Field Notes From a Religion-Less Christian

January 23, 2022

Atheists and Theists Alike Get Nervous Around Jesus

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalm 111

Nobody has to be told to fear God. It is not a command. Rather, it is natural and inevitable. For the atheist, it is the dark night of the soul. For the theist, it is the anger of the divine. So there we all are, unbeliever and believer alike, trying to make good with our destiny, hopeful that what will become of us will be something other than nothing. This is what Luther called the “unpreached God,” the silent One with hands off, waiting for some good to arise from us that we might be worthy of blessing. There is indeed good that arises, but alas, not only is it ephemeral, it is never free of its own self-interest. 

But it’s not as if any moral purity matters anyway. We are the ones who have created a Monster Tyrant out of God. We are the ones who have created the meritorious system that is religion in order to fight off, to have some weaponry to go to battle, against the Darkness that will not let us know our fate. 

I’m struck by Nathaniel’s question to Philip (John 1): “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The answer is yes and no. Of course the question’s referent is Jesus, one showing up in public with a call to radical reliance on God and radical obedience to God. And yes, this is one who is good in every sense of the word. But note that. Every sense of the word. There is the sense of good that makes it clear that the higher moral ground is absolutely nothing on which to stand. What makes Jesus good, it becomes clear very early on in his public ministry work, is that all barriers to God are nonexistent. Class, gender, race, sexuality, origin and all else are stripped of significance in relation to the relation(ship) with God. It is Isaiah 55 all over the place: you without money, come and buy! What makes Jesus good is not moral standing but rather a clearing of the deck of all pretense before God. 

It is the shame of the church that this good news of Jesus is delivered not unvarnished but rather cloaked in equivocations of politics and power. The church hedges all the time, calling people to believe that believing is the standard for access to God. 

Wouldn’t one who is afraid be attracted to one who rebukes and eliminates the fear?

Neither atheists nor theists, however, are attracted. Neither like Jesus. Jesus makes the fearless life all too easy. There must be more to it, we think, this end of darkness. There must be more to it than this itinerate Jew of 1st century Palestine. Quick, let me find stoicism or epicureanism instead! It is the quest that matters! Quick, let me find orthodoxy instead. It’s fidelity that matters!

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not the final word. It is the fear that drives us, gets us going. But to what end? To what place? To what person? For me it is to the one who is the end of the Law (Galatians), the one who takes the fear and replaces it with an eternal embrace. That would be Jesus of Nazareth. Where is he that I might meet him and be fearless? Philip says, “come and see.”