From the Proslogion by Saint Anselm:

Insignificant man, escape from your everyday business for a short while, hide for a moment from your restless thoughts. Break off from your cares and troubles and be less concerned about your tasks and labors. Make a little time for God and rest a while in him.

Enter into your mind’s inner chamber. Shut out everything but God and whatever helps you to seek him; and when you have shut the door, look for him. Speak now to God and say with your whole heart: I seek your face; your face, Lord, I desire.

Lord, my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not here where shall I look for you in your absence? Yet if you are everywhere, why do I not see you when you are present? But surely you dwell in “light inaccessible.” And where is light inaccessible? How shall I approach light inaccessible? Or who will lead me and bring me into it that I may see you there? And then, by what signs and under what forms shall I seek you? I have never seen you, Lord my God; I do not know your face.

Lord most high, what shall this exile do, so far from you? What shall your servant do, tormented by love of you and cast so far from your face? He yearns to see you, and your face is too far from him. He desires to approach you, and your dwelling is unapproachable. he longs to find you, and does not know your dwelling place. He strives to look for you, and does not know your face.

Lord, you are my God and you are my Lord, and I have never seen you. You have made me and remade me, and you have given me all the good things I possess and still I do not know you. I was made in order to see you, and I have not yet done that for which I was made.

Lord, how long will it be? How long, Lord, will you forget us? How long will you turn your face away from us? When will you look upon us and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes and show us your face? When will you give yourself back to us?

Look upon us, Lord, hear us and enlighten us, show us your very self. Restore yourself to us that it may go well with us whose life is so evil without you. Take pity on our efforts and our striving toward you, for we have no strength apart form you.

Teach me to seek you, and when I seek you show yourself to me, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you and desire you in seeking you, find you in loving you and love you in finding you.

I wrote about this four years ago, but I recently have been reading some more about the role of weeping in the Orthodox tradition. 

Holy persons and holy fools in the Orthodox tradition will often weep, and spiritual counsel is often to be told to go and weep. As one of the desert fathers said, "Whoever wishes to be liberated from sins is liberated from them by shedding tears, and whoever wishes to acquire the virtues acquires them by shedding tears. Tears are the way which Scripture and our Fathers have handed down to us, saying 'Weep.' There is no other way but this."

Another saying from the Orthodox tradition: "A brother asked an old man, ‘What should I do?’ And the old man said to him, 'We ought always to weep.'"

The desert solitary Evagrios of Pontos said: "Pray that you may receive tears, so that through mourning you may tame what is savage in your soul." 

What is the source and cause of our weeping? Two main answers come from the tradition. First, as noted above, there is sorrow for sin and through this sorrow we tame what is savage in our soul. But the deeper reason is love and compassion for the world. The famous description of the merciful heart from Isaac of Nineveh captures this well: 

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for every created thing. And at the recollection and sight of them, the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation. 

The vision here is of a heart so exquisitely attuned to the suffering of the world that it weeps in compassionate response. 

And so we weep. We weep for ourselves. We weep for the world. We weep for sin. We weep for love. And this weeping washes the heart clean. Weeping is the path to holiness. 

Go and weep. There is no other way than this. 

During times of great anxiety and uncertainty, when it seems like the fate of the world is hanging in the balance, there wells up within us a great desire to "do something." And so we thrash around, giving our inner agitation an outlet. You see a lot of this happening on social media. 

I once came close to drowning. I found myself in deep water and started to flail. That only caused me to sink faster. Thankfully, I calmed myself and laid back on the water to float. I became still, and that saved my life.

In Exodus Moses and the Israelites find themselves pursued by Pharaoh and backed up against the Red Sea, the Egyptian army bearing down on them. Trapped between a rock and a hard place, the people begin to panic. Nowhere to go! Nowhere to run!

Then Moses says:

“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

"You need only to be still." 

Being still can be a profound act of resistance. We are surrounded by the crazed, anxious activity of others. Their panic is contagious, their fear infectious. Worse, they will shame you for staying still, denigrating your calm as wickedness and damning you for not "doing something" as the world burns. 

But on the banks of the Red Sea, God fights for the still. And as I discovered many years ago, the flailing drown while the still are saved.

A final post contrasting psychology theories of hope with visions of Christian hope. 

