A God-fearing people

The View - Modest Mouse

The chorus to the song goes: “As life gets longer, awful feels softer, and it feels pretty soft to me. And if it takes shit to make bliss, well I feel pretty blissfully."[1] Isaac Brock, the vocalist and writer for the band, having endured drug addiction, a single, abusive, and neglecting mother and lacking any semblance of what I will call “childhood” has born the brunt of it. Life is not beautiful without pain, and in that case, he states “he would rather never ever even see beauty again.” By all definitions, Isaac Brock was full of fear.

Though Isaac Brock is not quite a Christian, his lyrics reflect the struggles of life that we all face.[2]

It was, by Aristotle’s definition, not until 9th grade that I became an intellectual—that I realized the perpetual fear that we all must live in. In my freshman year Ancient and Medieval History and Religion class, I asked the question, rhetorically, “Why did God create evil?” I asked that question because it reflects the futility, the fear, the discord, and the misery that exists in life. We were exploring the conception of world religions, and the struggles that the “framers” (the title does not do them justice) of these religions faced. Like Hopkins writes in God's Grandeur, “The world is charged with the Grandeur of God.”[3] So, let me ask it again, why did God create evil—or in that case, why did he create anything bad?

Life would be less uneasy if little bastards weren't running around.[4]

The best explanation that can be given to an unanswerable question can be found in Blake's The Shepherd: “He is watchful while they are in peace, For they know when their shepherd is nigh.”[5] The higher being knows of something that the lower does not. This is the quintessence of fear itself: we don’t fear until we have perspective. Knowing of something greater, the shepherd watches over the herd to protect them, and his power is felt. Further, Blake writes in On Another's Sorrow, “Can I see another’s woe, And not be in sorrow too?”[6] Lessons can be learned from fear, and the primary of these is compassion. Like Dana wrote, compassion is derived from fear. Compassion is, according to the OED, very similar to sympathy, and where does the term sympathy appear? The sympathetic imagination. We can not help with what we have no experience with. I am taking Fundamentals of Acting this semester, and one of the primary tools for an actor in analyzing a scene is not only identifying an essential action or an objective, but applying what they in the biz call an “As if.” That is, “I am going to act this out, as if that happened to me.” Where “this” refers to the objective in the scene, and “that” refers to a prior event that the actor can draw experience from.

Who would have thought compassion is a form of acting?[7]

In Harrigan’s story, “The Tiger is God,” we see an embodiment of God’s omnipotence in the animal. As an observer of Miguel at the zoo mentioned, “He had an intent to kill.”[8] But Miguel was left there for a reason. Perhaps less than an embodiment, the tiger is a manifestation of God’s goals for mankind. Fear is the most powerful of feelings—one that brings all living things together. Consider it an act of hazing. Fraternities do it, however cruelly, to force an undividing brotherhood among their pledges. Hazing practices like that are forbidden, perhaps because of the authorities using it to play God, so to speak. I will now search for shelter, fearing the almighty hand of God reaching down from the heavens and smiting me for saying that His instilling of fear into all living creatures is an act of hazing, so to speak. That being said, “To what end would we destroy the tiger?”[9] The animal was put here to kill and to inspire fear because of God’s need for us to fear him. Christian, Atheist, or Agnostic, you sure as hell better fear God because regardless of what you believe, there is a psychotic, perpetual inkling of “what if?” that exists in all of our hearts—every single one of us. Like Hopkins writes in Hurrahing in Harvest, "I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our savior."[12] If nothing else, that fear exists because of our lack of understanding, our fear of the unknown and our mystification with the glory of the sky, space, and heavens above. Indeed, “The Tiger is God,”[10] because we need something to derive our fear and compassion from. So, Tiger in Blake's The Tiger, “Did he who make the lamb make thee?”[11]

Yes.

[1]http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/o/oclyrics/theviewlyrics.html
[2]http://www.snow.edu/kage/assets/modest_mouse.jpg
[3]Hopkins 164
[4]http://www.satanspace.com/gallery/albums/satanic/dead-evil-dolly-with-pentagram-on-head.jpg
[5]Blake 140
[6]Blake 142
[7]http://www.midatlanticarts.org/images/acting_company.jpg
[8]Harrigan 151
[9]Harrigan 153
[10]Harrigan 155
[11]Blake 146
[12] Hopkins 166