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Wisdom 17-18. This is not a random selection today, it was part of what Father Mike read today in The Bible in a Year podcast. When he read it, I remembered reading about this passage in The Christian and Anxiety by Hans Urs von Balthasar and being so impressed by his analysis there. I have thought back on it often during COVID, especially in the early days, so I re-read both these chapters and some of von Balthasar today.

 

These chapters describe the Egyptians' fear during the three days of darkness, one of the plagues of Egypt. Chapter 17 focuses on the Egyptians. It says those who thought they held the holy nation in their power themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of night. In this darkness they are in terror. They hear terrifying sounds all around them, they see specters, even the things that they can see by the light of their "dreadful, self-kindled fire" they deem worse than the imagined things. They make themselves "sick with ridiculous fear." Even as nothing actually dangerous or threatening is happening, "they perished in trembling fear, refusing to even look at the air, though it nowhere could be avoided." (This line really made me think of the COVID overreactors - they were/are afraid of the air! And other people's faces!). Every sound - birds in the trees, running animals, whistling wind - everything paralyzed them with terror. "For fear is nothing but the surrender of the helps that come from reason; and the inner expectation of help being weak, prefers ignorance of what causes the torment." (As anyone who tried to tell people the actual transmissibility and risk of COVID can attest to!)

 

Meanwhile, in chapter 18 we learn about the Jews - "But for thy holy ones there was very great light." The Jews did not experience the abject horror that the Egyptians did. They not only had actual light from God, but they also had the confidence of God and His loving help, so they felt none of the unreasonable terror that the Egyptians did. And the Egyptians at least noticed that the Jews weren't suffering and "begged their pardon for having been at variance with them." (We haven't reached this stage yet with the COVID nonsense, unfortunately, although the Egyptians did change their minds after each plague, so I'm not sure I would trust an apology from the COVID and vaccine fanatics at this point, anyway!)

 

Von Balthasar writes of Chapter 17 of Wisdom "This is a portrait of total anxiety. Sentencing the impious to this fear was in keeping with a special providential plan of the God who judges ... and the self-torment of anxiety is greater than the darkness itself of Hades." Von Balthasar also points out that the darkness "has an inextricably reciprocal relationship with the anxiety it causes, in that it simultaneously effects, graphically portrays, and ultimately is caused by that which it is meant to punish." in other words, we make our own hell and sentence ourselves to it when we allow fear to overcome reason.

 

So one can see how this passage from Wisdom along with Von Balthasar's analysis is almost a perfect corollary to what happened with the COVID madness. The extent to which fear during COVID affected us is, I think, proportional to our confidence in God. If we completely trust God then we have no fear (not many people are at this level, admitedly, but the slight fear the virus warranted was easily overcome with reasonable precautions). Does our trust in God mean we won't get COVID? No, it means that if we do we know it was part of God's providential plan, and we trust that He will care for us. Does it mean that we should take no precautions against COVID? No - we know God expects us to value our lives and the lives of others and take reasonable precautions to preserve health and life. But the key word there is reasonable. As Wisdom says, "fear is the surrendering of the helps that come from reason," and, boy, was there a lot of surrendering of reason during COVID (which is still, unfortunately, ongoing to a large extent)! Many, even most, of our "experts" and doctors, many family members, and many others were overcome with fear to the point of being completely unreasonable (not to mention the ones who were actively promoting the fear, fostering it for profit, control, power and other unfathomable motives).

 

While we do have a duty to obey valid authority, even if the dictates of it are unreasonable (like wearing masks that don't work and staying a random six feet away from other people), we never have a duty to stop exercising reason, in fact we have an affirmative duty to use our God-given intelligence to seek the truth. Anyone who was not acting with bad intent or overcome with fear during COVID could see pretty quickly that there was no reason at all to the government's response (Black Lives Matter protests were encouraged while businesses were shut down and kids locked out of schools!) That knowledge, or wisdom, led one to question everything, which came in very handy once the vaccines were introduced. A healthy skepticism of their pronounced "safety" and "effectiveness" saved many lives, I am certain.

 

So these chapters of Wisdom are instructive. They are not just a description of the Egyptians' fear, they are a roadmap for how to deal with fear and anxiety in general. If we are feeling those emotions, we should turn to God. He will give us light and wisdom (as long as we are not of two minds, as James warns!😉).