NeoZine

The Flash

It happened in a remote desert in the American West. The vast desert was suffocated in nighttime silence and the darkness was blinding from rare clouds that smothered the stars like an evil presence. In the center of this wasteland stood a handful of men waiting silently but fidgeting or smoking. They were an elite group of scientists gathered from distant countries and gathered in this one spot in New Mexico. Years of theoretical calculations and engineering led to this moment of testing the world’s most expensive science. The budget surpassed the entire automobile industry, but it was still just a theory costing billions.

A gong shattered the silence from somewhere in the desert, and then silence fell again. Five more minutes. Dawn was an hour away, and they were exhausted but still tense and dreadful. Everyone knew this moment could split open a world inconceivable in human experience, but nobody could think of anything to say.

Then it happened: light filled the desert sky from horizon to horizon, far more brilliant than sunlight and it caramelized sand in 100-million-degree heat and the brightest light ever seen on earth. It would sear their eyes to the socket if not for thick welder glasses. Some girls in Hiroshima would soon be caught off-guard gazing with naked eyes at a silver dot gliding across the sky called the Enola Gay. That one American bomber unleashed more explosive power than a fleet of thousands.

The fuel of stars. They called it Trinity, where the first atomic bomb unleashed a dragon’s breath of heat bound inside the atom. The flash towered in a mushroom of purplish, dark radioactivity. The brilliance faded and a windstorm rolled across the desert and blasted the scientists, then passed. It was silent again, but not dark.

“I am death,” someone uttered, “the destroyer of worlds.” His name was Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist at Las Alamos where they built The Bomb in secrecy. Like many of the scientists he was a pacifist and a humanitarian never dreaming of unleashing atomic fire against men, women and children—but they did it at Hiroshima and again at Nagasaki.

A horrified Japanese emperor declared unconditional surrender, and then America faced the new world of atomic energy with ominous implications. This is when Dr. Oppenheimer and the other scientists suddenly grew fearful of the future:

Before we opened the door to this horrifying new world in which we live today, we should have knocked. But we have chosen to fall into the house together with the door. – J. Robert Oppenheimer, Atomic Energy Commission hearings^1^

The Quest

The “Father of the Atomic Bomb” grew to despise his title, but while isolated in Los Alamos he energized the scientists to work feverishly on The Bomb. After the war the public gasped at the beast he created, and Oppenheimer reversed course: the rest of his life was devoted to stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as if he could stuff the genie back into the bottle.

Why the inconsistency? As early as 1942 Oppenheimer was aware of the Hydrogen bomb and its near-infinite capacity for destruction, but he pressed forward and soothed squeamish scientists afraid of the implications. In the self-contained world of Las Alamos he thrived in his role as “Father of the Atomic Bomb.” It all made perfect sense.

Oppenheimer’s famous and confused life depicts The Quest: a lifetime struggling for significance. In Las Alamos he was The King, crowned with significance. Outside Las Alamos he fought for years against the misinterpretations and aspersions the public cast against him for The Bomb. He tried reaching for higher peaks of greatness, and became the first chairman of the new Atomic Energy Commission. From that platform he launched an effort to steer world powers and direct the future of mankind through international control of nuclear weapons. But from such lofty heights he also made political enemies, and they rallied and finally denounced him as a communist sympathizer during the “Red Scare” of the McCarthy era. The accusation was absurd, but reason and justice rarely prevail in such times.

The Quest for significance is the great motivation behind the feats of history. Ancient Pyramids and monolithic skyscrapers arise from a haunting drive in individuals and entire cultures for greatness. Everybody pursues The Quest because the alternative—a life of insignificance—is a prelude to death, and even the Bible agrees:

“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless! What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes.” – Ecclesiastes 1:2–4

Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” answers Solomon’s question, “What do people get for all their hard work?” Willy Loman was a salesman nearing retirement. His reached a tragic terminus in his complex life of “constantly insisting that he needed to ‘make it big within two weeks,’” and then The Quest drove him to suicide. Who can read Miller’s play without a twinge of heartbreak for this helpless man? We are “worth more dead than alive,” he concludes, and then takes his life. Even in death he was in hot pursuit of The Quest: he thought suicide would bring together people he knew from 40-odd years a salesman, and then he would be appreciated at least in their memories. But only his poor wife and two embittered sons attended. It was not The Quest he imagined.

