fathers intended; a political system in which compromise is out of the question and one is tricked into believing that every choice is a choice between two ideological extremes. Remember when Mitch McConnell proposed a perfectly sane compromise deal at the beginning of this whole debacle? The man was practically crucified in the conservative media. Trying to see where the other side is coming from, give-and-take are tantamount to treason. A few weeks ago Glenn Beck flat out said that what our nation is facing is a choice between fascist Communism and Libertarian freedom. In other words, there is no middle ground. Wouldn't you rather be a tea-partier than a Communist??

I remember a while back, after the recent health-care bill passed (typically referred to as 'Obamacare'), I was really disappointed in Dennis Kucinich for voting for it. Kucinich is a man I have a deep respect for and one of the only people in Washington I trust. How could he sell out like this? He promised to fight for single-payer, but now has voted for a bill that effectively hands over thousands of new customers to the insurance companies! I was impressed when he sent out a letter to his supporters explaining his vote. The short of it comes down to the fact that he saw a 'yes' vote on that less-than-stellar bill as at least a tiny baby step away from the current system. After speaking with the president at length the day before the vote, he realized that a 'no' vote would be much more damaging in that it would halt the debate altogether and no one knew at that point how long it would be before they would have the majority votes necessary to pass any kind of reform again. So he compromised. He looked at the bigger picture and said, "This is too important to take an ideological stand and cast a meaningless vote." As I look back, I don't think Dennis sold out at all. His ideological stand was the countless hours he spent educating people on socialized care, working the House floor, and never arguing for anything less than what he knew to be the best thing for America.

This is exactly where the Republicans are a complete and utter failure right now. The American people aren't hearing arguments for why tea party policies are the best thing for the country. We are simply being scared into believing that the country is on the verge of apocalypse unless the tea party has its way (and I say that with complete seriousness). We are being told that compromise is out of the question because one side and one side alone has access to the divine revelation of what the United States is and how to save it. No deviation from the straight and narrow can be afforded.

If we all walk away from this glorified Lebron-announcement with anything, it should be a recognition that the only way we are going to stop our country from walking down an extremely scary path is to refuse the hand we are dealt.

The Divine Life of Animals [Part 1]

To my long-lost readers, I offer my deepest and most shameless apologies. We are rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of my last posting. In an attempt (yet again) to eradicate what--to anyone who has sought after any semi-regular writing regimen--seems to be an unyielding tendency towards silence and failure, I have decided to undertake a book review of sorts. My ultimate goal however is not critical, but conversational. After a period of digestion (or gestation, as the case may be), I will simply dump my thoughts into the void you and I, dear reader, currently occupy. Onward:

The Divine Life of Animals: One Man's Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On

Introduction

Disregarding its title, my purposes in reading this book have nothing to do with the kind of New Age, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Hollywood Hinduism it seems to imply. I picked up this book because it has long been my conviction that something is missing from the standard way of talking about animals and the created world we share with them. Even as I say that, it strikes me that in typical contemporary discourse on any topic related to nature, the idea that we actually share anything with animals is a foreign one. By this I mean more than the human choice to share one's household with an animal, or tossing seeds and breadcrumbs at a few of the wild ones, or even our moral obligation to protect their natural habitat. What I am interested in exploring is the spiritual identity of all created things; an identity we share in communion with as co-participants in the self-revelation of God. This book may or may not go into these things, but I hope at least it will be a springboard.

In this opening chapter, Tompkins brings up two interesting points of discussion. The first is a very brief exploration of the word nephesh as it appears in the Hebrew scriptures. This word is a rich, multi-faceted word which, when translated into English, is flattened out as the fairly generic word soul. He illustrates that, for the ancients, one's nephesh was not an etherial thing or essential meta-self which goes away to Heaven when we die. "Indeed, our nephesh is what makes each of us who we are" (9). In Genesis, God breathes nephesh into the nose of Adam, creating the first human. Tompkins is fairly successful here in helping break down our cultural resistance to an idea such as the animal soul. I also think this enriched conceptualization of what soul is can be helpful in our own self-understanding as image-bearers. Scripture is very clear that God is not simply interested in 'soul-winning' or taking us away from our bodies. Our physical bodies are to be redeemed, as they themselves are essential to our identity. Nephesh, the soul, is not a removed spirit that eventually flees elsewhere; it is the breath in our lungs, the blood in our veins, and our eternal identity as living things. That being said, I think more discussion is needed in regards to whether or not there is a distinction between our identity as created (living) things, and personhood.

The second point brought up in the introduction I found noteworthy addresses the transition between the child's innocent emotional/spiritual connection to and sense of wonderment towards creation--particularly animals--and the removed, informed coldness of adulthood toward the same. "'Children often identify with animals in ways that amuse and frustrate us...spending emotion with an abandon that adults, with their thrifty investments and prudent decisions, cannot afford'" (11). Tompkins gives several examples of ways in which children, who know about death, and see it in various forms in media frequently, are often struck by the horror of death seemingly for the first time when it is related to animals. As a child, the author was moved by an experience attempting to feed a starving dog in Mexico and being met with reproach by his mother who saw his actions as wasteful. He had surely seen hungry people before, but I think most of us would agree children have a unique relationship with animals and seem to have an intuitive inclination towards sharing life with them in a way that is lost with age. I resonated with this discussion myself. I don't recall the name of the movie or much of what it was about, but the important point is that the story revolved around a real, not cartoon otter. As I remember it, the otter is accidentally killed in a creek by a human digging with a shovel. For months afterward, maybe even years (my parents would know better), my bed-time prayers included, "Help me forget the otter movie." There's no doubt in my mind I had encountered death before in movies or playing cowboys and Indians, but there was something about an emotional connection I made with that animal that made the reality of death hit me for the first time: Things die. When they die, they're not here anymore. When I, with my child's mind tried to see where they would be after that, all I saw was a blank space. The idea of nothingness scared me more than any monster or nightmare.

Potable Quotable: 

"We patronize [animals] for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth" (12). -Henry Beston