Israelite Hope versus Enlightenment Despair
At the culmination of Israel's portrayal of reality is a certitude and a vision of newness, a full restoration to well-being that runs beyond any old well-being.
This culmination in well-being, assured by the resolve of YHWH, is articulated in the conclusion of most psalms of complaint and in prophetic promises that eventuate in messianic and apocalyptic expectations. Israel's speech witnesses to profound hope, based in the promise-maker and promise-keeper for whom all things are possible.
Israel refuses to accept that any context of nullity - exile, death, chaos - is a permanent conclusion to reality. Israel, in such circumstance, articulated hope rooted not in any discernible signs in the circumstance, but in the character of YHWH (based on old experience), who was not a prisoner of circumstance but was able to override circumstance in order to implement promises. This hope is not incidental in Israel's life; it is a bedrock, identity-giving conviction, nurtured in nullity, that YHWH's good intentions have not and will not be defeated. As a consequence, complainers anticipate well-being and praise. Israel awaits home-coming, the dead look to new life, creation expects reordering.
All of this requires confidence in an agent outside of the system of defeat. Enlightenment liberalism, which sets the liberated, self-sufficient human agent at the center of reality, can entertain or credit no such agent outside the system. Without such an agent who exists in and through Israel's core testimony, there are no new gifts to be given and no new possibilities to be received. Thus, put simply, the alternative to Israelite hope is Enlightenment despair. In such a metanarrative, when human capacity is exhausted, all is exhausted. Ultimate trust is placed in human capacity, human ingenuity, and human technology. It is self-evident that such a trust cannot deliver, and so ends in despair, for self-sufficiency is only a whisker away from despair. Such a reading of reality engenders fear and hate, self-hate, and brutality, But Israel, inside its peculiar testimony, refuses such a reading.
This reminds me of how addicted we are to declarations that nothing is to be done on the basis of nothing but an ambiguously or imperiously issued fiat. In the most common context for someone living in the United States, we await the ambiguous and imperiously issued fiat of a five-four or larger declaration of the Supreme Court, whether or not American democracy has a future. They issue such fiats regularly to the effect that nothing is to be done about the epidemic of mass gun murder in American schools, destroying the lives of children, even very young ones. That fiat is based on the often make-believe secular law of the Constitution, and because of that unholy scripture, noting is to be done even though anyone with a working mind knows what can be done. That previous courts held otherwise, as well doesn't matter. That such overturning of Supreme Court precedent negates the authority of that court to do anything and be taken as authoritative is not to matter, by fiat of the Supreme Court.
Similar fiats are regularly issued in many modern academic and intellectual categories, in science, no less than anything other. I especially like the arbitrary and authoritative fiat that phenomena which are very well established, established by rigorous experimental science which its critics cannot find any flaw with or any flaw in the quantitative analysis of the data resulting from those experiments cannot be right "BECAUSE" that because never as well defined or demonstrated as the experimental results that are rejected. I'm speaking of what is probably the most rigorously conducted of all science, these days, the scientific investigation of parapsychology. Of course, mentioning that is forbidden by arbitrary, authoritative fiat enforced by coercive disapproval and shunning.
Such nullification is rampant under the "enlightenment" materialist-atheist-scientistic culture which the Hebrew religious tradition is in conflict with.
I state the contrast as boldly and sweepingly as I know how. The drama of brokenness and restoration, which has YHWH as its key agent, features generosity, candor in brokenness and resilient hope, the markings of a viable life. The primary alternative now available to us features scarcity, denial and despair, surely the ingredients of nihilism.
I have continually found that the general culture of the "enlightened" enemies of faith is a rather sad and pathetic thing. The despair and denial and nihilism is generally never far from the surface of merriment and soporific distraction, which is certainly part of the popular, common received culture of the United States, much of Europe and elsewhere. That the circuses of electronic entertainment is the primary formation of most peoples active minds instead of learning seems relevant to this, to me. The amount of drinking, taking drugs (especially, perhaps those prescribed by doctors) and wallowing in hate, given how long the West has been wallowing in "enlightenment" might give us reason to doubt the claims of that hegemony that rules us and our institutions. It is remarkable that the association of active religious belief with better health and more happiness and less addiction, etc. and its opposite, the uninvolvement with and rejection of religion are associated with more negative results, on the basis of many studies more rigorous than most sociology is doesn't gain any traction.
To be sure, for all its venturesome witness, Israel did not always choose cleanly. Israel accommodated and compromised, In practiced scarcity as much as it trusted generosity. It engaged occasionally in denial, for all its embrace of brokenness. It lived close to despair, for all its resources of hope. The amazing thing, in my judgement, is not that Israel compromised; it is that Israel kept its testimony as sustained as it did amid the pressures and demands of its circumstance. It kept its testimony enough of a coherent assertion that it was able to say, in the voice of YHWH, to itself, to its own children, and to any others who would listen:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and strength of days so that you may live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20)
This Deuteronomic assertion, derivative from the vision of Moses, proved durable enough for Israel that in its season of rehabilitation, Ezra could still affirm: "Nevertheless, in our great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God" (Nehemiah 9:31). The choosing between construals of reality is something Israel always had to do again. And the choosing is not yet finished.
I can believe that.
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