Mad Max-men

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.   Matthew 24:6  NIV

Must happen – pólemos.  The Greek word of the day.  War.  Conflict.  It seems that the world is unraveling daily.  Who knows where the next battleground will be?  And all of this feeds the gristmill of the “end times” prognosticators. Perhaps they’ve forgotten Yeshua’s words to his disciples.  deí génesthai.  “Must happen.”  As Heschel famously wrote, “History is a nightmare.”  But in the midst of this nightmare some reflection is necessary.  Even if we are surrounded by conflict, by wars and rumors of wars, we are still asked to consider what all of this means for our idea of humanity.

“For can one call our species sane when we remain unruffled in the face of mass murder, the fruit of mendacity, man-made agony without end?[1]

Something eternal hangs in the balance.  We are asked to be brave, to refuse defeat or despair, to remember that the end is not yet—and there is work to be done.  Heschel helps us see the enormity of our choices:

“Lukewarm Judaism would be as effective in purging our character as a lukewarm furnace in melting steel.  Gone for our time is the sweetness of faith.  It has ceased to come to us as a gift.  It requires ‘blood, sweat, and tears.’  We are frightened by a world that God may be ready to abandon.  What a nightmare to live in a cosmic life, in an absurdity that makes pretensions to beauty.”[2]

We are asked to put aside the religious preoccupation with safety, comfort, and routine.  These goals have denuded our faith and swept us into a monastic corner barricaded against the true flow of God’s handiwork.  Reflection requires re-evaluation.

“One of the failures of Western man is due to the equation of religion and self-interest, whether it is the survival of the people within the Jewish context or the personal salvation that is the center of concern in Christianity.  With our ears attuned to the mystery of living, and our eyes beholding the marvel of being, our hearts open to the anguish of humanity which surpasses our capacity for compassion, we must surely feel ashamed of a life lived within the confines of mere self-regard.”[3]

More than anything else, we must abandon the idea perpetuated by religious norms.

“Other thinkers considered love or obedience the normative aim of religious existence.  The outstanding contribution of the Kotzker was to teach that mediocrity was the fundamental religious concern.  This realization led to religious radicalism, for Truth shunned all moderation.”[4]  In the end, “An easy life was not worth living.”[5]

“ . . . the opposite of the believer was not the heretic but the coward.  Be brave or perish.”[6]

Topical Index: Abraham Heschel, war, end times, brave, religion, Matthew 24:6