The Fear of Nothingness

Why I'd rather be a nest than a branch in the vine of Jesus.

Photo by Mary Skovpen on Unsplash

One metaphor that should startle us—and once did—was put forcibly by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die” (Cost of Discipleship). It is a modern take on Jesus, who said starkly: “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”  And yet we reverently but calmly go on and on about how we need to die to self— no longer thinking much about that little word.  It is a metaphor that inspires us sentimentally, but it no longer implants in us the fear of God.  We’ve tamed the metaphor: “Well, Jesus doesn’t really mean die; he doesn’t really mean we have to lose our lives.  We get to keep on living; only we need to try very hard to live for him.”

But there is another metaphor that Jesus used, and that the saints picked up, which speaks to the same idea as death to self—that is, profound humility—which today startles and frightens those who live in this therapeutic age: Nothingness.  “The Son can do nothing of his own accord,” Jesus said (John 5:30). And he added that everything he has comes from the Father (John 17:7), implying he had nothing without the Father and could do nothing without the Father.

This leads even great Protestant preachers to wax eloquent about Christ being all (Col. 3:11), the positive corollary to thinking ourselves as nothing:

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