Manasseh in chains

II Chronicles 33:12

In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers

It was always hidden in the back of my mind. I would never look there, never examine it. For many years, I did not need to. My mind is easily occupied, and there was always a flood of things to set before it. The mind, after all, is fixed upon what is set before it, and there is a certain consciousness about this act. We are familiar with the act of pushing away an unpleasant thought, or the greater passivity of ignoring what is unpleasant. It is hard to discipline the mind to ignore what is placed before it. This is hard, uncomfortable, and when irrational (that is, against our rational interests, the reasoned response that a situation demands), it makes us feel bad. Better to simply offer a more compelling sight, a more interesting view, to occupy the mind not with what is of greater importance, but what can dazzle and make forget.

This is what the saying of my forefather meant: "the fool says in his heart, there is no God." Of course there is a God. Nothing could be clearer. The unforced mind naturally is aware of God, as a child's is (indeed, I feel almost childlike in my helplessness, childlike in my openness to God, childlike in the freedom that came with my weakness). After a time, we must learn to close our mind to it, because as life is experienced a growing discomfort comes in, sooner for some, later for others, according to the graces experienced, of birth and situation. It took a greater effort of the will to close my mind to the fears and intensities of Israel's laws, for in my nation alone we have moved from a general self-unease to a fully-laid-bare awe at our inability. I remember days in my palaces, days of pretended pleasure when the rememberance of the law would suddenly have arms and feet. It would grab me, shake me, take me like a living thing, exact from me a measure of fear that would for those brief moments almost cast me down physically. I felt it like a sword, dividing to my soul and exposing me.

Then I would drift over to my tables, to my concubines, to my rituals, to my animals, to my couches, a double effort of supression (that is, pushing away and setting before myself new things), and I would laugh at myself for my ancient fear, so like my despised father. God does not exist, my heart would sing. He won't call me to account, I would say. Look at the nature of the world, the violence of it, the pain of it, the inequality visible from every window of my palace. Men toil for nothing all the days of their life and I have taken pleasure as all would do if they could. God has covered his eyes, or at least forgotten.

O Lord, how hard was my heart! What a work of breaking you had to do!

I was king.

Yet I was a man. No more powerful in myself than any warrior, no smarter than my advisors. The position brought with it the power, though in my heart I did not recognize this (this is what is meant in David's words about the throne of his son, and that this son would be given the nations). How could I, after all, born as son of the king enthroned at age 12? Power surrounded me from birth and I swam in it. We do not consider the air we breath.

These things are hard to express. Power came, and with it a type of outward exertion (think on these words, consider them, weigh them), for power in men is not absolute but relatively expressed, my ability to dominate you, to impose myself upon you. Power is like the crashing of armies, or the two young lions in competition. My power was spectacular, but all men possess power, all possess a sphere within which they dominate, relative to some other, whether abstract or real. Power moving outward can absorb while still leaving a realm within for each individual.

Such are my meditations these days. Let me return to my original point and say that I chose that abstracted, relative power, I gave myself to it so that I could dominate, control, build for myself some world, while all the while I knew the truth. Truth can only be suppressed, it cannot, will never, be destroyed, or its effects held back. It is. And so my idolatry.

My sons. I remember the poles I built. The altars. I carved an image and put it in the temple of God. I worshiped the sun and the moon and the stars. I listened to every sorcerer, diviner, witch, demon-caller. I gave my sons to the fire.

Some things cannot be changed no matter how deeply I drink from the well of God's mercy. My sons remain dead.

Mercy. When I think of the word, it extends so deep that I am for a moment lost. But I move ahead of myself.

