When I must deny about myself then I can afford to deny about my neighbor as well and I don't need to know what my neighbor has or doesn't have.

 There is no place in the public domain where failure can be faced.  Witness the squirming anguish of Richard Nixon, who is more like us than different from us.  Ultimately, we are incapable of facing our own death.  All these denials about endings are necessary in the royal community because it is too costly to face and embrace them.  It would suggest that we are not in charge, that things will not forever stay the manageable way they are, and that things will not finally all work out.  It is the business of kings to attach the word "forever" to everything we treasure.  The great dilemma is that religious functionaries are expected to use the same "forever,"  to attach it to things and make it sound theologically legitimated.  But "forever" is always the word of Pharaoh, and as such it is the very word against which Yahweh and Moses did their liberating thing.

In a Saint Louis radio station there is a cleaning lady who one day walked through a studio during a program offering advice on marital problems.  In an offhand way she simply provided advice on her way to do her work.  Her advice turned out to be more sound and clever than what was officially offered, and as a result she was made a part of the regular programming.  Miss Blue has become a feature, and the words with which she begins and ends are,  "All is well."  Sometimes, depending on the mood of the announcer, she is invited to say it repeatedly, perhaps only to cause a chuckle, probably a bit of mockery, even self-mockery, but also to practice the religion of deception.  From the ghetto community out of which she speaks, it could be that "all is well" is a trusting affirmation that enables persons to cope.  But when the same phrase is co-opted for the media it becomes an endorsement of the status quo that serves further to deny and numb.  It is like a king who says "forever" to keep all the serious questions in check.

The chant of Miss Blue, now co-opted, is not unlike the mocked statement of Jeremiah concerning the numbed self-deception of the temple:  "This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" (Jer. 7:4).  Nor is it unlike Toots Shor, that most famous saloon-keeper who died of cancer.  In his last days, when his death was imminent, he said, "I don't want to know what I have."' That is a fair summary of the attitude of the royal consciousness - not wanting to know.  If we don't know perhaps it won't happen,  and we can pretend a while longer.  When I must deny about myself then I can afford to deny about my neighbor as well and I don't need to know what my neighbor has or doesn't have.  I can imagine both my neighbor and myself out of historical existence,  and "forever" becomes not an affirmation but a denial.

As I read this again it is breathtaking how topical it is on Sunday October 4, 2020, how topical it would have seemed any day of my adulthood in the United States or, probably anywhere.  

I wonder if there was an intention of denying the importance of the texts that Walter  Brueggemann bases his study on for exactly the same reasons he discusses here, it is dangerous to the royal consciousness in our late, decaying republican form of it.  The extent to which this has been the difference demonstrated in the Hebrew Scriptures, New as well as Old Testament, the difference between the typical royal consciousness and the radical alternative of Moses, the other Old Testament Prophets, Jesus and Paul and James, etc.  The conventional religion of most of Christianity as invested in the Solomonic distortion of that tradition as some of the former and contemporary sects of Judaism - the temple cult being slammed by the Prophets was so obvious that it is one of the few aspects of this that made an impression on me in childhood and which has stuck with me ever since.  

Trump's behavior this year has, of course, been the masthead example of the denial of everything from mortality and death to the fact that though he might not live to see the exposure of the crimes of his corporations, his children and in-laws may well not escape it.   When that's the kind of "forever" that someone chooses to deceive themselves with, it's no wonder that the concept comes in for such critical dismissal.  

Note:  The great mystic Julian of Norwich had a famous vision in which she was told by Jesus,   ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.”  That vision of what I'd interpret to be universal salvation is far removed from Miss Blue's radio-show slogan.  It's tempting to go into a long contrast between the two phrases and how they originated and how they were used, but I just thought I'd mention it in passing.