T.S. Elliot depicts The Quest as always out of reach, just barely:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall.
…
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Across the ages figures like Willie Loman and J. Alfred Prufrock wasted their lives on The Quest because they refused to accept a simple, timeless truth: your significance is not self-determined. Rather, significance is determined by others. Oppenheimer fought vociferously against the popular opinion held of him, but despite his objections he is still The Father of the Atomic Bomb today. He was powerless to change it.

The Spark

It was God who placed this drive for significance deep in our hearts when He first created:

Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image…They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky…” God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals…” – Genesis 1:26–28 (NLT)

He also put a quest to rise above immediacy and behold a panorama:

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. – Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)

People may define significance differently, but everyone still defines it and pursues it. We must find it. We were designed for it, and without it life becomes so random and painful that people kill themselves or others or settle into a resigned, grinding death. Significance is the difference between humans and animals, so killing and eating fish is a world away from killing and eating humans. It is all a matter of significance.

Why did God give it?

Loving Significance

“You feel you’re worth something because someone big and important has loved you…When I’m bearing the cross, I don’t feel good, but I have significance in a relationship that moves me forward.” – R. Ankenman

The quest for significance in the Bible is sharply different from Miller’s salesman and all those others and it is refreshing:

“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand…”—Rom. 5:2

This “introduction by faith” means “the privilege of approach to a person of high rank.” (prosagōgēn in Greek—see BKC.) It means entering the throne room of the Creator Almighty, and the message is strewn across the Bible:

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, – Hebrews 10:19–20 (NASB)

Scores and scores of verses repeat it: our exalted, privileged and special relationship with the Creator God is a grand motivation not only because it means significance, but it means life actually works, and it overshadows “Tribulations”:

“…and we exult in hope of the glory of God…we also exult in our tribulations…we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” – Romans 5:3ff

Exult repeated three times “literally means ‘to boast’ or ‘exult’ here in a pure sense.” (see BKC—Kauchōmetha in Greek.) What a contrast to the depression of that salesman and Prufrock!

The significance when someone feels loved—not a mere abstraction, but an emotional, stirred heart—by someone as big and important as the Creator God creates power and courage to move against the uncertainties of life. Pufrock felt the opposite—”in short, I was afraid”–because the man in Elliot’s poem is lonely and tragic as he faces death. That salesman was isolated and inconsequential too.

Vast Reserves of Energy

The sense of greatness generated by love builds and builds reserves of courage able to brush aside opposition, which explains why Paul had such endurance:

Great is my confidence in you; great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort; I am overflowing with joy in all our affliction. – 2 Corinthians 7:4 (NASB)

Such courageous energy was also described by Christ available to

“They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over.” – Luke 6:38 (NASB)

Christ lived and died filled with reserves of courage:

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrews 12:2 (NASB)

These vast reserves are not idealistic because they are poured out in measurable, physical activity:

Take a little boy, for example. He goes into the great, green, beautiful world. He bumps his head and discovers the world is mean and nasty to him! So he goes running back inside the house to where mommy is and says, “Please kiss it, mommy!” What he’s saying is, “Mommy, prove to me it’s worth going out into the world and getting hurt.” – R. Ankenman

Those without love are painfully aware that love provides the energy and courage to face a world of uncertainty, and they’re crippled without it:

Consider a home where there isn’t this kind of nurturing love. Here’s where the little boy makes noise and the mom watching TV is always saying, “Shutup!” Do you think Johnny wants to go out into that big world full of nasty dogs? No sir! “Those dogs scare me!” He has no security. A stranger walks into the room and he heads to the corner…He’s afraid and doesn’t have motivation to go anywhere. He needs to feel loved and it must be emotional, or else he’ll feel angry, negative emotions instead. – bibtex:Ankenman-Disturbance

Uranium

Love relationships deliver energy and motivation.

