Jesus and Awful Madnesses

In the "first" story of Creation, the proclivities of humanity are described.  People since then have--as the story presumes--multiplied themselves and spread out over the world, littering the earth with their offspring without, apparently, the need for Genesis.  That the word "proclivity" is not particularly uplifting seems to fit the larger narrative, wherein Adam and Eve had the opportunity to remain in God's good stead without--as the narrative allows--either multiplying or spreading out.  Even the sordid generations of Babel had the impulses to raise an impressive workforce and would over time have burgeoned beyond all terrain known to them.

Multiplying and filling the earth are not in themselves moral goods.  The devil, understood in Genesis to have offspring, would be expected to spread with vigor his "seed" to every clime, though such offspring need have no more "natural" explanation than children of Abraham spawned from the stones of the Jordan.  Indeed, it would be expected that the devil--understood in Scripture to have practical if not actual ubiquity--would pack Creation with his minions.  That, meanwhile, this overburdened plane is stocked sufficiently with ever-attendant angels, defying all notions we might have of overcrowding, is of no pursuable concern to us.

Indeed, of most concern to us is any tendency we might have to imagine that there are ever vacuums of supernatural presence.  Jesus describes the situation of a person rid of a demon only to be plagued in short order by seven more.  We cannot entertain the notion that understanding the teachings of Jesus is possible in a mindset of purported calm rationality--a deist philosophers' backdrop against which occur intermittent and discrete appearances of the supernatural.  The most explicit sort of rationality that Jesus describes is that of a builder estimating the cost of a tower, or that of a king considering whether he can confront an army of twenty thousand with his own of ten thousand.  What would seem to be concerns of simple prudence are presented by Jesus as scenarios addressable only by total commitment.

Since concerns of prudence will weigh in this life upon both the saved and the unsaved, then we are left with the lesson that abiding concerns--those which bear upon the question of whether one will follow Jesus--do not admit of rational analysis.  It is at precisely this point in Luke that Jesus describes the salt and its lost savor.  What is subjective and unquantified--and as disturbing as the worthless salt thrown out to be trodden upon--is what is most important.  Moreover, it is the volatile and penetrating imagery of salt or fire (or "Everyone will be salted with fire") that sends us closest to the lurking madness of thinking we can understand this world of angels and devils.

As I addressed in my previous post, that amalgam of thought, words, and emotions that characterizes our relationship to reality is really a conglomeration of madnesses--madnesses saddled by the attention of demons.  One can throw this contention aside, and draw up a drawing-room's worth of cool-headed and respectable theology, but only by throwing aside Jesus' assertions about the devil-ridden realm that is the arena of his incarnation and of our carnal selves.  While it is true that Jesus acknowledges the existence of prosaic reality (and drives many of his listeners to distraction by asserting that God's gentle rain falls as readily upon the wicked as upon the righteous), Jesus maintains steadfastly a truth that surmounts all realms, and that defies all analysis: the integrity of God.

It is this issue--the integrity of God--that occupies the attentions of the devil, and there is no reason to think of the devil as fascinated with the damnation of humans.  It is God's vindicated boast about his servant Job that so engrosses Satan, not the person of Job himself (nor, inescapably, of Job's lost first crop of children.)  Neither need it be held that the devil is at all concerned about his own "children," who might have expected to be thrown into worse than pigs if Jesus yielded to the Temptation to possess the world as the devil's lieutenant.  And the notion that Satan would allow Jesus (or anyone else) to drive out his demons on any other terms is refuted by Jesus on no other score than that the integrity of Satan himself would be compromised thereby.

God is one, and if God is one, then this truth is as accessible in a world of wonderful and awful madnesses, as in a world of rational postulates more or less true.  Jesus confronts a world of madnesses, and he speaks to us in those terms.