Anyway… our present Reflection on the character of God and the
Gods is ‘immoral’ in precisely this way. In the sense of our church pastor,
though, I am probably even a worse infidel than one who simply questions whether
He/She/It/They exist—such questions hold little interest for me at this point because,
at the end of the day, conversations about the existence of things invisible,
such as souls and demons, gods and angels, are conventionally typecast and
therefore wearying in their predictability. Rather, I think I must be for my
church pastor an infidel of an entirely more pernicious sort, which is due, I
am sure, to a Nietzschean sensibility deeply rooted in my education; because I dare
to wonder (in an Aristotelian kind of way) about one of the ‘accouterments’
that has long been associated with religious thinking—about one of the
qualities of character that has been traditionally wrapped around the Concept
of Deity—about Duty. The conventional
conversation revolves around man’s duty to God; but my wonder is whether Gods have any Obligation to the world of men?
Do Gods have a sense of Duty vis-à-vis men?
It is amazing to me how much our respect for the Idea of God has diminished since the High
Middle Ages. The Idea of the new-world God, the One which is articulated for
the ‘three great monotheistic religions’, and which we have conceptually identified
as titular Supreme Being of the modern world, is both pampered and immoral, and
therefore ultimately unsatisfying.
We pamper this new-world God-Idea in that we refuse systematically to
make him carry the burden or blame for any of the ‘bad stuff’ that happens in
the world, i.e., disasters, devastating
illnesses, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, great storms, and other formidable crisis-events
of nature. Religious thinkers, in a twist of sophistry worthy of the great
Scholastic-era pedants, like generally to blame such events on the Evil One,
thereby blaming One invisible ‘critter’ and acquitting Another. It is obviously
too difficult for a simple philosopher and infidel to tell the difference
between all these invisible ‘critters’… For the run-of-the-mill, generally
thoughtful but not necessarily religious kinds of thinker, though, who have
learned to ‘secularize’ natural events, we seem to have acquired the populist
knack of thinking of men as Nietzschean camels –
as beasts of burden; and our burden is to lug around on our metaphorical backs the
‘bad stuff that happens in the world’ as moralized baggage—the world is become a
morality tale, a day-time soap opera replete with the eternal questions: what
did you learn from this crisis that happened to you? what from that? I guess that
will teach me to…! Every moment of our time spent in the new-world is a
teaching/learning moment, because we are functionally alone to walk through the days of our lives. If we can- will- are
not able to detect the Hand of God (either the good One or the bad One) in the
world, thus tracing the causal burden to He/She/It/They, and if we do not learn some point of moral edification from
the events and circumstances of our own life, then we will be left with simply having
to endure in complete ignorance and impotence the ‘bad stuff’ that happens to
us.
We have also morally
neutered this new-world God, making Him, finally, immoral. There is no moral accountability that we attach to this Creature-Idea
we have named God; so “It” can use all the resources of knowledge, the
unfathomable power of the world and all the planetary systems, to move and manipulate
the world of men without giving Itself away.
Unlimited power and no need to render accounts, and still It fails to indicate clearly to Men either what It wishes
to achieve with all the Sound and the Fury unchained on this planet, or what
the more general game plan is for Men and this their world. In this respect,
the new-world God is significantly inferior, both conceptually and morally, to
the old-world pagan conception of God and the Gods.
In 468 B.C. a lyric poet named
Bacchylides, nephew of the very famous poet, Simonides, wrote a splendid celebratory
ode (Epinicia 3)
for Hiero tyrannos on the occasion of
his chariot-race victory in the Olympic games. By way of honoring this King Hiero,
Bacchylides tells the story of another, former great king, called King Croesus.
It is this Croesus story ‘behind’ the Hiero story that is relevant to our
present reflection; because like this victorious Hiero of Syracuse, the
historical Croesus of Lydia was both a princely contributor to the temple of Apollo in Delphi, and he was also clearly
rewarded by the Gods in exchange for his generous support of
the temple. In other words, we learn in this story that the old-world pagan Gods,
Zeus and Apollo to be precise, actually reach out to and reward really and truly the pious conduct of
Croesus, who has been an active supporter of the Apollonian temple. There is
the premise of a fundamental duty-based reciprocity from Gods to men.
In
the story, Bacchylides tells us of Croesus and of the fall of his empire, Lydia.
