Frost's sonnet reveals a noteworthy pattern.
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Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small. ~Robert Frost
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small. ~Robert Frost
Reflection II on Robert Frost's poem Design
Deism/Malevolence vs. Hopeful Imagination
If there is a Designer what sort of design is this that includes both beauty and tragedy? Is the Divine Maker that of the distant clock maker who has wound the world up and let it go to run its course? Or one who has set everything in motion by good design but then lost control of his creation unable to “steer” it unto a good end? If so, then God would be impotent and unworthy of praise; design exists, but it doesn’t “govern” as hinted in the last line of the sonnet. If good doesn’t “govern” then tragedy can only have the final word. If we believe this way, our lives should look something like this: when bad things happen, tragic things, we throw our hands up in the air and say: "Well, things operate by the laws of nature alone. We must be prepared for good and bad according to nature's laws." We may succomb to a kind of Stoicism. What appeared to be good and innocent, however, was really in the end evil, because eventually all is lost. The anthropods in the sonnet are cruelly lured into a nefarious fate through an innocent looking flower, ironically called "heal-all." "Heal-all" was originally meant to help and to heal, but instead it destroys. If all we have is Nature to read and not God's revelation of Himself to us via a written and spoken word, we are left with simply Nature's Laws and nothing more. If our worldview does not contain the revealed character of the God of the Psalmists, our observations of nature could lead us down this path of living with a remote God, so we too, would keep our distance and bother not God with our small or large joys and sorrows. Neither would we sing praise of the Psalmists, for we do not experience God at work with purpose in our lives or in the greater world.
Perhaps we are not as docile as the those who keep their distance from God. Maybe we come at God by way of different approach as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick-with a spear in our hand, ready to accuse and destroy, for we have wrestled with the cruelty that we have experienced or that close loved ones have experienced. Like Ahab in Moby Dick or Captain Dan in Forrest Gump, we may have lost limbs, physically or emotionally. Or in observing the horrors of nature, we forget the unexplainable wonder and desire for goodness and order in things both great and small.
Right on the heels of the distant god of Deism, is the assumption of a malevolent Designer. In this interpretation of nature God is the ultimate stoic fiend, who “steered the white moth thither” and cared not for it’s snuffed out life, who employed a “design of darkness to appall.” Hence, Dawkins, the infamous atheist, would be justified in his conclusion that any idea of a personal God could only be identified as a bully who sets arbitrary limits on human behavior. Or consider these words from a Facebook page entitled Malevolent Design: The death of a loving God: "Through logic, you can see that the church concept of an all-loving heavenly father doesn’t hold water. If a divine Maker fashioned everything that exists, he designed breast cancer for women, childhood leukemia, cerebral palsy, leprosy, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, and Down’s syndrome. He mandated foxes to rip rabbits apart (bunnies emit a terrible shriek at that moment) and cheetahs to slaughter fawns. No human would be cruel enough to plan such horrors. If a supreme being did so, he’s a monster, not an all-merciful father," James Haught, (humanist agnostic, quoted from blog post). The presence of evil can drive a wedge for some into the very heart of the idea that there can be a God who brought a good world into being, and that He has good intentions. And those who give this argument often feel obliged to throw spears at the character of the God of the Bible, to literally "hunt" Him down and destroy any positive assertion that the Bible makes about God. Agnostic arguments like these are feeling Frost's question.
But Frost reaches a little more into the possibility of paradox-can there be a designer when a wondrous world exists but with death and tragedy? Like Blake's famous poem, Tyger Tyger "Did he who make the Lamb make thee?" Is this the same God to soothe and to terrify? Frost reflects much more imaginatively than the agnostic. He cannot seem to get away from design, but he can't answer directly the question: Is it random or is it cruel, because I cannot as yet declare that it is all completely good? But Frost's spider web gives us a glimpse of a noteworthy pattern, hinting for us that we, in experience, distinguish between "good" and "evil." What if the fact that we can imagine a world without suffering, violence, disease or futility, leads us to a different kind of God than either distant or malevolent?
Frost even entertains the atheist’s assumption that God is non-existent: “If design govern in a thing so small.” In Frost's day Darwin's ideas had given society the theory that they needed to embrace a world without God or design. Richard Dawkins, who embraces both Darwinism and atheism, surmised that the “universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference,” (River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1995.) Dawkins seems to leave out the possibility that if man feels his purposelessness, it alludes to the existence of "purpose." Many today who accept Darwinism or evolution cling firmly to the belief that life has meaning and purpose, because they feel it, see it, and experience it in their everyday lives. They see the intricacy and design of life and take pleasure in so much good. They experience the spiritual aspects of life like love, hatred of evils and feelings that they cannot see. Yet, it seems that many have never explored the consequences of evolution as a philosophy, what does it mean? What is its influence on the human heart? Dawkins is honest and right about a world of evolutionary origin- one who sees a Godless, random world cannot truly claim to discern the presence of evil or even the good; they cannot make moral claims absolutely, or at least they should not.
Thankfully, Frost finds evidence that is contrary. Although the poem experiences darkness, it cannot seem to resign itself to that darkness based on the evidence of nature to contain both good and evil, that cannot be so easily dismissed. Frost is aware that to not ask the question about what sort of design this is, is to resign oneself to “pitiless indifference,” but he feels too much the lack of perfection to remain unperturbed by it. Frost sees "good" and "evil" and seems to imply that he would rather that one prevailed over the other. That is why his last line is so ambiguous.
