“The insane person (ἄφρων, безумен) has said in his heart: There is no God. They are corrupt and are abominable in iniquities; there is none that does good. God looked down from heaven upon the sons of man, to see if there be any that understand or seek after God. They are all gone astray, they are altogether rendered useless; there is none that does good, no not one. Shall not all they that work iniquity come to understanding, they that eat up my people as they eat bread? They have not called upon the Lord. There they have feared with fear where no fear is. For God has scattered the bones of people-pleasers; they have been put to shame, because God has set them at nought.“ (Ps 52: 1-7, LXX)
It’s insane, to profess in one’s heart, “There is no God.” Why? Because it isn’t true; it’s a delusion and a waste of time. It’s an imagined reality, which aims to replace the one given by God, in which He is the one Source of good and of purpose and of spiritual nourishment or “bread,” Whom alone we are to seek both to please and to fear, in a healthy way. In the delusional, surrogate reality where “There is no God,” our God-given capacities remain with us, like fear; like a desire for purpose, for good, and for spiritual nourishment. But these gifts have no proper use in a man-made, God-less reality. So we “fear where no fear is,” and based on our fears we end up either people-pleasing, or “eating up” others like vampires, being all entangled in merely-human (co)dependencies.
Let me let God into my day today, because He “is.” That’s the sanest, most useful truth about today, which I will carry in my heart, so I don’t fear “where no fear is.” “Thy will be done” with me and all of us this Monday, Lord, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
