I borrowed the unbracketed
part of title of this piece from the Danish philosopher/theologian Soren
Kierkegaard who in turn had borrowed it from the Bible. Not
being religious, I take Kierkegaard's
theology with - for want of a better description - a pinch of salt, but I like
his humour. Kierkegaard was arguably the first philosopher to make running jokes
while philosophising.
I am not here to
dissect Kierkegaard’s humour because his book whose title I have used has
little to commend it as humorous. In Fear
and Trembling Kierkegaard writes about the ‘infinite resignation’ and self-denying
submission which led Abraham to the kind of faith that would not let him
hesitate over killing his only son Isaac, the kind of fear and trembling he had
to display in the presence of his god.
As a sceptical thinker,
I see little reasonableness in Kierkegaard’s dense apology for Abraham’s
behaviour. If anyone like Abraham truly existed, I think he was a blundering
fool, a credulous filicidal killer-to-be, a knife-wielding schizophrenic who
was hearing a voice that was urging him to slaughter his son. Because what father in his right senses would
take his son into the bush with a view to cutting his throat? Even in those thousands
of years that Abraham might have lived it didn’t appear to be a kosher thing to
do.
Okay it can all be set
down to faith, blind faith. Which is why I look askance at faith, because I
believe it is better to steer clear of anything that will make me do
unreasonable things like flying planes into tall buildings or giving away 10 percent
of my hard-earned wage to a flamboyant pastor who has dozens of cars and a couple
of private jets.
In a slightly nuanced sort
of way, during my recent visit to Nigeria I experienced first-hand the fear and
trembling that can be induced by religious faith. I went to a pub with my
brother Akin and he introduced me to a younger friend of his, Isaac (a
pseudonym). You see, Akin sometimes takes on the quirk of introducing me to his
friends with tags like ‘atheist,’ ‘agnostic’ and so forth, possibly to let them
sit up and take notice. Now he said:
‘Isaac, this is my
freethinker brother. His name is Debo.’
Isaac replied: ‘Ah
freethinker. You believe in God, don’t you Mr Debo.’
With a poker face, I
replied: ‘As it happens I don’t. For me it is neither here nor there.’
Isaac: ‘Hey Mr Debo,
have you ever thought of hell.’
The humble Mr Debo
said, ‘Again, nothing can be farther from my mind. We live our heavens and
hells here, Isaac.’
And as if I had just
there and then grown horns on my forehead and my sandaled feet cloven, Isaac
suddenly clammed up. ‘Oh I refuse to discuss my faith with you, Mr Debo. I must
not, I can’t.’
Seeing the chance to
play the devil’s advocate, I said, ‘But why not? If you are so sure of your
faith why should you have any problem telling me about it?’
I don’t know whether
this attitude was caused by genuine fear or by the amount of beer Isaac had
downed before we came in. ‘I don’t want anything to taint my faith. I don’t
want to listen to anything that would make me begin to think , to doubt our
Lord Jesus Christ.’
I said: ‘So you don’t
want to think.’
‘My brother, I’d rather
not. Please can we not talk about all this?’ Isaac was almost trembling now, he
appeared to be drenched in fear-sprung sweat.
If we had all been
drinking from a common chalice, I bet Isaac would have demanded his own cup. I imagine
he had a sneaking feeling that he was wining with the devil.
And who would not feel
swollen-headed for having inspired such terror in a fellow man, such fear and
trembling!
No comments:
Post a Comment