Time Will Tell
How long, O LORD, will You forget me always? How long hide Your face from me? How long shall I cast about for counsel, sorrow in my heart all day? How long will my enemy loom over me? Psalm 13:2-3 [Hebrew] Robert Alter
How long? – We covered the Hebrew intensity of this phrase nearly a year ago November 3, 2020). Let me remind you:
ʿad ʾānāʾ (ad anah). How long? The preposition ʿad is much stronger here than our translation. In effect, David is saying “Until when?,” the ʿad implying perpetuity. What he really cries out is something like this: “Lord, it feels like forever that You have hidden Yourself from me.”
At that time, I suggested that we all feel like this once in a while. But perhaps it’s more than a passing emotional state. Maybe it’s what it means to have faith. Notice Soloveitchik’s comment:
“The role of the man of faith, whose religious experience is fraught with inner conflicts and incongruities, who oscillates between ecstasy in God’s companionship and despair when he feels abandoned by God, and who is torn asunder by the heightened contrast between self-appreciation and abnegation, has been a difficult one since the times of Abraham and Moses.”[1]
Now let’s consider the description of Paul Tournier:
“We are controlled by feelings, not by logic, though we fondly imagine that we are being guided by our reason. What happens in fact is that reason supplies the arguments with which to justify our behavior. We appear to be logical, but are thoroughly illogical. That is one more contradiction.”[2]
“There is scarcely any such thing as a stable spiritual life. In any case it is rather a Hindu than a Christian ideal—the disappearance of the person, absorbed into the great Whole. We do not ‘possess’ God or contact with Him. We find him periodically and this is precisely authentic and living religious experience. It is an adventure, of which the return of the prodigal is an illustration, whereas the elder son, to whom the Father says, ‘Thou art ever with me’ (Luke 15:31), undergoes no religious experience.”[3]
Is faith an emotion? Hellenistic Christianity says, “No, it’s true propositions, doctrines, creeds. It’s statements (statements of faith). It’s convicting arguments. It’s rational, logical, certain. Anything but emotions.” But I’m not so sure anymore. It seems that Tournier describes life more accurately than Aquinas. We believe because we felt something happen to us, and we hold on to our beliefs because of the way we feel with them, or without them. Reason doesn’t really have much to do with it. We imagine that we have logical grounds for believing. We’re convinced that we do, but when life starts falling apart, the logic leaves us high and dry. It’s that stubborn feeling that keeps us seeking God.
And that means faith fluctuates. Emotions are up and down, sideways, changing—despite some undecipherable continuous thread that makes us who we are. Soloveitchik is brave enough to write what we know to be true. We’re caught in some torturous, wonderful, fearful, joyful web—with God, and we don’t want to let go. As Tournier says, “Grace is given drop by drop.”[4]
It’s okay to be afraid.
Topical Index: faith, emotion, feelings, ʿad ʾānāʾ, how long, Psalm 13:2-3 [Hebrew Bible]
[1] Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (Three Leaves Press, Doubleday, 1965), p. 2.
[2] Paul Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, p. 52.
[3] Ibid., p. 113.
[4] Ibid., p. 172.
“It’s OK to be afraid.” Yes, I understand that fear is seemingly a “built-in” of our human frame; but is it really “OK”? (For that matter, is the entirety of the human condition really “OK”?)
There are many places in the testimony of Scripture where humans are admonished, “Do not fear!” Personally, I’ve found that to be a challenge in my experience; there are just simply times and places and circumstances in which fear surfaces and threatens to overwhelm all other feelings.
The Apostle Peter, no doubt a fairly “rough and tumble” sort, appears to have succumbed to fear, likely nuanced by a variety of emotive connections. (And isn’t that, after all, the complex nature of “feelings”?) Yet in Peter’s second epistle, we see Peter focusing his instruction on and aimed directly at the central need to stabilize the Christian’s reliable basis and ground— that is, faithful affirmation of the sure promises of God through Christ. By employing the certainty of his own eyewitness experiences, including that of Jesus’ proleptic Transfiguration, Peter serves Christ’s follower’s by reminding them of the actual stabilizing realty that will allow faith to “overpower” fear, or for that matter, any feeling that detracts and distracts from God’s promises.
Both as a Registered Nurse and as a young husband, I’ve assisted mothers through the labor and travail of the birthing process. I was careful not to distract or detract a mom’s attention from the fear and pain of her labor; rather, I worked to focus her full attention on the need of that little one, who was depending on and relying upon her faithful endurance to convey it to its new life.
The Apostle Peter does the same, even as he is anxious about communicating effectively with the recipients of his epistle before he departs, for Peter knows he will soon die. But Peter saw a glimpse of Jesus enthroned as King beforehand, a preview of the King who will come in power and glory… a power sufficient to overwhelm fear so as to embolden and empower Peter to feed Christ’s sheep in the face of the Adversary and enemies of Christ … and a glory that overcomes death, translating him to Kingdom of the Royal Son of Yahweh.
No Fear!