'Predator Day'*

Recently I've been reading Atwood's 'The Year of the Flood,' the latest of her speculative fiction novels. It features the God's Gardeners, a religious sect devoted to environmentalist principles and preparing for survival in the predicted holocaust referred to as 'The Waterless Flood'. The God's Gardeners remind me of some left-wing church congregations I've belonged to (though they don't really do the Jesus thing). I actually find the theology in the sermons of the sect's leader, Adam One, reasonably sound. In the book, one of the group's feast days is called Predator Day. In his sermon on this day, Adam One says,

'Thus on Predator Day we meditate on the Alpha Predator aspects of God. The suddenness and ferocity with which an apprehension of the Divine may appear to us; our smallness and fearfulness - may I say, our Mouselikeness - in the face of such Power; our feelings of individual annihilation in the brightness of that splendid Light. God walks in the tender dawn Gardens of the mind, but He also prowls in its night Forests. He is not a tame Being, my Friends: he is a wild Being...' (Atwood 2009, p.346)

The link between these ideas and my feelings of fear in God's presence is obvious...

However, a couple of people I know - a psychologist and a friend - have suggested that fear is only about God and spirituality on the surface, that on a deeper level, it may be the result of an event or pattern of events in childhood. This psychologist believed that my fear was brought about by a feeling of distance from both of my parents as a young child, and that this would have felt tantamount to having no parents at all. From an evolutionary standpoint, he argued, this would be like being a very small, defenseless animal, unprotected from any predator that might swoop down and snap me up. According to this psychologist, my fear is at root a fear of death.

My friend wonders why I turned to a fundamentalist form of faith to begin with, and suggests that the reason for this and the cause of my anxiety may be one and the same. It makes sense that I would follow a religious path that heavily emphasises the gaining of eternal life.

So now, the image of God as Alpha Predator resonates with me, and causes far less anxiety than other images. Is this an unhealthy thing, the result of childhood issues that need to be untangled? Maybe, but I believe there is also wisdom in this picture of the Divine.

*(Atwood 2009, pp.345-348)

Atwood, M. (2009). The Year of the Flood. London, Berlin and New York: Bloomsbury.




[Image of Aslan from 'The Chronicles of Narnia'], downloaded 10th January, 2010, from:
http://entertainment.desktopnexus.com/wallpaper/71566/.