This last point I'll make is, perhaps, the most obvious. We've talked about agency and pathway attributions in Snyder's theory of hope, and how a religious perspective on those attributions radically reconfigures the theory, or wholly sets it aside. Let's now turn to the goal-directed and motivational aspect of Snyder's theory.

The most obvious contrast between psychological hope and Christian hope is that Christian hope is eschatological in nature. Christian hope is not realized in this life but in the next, in the New Creation. Consequently, hope is intimately associated with faith. As Hebrews puts it:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

Eschatological hope can fit with Snyder's theory. Arriving "holy and blameless" at the Day of the Lord can be our future-facing goal. Heaven can be our desired destination. And if we have the appropriate agency and pathway attributions, especially in light of everything I said in the last post about God's involvement, we have hope that we can reach the goal. This hope also creates motivation, a motivation the New Testament repeatedly appeals to and encourages. Pressing on, perseverance, holding fast. As Paul writes in Philippians:

My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.

Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

Recall, Snyder describes hope as a motivational state directed toward a goal. I think we see that clearly here with Paul. All that to say, there are clear applications of Snyder's theory, structurally speaking, to eschatological hope. 

That said, the shift to eschatology again pivots us away from psychology to theology. For example, some people can lose eschatological hope. They might feel damned. They might lose their faith. Their trust in God might falter. And in those instances, if we are using Snyder's theory, how are we to restore hope? Should we look toward agency attributions and rehabilitate self-efficacy? I wouldn't think so given that self-efficacy can't get you to heaven. Concerning pathways, what route do I point to that a person might walk if faith or trust is failing? Or if they feel themselves damned?

In such instances, it seems to me, our pastoral response is to simply point people to Christ. To accompany them and to pray with and for them. Because, as I've pointed out in this series, God is our hope. With God there is no need for agency or pathway attributions as God is both the power and the path. Hope, as we've seen, becomes engaged with faith. Having hope is having faith. And having faith is having hope. This faith/hope connection brings in an element that is missing in Snyder's theory. To trust in God is hope itself, no agency or pathway attributions needed. This isn't to say aspects of Snyder's theory don't appear in religious hope, as I sketched above, just that hope has shifted into a metaphysical key that demands pastoral and theological responses that psychology cannot provide. 

"he knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust"

We often, crudely, pit the Old Testament against the New Testament. In the Old Testament God is wrathful and punitive. The moral vision is rooted in purity and Law. The New Testament, by contrast, focuses upon the mercy and love of Jesus. The moral vision flows out of grace.

But grace has its origin in the Old Testament. We find this in many places, but perhaps there is no better place than Psalm 103:

He forgives all your iniquity;
he heals all your diseases.

And:

He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve
or repaid us according to our iniquities.

And:

As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed
our transgressions from us.

These are some of the most moving and lyrical descriptions of grace in the entire Bible.

Beyond these descriptions of grace, what I find interesting in Psalm 103 is the source of the Lord's compassion. To be sure, the Lord's mercy is rooted in His character. But Psalm 103 floats something else as well: 

For he knows what we are made of,
remembering that we are dust.

For me, this is one of the most comforting passages in Scripture. God know of what we are made of. He remembers that we are dust. 

God knows we are frail and weak. We are dust. Consequently, the bar is very low! God doesn't have high expectations for us because he knows we are unable to meet them. Perfection just isn't in the cards. Moral consistency isn't anything we can achieve. We wobble and we waver. We falter and we fail. We bend and we break. We stumble and we slip. 

Too much alliteration, but you get the idea. We're just not very dependable. And God knows this! And in knowing this, God extends mercy and compassion. 

The more secular and non-religious way of saying all this is that God knows that we are human. And God loves us as humans, as broken and imperfect creatures. We are, after all, only dust.

Having considered agency attributions from the perspective of religious hope, let's turn to pathway attributions.

Again, pathway attributions concern our ability to see a realistic and viable route to the goal we are pursuing. If we see a pathway we have hope. But if no path can be found we lose hope.

Snyder's theory makes perfect sense if we restrict ourselves to material causes and effects. Hope for me, as a human being, is restricted to paths that I, as a human being, can travel. But things change dramatically when we enter the realm of religious hope. For God, being God, can always find a path should he choose to open one for me. As the old saying goes, "God can make a way where there is no way."

Biblically, think of Ezekiel 37, the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. The prophet stands in a valley full of bones. The Lord asks, "Son of man, can these bones live?" The prophet can't see a pathway. Deadness has no potential. There is no hope. So the prophet replies, "Lord, only you know." And the Lord responds: "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! You will live!'" God makes a way where there was no way.

