Can’t We Just Talk About It?

They quickly forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel, but craved intensely in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert.  Psalm 106:13-14  NASB 1995

Quickly forgot – māhar šokḥu reads the Hebrew text, but it is hyperbole.  Clearly Israel didn’t forget the works of YHVH overnight.  It took decades for the people to forget their rescue.  It took even longer for them to reject God’s instructions.  But once they did, well, that road was paved all the way to total destruction.  It’s probably important to note that šākaḥ (to forget) is the antonym of zākar, a word which not only means “remember” but in its form as a noun means “male.”  That makes me wonder if forgetting God’s rescue and instructions isn’t the equivalent of becoming something other than human.

I guess we will find out.

I say that because it appears to me that we’re walking down the same paved highway.  Douglas Murray offers some sobering insights about our current condition.  Do you remember this from two days ago?

“Intelligent and cultured people appeared to see it as their duty not to shore up and protect the culture in which they had grown up, but rather to deny it, assail it, or otherwise bring it low.  All the time a new orientalism grew up around us. ‘We may think badly of ourselves but we are willing to think exceptionally well of absolutely anyone else.’”[1]

Now we’ll add a few more.  Let’s take them one at a time.

 “. . . existential nihilism which underlies our society. . .”[2]

What does Murray mean?  Simply put, we live in a culture that believes nothing really matters that much.  There are no more unifying stories.  The history of who we are and how we got here has been scrapped, rewritten, or vilified.  What’s left is “every man in his own eyes,”—nothing at all.  Do whatever you want because tomorrow we die.  Nihilism is the rejection of all moral and religious values.  It is (as Heschel pointed out years ago) the result of exiling God from our world.  And it leaves us with meaninglessness.  Life without overarching purpose.  Hanging out waiting for the end.  A culture of “who cares?” breeds divisiveness and violence because if you can hit someone else at least you know you’re alive.

Murray also notes another consequence of meaninglessness:

“To immerse oneself in popular culture for any length of time is to wallow in an almost unbearable shallowness.”[3]

Nothing truly important challenges our world.  I don’t mean that there aren’t any real issues.  There are.  It’s just that if we live in a world that will soon be extinguished (climate change) or fall into anarchy (racist conflict) or succumb to medical terrorism (pandemics) or cope with rampant injustice and corruption—if it’s all just falling apart at a faster and faster pace—then why try?  Why try to make anything different or better?  It’s too late for that (so says nearly every news pundit).  Better to just numb yourself with reality TV and be the silent observers of other people’s misery.  And even if you really try to do something good, does it make any significant difference?  Your tiny effort gets swept up in forces beyond your control.  Beyond any human control.  When we got rid of God, we inherited meaninglessness.

Finally, Murray makes an excellent point about the intolerance toward dialogue:

“If we have decided what the answers cannot be—or what answers we could not cope with—then there seems little point, beyond a fondness for truth, in asking the questions.”[4]

I find this true nearly every time any substantial doctrine is questioned.  Those who have the “truth” don’t really want to ask any questions.  Just shut up and believe!  It’s safer that way—and in a world with so much chaos and deterioration, running to unquestioned beliefs keeps the wolf at bay.  Maybe.

Topical Index:  culture, nihilism, forget, exile, meaninglessness, Psalm 106:13-14

[1] Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 261.

[2] Ibid., p. 260.

[3] Ibid., p. 263.

[4] Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 33.