Cancelling Humanity (2)

You have removed my acquaintances far from me; You have made me an object of loathing to them; I am shut up and cannot go out.  Psalm 88:8  NASB

An object of loathing – How do you effectively destroy what makes us human without killing the body?  Isolation!  There’s a very good reason why prisons employ isolation as a severe means of psychological punishment.  Human beings are human in community.   We are socially dependent creatures.  In fact, according to the biblical worldview, we exist only in communal relationship—with spouse, with children, with tribe, with God.  Remove our connections—remove our humanity.  Robinson Crusoe is a literary fiction.

Thousands of years before the world at large became the victim of enforced medical terrorism (benignly called “social distancing”), the psalmist raised the alarm.  “An object of loathing” is the Hebrew tôʿēbot.  It’s actually plural, as though the author is decrying multiple afflictions, all connected to social disruptions.  To put it in modern terms, he feels as if God Himself has enforced social distancing, disconnecting him from everything that constitutes his self-aware humanity.  He’s been cut off!  The word doesn’t mean just “separated.”  It means, “to be made an abomination.”  Abhorrent!  Detestable!  Something to run from, to avoid at all costs, to be ritually and culturally impure.  Sort of like the attempt to vilify all those who have not been vaccinated as the pariahs of society.  “Be afraid of them!  Stay away!  They are evil, don’t you know, because they aren’t thinking of the ‘greater good,’ where we all just do whatever we’re told.”

“Any society that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little security will deserve neither and lose both” (Benjamin Franklin).  Perhaps we have arrived.

At any rate, the psalmist’s alarm must ring true in our ears.  If I am an abomination to my “acquaintances”—really the Hebrew should be read “to those who know me”—then my humanity is severely diminished.  I am less of myself.  And if it’s God who is making this happen, what hope do I have of ever being really me?  I need you!  Not just because I need your company, your involvement, your companionship.  No, “it’s not good for man to be alone” because he stops being “man.”  Isolation kills.  It’s really that simple.  A world of isolated automatons is not a human world.  If God really wanted to punish us forever in that fictional place called Hell, all He would have to do is lock us away, each in our own cell without any human contact forever.  Whither and die, become a vegetable, breathing but without life.  “No,” a thousand times “No!”  Whatever the psalmist is experiencing at this moment, it cannot be the ultimate intention of a relational God.

Addition: But whatever he is feeling is certainly a frightening human possibility.  Brené Brown noted that we are hardwired for connection.  Without it we die—perhaps only a little at a time but die nonetheless.  This is the turning point.  If I can’t find connection, if God has “cut me off,” the death sentence has already been given.  God must reconnect me if I am going to survive.

Topical Index: loathing, abomination, tôʿēbâ, connection, human, Psalm 88:8