It's Getting Personal

Calling Across the Storm Tossed Sea

The Christian believes in infinite cosmic personalism.  As the catechism has it, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth."  All of existence, all life, all experience, all circumstances are Personally motivated and caused by the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God.  He is in the details.  All of them.  Behind them, in them, and ahead of them are the thoughts, intentions and plans of God for us. 

The modern Unbeliever, however, believes in cosmic impersonalism.  The universe just is.  Behind it and in it there is no plan, no purpose, no goodness, no justice nor truth.  There is just what is. And what "is" remains ultimately random, without any meaning.  

Now the Unbeliever has a problem.  Cosmic impersonalism is hard to live with, to say the least.
  The ancient Greeks believed in blind, impersonal fate--much like modern man in may ways.  Whatever will be, will be.  Yet this bleak world-view was deadly, so higher powers were imagined into existence--the gods.  These were super-humans, with all human foibles and personality traits.  The Greeks tried to personalise the impersonal. 

The Christian is reconciled in advance to all circumstances.  No circumstance is random or ultimately impersonal.  That's why the formal name given to the entirety of life's circumstances--whether positive or negative--is Providence.  In everything that happens, God is providing for us, His children.  Even supposedly random events are specified to be God's personal disposition for each.  (Proverbs 16:33) All of life's experiences and circumstances represent not the product of impersonal forces, but the infinitely detailed personal plan of God for everyone. 

The Christian knows that this world is fallen.  There is evil abroad.  That, too, is personal.  Evil does not reside in rocks, but in the thoughts and intentions of malicious beings dedicated to the attempted destruction of  God and all His hosts.  But, though many evil things may befall us, we are not undone.  God's plans for the Devil and his demonic host are ultimately for His glory and our good.  As Luther has it:

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

Contrast this with the horror of Unbelief.  Since there is no good nor evil, nothing in this life has any actual significance or meaning--there is just an endless succession of circumstances and events. To murder has the same significance and not murdering.  Nada.  No significance at all.  As Jean Paul Sartre expressed it, if you are driving down the street and an old woman is crossing the road, should you brake or accelerate?  Killing her has the same significance as not killing her.  None at all.  The only significance, he asserted, was in deciding to do something.  But in this he was merely engaged in special pleading. 

Of course no man can live in a manner consistent with cosmic impersonalism.  So, like the ancient Greeks, the modern Western mind formally proclaims impersonal random chance as the source of all being, then manufactures all kinds of cosmic personalism in the vain attempt to make sense of the world.  It speaks and acts as if the world were a morally infused existence.  There are things to be hated and loved.  There are values, ethics and morals.  The people who live under the same roof believe they love their spouses, their children, they parents and grand parents.  But every action, thought, and word asserting or implying personhood is a falsehood, a lie which cannot be true.  It is just a fiction, a just-so story to make us feel better about things.  The Unbeliever cannot live his "truth"--he denies the truth of cosmic impersonalism every day in countless ways.

But, whilst in the vortex of the lie--claiming cosmic impersonalism, whilst asserting at the same time an ultimately personal warp and woof of existence--the Unbeliever will not repent and turn to the God Who made him.  Consequently, all Unbelief is a lie, a self-deceit, and a manifestation of sin. 

There are myriads of Unbelievers who intuitively know that this is true.  They are confronted with the cosmic personalism of God at every turn.  They know they are suppressing that One Truth.  They are conscious of casting their lot elsewhere.  They are perpetually disturbed, like the tossing of waves on a windswept sea.  They crave reconciliation to the universe, but resist reconciliation to its Creator. 

Across and above the storm tossed waves comes the cry of the One Who is their only hope: "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28)   To which Christians add their cry:  "Lord, have mercy, we beseech Thee."