A related issue here is how God rehabilitates agency attributions as well. God gives me power. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Even when I lack agency I can rely on the Holy Spirit to assist and empower me.

This is one of the the reasons the prosperity gospel thrives in marginalized contexts. In many ways the prosperity gospel is simply a religious application of Snyder's hope theory. With God we always have agency and pathways. This supercharges hope, and that hope, per Snyder's theory, creates motivational energy, vitality, passion, optimism, and zest in moving toward our goals. And this is exactly what empirical studies have shown, how the prosperity gospel provides hope and motivation to despairing and demoralized people, especially in Third World contexts. This is why, though a critic of the prosperity gospel on theological grounds, I've expressed appreciation for its psychological power and appeal among the poor, something I think elite and privileged people frequently miss.

In many ways, all this simply confirms Snyder's theory. But it also short-circuits the theory and raises other questions. By short-circuiting the theory I mean that the minute God is introduced into the hope equation the hope equation becomes superfluous. Why engage in agency attributions when you have God on your side? Why envision pathways when God can make a way where there is no way? God, in this view, simply replaces hope, wholesale. God is hope. Full stop.

No doubt this is the power of religious hope, its capacity to transcend the material horizon, a capacity for hope where there is no hope. And if the human mind runs on hope, then in many ways the human mind is inherently religious. A diet of nihilism and hopelessness isn't good for us. This is a big part of the story I tell in The Shape of Joy. 

But it also raises some questions. First, there is the old Freudian question I try to tackle in The Authenticity of Faith. Do we believe in God for psychological reasons? We need hope and so we posit some supernatural agent to fill that need. Which raises the question of false or delusional hope. Given that God is always, from the perspective of hope, a get out of jail free card, can this card get played in ways that are dysfunctional? A pastoral example here is praying for a miracle. The possibility of a miracle means there is always a pathway, always a hope. But might praying for or depending upon a miracle become problematic in some cases? 

Consider some examples. A child is facing a treatable medical condition. But the parents reject modern medicine. So the parents forgo treatment and pray for a miraculous healing. And the child dies. Is hope a problem here?

Consider also the COVID era, how some churches remained open, defiantly so, by making appeals to God's miraculous protection. No masks, social distancing, or vaccines were needed. God would protect. Is hope a problem here?

We can think of other examples. But consider also this question. Say all material means have been exhausted. You reach the end of the road for human power, capability, technology, and ingenuity. All pathways available to humans have been exhausted. Can you, in that moment, reach for religious, metaphysical hope? Is it okay to pray for a miracle in that moment, as a last resort? I expect opinions would differ. Some atheists might say, well, in that instance, no harm no foul. But others of a more stoical mindset might argue that grimly facing the facts and reconciling oneself to a hopeless situation is the better course. 

My point is raising these questions is to return to a point I made in the first post, how your ontology circumscribes your hope. Your vision of reality will affect how you think about miracles and the advisability of praying for them when all hope is lost. And even among those who believe in miracles there are issues that need to be discerned, like forgoing medical care in favor of divine intervention. Can you trust too much in science? Some might say so. Can you trust too much in miracles? Some might say so. 

But back to the subject at hand. No matter how you think about such questions, introducing God into our agency and pathway attributions blows hope theory up. Once God arrives agency and pathway attributions are always open. All the switches get flipped toward hope. But once that happens we have to enter into theological discussions about what is appropriate to expect of God by way of answer or intervention. Which means that hope has shifted away from the psychological to the theological. And psychology doesn't have a lot to say about God.

Having described Snyder's influential theory of hope in the psychological research, I want to turn to reflect upon how this theory struggles to describe the religious experience of Christian hope.

In this post let's talk about agency attributions.

Recall, according to hope theory hope is a product of agency and pathway attributions. Agency attributions concern confidence and self-efficacy. Do I have what it takes to walk the pathway toward my desired goal? If so, I have hope. If not, my hope diminishes. 

Now, pivot to religious hope. The issue of agency in religious hope is complicated. To be sure, our agency is involved in our relationship with God. As Paul wrote, "I press on toward the goal." And yet, there is also the strong recognition that, separate from God, my will, effort, and agency can accomplish nothing. Given this, Christian hope is less concerned with self-efficacy than surrender, getting my will out of the way. The phrase "Let go, Let God" applies here. 

