Fear is the Blood

I heard a radio preacher recently carry on at length about how the whole of Christianity's scorn in the eyes of the world--culminating in the done-in-the-name-of-mistaken-righteousness killing of Christians--is a scorn that can be seen arising in the sin of Cain (culminating, of course, in his killing of the righteous "prophet" Abel.)  Most particularly, the preacher's focus was on the salvation-economy represented by reliance on faith in the prototypical--foreshadowing the Crucifixion--sacrifice, in opposition to the world's revulsion at blood sacrifice and the corresponding determination of the world to make the journey to God through other beliefs, other rituals, other works.

It is not merely to the cynic, nor even to the skeptic, to point out that Genesis indicates in no way that Abel's "blood sacrifice" is superior to Cain's "bloodless sacrifice" by the simple fact of the animal death.  (The commentators are forced to admit that, under the Mosaic Law, bloodless sacrifice was entirely acceptable.)  Nor is it to be assumed that a faulty sacrifice--rather than the downcast attitude for which God upbraids Cain--is what puts God and Cain asunder.

Indeed, God charges Cain with the duties of doing well and of overcoming sin, not with some duty to merely possess such "faith" that would by some inexplicable means qualify Cain as a recipient of the unmerited salvation that comes to those who believe in Christ's gracious sacrifice--although of course in the glare of circumspect analysis, it would still be a "work" for Cain to exert such faith, even if the sacrifice he could offer and the righteous life he could live can be--Calvinism-like--called the outworking of a salvation already possessed through pure, unmerited grace.  Of course Calvinism in any undiluted measure is inane, and it is no surprise that any "unmerited faith alone" analysis would show the whole story of Cain and Abel to be insubstantial blather.

What is important to us here is the corresponding fact, found in the vaguely-described story of the two brothers' respective sacrifices, that the element of "blood" is not particularly mentioned--while in the ensuing story of the first murder God says that the blood of Abel cries out from the ground.  Then, after the Flood, Noah is described as sacrificing animals to God--again, without mention of blood.  Blood, rather, features in God's ensuing description of how humans--and animals, infused now with a dread of humans--would be liable for the blood of slain persons.  And the price of killing would be to have one's own blood be shed as punishment.

It is said in Scripture that the life is in the blood.  This leaves us with the awkward realization that creatures exist, and undeniably live, who possess no blood--whether these be one-celled organisms (or many more complex ones), or one-celled fertilized embryos (or those with many more cells.)  Inescapably, the notion of "blood as life" is possessed of two notable characteristics.  First, the notion is evocative rather than factual.  Second, the notion is of dwindling application in any event as a more and more expansive (and therefore simpler) conception of "life" is applied to other than the flesh-and-bone creatures that leap first to mind.  Plants live, and germs live, and viruses live, and replicating proteins live--and who-knows-what "live."  Describable as attentive to--and responding to--the voice of God (or even of believers), the entirety of Creation "lives."

In the conceptualities of the Creation addressed in the teachings of Jesus, everything can be roused to action, or guided in direction, by the speaking of the divine, and it would be insipid to insist that a bright-line demarcation can be drawn across any frontier of Creation in this regard.  Jesus cursed a fig tree for its fruitlessness by proclaiming that it would never bear fruit--that the fig tree withered away as a consequence would seem to be a withering from shame or despair, since withering is not necessitated by fruitlessness.  This might seem to be silly musing, but it really is true that Jesus commands the waves to be still, and says that faithful disciples of his could command the mountains to move.

All of Creation fears God--or at least is capable of fear.  All of Creation lives--or at least possesses innate life-capacity.  Most pointedly, all Creation is liable to being roused--willingly or not--by the ineffable, irresistible speaking of God, and all Creation is attuned to the holding of its animating essence--its "life's blood"--as against possible traumas, whether divinely-caused or not.  This is the Creation created by Jesus, and this is the Creation that has no existence without him.

What this all leads to are twin realizations that are really not at all profound, yet usually escape us because of our pitiful vantage-point as against our surroundings.  First, Creation--being never more than "very good" rather than perfectly suited in any regard for a perfect purpose of God--is a Creation that is spurred beyond its normal state by the commands of God, whenever and however such commands are issued.  The elements do not leap in perfect obeyance to the will of God, though our conceits or our poetry might contend so.  Understood in the searing light of logic, the elements of Creation are defined in their existence by fearfulness of God.

Second, the "blood" that is the "life" of the creature is not some particular fluid or corpuscular element, but rather a metaphor of life itself.  The Jesus who contended that food does not enter the body, but rather passes merely through, was not founding his authority upon biology, microscopic or otherwise.  Similarly, the "blood" that is the "life" in the context of Jesus' world-view is secondary in the application to the mysterious life-force that it represents.  The Jesus who created Creation infused it, and infuses it still, with the essence of himself (and it would be nothing without him.)  His is the blood of existence itself--understood in the searing light of logic, the elements of Creation are defined in their existence by the permeating ministrations of the Son of God.

This leads us to the Jesus of the great sacrifice of himself.  His blood to be poured out was himself, in sacrificial substitution for imperfect Creation, and his dread of his impending suffering was a sacrificial substitution for the experience of existence of Creation--a most acute experience for us, but an experience that we can only with revolting conceit assume to be spared the Creation which writhes under our sins.  In the most basic and rawest of conceptualities, fear is the blood of all that we can comprehend existing, and it is in a horrid yet perfectly holy progression that Jesus would spill the pure blood that Creation cannot, and would--resounding in the agony of his cries--endure the pure fear that we the created cannot.