The Hope of Tawḥid
I seek refuge in my God, from Satan the accursed.
This will be a short post. I think the recent behavior of Donald Trump speaks for itself. Again, I don’t think this is new or particularly extraordinary — it is merely the result of a bloated empire in decline, grasping at straws for a “Golden Age” that never existed. It’s sad, really. I’m watching what is effectively a massive geo-political temper trantrum, resulting in millions of foreign workers (many of them completely legal) losing their employment, homes, and residency; millions of American citizens losing the social programs they rely on and Gaza being potentially turned into a consumerist hell-scape. I just watched a video of Trump, Zelensky, and Vance have a highly unprofessional argument in the Oval Office, broadcasted for the whole world to see. Trump never left reality TV, he merely brought it with him in the most powerful office on the planet. And people are shocked that the Democrats have done nothing to fight this. Those who are surprised haven’t been paying attention. There is no opposition party. There is only the American Consumer Machine. Biden sowed the seed, Trump delivered the growth.
Like all things, Trump’s days are numbered. There’s a reason why the Hebrew words for mortal (’anūš) and man (’enōš) are from the same root. All men come to an end. His successor may be better, he may be worse. All we know is that there will be someone else. The United States will not last forever. All empires come to an end. There will come a day when the US is as historically relevant as the Roman Empire, and it will be studied by individuals thousands of years into the future (if our species actually makes it that far). All I can do is hope against hope, show mercy to my neighbor and tend to any suffering in my purview. It is also incumbent upon me to proclaim and to teach wisdom of old, from the Ancient of Days who transcends human history and never passes away. That is the hope of what in Arabic is called Tawḥid — the one reference set as the authority over you. God is not found from within — he is outside of you. You have to hear his voice when it is intoned from the Minaret!
I have been thinking about Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians a lot lately. I think it is his most iconoclastic work. There is no sophia except Christ Crucified, and there is no logos except the logos of the cross! There is no god but God! One God, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Paul channeled the same “monotheism” of the Hebrew prophets. That word “monotheism” is helpful because it is not just about one reference (out of many) but the only (monos) reference. That is because there are no other gods that are like the scriptural God. This is not an appeal to a transcendental principle… this is an appeal to scripture’s one and only reference. The force of scripture is submission to a God, who is not a transient “ontological” being a la Plato, but is encountered by a scrap of papyrus written with letters that humiliate you when you exalt yourself and lifts up the poor you destroy. The hope of Tawḥid is for man is to see himself as he really is, as Ecclesiastes so beautifully does. Scripture projects God and outside it, there is no God — only our Platonic imagination.
I only have hope in the Torah, scripturally understood.