As concrete example, consider the first two steps of the Twelve Steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless—that our lives had become unmanageable.


2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Where is self-efficacy in this recognition of powerlessness? Christian hope comes, it seems, from turning one's back on agency attributions. Christian hope is less about agency than trust.

To be sure, Snyder's theory can be tweaked to fit this reframe, and he's done this in response to questions raised in the psychology of religion literature. The tweak comes by reworking the goal. If my goal is to trust in God, to surrender, and to let go and let God, do I have the "agency" to do that? I can I surrender? If I can, if I have a high agency expectation, then I have hope in moving toward that goal of surrender. Well, sure, you can always keep replacing the goal to make the theory fit. But when you do this the theory becomes less interesting and insightful. You're just shifting labels around and not really explaining anything, in this case how stepping away from agency altogether, in an act of trusting surrender and relinquishment, is associated with hope. And if you want to redescribe "surrender" as "agency" well, fine, but what I'd like to see is a more fine-grained psychological theory of surrender than calling surrender something it really isn't in a rejiggered theory. 

To conclude, this is one issue--surrender versus self-efficacy--where psychological theories of hope struggle to describe religious hope. In the next post we'll turn to pathway attributions.

Two years ago it was my great privilege and honor to serve as a resource person for a grant-funded project being hosted by the Center for Pastor Theologians. The grant involved engaging with the empirical research in the social sciences about virtue to bring that science into conversation with theological and pastoral reflection. I served as the social scientist resource person for conversations about three virtues, love, hope, and humility. Part 2 of The Shape of Joy, where share my "hexagon tour of ego," made its first appearance with the CPT. But in this series I want to talk about my presentation on hope. 

In preparing for my presentation on hope I quickly ran into the epistemological divide that separates psychology and theology. At the end of the day, hope is circumscribed by your ontology. What is the nature of reality, the whole of it? Your answer to that question determines the horizon of your hope. Psychology, as an empirical science, restricts itself to material phenomena, at least as a methodological assumption. Consequently, psychology struggles to describe or account for resources of hope that fall outside the material realm. God, for example. To see this, let's take a look at the dominant paradigm in psychology regarding hope, C.R. Synder's hope theory.

Snyder articulated his theory of hope in 1991. In that seminal article, Snyder offered this definition of hope:

“Hope is a positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (a) agency (goal-directed energy), and (b) pathways (planning to meet goals)”

The first thing to note is that hope is a motivation, something that moves us toward a goal. This should be obvious as feeling hopeless is characterized by a lack of motivation. We lose our future-orientation and stop pursuing our goals. "What's the point?" we say to ourselves in a hopeless state.

The big part of Snyder's theory concerns how pathway and agency attributions relate to hope. 

Pathway attributions concern perceived routes toward our goals. Can we see a viable and realistic pathway from where I stand to where I want to be? If I can, that increases hope. If, however, I can't see a pathway, then hope diminishes. I see no way to get from A to Z. 

Agency attributions concern my self-confidence and self-efficacy to walk the pathway. I might, for example, see a path but lack confidence in my ability to achieve the goal. Here's a simple example. A student comes to me asking if there is any chance (hope) of getting an A my class. I say, "Yes. If you get an 98% of the final exam you'll get an A." So, that's a pathway. A legitimate route to the goal. But the student might lack the agency attribution needed for high hope, saying to themselves, "I'll never be able to get a 98%." To stay with the example, another student might come to me and ask if there is any chance of getting an A. This student is very high ability so their agency attributions are high. They believe, rightly so, that they can ace the final. However, I say to this student, "I'm sorry, but there's no mathematical possibility, given your current grades, of you getting an A in this class." So, agency can be high but no pathway possible. 

You get the point. According to Synder's hope theory, hope is comprised of pathway and agency attributions. Is there a realistic and viable pathway toward my goal? And am I confident that I have the capacities and resources to walk that path? If the answer is "yes" to both of those questions, I have hope. But if one or both of the answers are "no" then hope diminishes. 

Since Snyder introduced his theory in 1991 it has gone on to garner an impressive empirical record. Hope. as described by Snyder, is associated with all sorts of positive outcomes. High hope people thrive. And low hope people struggle.  Snyder's theory is also very practical. If you want to instill hope in people help them envision pathways, along with generating alternative pathways if they run into obstacles or setbacks. This ability, to keep finding routes toward your goals, is a vital capacity. Relatedly, we can support and rehabilitate an individual's sense of agency and empowerment. "You got this!" "You can do this!" From parenting to coaching to mentoring to social support to therapy, improving agency kindles a capacity for hope. 

