The Metaphysics of Faith

Why God Waits

Author Tip Jar

Burning Alive

There’s something delightful about the hubris of ancient monarchs. Yeah, sure, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed living under the rule of such people but, from a safe distance their antics can really be quite endearing. Xerxes getting mad at a body of water and ordering his men to give it three hundred lashes was a quite a hoot for example, and Caligula trying to make his horse into a Roman consul? Well, that’s just good fun. The kings of the Bible were no exceptions to this either. Nebuchadnezzar The Second for example. I mean, who can’t appreciate the irony of a guy with the title “King of the Universe” losing his mind and living like an animal for seven years, running around nude in the woods? I think we all can. Yes, lopping off heads, building towers to heaven, constructing giant golden idols to boil people alive inside…

Leaders used to be fun.

And Nebuchadnezzar, before he lost his mind, likewise lived it up the way a good ancient ruler should.

Nebuchadnezzar II. Great beard.

You see, in 589 BC his kingdom, Babylon, sacked Jerusalem. At least, I think that’s the correct date. Either then or 597. Jerusalem has been sacked a good many times in its history, and still likely has a good many sackings to come. The exact dates of all these plunderings get a little confusing for me. Anyway, Babylon sacked it twice, in 597 and again in 589 and I’m pretty sure the sacking we’re concerned about is the 589 one. If you’re a better historian than me however, please forgive me for being incorrect. I don’t think either date makes much of a difference to the story, and I’m not 100% sure we have the exact year for either pinned down beyond a shadow of a doubt anyhow.

Anyway, as I was saying… in 589 BC Babylon sacked Jerusalem. They surrounded the city, laid siege to it, eventually broke the ability of the inhabitants to resist, and finally lead a good many of the Jews within into captivity.

Dirty business sieges. And, honestly, an almost excruciatingly boring one. We like to imagine ancient warfare as a ferocious blur of sword and sandal, bronze spear clashing valiantly off bronze shield. And, of course, there was some of that. On the whole though warfare up unto and even slightly after the invention of the cannon involved one side sitting behind a big ass wall and the other side trying to keep them behind it until they starved. This was difficult. Any city worth its salt had heaps of food stored up for just such an occasion and, moreover, the ability to grow more food within its walls. You had to resort to all kinds of crazy things. Running at the walls en masse with ridiculously large ladders, building giant rolling siege towers that would get your men up onto the enemy’s wall, even simply piling up dirt for weeks and weeks until you’d made an actual 40 to 50 foot vertical ramp. All this while under arrow fire. In the ancient world, much as it is today, wars were decided more by engineers than by heroes, and Babylon had some great nerds. Try as they might, Jerusalem ultimately didn’t stand a chance.

They would construct dozens of these things for one offensive. Sometimes only to watch as the were set fire by the enemy and burned down.

To be fair to the Babylonians, being taken as a Babylonian slave was, relatively speaking, not that bad. They had, basically, the ancient equivalent of an IQ test and many of the young newly captured slaves would be administered it. If you scored well, the Babylonians had no qualms about elevating you to high positions within their society. By ancient standards, it was very meritocratic. Within the ranks of Babylonian hierarchy were slaves from all sorts of previous battles. People from all different cultures and religions and social class. Like the Empire of America today, Babylon’s slogan was something akin to “Diversity is our strength.”

Also, like the Empire of America today, by that they meant diversity of skin color, culture, and traditions…

Not diversity of thought.

And that makes sense, right? I mean, if they’re going to put you in charge of a portion of their empire you need to be on board with the program. In Babylon you could be as Jewish as you liked, as Greek as you liked, as Nubian as you liked… after you bowed down to the idols of their gods first. This is an old trick of Empire, you know. Sure, sure, have your gods and customs… after you bow to Ceasar. America asks the same of its people now. Affirming that their convictions stemming from their Buddhism or Catholicism or Islam are good and valid… so long as they come after their devotion to Democracy.

We even have an Idol to our god.

She stands in a harbor. Big and Green.

Well not everybody wants to do that.

And this could cause friction.

In this case, Nebuchadnezzar commanded his new captives to show loyalty to the cause by bowing down to an idol he’d set up. Pain of death if you didn’t. Not a nice death either, by the way. No. No instead quite a rather burning alive type death, which is few people’s favorite.

