The God of terror, anguish and darkness

James K Baxter with members of the community he fostered. Source John Pettit

Loss of job, break-up of marriage, sickness, death, a child in trouble; despair, agony, grief, the white abyss of unknowing – all can bring us to our knees. Prayer is a crucial response, but one poet declares:

Christ is my peace, my terror, my joy, my sorrow, my life, my death, but not my security. Are lovers ‘security’ to one another? I think not.

He goes on:

Who is harsher than this God of ours? Who is harder to love or be loved by? The God they imagine, and pray to very often in the churches, is a God of sugar compared to the terrible One who grips our living entrails, who drives both good and evil from our souls, as if both were enemies, and fills us with anguish and darkness. I would not advise anyone to follow God. God comes like the sandstorm out of the desert, or the avalanche on a mountain village, or tons of black water from the depths of the sea.

The language chosen by James, K Baxter, a leading New Zealand poet, is extreme. Baxter was a friend of those displaced during the counter-culture upheaval starting in the 1960s and established a community for young people, lived a life of poverty and died at an early age in 1972. As a former alcoholic he knew the terror to be encountered in life, and he embraced those who were at odds with a frigid society.

The love in his heart that Baxter was nationally renowned for drove him hard. He saw his – and everyone else’s – role in this way:

Feed the hungry;
Give drink to the thirsty;
Give clothes to those who lack them;
Give hospitality to strangers;
Look after the sick;
Bail people out of jail, visit them in jail, and look after them when they come out of jail;
Go to neighbours’ funerals;
Tell other ignorant people what you in your ignorance think you know;
Help the doubtful to clarify their minds and make their own decisions;
Console the sad;
Reprove sinners, but gently, brother, gently;
Forgive what seems to be harm done to yourself;
Put up with difficult people;
Pray for all.

The mission focus of this extended Beatitudes could be regarded as a source of agony for men particularly. In this perspective, the most significant masculine characteristics are of enduring suffering in the cause of service, and of accepting sacrifice of self when supporting the needs of others. (More on this view here.)

In similar vein, Alexandra King has written of the terror, agony, grief and a “white abyss of unknowing” (her words) that gripped her during a time of repeated miscarriages. That time was clouded by an anguish only somewhat relieved by contact with family and friends, by bread-making, and eventually prayer.  Even when she becomes pregnant again, the terror remains:

Before every doctor’s appointment, I replace kneeling by the oven [when making bread] with kneeling on hospital bathroom floors, which beats the waiting room. On my knees in the dirt finally feels right. Without fail, behind the locked door, one ear cocked in case my name is called, I place my forehead on the uncaring regulation tiles, and utter the good Christian prayer my desperation has alchemized to incantation. Our Father who art in heaven … Give us this day our daily bread. Every week, miraculously, I emerge on to city streets clutching a contact sheet, which, unspooled, reveals images of a glowing gummy bear who is not dead.

The terror arising from pandemic, disaster, personal circumstances and the decisions we have taken or should take are foreshadowed by the writers of several psalms as they plead for God to grant them relief:

With Death’s breakers closing in on me,
Belial’s torrents ready to swallow me,
Sheol’s snares every side of me,
Death’s traps lying ahead of me,
I called to Yahweh in my anguish…
Psalm 18

Yahweh, you set me on impregnable heights,
But you turned away your face and I was terrified.
Psalm 30

The sheer number of my enemies makes me contemptible,

Loathsome to my neighbours,
And my friends shrink from me in horror.
All I hear is slander – terror wherever I turn – as they plot against me,
scheming to take my life.
Psalm 31

Elsewhere, we have Job, David hunted by Saul, Paul’s list of the horrors he had endured, and Jesus’ own “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 

However, in Baxter’s words, though Christ is for us sometimes “the winter sea whitened by whirlwinds, He is also the albatross floating at the centre of endless calm”.

Therefore, Christian men especially should be prepared for tough-going in entering "mission impossible" territory in our own life and in God's service, knowing that God allows times of darkness, which He uses to test and probe us (Psalm 18), and that with God's grace it is our turn to rescue the poor from the oppressor, and the needy from the exploiter (Psalm 35).  

Courage, my friends!

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