And yet, as powerful as Snyder's hope theory is, it doesn't easily or comprehensively describe hope in the context of faith. In the posts to follow I'll describe some of the contrasts between psychological hope and Christian hope.

I recently shared a lesson at Freedom Fellowship, the little mission church I worship at on Wednesday evenings. If you've read my books you know a lot about Freedom.

The text I spoke on was Matthew 11.12, a passage I shared some reflections about a few years ago. 

Matthew 11.12 is one of the more perplexing sayings of Jesus in the gospels. Here it is:

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. (NIV)

What makes the interpretation of the passage difficult is that the verb for violence--biazetai, from the root biazó "to force"--in the phrase "the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence" (NIV), can be in the middle or passive voice. That is, the kingdom of God can be subject to force or the agent of force.

Our knee jerk response to those options is that the kingdom of God wouldn't be the agent of force. Thus, most translations, like the NIV above, interpret the verb in the passive voice: the kingdom is subject to or suffers violence:

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. (KJV)

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. (ESV)

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. (NRSV) 

This interpretation seems to fit well with the rest of the saying that "the violent take [the kingdom of God] by force" (NRSV). In short, the meaning of the passage suggests that the kingdom of God is under siege and being attacked.

As a first pass that seems to make sense, but upon deeper reflection it raises some questions. The kingdom of God can't be taken by force, can it? If the "gates of hell" can't prevail against the kingdom (Matt. 16.18) how could the kingdom ever be "taken by force"?

So, maybe an alternative translation is in order, making the kingdom the agent of force. Few translations go this direction, but the NLT does:

And from the time John the Baptist began preaching until now, the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing, and violent people are attacking it.

Unlike the other translations, here the kingdom is the agent of force: "the Kingdom of Heaven has been forcefully advancing." But the NLT keeps the main idea of the other translations, that the kingdom is being attacked by violent people.

So, who are these violent people who are attacking the kingdom?

Some see a hint in the context of the passage. The saying in Matthew 11.12 occurs in a larger conversation where Jesus is discussing the witness of John the Baptist. The conversation takes place because John, who was in prison at the time, sends emissaries to ask of Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” The mention of John being in prison in 11.2 is taken by some to be the clue to interpreting 11.12. Maybe Herod is the violent person who, in his persecution of John, is attacking the kingdom of God, trying to take it by force. Maybe the opposition both John and Jesus are facing are the violent people who are attacking the kingdom.

In my opinion, however, I think the key to the interpretation of Matthew 11.12 lies in the context of Jesus' speech about the kingdom's reception. Again, all major translations translate Matthew 11.12 as a saying about the kingdom of God being attacked by forceful or violent persons. But that interpretation is the exact opposite of what Jesus is describing in the context of Matthew 11. According to Jesus in Matthew 11, the kingdom isn't being attacked. The kingdom is being rejected.

I don't want to quote the entire text of Matthew 11.1-24, but it might be good for you to read it. But here are the highlights. The passage begins with John questioning from prison if Jesus is indeed the Messiah. Jesus responds:

“Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

Note the final line, "Blessed in anyone who does not stumble on account of me." John seems to be having doubts, and Jesus offers both evidence and a warning. In short, the context of Matthew 11 is one of doubt and warning. Jesus then turns to the crowd and begins to tell them about John. Jesus says John is a prophet. In fact, John is Elijah, the long-awaited herald of the Messiah. So the issue before the crowd is if they will accept this fact:

For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. Whoever has ears, let them hear. 

The trouble is, the people aren't willing to accept John or Jesus. The people have rejected both John and Jesus. So Jesus offers up a stinging rebuke:

Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.” 

This should illustrate the point I made above. The context of Matthew 11 isn't one of violent people attacking the kingdom. From the start, with John's doubts and Jesus' warning to John, to the end, with Jesus' judgment upon the lack of faith he was encountering, the context is about the rejection of the kingdom. The issue here is doubt and a lack of faith.

And it's here, in the middle of this conversation about doubt and a lack of faith, that the puzzling lines of Matthew 11.12 appear. How does that passage fit with the context?

