Out of (Our) Control
Issue 2: April 17, 2020
Dear Friends,
I hope you’re keeping your sanity during this ongoing quarantine or “shelter-in-place” or “lockdown” or whatever it is we are calling it. I mentioned last week that the situation hasn’t exactly thrown our family for a loop because we basically stay home all the time anyway. But I imagine how things must be for families in which the parents usually go to work at an office every day and the children are used to going to school. Yes, that would be a rather drastic adjustment to the life situation!
It’s amazing how it can all change so quickly, isn’t it? It is all so fragile. A new disease with no known natural immunity or treatment exposes to us the fragility of life itself. I know some people still scoff at all this as “no big deal,” but I can’t help but notice that in America we’re currently at ten times the number of sudden and unexpected deaths than we suffered on 9/11/2001, and I don’t remember anybody shrugging their shoulders back then. But, really, it shows how everything is fragile. We had a massive, booming economy that is suddenly, literally overnight, dead in the water. Simple everyday things like baseball games from April to October can no longer be taken for granted.
And let’s face it: we aren’t used to not being in control. That’s particularly true for Americans, but it isn’t just us. Modern humanity as a whole, since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Industry, has imagined itself the Lord of all. Our science and technology has been so breathtakingly successful that we put all our hope and trust in it. The Psalms warn of putting trust in princes or horses or chariots (Ps.20;146), but the contemporary warning would probably refer to people in white lab coats. It does seem ironic that it is a medical ailment that has brought us up short. That is not to disparage rulers, horses, chariots, or doctors and drugs; they all have a place and purpose and we should be grateful for them. But God does know our tendency to put our ultimate hope in fallen, creaturely things and institutions that will disappoint us, and he has been occasionally known to dismantle idols precisely at the point they seem strongest.
As famous professional wrestler and noted theologian (?) Hulk Hogan explained:
Much of American political history over the past century is tied to this supreme confidence in our technological know-how. From Woodrow Wilson to FDR to the Great Society and onward, there is the idea that we can easily transfer our mastery of the natural world to the realm of human beings and our social problems. That’s how we got disciplines now called “Social Sciences.” And it’s understandable, on one level: if we can figure out quantum mechanics, split an atom, make heavy metal tubes filled with luggage and people fly through the air, deliver all the knowledge of the world (without need of wires or cables!) to each and every human being on a device they hold in their hand, why on earth can’t we solve poverty, unemployment, violence, drugs, and so forth? All we need are armies of experts to apply “scientific” principles to our social problems. Alas. It doesn’t look like we’re winning our “Wars” on, say, poverty or drugs. Perhaps humans, as uniquely personal and moral beings, are not just like other natural phenomena.
Try as we might—and we do have a great deal of might— we seem incapable of creating heaven on earth. Those who historically tried the hardest to make earth into heaven instead turned it, time and again, into a living hell. The architects called it “scientific socialism” (there’s that word again), but you know them as Communists. I know it is terribly rude to publicly notice that this latest calamity—or at least its scope and severity—also involves Communists, so please just ignore the sentence you are now reading and do not click that link. Because I hate to be rude.
Back when this was all beginning I tweeted out an apt quote from Herman Bavinck, the 19th century Dutch theologian:
One moment man considers himself infinitely superior to nature and believes that it no longer has any secrets for him. The next moment he experiences nature as a dark and mysterious power that he does not understand, whose riddles he cannot solve, and from who power he cannot free himself.
We just experienced these two “moments,” and they almost literally followed from one to the next. “Intellectualism and mysticism alternate,” Bavinck went on to say, and I submit as recent evidence the various people who constantly tell us that, actually, there is a known “scientific” reason for everything and that, also, Mother Earth is angry with us for not taking climate change seriously enough. On the one hand there is a kind of worship of nature and our mastery over it, followed next by a kind of fear and despair at our vulnerability to it.
But Bavinck encourages us to see to that a Christian worldview overcomes both this worship of nature and contempt (fear) for it:
But the Christian looks upward and confesses God as the Creator of heaven and earth. In nature and history he observes the unfathomability of the ways of God and the unsearchability of his judgments, but he does not despair, for all things are subject to the government of an omnipotent God and a gracious Father, and they will therefore work together for good to those who love God. Here, accordingly, there is room for love and admiration of nature, but all deification is excluded. Here a human being is placed in the right relation to the world because he has been put in the right relation to God.
Neither overconfidence nor despair. That is a great advantage to those who know that God is in control and that he has his purposes. And Bavinck’s encouragement echoes what I said in my interview with Andrew Sandlin: knowing that God is a gracious Father who has his purposes, that those purposes will lead to our ultimate good, and that we need not fear death is what gives a Christian the motivation not just to get out of bed in the morning, but to move toward crises.
Now, I also believe a resolution of this crisis will come by way of science and technology—a therapeutic treatment or vaccine. But that will not be an occasion for boasting, “Look what our power and might have done!” (c.f., Dt.8:17) but rather thankful gratitude that God continually blesses us with scientific and technological powers.
Hulk Hogan really does have this much right: God’s judgments call us to humble ourselves. Jesus calls us to understand natural judgments as opportunities to repent, to take stock, to put aside our sins and our pride, and to turn to the Lord for mercy. Peter Leithart walks through the Ten Commandments and gives us, as a people, an excellent start.
We are not in control. Knowing the One who is makes all the difference, both for people individually and for peoples corporately. When all this is over and we “get back to normal,” I hope that we have an increased sense of just how abnormal our “normal” is—work, health, peace, prosperity, and, yes, the sublimity of baseball. We are an incredibly blessed people, but we’ve been marked more by pride than humility.
Miscellany
Our family’s journey through Middle Earth continues apace. We will be starting in on The Return of the King shortly. Something that happens when you read aloud is that you are subconsciously more engaged than your listeners. I barely made it through Sam wondering whether they’d sing songs about Frodo:
“Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We’re in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: ‘Let’s hear about Frodo and the Ring!’ And they’ll say: ‘Yes, that’s one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn’t he, dad?’ ‘Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that’s saying a lot.’”
“It’s saying a lot too much,” said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. “Why, Sam,” he said, “to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. ‘I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?’”
“Now, Mr. Frodo,” said Sam, “you shouldn’t make fun. I was serious.”
“So was I,” said Frodo, “and so I am.”
There’s a lot that I love about this exchange (not least the power of laughter), but particularly Sam’s recognition that “we are in one, of course.” That is, in a great song or tale. It’s true of each and every one of us. I put the sentiment into a song once myself, and I’ll close out this week’s newsletter with Ticker Tape Parade performing it (I know, shameless promotion, but it’s my newsletter, after all.) I hope it inspires you!
“Time to step into the spotlight / don’t miss your cue!
Don’t you know that all the world’s a stage?
Time to overcome your stage fright / you’re in a work of art
Every day the curtain rises / and you get to have a speaking part.”
Outstanding article, Brian. I appreciate the measured thoughtfulness you bring to your writing.