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The Triumphant God

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Psalm 47: 'For the Lord most high is terrible, he is a great King over all the earth'.

Two psalms successively chant the grandeur of God. He rules over All-under-Heaven. As the proclamation of right lays the foundation for conflict, the Chinese belief in the Son-of-Heaven as the rightful ruler over the whole ecumene could not perform what the invisible God could do. Invisibility protect the potential yet to be revealed in the future, and in return requires faith in the invisible lord. This is the logic that sustains the faith of the believers, in the darkest hours, and the most testing times. To subdue a community founded on such faith, the authority of this Earth would have to continue convincing the believers that the invisible one does not exist, by staying invisible. That is the meaning of persecution, a provocation to the invisible one, as 'I dare you to show yourself'. The prosecution address not the prosecuted, but the savior of the prosecuted. In this sense, dictatorial rule situates itself in the struggle with the invisible one, and acquire a theological essence. Dictators are putting their bet on their faith, too. The question for the lovers of humanity is therefore, rather, what is our place in this battle. The revelation of the invisible one would be the end of battle, which is entirely out of our hand. The persecuted, not knowing the role of their faith, would be fighting a battle which is different to the one between the persecutor and the invisible savior. Simply waiting for the invisible one reduces the persecuted to the status of casualty, and deprives them the richer fruit of their suffering. How the faith in a triumphant yet invisible savior could engage in this battle between the destroyer of creation and the creator?
  A common answer is to love thy enemy. That means recognising the enmity while refusing it. Does that mean the persecuted also lay a certain faith in the persecutor, believing that their love could work influence?
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Wealth does not redeem my soul

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Psalm 49: 'But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave; for he shall receive me'. Wealth redeems not. God does. The psalm announces the authority of God over Death. The ultimate forces. Interestingly their realms seems to have only the grave as border. Death takes all alive, to grave. God takes from Grave. We the living face only Death, or nothing. In this sense, wealth is enjoyable only when we face nothing. The pleasure of wealth belongs to those under the illusion of eternal life. Yet it started with God taking one from the grave. In this sense, one does not know eternal life unless seeing death. Eternal, therefore, does not reach to the past, and eternal life actually means not really temporal unlimitedness, but the overcoming of Death.  The realisation of the meaningless of wealth, or the might of Death, renders sorrow to all that lives. The joy in God is therefore not so much joy, but the power that sustains us through this life, with an understanding of the s...
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