It might be helpful to render Matthew 11.12 more neutrally. In the passage Jesus uses the root verb biazó "to force" twice, and the root verb harpazó "to take/seize with force" once. So the idea of "force" flows through the whole passage. Some more neutral renderings of the passage might be:

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully coming, and the forceful seize it.

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully coming, and the forceful forcefully take it.

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully coming, and the forceful grab it.

Rendered more neutrally I think we see the point of the saying. From John to Jesus the kingdom of heaven had been forcefully advancing. And yet, the kingdom was being met with doubt and questioning. Even John was starting to waver. So, Jesus declares that the kingdom is advancing. The army is on the move, so now is the time to forcefully seize this opportunity. But sadly, the people were meeting the kingdom with doubt and a lukewarm reception. The people lacked urgency or interest. Instead of forcefully seizing the kingdom there was apathy. Matthew 11.12 is a rebuke, a call to action, a challenge to doubting and questioning audiences to forcefully seize the kingdom.

I think additional support for this interpretation can also be found in linking Matthew 11 with the story of the Syrophoenician woman in Matthew 15:

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment. (Matthew 15.21-28)

We're familiar with the controversy here. Jesus calls the woman a dog. More, Jesus appears to have a very parochial view of his vocation and mission, privileging Israel over the nations. But the woman persists and forces her way into the kingdom. She refuses to be denied, and that force wins the day.

I think this story in Matthew 15 is illustrating what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 11.12, how forceful people forcefully seize the kingdom. I think Matthew is using this story to draw a contrast between the forceful faith of this pagan woman and the apathy Jesus was receiving in the towns of Israel. Let me illustrate this connection between Matthew 11 and Matthew 15:

Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes." (Matthew 11.20-21)

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” (Matthew 15.21-22)

What Jesus predicted Matthew 11 comes true in Matthew 15. In contrast to the apathy the kingdom was being met with in Israel, the pagans in Tyre and Sidon were forcefully seizing the kingdom. The woman would not be denied. She forced her way into the kingdom.

Yes, Jesus does throw up a barrier in Matthew 15. But I think the deeper point of the story is to display a contrast between how the kingdom of God can be met with either apathy or urgency. Jesus finds in the Syrophoenician woman the forceful response he's looking for but can't find in Israel. The kingdom is forcefully coming and the forceful, like the Syrophoenician woman, forcefully seize it.

"You have picked me up and thrown me aside"

As I have described in this series, in most of the lament psalms the direct cause of pain is "the enemy." If there is an accusation being leveled at God it concerns passivity. God is implored to act and wake up, to do something. 

But some psalms take greater risks. In these psalms God is the source of the suffering and the origin of the torment. To be sure, enemies are present in Psalm 102: "My enemies taunt me all day long; they ridicule and use my name as a curse." But the poet of Psalm 102 is willing to point the finger directly at God: "You have picked me up and thrown me aside." 

Unlike Psalm 88, however, Psalm 102 mixes these direct accusations with praise. And what is so interesting to me about Jewish praise is how it focuses upon God's eternal nature. This quality alone--God's everlastingness--makes Him worthy of praise:

Long ago you established the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you will endure;
all of them will wear out like clothing.
You will change them like a garment,
and they will pass away.
But you are the same,
and your years will never end.

It has often been noted how there is no strong vision of the afterlife in the Psalms. The rewards and blessings concern this life, here and now. As the Psalmist says, the dead cannot praise God from the grave. Only the living can sing. So life--this life--is the prize.

And yet, no matter what happens to us, live or die, God is worthy of praise simply for being the Eternal One. We will wear out like clothing. We will fade like flowers. We shall pass away like grass. But God remains. And for that, He is praised and exulted. God was praised simply for being God, for God's own intrinsic Self. To be sure, the Hebrews offered up their petitions for happiness, well-being, and blessing. But their praise was never dependent or contingent upon these outcomes.  

What strikes me in all this is how the ancient Hebrews appeared to have grasped the extremity of our transitoriness in ways we moderns have not. The Hebrews recognized the vast contrast between ourselves and the Eternal. Beholding that ontological chasm was all that was needed to bend the knee in doxological acknowledgement. 

But us? We've somehow convinced ourselves that we are made of sturdier stuff. We've come to feel entitled to the next breath and heartbeat. We believe that continued existence is our due, and that death can be put off indefinitely. But this, of course, is madness. 

