Christmas: More Than ‘Wonder & Awe’
Rene Girard, Part VII (Series Finale!) — Aristotle, the NAP & the Healthy Kind of Fear
Articles in the Rene Girard series:
Part I — Ancient Memes & Modern ‘Lawfare’
Part II — Simple Things Replicate; Complex Things Grow
Part III — Antivirus Mindware
Part IV — ♪♫ ‘We Built This City …’ ♪♫
Part V — Jesus Christ, Memelord?
Part VI — Does God Accept You As You Are?
Part VII (Series Finale!) — Christmas: More Than ‘Wonder & Awe’ [YOU ARE HERE!]
I help teach a course at my parish for adults who are curious about Christianity. One of my favorite lessons involves the seven “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” which are the way we describe seven core faculties that help us develop our conscience and willpower.
Though I’m not very visually expressive in most of my life, including my teaching style, I break the mold for this lesson and use some props:
A flashlight
A thick rubber band
A directional compass
A set of prayer beads
And then I get to the final visual aid, for a faculty traditionally called Fear of the Lord, but often renamed to Wonder and Awe (because many modern people don’t like the word “fear”).
I introduce it with a short personal story, about visiting a friend in the hospital the day after she had given birth to her first child. This was the first newborn I’d seen up close! And I was asked, to my surprise, if I wanted to hold the baby.
At this point in the storytelling, I bring the final prop out of the bag — a doll that looks like a baby — and continue my anecdote. I had never held a newborn and was apprehensive about it. But not wanting to be rude, I agreed. I nervously sat on a chair and paid close attention to how I should arrange my arms to receive this one-day-old boy.
I had Fear of the Baby.
Did I expect the baby to hurt me? By now, my audience of students are all grinning, if not laughing. No, of course I didn’t think the baby would hurt me. My “fear of the baby” was that I didn’t want anything bad to happen to the baby!
To be or not to be responsible?
Yes, I felt some wonder and awe when holding a newborn. But I can also feel wonder and awe when I’m entertained or amused. I’ve even had wonder and awe at a well-executed card trick; “Whoa! That IS my card! How did you do that?!”
Wonder and awe only help with morality if accompanied by something much more important: being filled with a sense of responsibility at the gravity of a situation.
Fear of the Lord takes the emotional reaction of wonder and awe, and coheres it with reasoning and character to form a moral imperative. Think of Aristotle’s classical Logos (reasoning), Ethos (character), and Pathos (emotion) simultaneously persuading your own behavior.
There are also echoes of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) for anarchist/voluntarist folks, and the “First, do no harm” mantra for medical professionals.
Start with this understanding of a person’s vulnerability, add in the positive aspects of love and dignity, expand it all the way to the scope of the Divine, and you arrive at the healthy kind of fear: You don’t want to let down a good God who loves you.
And this brings us to today’s celebration of the Nativity of Jesus Christ, better known as Christmas (and it’s not a “repurposed” pagan feast!). God takes on human form the way we all do: small and vulnerable, growing in His mother Mary’s womb before finally emerging to face the world as a still-mostly-helpless newborn.
The first people to meet God-as-human encounter Him not as a cause for the “afraid” kind of fear, but as a little child who fills them with a sense of responsibility at the gravity, the importance, the ultimate beauty of being human.
The goat & the good
Dec. 25 is also the birthday of the late French anthropologist Rene Girard, who would’ve turned 101 years old on the day this article publishes. I read Girard’s book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, and discussed his ideas in two different interviews (see Sep. 15, 2024, and Oct. 9, 2024, in my list of podcast appearances).
Girard found, across cultures, patterns of destructive behaviors and the rituals meant to mitigate them. He described these as “mimetic” cycles, often driven by emotion and passed like a contagion from person to person.
In the climaxes of these cycles, people would project their weaknesses onto either “scapegoats” to be banished from their midst or sacrificial victims to be killed. It was a way to pacify any feelings of guilt, never having to hold oneself personally accountable.
Girard saw the Gospels as the antidote to the mimetic cycles and their scapegoating and victimizing of people. Jesus models and teaches a robust morality capable of riding the seas of emotion and preventing the waves from cresting into violence and manipulation.
It’s a vision of our fellow humans as subjects with dignity, rather than objects of envy.
It’s a healthy kind of fear, not a sickly cowardice.
And it’s a good conclusion to this seven-part series, which has explored:
how simpler ideas spread in ways people can’t always control, and the extra time and effort needed to develop and share deeper, more complex aspects of being …
the possibility that any idea can be harmful if it stays at the meme level and dissuades us from honest self-reflection …
Jesus’ better solutions to building community, to planting seeds for growth, and to fostering a genuine love that seeks dynamic flourishing, not complacency …
and today, finally, the gift of individual responsibility that moves us to protect the vulnerable and exalt their dignity.
In this season of “wonder and awe,” realize there’s more to your will and conscience than temporarily pacifying or amusing yourself, especially if such behavior involves scapegoating and victimizing others.
There are virtues to cultivate, vices to outgrow, an experience of the Transcendent to explore, and a healthy sense of gravity and purpose (among other “gifts”) to inspire you.
A Blessed Christmas to all!
Concluding thoughts
Ever get nervous holding a baby?
Do you experience the good kind of fear in your life?
What do you think of this as the final piece in the Rene Girard series?
Share your thoughts in the Comments section …
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Find the book, Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen:
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Excellent series! I’ll be diving in to both books, yours and Girard’s. Thank you!