We all know what happened nine years ago around this time. We all remember where we were. There’s no need to reiterate the pain of an atrocity as a cheep means to invoke sentimentality.
But where are we nine years later? It would seem that we are even further away from compassion and understanding. Dangerously so. Although we do tend to get wrapped up in the glass being half-empty, don’t we? We forget about the stuff in the glass that gives us strength because we’re inundated with propaganda from across the political spectrum. Not everybody is an ignorant, Koran-burning xenophobe with a penchant for media manipulation and cheep publicity tricks. Not every American hates the idea of a “Ground Zero Mosque,” as if reaching out to the Muslim world in a gesture of solidarity would spit in the face of those who died in the World Trade Center attacks. I thought Jesus said, turn the other cheek, and love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. I guess we’re only Christians when it’s convenient.
How many churches were built in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the U.S. detonated atomic weapons in the cities, murdering and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent people? Is that okay, or is it an atrocity? How quickly we forget and how fast we point our fingers.
As I grow older, I experience an increasing cynicism that seems to wrap itself around me in a gradually thickening cloud of misanthropy. When I was in college, I knew that people were good. All people were good. And I still feel that way. But as the despondency of realism claws at my spirit like an undead zombie seeking to turn me into one of its own, I feel more and more inclined to just say fuck it. It is what it is. People are good in their core, but being good is not a priority. Being feared is what many people aspire to, as if Machiavelli’s question was rhetorical.
One could argue that fear trumps love because love has been thrown into the fire of illusion stoked by the imagination of Hollywood and its media contemporaries. Perhaps love began to die when Aristotle wrote his Poetics, an academic attempt to understand the inimitable qualities that make great art great. Perhaps when we started to try and understand love and all its intricate complexities was when we started to actually fear love. Because we can’t understand love, we fear it, so fear comes before love and is therefore more important.
There’s an interesting quote from Proverbs that always threw me for a loop. It says, “The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.” I always took that to mean that we can’t have knowledge until we fear God. But fear is such a loaded word, isn’t it? Especially when talking about a Creator. Like George Carlin observed, I don’t want to worship a God who wants us to fear It. God should be an element of love and kindness and compassion.
But the English language–in all its bastardized glory–doesn’t due justice to the Hebrew word for fear. Like the online new age guru Richard Shelquist illustrates on his Web site:
“The word most often translated in the Old Testament as fear is the Hebrew word... yirah which can possibly mean fear, but also means awe, reverence, respect and devotion. A closely related Hebrew word is... yare which can mean fearful, but also means to stand in awe, reverence or honor.”
But I didn’t really understand the depth of the “fear of God” saying until I read a little bit of Van Til’s Apologetic. Van Til–in all his obtuse and esoteric glory–notes that the quote, like passages in all great works of literature, has several meanings and the meanings are constantly evolving. Til writes that reverence and respect towards our Creator is essential as all knowledge comes to us through our Creator. Specifically, when we learn something, we must not wallow in the pride of our indomitable intelligence, but rather, accept that the knowledge was actually a gift, a gift that can be taken away if not understood or appreciated.
Maybe we should look at love under the same light. Maybe we should hold love in reverence and respect, as a gift that we should appreciate, lest it be taken from our hearts and replaced with calloused cynicism.
As human beings have evolved, both physically and mentally, we have yet to make a dent emotionally or spiritually. We are still moved by sophomoric yet emotive techniques that should have been thrown in the trash with our baby teeth. We are so immature in our spiritual understanding it makes me queasy. Of course there are millions and perhaps billions of people worldwide who lack physical and mental sophistication but exude a spiritual and emotional maturity that allows them a peace of mind that others can’t even imagine. Not even Hollywood.
Perhaps this problem exists strictly in western countries, or maybe just in the U.S. I don’t know. I do know that when we create things to fix the problems created by other created things, we just create more problems (that’s a lot of creation). At one time in history, our worries were limited to food and survival. Now our worries and psychological problems are enough to warrant an entire industry to fight the negative side effects of our own inventions. It’s truly an amazing spectacle of hubris and fear.
This is no call to turn Luddite, blow up your TV, throw away your paper and move the country, as John Prine suggests. It’s more of a call to ask ourselves a simple question. Have Americans learned anything positive from the Sept. 11 attacks, or do we only care about defeating Islamic extremists? Perhaps what we need is a peaceful wing of Al-Qaida, a Christian Taliban. Maybe we need some people who want the same things but use peaceful means to achieve it. I’m not advocating intolerance against women and Sharia law, but I am asking us to join a fight against imperialism, against one-size-fits-all international policies, against ignorance and corruption and greed which are all symptoms of fear. A fight against the fear of "the other" that has plagued humanity since the tower of Babel fell and our pride thrust our tongues to choose a voice and we were forever separated from our brothers and sisters through language.
Rodney King, the simple-minded Los Angeles victim of the 1992 L.A. riots, was deeply observant when we mused, half-crying and with his head bowed, “Can’t we all just get along?” King echoed the very sentiment that has stirred the minds of every idealist since the tower of Babel crashed. Why can’t we get along? Why is fear so motivating?
If we listen to FDR and understand that fear itself is the only thing to fear, maybe we’ll get somewhere. If we respect fear only because of the power that it has to motivate our actions, maybe then we can stop using fear to achieve power or control. If fear exists only as something that stands in front of us, only an obstacle that must be overcome to achieve understanding, maybe we stand a chance. But we have a long way to go.
Only those who aren’t afraid to get their feet wet can really enjoy the ocean. If you can’t swim, maybe it’s time to throw yourself into the water and see what you’re made of. As long as you have a friend there who understands what you’re doing, you should have no fear, and neither should your friend. Only respect for the power of the ocean, and love for the gift of water.
Let’s all go swimming!
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