Knowing the reality of God and the difference it makes

The twentieth century novel, Lord of the Flies, is the story about a group of public-school boys who land on an uninhabited island. Without adult authority, their behaviour degenerates into violence and savagery with one boy eventually bludgeoned to death by the others. The book is a chilling exploration of what is in the human heart and what happens when the moral restraints of society are removed. The collapse of order during war time can lead to similar violence and cruelty and to actions that under normal circumstances people would not contemplate. It reveals to us how corrupt the human heart is and how its evil impulses are held back by social constraints and the fear of consequences rather than by an innate goodness in us.

Without God – the relishing of evil

As we continue reading the series of woes, the fourth woe (Hab 2:15-17) adds another dimension to the picture of the proud and self-sufficient. If the image is meant to be taken literally, then it may describe a drunken party that degenerates into sexual immorality. However, this seems less likely because the sin for which God’s judgment of ‘the cup’ and disgrace will follow is for violence and devastation done to people and animals (Hab 2:17). Thus, drunkenness is better conceived here as a metaphor expressing the stupor that comes from the suffering imposed on conquered peoples. Utterly humiliated, they may have been stripped of their clothing, their shame and nakedness literally and figuratively exposed so that the victors could gloat over the degradation of the defeated. In turn, God is going to force the conquerors to drink the cup, an image of suffering and judgment that will lead to their shame (Hab 2:16). What this picture contributes to the overall portrait is a revelling in cruelty that delights in the humiliation of others. Thus, it describes unfettered evil that no longer knows or acknowledges any shame over wrongdoing but relishes it.

Worshipping what is not God

The final woe gets to the heart of the matter in depicting the idol worshipper. In the ancient Near East, the wooden or metal statues and figurines created by artists went through a special ceremony of consecration when the images came to receive the essence of a deity. It is not that pagan cultures were unaware of the distinction between spiritual and physical reality (the difference between an image and a god), but they believed that the two could be fused through ritual, so that in a mysterious way a god could be present in his or her image. This is in fact not very different from the way God promised to dwell with His people in the earthly temple (Exod 25:8) even though they knew that the Almighty was much too great to be contained in a physical building (1 Kings 8:27). When Israel mocks idol worshippers, their point is that there is no spiritual reality behind their images so that believing in the power of physical objects they themselves made becomes nonsense. These images are man-made and inanimate, nothing more. They cannot speak, respond or help (Hab 2:18-19; see also Ps 115:4-8; Isa 44:9-20). 

Knowing the presence of God

Acknowledging the reality of God matters then because it reminds all that He sees what human beings are doing and will judge evil. In His presence all must fall silent (the Hebrew reads ‘Hush before Him, all the earth!’; Hab 2:20). Our Western context, in fact, shows what happens when God is banished from people’s consciousness so that they feel free to live as they please with increasingly less restraint. Nevertheless, we cannot entirely get rid of our conscience, nor the reality of the moral principles that God built into His created world. Recognising God’s presence, however, also matters because we were created as dependent beings and if we do not trust God and even deny His reality, we will by necessity rely on something else. Whether we depend on relationships, achievements, the recognition of others, wealth, power, status and so on, none of those can truly guide and help us. Thus, we are back where we started. It is faith and trust in the Lord that leads to a flourishing life.

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