He is at least looking at the natural world to gain a clue of what it represents, like his Puritan-tainted forebear, Melville, for whom nature points beyond itself. In Design, Frost has picked up a little of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, only less angrily and more playfully, in suggesting that God is in some way culpable for evil. He does not want to "destroy" God, he wants to wrestle. This might get us somewhere beyond indifference, to at least a God whom we can approach.
But repentance is not something that those who take a deistic, agnostic, or atheistic approach to God and the world, can experience. Jacob himself couldn't experience it until he "knew" the very personal God, the God who came to Him: until he knew God beyond his own experience, until he knew God as God chose to reveal Himself to Jacob, until he knew his own position before God, his utter inability to make things go his way in the presence of the Divine One. Up until this encounter with the angel, Jacob had manipulated every other situation in his life for his own advantage. This time he accepts God's provision, with a heart humbled by God, by asking and receiving.
Right on the heels of the distant god of Deism, is the assumption of a malevolent Designer. In this interpretation of nature God is the ultimate stoic fiend, who “steered the white moth thither” and cared not for it’s snuffed out life, who employed a “design of darkness to appall.” Hence, Dawkins, the infamous atheist, would be justified in his conclusion that any idea of a personal God could only be identified as a bully who sets arbitrary limits on human behavior. Or consider these words from a Facebook page entitled Malevolent Design: The death of a loving God: "Through logic, you can see that the church concept of an all-loving heavenly father doesn’t hold water. If a divine Maker fashioned everything that exists, he designed breast cancer for women, childhood leukemia, cerebral palsy, leprosy, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, and Down’s syndrome. He mandated foxes to rip rabbits apart (bunnies emit a terrible shriek at that moment) and cheetahs to slaughter fawns. No human would be cruel enough to plan such horrors. If a supreme being did so, he’s a monster, not an all-merciful father," James Haught, (humanist agnostic, quoted from blog post). The presence of evil can drive a wedge for some into the very heart of the idea that there can be a God who brought a good world into being, and that He has good intentions. And those who give this argument often feel obliged to throw spears at the character of the God of the Bible, to literally "hunt" Him down and destroy any positive assertion that the Bible makes about God. Agnostic arguments like these are feeling Frost's question.
But Frost reaches a little more into the possibility of paradox-can there be a designer when a wondrous world exists but with death and tragedy? Like Blake's famous poem, Tyger Tyger "Did he who make the Lamb make thee?" Is this the same God to soothe and to terrify? Frost reflects much more imaginatively than the agnostic. He cannot seem to get away from design, but he can't answer directly the question: Is it random or is it cruel, because I cannot as yet declare that it is all completely good? But Frost's spider web gives us a glimpse of a noteworthy pattern, hinting for us that we, in experience, distinguish between "good" and "evil." What if the fact that we can imagine a world without suffering, violence, disease or futility, leads us to a different kind of God than either distant or malevolent?
Atheism/Indifference vs. Nature as Symbol
Thankfully, Frost finds evidence that is contrary. Although the poem experiences darkness, it cannot seem to resign itself to that darkness based on the evidence of nature to contain both good and evil, that cannot be so easily dismissed. Frost is aware that to not ask the question about what sort of design this is, is to resign oneself to “pitiless indifference,” but he feels too much the lack of perfection to remain unperturbed by it. Frost sees "good" and "evil" and seems to imply that he would rather that one prevailed over the other. That is why his last line is so ambiguous.
He is at least looking at the natural world to gain a clue of what it represents, like his Puritan-tainted forebear, Melville, for whom nature points beyond itself. In Design, Frost has picked up a little of Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, only less angrily and more playfully, in suggesting that God is in some way culpable for evil. He does not want to "destroy" God, he wants to wrestle. This might get us somewhere beyond indifference, to at least a God whom we can approach.
A Wrestle with the God Beyond our Own Experience
The God of the Psalmists is also the God of Jacob. We can ask questions of the God of Jacob; ultimately, the God of Jacob approaches us. Jacob wrestled with God's angel in the middle of the night in order to receive a blessing. Jacob sought to know- "If there is purpose in life, bless me with its revelation." But in order to receive this blessing he, as all humans do, needed a touch and a revelation from God. It couldn't be discovered by Nature or by the human mind unaided. The touch of God wounds. The touch of God exposed Jacob's frailty, his "lameness" or "pitifulness" before the perfect, Holy God, before receiving the blessing of God who is Christ, the fruit of repentance. The God of the Psalmists and of Jacob is never indifferent, but indeed shows pity on those who have lost their way because of sin, who walk in darkness, unable to find life's purpose without God intervening, unable to overcome the effects of evil in the world on their own.But repentance is not something that those who take a deistic, agnostic, or atheistic approach to God and the world, can experience. Jacob himself couldn't experience it until he "knew" the very personal God, the God who came to Him: until he knew God beyond his own experience, until he knew God as God chose to reveal Himself to Jacob, until he knew his own position before God, his utter inability to make things go his way in the presence of the Divine One. Up until this encounter with the angel, Jacob had manipulated every other situation in his life for his own advantage. This time he accepts God's provision, with a heart humbled by God, by asking and receiving.
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