-Soren Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety as excerpted in Provocations, Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, Charles Moore ed. (Farmington: Plough Publishing House, 2002), p. 64
Eternity is indeed a radical thought, it is something that cannot be studied it must be believed. Science concerns itself with the concrete, the beauty of Science is in the ordered details of creation, science prefers to have limits, parameters, boundaries in which to function. In designing a scientific experiment the most important task is to design the experiment to test the proper hypothesis, to define your controls, to focus the investigation like a laser. Consideration of the eternal would muddle the scientific process almost irreparably. But yet the most effective and innovative scientists often spend a great deal of time and thought on things eternal, Einstein was drawn to an entirely new understanding by his interest in things that defy traditional scientific inquiry. Eternity though requires that we focus ourselves inwardly rather than outwardly. The eternal has the capability to alter the reality of the outward. Accounts going back thousands of years of martyrs facing gruesome death with serene expression proclaim the power of the eternal over the mortal.
The eternal strikes a note of fear in our hearts, because so much of it is unknown, because no matter how much we know or how much power we are able to exercise in the realm of the finite, the eternal still dwarfs our knowledge and illustrates that it is completely beyond our control. The collective consciousness of the physical realm, the entity that Kierkegaard refers to as the “Age” reacts violently to the thought of eternity. What the Bible refers to as “the world” or “the principalities and powers” are not necessarily demonic, they are simply finite and as such fall under the domain of the Accuser in the same way as demons. The Age fears the eternal because it knows that the eternal is the only force that can destroy its grip on the hearts and minds of humanity.
Think about the general scorn that the culture has for Christianity. The trend is to avoid frontal attack until such time as it seems that victory is assured. Weaken the public devotion to God by building up the noble vision of the Republic, scorn morality as intolerant and backwards, flout sinfulness as fashionable, erode the awareness of the eternal little by little and soon faith seems like little more than superstition. Finally, since faith is an irrational belief in eternal things, it should have no place in the realm of the concrete, “real” world. Faith should never be allowed to invade government or education, all remnants of the “superstitions” of the past should be removed from the public arena. We may, in times of crisis or at auspicious moments, make vague, passing references to “God” but try and be as deistic as possible, remember it is not a specific God but rather a god with a small g.
This general trend has always been present; there has always been enmity between God and god, between the spiritual and the physical, between political and religious, between Christ and the world. In Kierkegaard’s time, during the mid 19th century, deism or the belief in a very generic sort of higher power rather than a personally involved God like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was common and had reached to the very highest echelons of human society, kings and rulers of all sorts, including Thomas Jefferson and many of the founding fathers were all accomplished deists. But if you would have exposed any of those rulers or politicians as being ignorant enough to assert that Job was his favorite book of the New Testament they would have been instantly identified and scorned as both a reprobate heathen and an ignoramus. Now such a display of Scriptural ignorance doesn’t even hurt one’s standing in the popularity contests that pass for elections.
Pastors, theologians and the faithful around the world often lament the loss of awareness regarding the eternal but yet it never abates. The Age seems to grow ever stronger even though it is a brittle, friable substance. Kierkegaard was correct in asserting that it would all crumble, the tyranny of the secular and the material would be reduced to dust under the weight of the eternal, if only there were more who would let it into their hearts. If only there were more human minds that would open themselves up to the weight of inwardness and the glory of the Eternal, we would cease to be weightless, empty creatures who can tread about on rice paper without leaving a mark. In Hebrew the word that is commonly translated “glory” is pronounced covode. Glory is not a fully adequate translation, there is no fully adequate translation. Covode is heavy, immensely weighty, covode will throw humans onto their face, we cannot gaze upon covode and live but yet we can be filled with covode. When we come to Christ we are filled up with the Glory of God, we become heavy with the weight of inwardness, we become the restless element, we become tinted with the hue of eternity, we are transformed by the eternal. The Age will fear us, the Age will seek to drive us out but ultimately we have the power, the weight, to cause the crumbling and the destruction of the Age.
