The Lord is My Shepherd, Pt. 3
Naming the Presence of God
If the first two affirmations that we make in the moral life are one of distance and difference—that God IS, and that it is GOD who is among us—then the third affirmation here is one which removes from us a very real danger: that this alien presence, this LORD, is an unknown tyrant. The order we have been working here matters in two ways, I think:
We begin the Christian moral life not by establishing, without question, the social conditions we wish to rectify or the cultural conditions which we wish to have an answer to. As creatures afflicted by sin, to say that we have a clear idea of what is harming us, and then building outward to the cure, is precisely backwards. If sin does anything, then it certainly obscures my knowledge of myself, calling my understanding of my own issues into question, constantly asking if God really did say that. We begin, I think, rather with the affirmation of God, who is different from creatures not just in degree, but kind: God alone is God, and all else is creation. As such, we begin not by naming the way out by assuming that I have a clear grasp on either my own vices (which obscure my reasoning), or assuming that I have a grasp on all the relevant particulars.
Beginning with God in Christian Ethics reminds us that the task here is not only one of social constructions and policy, but one which is done within a world in which God is. To begin here is not to deflate aims like the kingdom coming on earth, but to expand our notions of what this entails; the Christian life is not anti-materialist, but materialist affirming in that GOD is the creator of all things, and that through all things, we are being drawn to the LORD.
Linking together the otherness of God and the eternality of “is” becomes married with the presence of this God as this shepherd—a working laborer within an economy which the shepherd does not control, an environment they must navigate, and with a face that is recognizable. The Psalms, replete with images of the people of God as sheep (i.e. Psalm 100), invite us not to abstract ourselves up out of this environment in order to be God’s people, but know that, in the leading by the shepherd, we are being led by God.
The identification of God’s otherness with the visibility and temporality of the shepherd infuses the life in the world with, as Kierkegaard put it, a qualitatively different direction. We are drawn deeper into creation, but by one who’s leading makes us weird to the creation that we cannot disavow. We enter into the world not of our own construction, by one who identifies with and is, as the shepherd, not above the creation that is made by the One who is the shepherd.
The difference that this identification makes is one that differentiates hope from despair. To say that all we have are shepherds is to say that all we have is each other, directing our attention toward the green valleys and rough waters. This alone is not hopeless, but any mitigation of streams that are being blocked up, or green pastures that are being enclosed requires us to engage in wholesale reconstruction of the pasturescape, while putting to the side our inability to make it rain upon the pasture. Hope—the identification of the shepherd with the LORD—does not alone make it rain, nor undo our feelings of helplessness. But it centers our beginning point for action: the LORD is our shepherd, who leads sheep even in times of drought, and who invites us all into green pastures that are shared. For it is the shepherd—the Holy One of Israel present among us— who owns the means of production, the still waters, the green pastures.
To neglect this identity is tempting: either is preserves the LORD in a space abstractly reigning over creation, or it frees creation to renew creation apart from any strictures. But the tethering of the LORD to the shepherd is the covenant of God: God will be our God, and we will be God’s people. Not all ways morally are now open to the people, and in exchange, the LORD of all that is dwells among them: seems like a good exchange.
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Reading: John Mills’ On Liberty, and Utilitarianism. First impression: the link between bureaucratic thinking and personal liberty come together here in pretty telling ways—personal liberty requires us to have not just strong institutions, but strong bureaucracies to mediate all of these divergent wills and desires. Also reading David Foster Wallace’s Both Flesh and Not, a series on nonfiction essays. Wallace is new for me, and it’s summer, so why not?