We have lost ontological humility, and with the loss of that humility a primordial capacity for worship, especially when we don't get what we want. Our praise is conditional, our worship contingent. We don't praise God for being God, we praise God for getting what we want. And because of this, we struggle to get inside the experience of Psalm 102, the hot lament mixed with durable praise.

Today a follow up reflection on the Maurice Blondel quote I shared yesterday:

To reach man, God must go through all of nature and offer Himself to him under the most brute of material species. To reach God, man must go through all of nature and find Him under the veil where He hides Himself only to be accessible. Thus the whole natural order comes between God and man as a bond and as an obstacle, as a necessary means of union and as a necessary means of distinction.

As I pondered this quote in the reflections I shared in the last post, I imagined how our seeking God through the scrim of nature can get stuck on either side, and how that "getting stuck" leads to either atheism or paganism, unbelief or idolatry. 

Let me explain.

As Blondel describes, we must find God "under the veil" of nature. God is speaking to us through nature, the heavens declare the glory of God, but we can fail to hear or see Him. Coming from God's direction toward us, God's communication gets "hung up" in nature, diffused and refracted, and never penetrates all the way to us. We behold nature, but do not see God shining thorough it.  

When this happens we experience atheism, or more properly, materialism. We experience nature as mute and silent, as inert "stuff." Nature is experienced as disenchanted, evacuated of any sacred character. Our only relationship to nature is "scientific" and "factual." 

So, if atheism is God's communication getting "stuck," "blocked," or "dissipated" by nature in its movement toward us, there's a related problem with our movement toward God getting "stuck" or "hung up" in nature. This is the temptation in paganism.

In this situation, the sacred character of nature is readily perceived and recognized. Nature is enchanted, suffused with spiritual meaning and potency. But if our movement toward God gets stuck or hung up there, in nature, we come to worship nature rather than God. We don't "push through" nature to seek the Creator. This leads to idolatry, worshiping creation over the Creator, which tends to manifest in a neopagan, bespoke, spiritual-but-not-religious posture. 

To summarize, Blondel's quote made me wonder if there's a single dynamic at work that connects atheism, paganism, and faith. That dynamic concerns how the movement between God and humanity through nature can lead to one of three outcomes. First, if we fail to perceive God in and through nature, we end up with atheism, scientism, materialism, and disenchantment. God is "blocked" by nature and nothing sacred is perceived in or through the material world. We end up with unbelief, a dry "factual" experience of the cosmos. Second, we might perceive the sacred aspect of nature but fail to reach the Creator behind and beyond nature. This leads to a neopagan, spiritual-but-not religious posture. Instead of unbelief, we have idolatry.  Lastly, we have faith, full and complete communication through nature from both sides. We experience the sacred through nature, we experience divine communication, we hear. And we, in response, penetrate through nature to express doxological recognition of the Creator. 

Simply:

Atheism is God hidden in nature.

Paganism is God mistaken as nature.

Faith is God communicating through nature.

I am unfamiliar with the thought of Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), the Catholic philosopher. However, in reading an article I was interrupted by a Blondel quote from his famous work Action:

To reach man, God must go through all of nature and offer Himself to him under the most brute of material species. To reach God, man must go through all of nature and find Him under the veil where He hides Himself only to be accessible. Thus the whole natural order comes between God and man as a bond and as an obstacle, as a necessary means of union and as a necessary means of distinction.

The quote describes material reality--nature--as both "bond" and "obstacle." Material reality can be a "means of union" between creature and Creator, but should also provide a "necessary means of distinction" between creator and Creator. 

Regarding the "bond" and "union" material reality provides, this captures the sacramentalism of Catholic theology. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, matter matters. God makes contact with material reality through materiality. As Blondel puts it, "God must go through all of nature and offer Himself to [us] under the most brute of material species." Think, here, of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. But also of the sacramental ontology of the ancient imagination, where all of nature is charged with the grandeur of God. 

On our side of the relationship, we, as material creatures, must seek God through the material realm. There is no Gnostic option in seeking God. We cannot sidestep the material realm. As Blondel says, "Man must go through all of nature and find Him." And yet, that very path can become an "obstacle." In nature God is "under a veil." God "hides" in nature. And yet, God does so to become "accessible." 

In short, the natural world has a dual aspect. Pathway or obstacle. Window or occlusion. Portal or blockage. Nature communicates God or makes God go silent. We see this dual nature depicted in Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour out speech;
night after night they communicate knowledge.
There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard.
Their message has gone out to the whole earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.

