Babylon Revisited

The king reflected and said, “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” Daniel 4:30 NASB

The great – “Since the culture of ancient times tended to value a person in light of the role performance, personal values also follow that path. Van der Toorn finds a ‘priority of shame over guilt, of honour over self-esteem, and of success over integrity. Since misfortune of any sort was inferred to derive from having offended deity, the “offender” inevitably experienced social rejection. No one wanted to suffer from guilt by association and likewise attract the ire of some god. Therefore, though the sufferer felt no guilt (the suffered had no idea what he might have done wrong, though he was ready to acknowledge any offense if only he were informed what to acknowledge), he was overwhelmed with shame from society’s response to his difficult circumstance. He felt that humiliation of public disgrace and suffered consequences in disintegrating relationship in his town and in his family. Prayers therefore seek restoration of the god’s favor, which is expected to result in the renewal of one’s social well being rather than in the renewal of one’s personal or spiritual well being. Shame would be resolved and honor restored.”[1]

Imagine life in this ancient world. When tragedies strike, when circumstances go against you, when success turns to failure, you are left wondering, “What did I do wrong? What god did I offend?” This is a world where invisible deities rule the affairs of men, where the favor of the gods is the single determining factor in well-being. But it is also a world where the gods hide their thoughts and their expectations. This is a world where you are left to guess what you must do in order to survive. Therefore, when bad things happen the only reasonable assumption is that you did something wrong to cause these bad things to happen. The problem, of course, is that you have no idea what it was.

In this ancient culture, God’s revelation of Torah makes all the difference. For the first time, men can know what God demands. Men are able to act according to the revealed expectations of God and can therefore anticipate the consequences with regularity. Life is no longer a guessing game. God tells us what to do. The ancient problem of the hidden gods is solved. Ancient Israel knew what God wanted. Life became a matter of obedience, not guesswork.

The loss of Torah in contemporary religious circles is not simply a loss of rules. Torah resolves the question of how life should be lived. Torah establishes the bridge between God and men. When the Church sets aside Torah, it sets aside the resolution of the problem of the hidden gods. Men are thrust back into a world where guessing governs well being. However, contemporary religion without Torah offers a different solution to this ancient problem. First, it moves the discussion from the public arena to the private experience of the individual. In the ancient world, my identity was determined by my public, social behavior. The shame of public humiliation was far more important than personal guilt. My honor and my family’s honor trumped any concerns about my personal self-worth. My display of visible success was so important that it mattered little how it was achieved. But in the modern world, guilt, self-esteem and inner spiritual restoration replaces the social and public nature of being human. Therefore, as long as I have a personal sense of right-standing before God, as long as my personal guilt has been resolved, the rest of my life is of little spiritual concern. There is obviously a direct connection between this internalization of religious status and the idea that once I am “saved” my subsequent behavior doesn’t matter. Since Torah is principally the explanation of correct behavior in the public arena, the priority of inner religious conviction no longer requires this external legislation. For example, as long as I have Jesus in my heart, it doesn’t matter what I eat. My internal religious conviction simply erases any concern about living in a way that acknowledges God’s external behavioral requirements. When the modern world replaced social identity with private self-esteem, Torah became obsolete.

Secondly, contemporary metaphysics no longer views the world as divinely saturated. Cause and effect have replaced the whims of the gods. Modern society believes that reason has overcome the superstition of a universe under the control of the gods. This implies that the principles of causality are the true determining factors of life. If I can find an explanation within the causal system, I do not need the gods and since the metaphysics of the causal system asserts that all events are causally connected, the real implication is that God is entirely unnecessary. This is why Aldous Huxley could claim that religion was simply a crutch for the feeble-minded; a useful support that could be cast away when Man eventually threw off the shackles of his delusions of dependence.

While the Church continues to claim a role for God, strands of metaphysical causality are also present in contemporary religious systems. For example, the proposal that God is the uncaused cause (the cosmological argument) already assumes the priority of causality. In fact, the argument is an argument of the existence of God, an argument that is only necessary when the culture no longer views God’s existence as unquestionable. Modern theological assertions of sovereignty wrestle with the problem of evil, once again demonstrating that metaphysical causality has set the stage for the entire debate. Creationism falls prey to the same metaphysics.

At the more pedestrian level of the ordinary believer, there is very little awareness of God’s active presence in every aspect of living. Most believers embrace a laissez-faire God who shows up when necessary or appropriate but who, for the most part, quietly sits in the bleachers while we play the game of life on the court. Acting as spectator, God offers color commentary rather than active engagement and must be “invited” to join our worship services and our lives. Furthermore, since Christian ethics is no longer directly connected to Torah, ethical guidance for living amounts to not much more than the endorsement of good behavior principles (“do unto others” or “love one another”). Because religious experience has become a private, interior commitment, there is little behavioral conformity in the application of these general principles. This lack of conformity is justified by an appeal to the witness of the inner experience. Circular arguments are, of course, immune from criticism.   More importantly, these circular arguments are also removed from public scrutiny and alignment with the culture of Scripture.

Finally, we must recognize the enormous difference between the ancient world of Semitic cultures and our own when it comes to the priority of individualization. In ancient Semitic cultures, isolation, solitude, self-sufficiency, and independence were considered “symptoms of death, dissolution, and destruction. Life is interdependence, interconnection, and communication within webs of interaction and interlocution that constitute reality.”[2] Only a moment’s reflection is needed to recognize how radically different our perception of reality has become. The very symptoms that the ancients considered anathema to life are now the primary forces that shape our world. From an ancient perspective, we are living in a culture of death.

Torah reflects these ancient views. Torah is not a modern religious invention. It wasn’t a modern religious invention in the first century. It was an ancient way of life. That’s why Gentiles who embraced the Jewish Messiah were ushered into training in Torah. Those Gentiles already shared the same worldview as ancient Babylon. They were undoubtedly overjoyed to find a God who had revealed the proper way to life. They did not convert to a system of religious belief like our contemporary culture of death. They adapted to an ancient path, a path where God actually told people what to do and how to live. It would have been unimaginable for first century converts to live according to some inner experience or witness of the Spirit. Life was public and religious conversion meant public transformation. A first century Gentile convert who stepped into our contemporary congregation might wonder how in the world we expect to do what God demands of us. He would be thrown right back into the guesswork of Babylon.

Many Christians think of Torah as rules. With the Enlightenment emphasis on personal liberty coursing through their veins, they reject the specifics of Torah, opting instead for a personalized ethics of principles application determined by their particular point of view. This tragic mistake goes unnoticed because the metaphysics of causality has also replaced the immanence of God. In combination, modern men no longer quake under the ancient question, “What does God demand of me?” Modern men think that they already know the answer, and what they do not yet know, they can rationally determine. Modern men have cast off Torah restraints and unwittingly thrown themselves into the dark. Of course, since they have closed their eyes, they don’t even know that the lights are off.

Whoever finds me [Wisdom] finds life and obtains favor from YHVH; but whoever misses me does violence to his very being [nephesh]; all who hate me love death.  Proverbs 8:35-36

Topical Index: Babylon, wisdom, Proverbs 8:35-36, John Walton, Daniel 4:30

[1] John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 146.

[2] Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p. 148.