You see Nebuchadnezzar had a great big furnace… and he wasn’t afraid to use it. In that regard I suppose that the blandness of today’s leaders is something to be thankful for. Joe Biden or Emmanuel Macron are surely a lot less interesting than the rulers of Nebuchadnezzar’s time, and that sort of sucks, yeah. But the flip side of that is that the penalties for disobeying them are likewise not nearly as bombastic. In the 2020s you can storm The Capitol and then just sit in jail for a few years and come back out again. Had you tried such with Nebuchadnezzar you’d have watched molten metal be poured down your family’s throats. Honestly, I can’t say which approach to social order is more humane, as Psychotic Cruelty and Bland Proceduralism are both valid parts of the human(e) condition, but… I certainly know under which I’d rather suffer.

Three of the Jews, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (kick-ass names btw), who had scored highly on the Babylonian aptitude test and been selected for high office by Babylonian officials, refused. Worshiping idols was against their religion, and they wouldn’t do it. This, naturally, made Nebuchadnezzar rather miffed. If his chosen officials would not get in line and worship the same gods (and therefore the same ideals) that he did, they couldn’t be trusted. A harsh but fair ruler, he called all three men into his presence and gave them one last chance. “Listen,” he said. “I get that you have your convictions, but a King must keep order. Therefore, I will ask you one last time. Bow before my gods or I will have to kill you.”

They wouldn’t.

Off to the furnace they go.

Not one to be trifled with, Nebuchadnezzar ordered that his special “burn people I don’t like alive” furnace be heated to seven times its normal “burn people I don’t like alive” temperature. And Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound hand and foot like animals and hurled, unceremoniously, inside.

Surprisingly, here the story takes a rather abrupt change in direction. As the king looked he saw within the flames the men standing up. Even… could it be? Yes! Standing up and walking around. Calmly. And what’s more… did his eyes deceive him or was there… one, two, three… four… a fourth? A fourth man within the flames? He looked around at his retainers and asked them if they also saw the fourth man.

They did.

Amazed, Nebuchadnezzar walked as near to the flames as his body could stand and shouted with a loud voice to be heard above the roar. “Shadrach! Meshach! Abednego! If your god has saved you, if that is he in there with you now, come out!” Promptly they did so. The fourth man disappearing and the other three stepping out of the flames nonchalantly, not a single hair having been singed.

Awesome.

But why did God wait so long?

The Metaphysics of Faith

I mean, it’s just not how you or I would do it, is it? God is supposed to be our loving Father and we, typically, do not allow our children to be terrorized if we can help it. I don’t think many of us would look kindly on a Dad who let his baby think it was going to drown in a swimming pool, only to purposefully wait until the last possible second to pull her out. We not only think the bad thing happening to our children is bad, but also that the anxiety and fear about the bad thing is bad, and that it’s our job to protect our children from both. On the surface then it simply makes no sense for God not to do likewise. Afterall, if he’s fully intent on keeping someone from harm, why on earth make them wait in anxious fear of death until the last possible moment? Until they’re already inside the fire. Is it some kind of test? Is he just trying to see if, and at what point, we will break?

A lot of people think so.

I don’t.

Instead, I think the reason God waits so long to save us is actually pretty simple:

God doesn’t experience Time.

You see God is Eternal, which probably doesn’t mean Time as we experience it just going on forever and ever into both an infinite future and an infinite past. No. Eternity is rather probably a lot more like a “place” or a “state of being” beyond Time. Above it somehow. Untouched by its flow. The Godhead you see lives only in The Eternal Now, the present, and in actuality probably considers both the past and the future to be on some level illusory. I know personally that when I am overcome with worry or anxiety or fear, lying in my bed fretting about the future, I often get the impression that the angels watching me are very confused.

“What’s that one’s problem?” One angel says to another, pointing down at me in my bedroom.

“Dunno. Think’s he’s gonna die or something I guess.”

“But… why? He’s just lying on a mattress in a room. He seems perfectly safe to me. He has a big pillow and an iced tea.”

And see the disconnect is that I’m lying there in fear of what might happen in the future.

But, to the angels… the future does not exist.

And, when you think about it, when you really pause and take a step back… isn’t that true? That the future, and the things in it that you fear, aren’t really there? Take stock right now of everything you’re worried about. Take really careful account of each and every thing.

Okay.

Now look at them all.

Isn’t it true that most of them don’t, technically, exist?

At least, not right now?

God please help, I am lying on a cushion in an air conditioned building.