On the one hand, speech: "Day after day they pour out speech." On the other hand, muteness: "There is no speech; there are no words; Their voice is not heard." 

So which is it, speech or silence? Well, it's both. 

Nature can be both means of communication with God or the muting of God's voice.

In December 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer shared a Christmas reflection with his brother-in-law Hans Von Dohnanyi, his close friend Eberhard Bethge, and Major General Hans Oster, a German military officer involved in plots to overthrow the Nazis. The reflection was entitled “After Ten Years,” and in it Bonhoeffer looked back over the last decade, taking stock of what had happened to Germany. Four months after writing the essay, on April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi were arrested. After two years of imprisonment they were executed.

"After Ten Years" contains seventeen sections. In each section Bonhoeffer tries to account for the moral collapse of Germany and attempts to trace the shape of moral action in the face of that collapse. Those who had spoken out, people Paul Schneider and the White Rose group, had been killed. Those who had put up milder resistance, like Bonhoeffer and others within the Confessing Church, were ineffectual and had, in various ways, become quiet and complicit in order to survive. In "After Ten Years" Bonhoeffer wrestles with the stark choices facing people of conscience in such dark times, martyrdom to one side and ineffectiveness to the other. As Bonhoeffer puts it in his reflections, "What remains for us is only the very narrow path, sometimes barely discernible, of taking each day as if it were the last and yet living it faithfully and responsibly as if there were yet to be a great future."

In yesterday's post, politicians were described as "black magicians." Hitler, obviously, is one of the best examples of how a political leader can come to wield dark, occult powers over the masses. And yet, this charismatic power doesn't absolve citizens of their moral responsibilities. As they say, it takes two to tango. What, then, characterizes a populace which causes them to succumb to the occult influences of the leader? We might point to some intrinsic moral corruption and wickedness in the people. Some evil or malice. But that's not Bonhoeffer's diagnosis. Instead of evil, Bonhoeffer points to something more depressing and mundane: Stupidity.

Here is the full passage on "Stupidity" from Bonhoeffer's essay "After Ten Years":

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind at least a sense of unease in human beings. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed—in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical—and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that in essence it is not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what “the people” really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The biblical passage, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, states that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

I have been reading Valentin Tomberg's Meditations on the Tarot, his exploration of Christian Hermeticism. I've been pondering doing a series on the book, but the book is so out of the box I think many readers won't have the cognitive flexibility to enjoy or be edified by such an exploration. So we'll see. 

And to calm any alarmed readers triggered by the word “tarot,” Tomberg’s book isn’t about divination. It is, rather, a Jungian-style meditation on the symbolism of the Major Arcana, treating them as archetypes. Tomberg was an orthodox Catholic, and the book comes with an appreciative theological appraisal by the Catholic theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

Anyway, I was struck by this passage yesterday in Meditations on the Tarot. Tomberg is discussing black magic, which a lot of Christians would consider to be the major threat of occultism, dabbling in the dark arts. Tomberg, however, who had a lot of experience with occultism, expresses a very deflationary take on black magic. According to Tomberg, a lot of what passes for "black magic" is sad, pathetic, and deluded. I'd suggest a lot of "black magic" is cosplay. But even if the black magician does make contact with dark powers, the one who is affected is the magician. Which is sad for them, but doesn't much hurt anyone else. According Tomberg, the real black magicians, the people we really need to worry about, are politicians. Politicians are the ones who are dabbling in black magic. 

Here's Tomberg making this point:

I am not able to cite by name any black magician amongst the occultists that I know, whereas it would not be too difficult to name some politicians who, for example, have nothing to do with occultism--and would even be hostile to it--but whose influence and impact agree very well with the classical concept of that of the "black magician." Indeed, is it difficult to name politicians who have exercised a deadly, suggestive influence on the popular masses, blinding them and inciting them to acts of cruelty, injustice and violence, of which each individual, taken separately, would be incapable...and who, through their semi-magical influence, have deprived individuals of their freedom and rendered them possessed?  And is not this action to deprive men of their moral freedom and to render them possessed the aim and very essence of black magic?

This remains a timely observation. We behold politicians who exercise a suggestive influence over their followers. The politician-magician casts a spell, a type of mass possession, in order to achieve their will to power. The Bible foretells and predicts these collective delusions. This is the heart of black magic.