Uranium delivers an atomic blast when it reaches critical mass. Only when highly compressed does uranium gain enough critical mass to release its energy. It’s a picturesque analogy of the unbelievable power of love, because when people draw closer together, the significance of their relationships increase the emotional yield, and more emotional yield means greater motivation to engage other people, which of course means building even greater significance. So it grows and grows: love is a dynamic force that yields more dynamic force.

This increasing momentum and output of love is the heartbeat of Christian sanctification, and also our greatest difficulty. It requires spiritual strength:

and may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you;
1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NASB)

This is why relationships often require time and effort before they become rewarding. Until the relationship becomes significant, the emotional reward is minimal. When a stranger says, “I love you, brother,” it not only sounds weird, it also feels weird, unlike love. But investment greatly increases the significance of a relationship – as it does with almost anything.

When relationships fail to deliver on the promise of large emotional returns, it means a greater investment of time and effort is required. People often take the opposite tact: if a relationship is not rewarding, it’s time to move along and start fresh. But a new relationship lacks significance and can’t possibly yield the emotional impact required by God’s blueprints for our hearts. Relationship-hoppers must sooner or later grow depressed and worn-out from relationships.

How foolishly people get sucked into Hollywood fantasies of easy, automatic love! Can anything free and easy have any significance? It should be obvious that only significant relationships deliver significant impact, but somehow Hollywood seems to snare a lot of victims. “Free and easy” describes dreams, not relationships. The young and naive tend to live floating on dream-clouds, but unfortunately modern culture is breeding a growing population of naive older people.

Paul was a master-builder of significant relationships, and watch what he did:

We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too…Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. – 1 Thessalonians 2:8,11

As a result of this extensive (even painful!) investment, watch Paul describe the emotional impact:

For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming? For you are our glory and joy. – 1 Thessalonians 2:19–20 (NASB)

The investment made in love delivers significance and impact not only today (“you are our glory and joy”), but the future looks nice and bright as well (“in the presence of our Lord”), which also delivers immediate emotional impact (“Who is [now/today] our hope or joy…?”). Love is incredible in the way it builds and builds emotional energy.

Depleted Uranium

These emotional reserves deliver the emotional capacity to handle stress, adversity and the energy to delve into someone’s life with genuine concern. But that last thing—loving someone else—requires more energy than the stress of the workplace. It is possible to leave work at the office, but emotional ties cannot be cut so easily. People are immensely difficult. They resist or react so strongly they suck the life straight out of a relationship. Some people live in marriages fueled by depleted uranium, which is quite different from the explosive type, and so very poisonous!

It happens this way: lacking emotional reserves—or to conserve emotional energy—people relate with a token, incredibly trite or sterile effort which sets a pattern in-motion. It means emotional reserves are low and getting lower while fuel is spent. The more someone withdraws relationally, the more insignificant relationships become. Insignificant relationships deliver less emotional punch, which means dwindling emotional reserves, which means more withdrawal, which explains someone like Willy Lomax. He ended up in emotional bankruptcy and a very fragile world.

The absence of these emotional reserves is called depression. It often hits a young adult when they move out of the house and try to live on their own, or even earlier if their home life suddenly collapses, as when a divorce splits the home:

Depression is when a car runs out of gas. Way back when cars first appeared an old-timer cowboy might buy one, and when it runs out of gas he kicks it with his spurs, but it doesn’t work. This is like someone depending on their old emotional life [from growing up] which used to work, but doesn’t anymore. – bibtex:Ankenman-Interview

When “a car runs out of gas” a solution is needed before all initiative gets arrested. People find other ways to build significance without having to depend on anyone:

What’s the worse negative emotion to feel? Depression. It’s the ultimate of miseries…There’s two forms of depression: I don’t feel anything and I don’t have anything. Temporary depression comes from things like mourning or grieving over someone’s death…You’re missing someone. This is temporary, however, because there’s something permanent underneath this feeling. The worse kind is the deep depression, which says, “There isn’t anyone who cares for me.” We’ll do anything to keep from going there. Always consider this: what is this person doing to keep from falling into depression? – Ankenman-Terms

What do people do to keep from falling into depression?

Related posts:

1. Reality Parenting
2. The Demands of Loneliness