We learn that Zeus had destined Sardis (a city located in Lydia) to be captured
by the Persian army, and that instead of waiting patiently for himself and his
family to be captured and lead into slavery by the Persians, King Croesus had a
great pyre built up in front of his palace; and climbing up upon the pyre with
his ‘inconsolably weeping’ wife and daughters, Croesus orders a slave to kindle
the wooden structure. But even as the slave is setting spark to kindle, Croesus
has not yet finished with the God; for he lifts his hands and his voice to the ‘steep’
heavens and bitterly ‘screams’ at the God, specifically Apollo, about His
personal failure to uphold justice in the relationship between Himself and this
pious king, i.e., the ‘I got your
back and you got my back’ sort of
justice—(the Greek is lovely, and you can download Greek fonts here for free): Ὑπέρβιε
δαῖμον, ποῦ θεῶν ἐστιν χάρις?
(Hyperbie
daimon, pou theon estin charis?). Of
course, the narrow bond of obligation between Apollo and Croesus also bespeaks
the broader duty-bound relationship
between Gods and men, not just from men to Gods, but more importantly in the
light of this reflection, from Gods to men.
So
ode-ifies Bacchylides: “‘Outrageous deity, where is the thanks (recognition of duty
or obligation) from the gods? Where is lord Apollo? [40] …What was hated is loved.
To die is sweetest.’ So Croesus spoke, and he bid the slave with the delicate
step to kindle the wooden structure. […] But when the flashing force of
terrible fire began to shoot through the wood, [55] Zeus set a dark rain-cloud
over it, and began to quench the golden flame. Nothing is unbelievable which is
brought about by the gods' ambition.”
Now what is exactly happening here
in this story? Croesus holds that Apollo, the God, has a debt toward him, a
man, because this man had not only recognized his debt toward the temple of the
God, but he had always been faithful to pay that debt. Unfortunately the story
goes that Apollo was off busy somewhere else, perhaps neglecting other faithful
supporters, so in a deus-ex-machina
moment, Zeus steps in with his dark rain-cloud and saves the day. Then, says Bacchylides, after Zeus has squared the justice issue,
Apollo finally decides to show up, “and brings the old man to live among the
Hyperboreans, [60] along with his slender-ankled daughters, because of his
piety, since of all mortals he sent the greatest gifts to holy Pytho.”
The old-world idea that the Gods have a duty-bound obligation to
men is not limited to the pagan Greek poets, however, but can also be also
found in the Hebrew Bible, for example in Psalm 82. In this intriguing Psalm,
Asaph gives us something rather unique in the history of poetic literature—a
job description for Gods.
The narrator
begins by setting the song-plot: God takes his place in the council of the Gods
in order to pass judgment. In this
song it is clear that the Judging God is displeased with His divine Companions,
and so He asks them a fairly blunt (some might say, blatantly ill-mannered) question:
“How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?” Not
dissimilar to the neglectful Apollo of Bacchylides’
ode, these Canaanite Gods are clearly not very nice either, or else They
have just had a very poor work ethic. It is at this point in the song that the
Judging God delivers Himself of the ‘job description’ for Gods in Their relationships
with men, which has four parts.
1.
“Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
2.
maintain the right of the lowly and the
destitute.
3.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
4.
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Then the Judge proceeds to remind the heavenly Cohort that although
they are Gods (verse 6), and children of the Most High, if They do not want to
‘do the God-job’, then, He says to Them, “you shall die like mortals, and fall
like any prince.” This One imagines no reward for a (God-)job poorly done.
Those days are long gone when a man could understand and respect the
Idea of a Self-respecting God—a God
with character. Instead, in our world-become-modern all we have to play with is
an anemic cardboard cut-out character/caricature Deity; and this One is never
far from His band of earthly authoritarians, who are neither Gods that they
should understand the generous nature of the job (per Asaph), nor respectful of
the type of duty-bound obligations that once bound Gods to men and vice-versa
(per Bacchylides).
The only way to
demonstrate that the titular Supreme Being of the modern imagination is not a God of the pampered and immoral
cardboard cut-out sort, and therefore not
inferior to the old pagan conception of God and the Gods, would perhaps be to
do the following…
·
Every time something bad happens to us, let us ‘scream’
out at God and put the blame squarely at His feet. We should then look for a
black rain cloud to pass over and put out the fire.
o
Nota
Bene: Bring your own watering can just in case.
·
For the vulnerable and defenseless, let them
raise their hands to the sky and ‘scream’ out at God, and remind Him that He
has a responsibility toward us men to protect and defend, for we wander the
world in darkness. We should then look to be hidden in a cleft in the rocks.
o
Nota
Bene: Wear climbing shoes and bring your own ropes.
·
Let us remind ourselves that God is in the
business of looking after our interests, if we have looked after His interests.
·
Let us hold God accountable for the things,
great and small, that are good and evil in the world.
If this does not persuade us of the emptiness in our ‘steep’
heavens, then nothing
will.
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