“What if I lose my job tomorrow?” “What if I don’t have enough to eat?” “What if everyone gets mad at me?” “What if I get sick?” “What if I lose my health insurance?” “What if my wife leaves me?” “What if there’s an accident?” “What if the market crashes?” “What if war breaks out?” “What if I can’t do it?” “What if nobody likes me?”

What if X happens Tomorrow. The fundamental structure of all human fear.

What if X happens tomorrow.

But for the moment X has not happened. X has no physical reality. X exists, only and totally, inside your head. When you sit paralyzed by fear, you are, very often, just afraid of Ghosts.

And God doesn’t swoop down to help you in that moment only because, from his perspective, there’s simply nothing to do. What you’re afraid of has not yet popped into existence, and in all likelihood never will. There is no fire to save you from, there are no lions at your door, you don’t have that cancer, you aren’t starving to death, the stock market hasn’t crashed and left you penniless.

There’s only you, sitting alone in your room, freaking the hell out.

And God doesn’t save you only because there’s nothing to save you from.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” — Jesus, Bible, Gospel of Matthew 6:24-34

And so on one level Faith, spirituality, is simply getting real. Being a Realist. Most people who claim that title today are nothing of the sort, and, if you get to talking with them, you will find that their “Realism” consists almost entirely of trying to make you as frightened of their imaginations as they are. They will tell you statistics and figures, and show you graphs, and demonstrate to you by all manner of logical abstractions that have no physical reality why you really ought to be worried. Money is gonna run out after all. Health is gonna fail. The world is heading in a bad direction and if you’re as wise as they are you’ll watch out for it. Existence to such a “realist” is nothing but a dog eat dog world red in tooth and claw and the fact that real actual butterflies exist and can flutter around without a care in the world and nothing eating them makes no impact whatsoever on their “Realism.”

By contrast an actual realist, a person of faith, may often be thought of as perfectly stupid and impractical. Such a person might do any number of mad and insane things. They might look at a sick person without despair for example… someone whom everyone else is totally certain will die in the near future. A real realist in this case might dare to have Hope. And while you do all the other people will be begging you to stop having it. “Don’t you know they’re terminal?” they will ask. Or, “Do you not realize the doctor has given them only six months to live?” “Statistically the odds of them surviving are very low.”

And if you stand there, like an idiot, saying that simply because they are sick today does not imply they will be sick tomorrow, and that God can heal all…

Somehow you’re the impractical one.

Stupid.

Head in the clouds.

All because you refuse believe in all the “real stuff”, like the tomorrow which hasn’t come or the “statistics” which are just numbers on paper. No. Instead, you’re just standing there looking at a real physical man, lying in a real physical bed, and telling him, as Jesus did, to get up and walk.

That’s faith.

Faith is being a realist. Faith is not being afraid of the ghosts in your head. Faith is acting as though God is looking out for you, even when you don’t see it. As Saint Paul said, we walk by Faith and not by Sight, because we have fallen, and part of what we have fallen into is Time. Out of Eternity. Into an illusion.

That is how, as again Saint Paul said, the heroes of the faith walked through furnaces, and shut the mouths of lions and conquered empires, and slew giants.

Because they never believed the illusions that said it wasn’t possible. That’s the metaphysics of Faith. That’s why God asks us to have it. It’s not an arbitrary request but rather asking us to come back up out of our fallen state. The one haunted by so many imaginary ghosts. “You are not in danger.” God says. “You will not starve to death. You will not be homeless. You will not die. There are no lions and, if there ever are, I will calm them. Believe in me. Love me. Trust me. Look around. You are actually lying in bed on a pillow with an iced tea. My child even death is an illusion and nothing whatsoever to fear.”

But…

Maybe you’re not ready for that. And that’s okay too. Just know that, when you make a decision out of fear, out of anxiety… when you bow down to Babylon’s idols… you are in some real sense consenting to Babylon’s authority over you. Giving yourself to Nebuchadnezzar instead of God. When you do that you place yourself outside of God’s protection. Outside his jurisdiction. That’s not to say God isn’t still watching out for you but when you choose not to have faith you have, on some level, made a deal with the Devil.

And the Devil don’t play.

And so I ask you to really examine your life and all the bad and negative things that have happened within it. How much of those things were, if you are honest, a result of your acting out of fear instead of faith? And how many might have been turned to good if you’d likewise approached each circumstance with confidence and virtue, instead of anxiety and vice?

I know in my case the answer to both is “More than I’d like to admit.”

Go with God and fear nothing. For every fear is an illusion, even the fear that you will fail.

Amor Vincit Omnia.