Idolatry. Idolatry is the suppression. Idolatry is managed. Idolatry is plainest when we see it as a worship of the work of our own hands. An idol, after all, is shaped from wood, iron, gold. But further, idolatry is worship of the work of our own minds. It is the imagined rituals of a man, and therefore the worship given remains here, and the illusion is that something is satisfied, something is ended. Idolatry is my power exerted over what cannot be understood. Idolatry is my consultations, when my diviners and sorcerers and I discussed the gods, their ways, how to please them, while all the time we were conscious in our hearts that God was angry. This was no abstraction of the mind, but a deeper conviction, a rumbling in our hearts, a baseline fear. The fool says in his heart, "there is no God."

I invented what I could (or, more accurately, though in this case accuracy matters little, absorbed the inventions of others) to cover this conviction, to occupy my mind, to set before myself the vanities that would give me a scope and realm to exercise my power freely. I invented a lack of constraint so as to not be constrained.

This is the natural course of man. Reader, it is your course!

So I sat astride the world I had created, in my power and pleasure, giving all that I possessed to my own idols, reigning over them in one sense (though in another sense they were my master, completely, for I didn't I give my sons to them?). In this state I could have died, going down to the dust in defeat, as all men must who seek to create a world to reign, that is to say, who seek immortality.

But instead, the Assyrians struck. I was taken prisoner. They put a hook in my nose (a hook so that every tug would remind me with sharp pain of pleasures I followed, for as my head turned left and right according to the pain experienced, naturally, instinctively, so my soul had turned right and left according to pleasure anticipated). I was powerless.

It was here where I made a discovery. Apart from all fantasy, all occupation of mind, all powers exerted, I existed, as a creature, and I existed before one who would judge. This is called truth, the experience of objective knowledge suddenly made alive, which is to say I applied it, focussed knowledge to myself for the first time (this is to act as a child acts, for children take the world quite intelligently as existing). It is not a comforting discovery, however, for to stand and exist before God is a terrifying experience. The LORD is just (Lord, we say, meaning one with power) and so what is sinful must be punished. How the Law flooded back to me in that moment, in my chains, and I shuddered, despairing.

Now, why should my story move forward from here? Can you give a reason? Why should I make a further discovery of God, I who had for 55 years suppressed every knowledge revealed, who had deceived and led my nation into idolatry, who had sent my own sons to be consumed by fire? My sins are spectacular, no doubt, but I think the question applies to all who make these discoveries of God. Why should we move past our despair, the despair all men will one day face, when their works are dust?

I have not found an answer yet. The process of it was simple. As I sat in chains, my soul in agony and despair, I was moved in my soul to cry out to God. I laid my whole self before him, having been taken down externally, I took myself down internally, I came before him in weakness and poverty, and I sought him. And I discovered him merciful.

Merciful. Mercy. His wrath had simply vanished. It was no longer present. When I lifted up my face to him I discovered him as my fathers once had, his face shining upon me, his love and good pleasure radiating forth, and my breath was taken away. The judge had vanished, and in place was a sense of mercy.

Mercy. I will say it simply because I can think of no better way to put it (why not put it this again? I can think of no reason): I did not receive what I deserved. This is mercy. I deserved death, punishment, a repayment. I received favor, love, acceptance. Mercy! Mercy! What can be said of it? What can express it? I am now over fifty years old, and I have lived all put these past few weeks in the vileness and corruption of failed man. I have looked back at my life and seen no service rendered, no good done. In addition, my sons are gone, my people now wandering among the idols, my own body broken and ruined, and God determined to bring his judgment upon us. That is my legacy! Yet I turn to God and feel only mercy and love!

There is mercy deeper than what can be penetrated. This is mercy to be experienced! To discover God as a God of mercy, how many men have known these paths? Lord, I do not know why (I know how, dimly. The promise). I do not know why. Mercy is not to be understood.

But I will drink it. I will enjoy it. I will draw near to you through it. I will sleep in it, rest on it, swim through it, sing of it. Mercy!

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Story of Manasseh: II Chronicles 33

Cross-references:

Romans 1:19-33
Psalms 14
Matthew 18:1-4
Matthew 5:1-8
(Others, but I am tired)