A Record of God's Experience
History from a perspective far wider than our own
What concerns the prophet is the human event as a divine experience. History to us is the record of human experience; to the prophet it is a record of God’s experience. - Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets
I recently met some friends for lunch at a small Indian restaurant in our neighborhood. Over platefuls of tasty rice and curry, we talked about how the past couple of weeks have felt. Each of us had our personal lists of troubling and complicated things taking up space in our heads and hearts. Clouding all of it was the discouragement from the election and the barrage of terrible political appointments and policy proposals since November 5. We agreed that it can be difficult to focus on a single thought for long or to honor a particular emotion for the time it deserves. We’ve found ourselves bouncing from one press release to the next, one absurdity to the next, one worry to the next.
I’m not sure our shared experience is unique or accidental. It seems one of the goals of authoritarian leaders and the would-be fascist movements supporting them is to flood our consciousnesses so thoroughly with cruelty, deception, and foolishness that we find it almost impossible to follow any narrative thread to its conclusion.
The deliberate distractions that have filled recent weeks remind me how the president-elect’s previous term often felt. We bounced from the Muslim ban to child separations to border walls to impeachments to an insurrection. On and on it went and, as consequential as it all was, it was hard to to be disappointed with those who simply tuned out.
And so, I’ve been wondering what it will take to keep looking, to not turn away, to pursue the truth even when we’re told it’s no longer available. Rabbi Heschel, in his wonderful book about Israel’s prophets, writes that contemporary historians are interested not simply in understanding events but “the understanding of man’s experience of events.” It’s an important vantage point and one that you and I can speak about intimately. It’s also intensely limited. As our senses are overwhelmed, as our logic goes topsy-turvy, as the reality we thought was shared with family and friends gets debated and debunked, our experience of events proves to be a shrinking platform tottering in terribly unstable seas. How long can it hold us up above the agitation and tumult breaking all around us?
But this, according to Heschel, isn’t the sort of historical interpretation that interested Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, Hosea, and the like. To them, “God’s judgement of man’s conduct is the main issue; all else is marginal.” The prophetic view of history prioritizes God’s experience. Events and epochs are read through the lens of the Lord who is righteous.
To say that history is a record of God’s experience is to widen its scope beyond our imagining. For despite how painfully we ache under injustice and raise our fists against abuse, there is, writes Heschel, “nothing we forget as eagerly, as quickly, as the wickedness of man.”
The earth holds such a terrifying secret. Ruins are removed, the dead are buried, and the crimes forgotten. Bland complacency, splendid mansions, fortresses of cruel oblivion, top the graves. The dead have no voice, but God will disclose the secret of the earth.
We forget. God does not. History “is not what is displayed at the moment, but what is concealed in the mind of the Lord.”
The prophet’s perspective about history can help us in a season as fraught as this one is proving to be. Their uncommon focus on God’s experience as the only accurate historical framework helpfully introduces enough distance between our uncertain experiences and how we interpret them. Not that we can ever set our experiences entirely aside; we time-bound creatures necessarily make meaning of the times through which we are living.
Thankfully it’s not a lot of distance between experience and interpretation that we need. A small gap, a beat or two between a moment and its meaning, is enough to make us curious about God’s perspective. And when we’re freed from the urgency of our own immediate historical interpretation, even if momentarily, we discover that our footing is more secure than the circumstances led us to believe.
Considering history from God’s vantage point allows to pray Isaiah’s petition, “O Lord, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble.” (33:2) To complain with Habakkuk, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?” (1:2) To hear God’s loving assurance to Ezekiel, “Yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant.” (16:60)
Turning with sympathy to God’s experience of history is not a surrender to these deceptive and wicked days. Certainly not! It was this divine-historical view which allowed Frederick Douglass to quote from Isaiah 33 in his speech on the inhumanity of slavery. With King James inflected speech we can imagine Douglass thundering, “ He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; He shall dwell on high.” With the prophet animating his vision, Douglass could claim that, due to the nation’s defense of slavery, “thus has the blessing of God been converted into a curse […] I warn the American people, by all that is just and honorable, to beware!”
Far from insulating us from our own chaotic age, considering history from God’s perspective invites us to step into our own experiences more committed to contend for the truth, more in touch with a courage which transcends our own bravery, more sympathetic to the vulnerable neighbors from whom our anxieties and worries might otherwise distract us.
If we’re not careful, the days ahead will wear us down or whittle away our imaginations to whatever we’ve most recently seen or felt. But though we can never claim to see God’s view, know God’s mind, or feel God’s pathos, the prophets show us that we can consider sympathetically a divine perspective which recalibrates our own, opening us to possibilities that would otherwise be too good, creative, and beautiful to hope for in days such as these.
(Photo credit: Pixabay.)
Plundered Updates
Have you read the book? A quick Amazon review will help others find it. Thanks!
The Holy Post podcast is in my regular rotation and it was a privilege to be featured during a recent episode.
The View From Here
My youngest son has gotten kind of into bird watching and he’s developed a fantastic impression of the black-capped chickadees that are especially visible and vocal as our leaves fall away. Here’s one I got to hang out with for a couple of minutes during my Tuesday walk through Jackson Park.