Been trying to put the late Jacques Derrida—he of the 1990s, specifically The Gift of Death (1993) and Specters of Marx (1995)—to use in deciphering the monetary metaphors that are central to pragmatist explanations of the truth. That leads back to Nietzsche, of course, and, by a circuitous route, to W. H. Auden’s meditations of the 1940s on the impending end of, well, of everything. I was helped along by Helen Rouner’s lovely essay, “Dust to Dust,” in Commonweal, March 2, 2024 (link below), and Paul Starobin’s mention of Auden’s “For the Time Being” in the course of our exchange on Lionel Shriver’s ugly novel, The Mandibles (2016) at Facebook. All of which led back to what follows.
[https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/dust-dust?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR07abWQgHISHE674i_jlMhCyUYe332s07vZtEs40CzNgAMvIupk2FdnpJ4]
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“Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” I know my lines. But c’mon.
My Father, I get it, I know why you’d want to deny my existence, forsake me and all that. I’d do the same if I were you. Who wants a bastard son, someone who claims God is a man? That kind of puts you out of business, doesn’t it? Since when is God right there beside you, your neighbor, the man with the automatic weapon who’s about to kill these innocents? What then?
So here I am on this cross and I can see as far as you can into the future. It’s not a pretty picture. These people, these human beings, are mostly vile, always sinful. They seem determined to kill themselves one way or another, by self-imposed famine and vicious wars, whatever. Two thousand years from now, you can see it, too, they’ll be on the brink, the eve of destruction. They’ll see it coming, and won’t be able to stop it.
Still, they can be kind and gentle, even creative. Hell, I spent 33 shoeless years among them. They’re interesting. They have these cravings, insane desires really, and they actually fall in love, with each other. Not like angels. Their bodies carry all the signals, you know what I mean? They fear death, because they know they’re gonna die, but not when, or how—or why.
I can feel the signals, right now. It hurts like Hell, everything hurts. It’s getting hard to breathe.
Yeah, I call myself the Son of Man, but you sent me here, didn’t you, to redeem yourself, you, the tough guy who tortured Job almost unto death and decided that was a big mistake. You’re right, Father, it was a mistake, and now I’m nailed to this cross to make up for it.
What else can you do to tell these people, these human beings, that you’re sorry for what you’ve done to them? I don’t know, I suppose it’s up to you, but no more floods, OK? That was way extreme.
Usually they just strap you to the thing and your lungs eventually give out. Gravity slowly suffocates you. But they wanted to make this a big deal, so they nailed me to the cross. Romans, what can I say, they’re committed to spectacle. Crucifixion, they call it, nails or not.
You know this, I’m gonna die this afternoon, around 3:00 EST, and the skies will be crowded, darkened, by ominous clouds. Three days later I wake up, start talking, preaching to the disciples, impressing unbelievers like Saul of Tarsus. So the story goes.
Me, I’m thinking this story is funny because the joke’s on you. You, Father, will probably never get it, because you have this realistic, practically literal version of the correspondence between words and things. That’s because you just say it and it happens. You don’t understand the excesses of the Word these people, these human beings, have invented, how far beyond this world, what’s right in front of them, they can go.
Which is what makes them interesting. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen,” old Saul will say, and that about sums it up. They act on what they believe, but they can’t see or feel it, they just know it, “in their hearts,” as they say. Or their bones.
But look, Father, where do we go with this story? Clueless preacher dies alongside criminals, or valiant rabbi saves these people, these human beings, from their own idiocy? Tragedy or comedy?
Like I said, one way to tell it is to say, God is a Man, and live with the consequences, like, “No helper hast thou here,” deus absconditus and all. No providence, no shaping presence of yours here, just this life, these bodies. “God is dead,” that’s how the crazy one will put it.
But before he explains why their guilt is about what they think they owe you—yeah, that means if you’re dead, their debt is cancelled and they can live guilt-free—before that, another strange one is gonna say, “The revolutionary desire to realize the kingdom of God on earth is the elastic point pf progressive civilization and the beginning of modern history.”
That’s where these people are headed if you bring me back to life and let them believe in resurrection, me, a carpenter, a nobody whose followers are fishermen and beggars and whores. The moral climate is bound to change. They’ll begin to believe that all suffering is to be redeemed, that every life matters, that “all men are created equal,” for God’s sake. No more of this business with the weak suffering what they must.
It’s getting harder to breathe, I can’t speak to you much longer. Some deranged soldier just stabbed me, what, are they trying to speed this thing up? I thought the point was to prolong the torture. Nobody knows what they’re doing anymore. No training, no standards.
Here comes Mary. Is that Peter? Poor bastard, he’s gonna hate himself tomorrow morning. What time is it?
All right, then. It’s finished.
Good one, James. Irony or not, saw a bumper sticker today: Eve was framed.
Thanks. Powerful. I had to look up Deus absconditus – 'Truly, you are a God who hidest thyself. ' In commenting on Isaiah 45:15 in his exegesis of the book Luther drew a parallel between the prophet's time and his own.