15.

If children are we at our most natural, before the illusions of culture are handed to us, then it is much more natural to fear Monster than Man. The image of a shark is filled with terrors; a panther or bear makes us tremble. The image of Man--with his slow gait, his weak muscle, his thin pelt that cannot protect him from cold, his body devoid of teeth and claws--this image does not naturally make one tremble, compared with that of some large hairy creature with bloodthirsty fangs and fierce claws. But sometime in between Joshua's sixth birthday and his twelfth, he'd replaced his fear of monsters with a fear of that ultimate terror, that beast capable of angelic mercy and godlike intellect, but usually more given to every cruelty imaginable--he feared Man.

Just as an alien being from another star, as he is often depicted as being short, thin and weak--just as this image is more terrible than that of some tiger, who is likely to submit with a few cracks of the whip--so too do the beasts look upon men. Even in the wilderness they tremble at our sight, knowing as they do that terror of the magic that we weave. Should we see an alien from some distant world, most likely we'd be paralyzed in terror, trembling before the mysterious witchcraft they work. And we know they are cold and cruel, and we cannot but fear small men with bare blue skin more than some shark who has terrors equal to our own.

When a guerrilla sniper takes aim at a platoon US Marines, and is spotted and his abode is discovered, he cannot hide anywhere such that those quick-moving men shall not find him, and his weapon is helpless before their advance. For though even a thousand chimpanzees could not take the sniper and cut him off from life, these determined men in flak jackets and helmets shall move quick, like ghosts, determined and impossible to resist, until they storm his nest and make a corpse of him. And when the car thief runs from police such that these hard men chase after, though he shall get many and many blocks away from them, and hide even in a tiny little crevice of some darkened park, inside a crop of bushes or under some reedy swamp--yet they shall advance forward, and discover him, and he shall be unable to escape or resist in the slightest. These creatures that make magic and their hard steel, their magnetic communications, their movement with one accord and a single, determined will--these are the things that cannot be appeased, and if one does not submit to them, one shall not live, or shall live a prisoner till death. The day will certainly come when men shall know all, shall know every bead of sweat as soon as it forms upon every face of man and beast; and to be a criminal, a guerrilla, any sort of illegal life, shall be impossible to live and succeed in. And none shall disobey their master, though their master ultimate and complete they shall know nothing of, nor comprehend his name in the slightest.

With meditations such as these, though he knew not the day and hour, the young Joshua feared beasts and things with claws no more; but put on a new garment, and replaced his old clothes with new ones; and thus did he fear Man more than Monster.

And there is a thing higher and more terrible than Man, or even the thin, pale blue flesh of the alien; and this thing we suppose loves us, against all evidence and every appearance. This thing is God--and God is not somewhere far away from this earth, nor is this world beyond his governance and uneven justice--as if this world were not real, and God did not rule all. And after this life and world he puts us not into any other, unless that other is governed by laws the same as those that govern earth, wherein evildoers are rewarded and saints are put to torture. For if we suspected this were against the law and will of God, we must also hold that this world is a kind of Other beyond his power and governance, which is impossible.

And so Joshua prayed to God not: "Deliver me from evil" but rather: "Have mercy on me"--for every injustice is God's own doing, and all the evils found on earth are equal to the evils found in any other place, including the exalted gardens in the stars. And this world is a true and real world, governed by principles unjust and rulers arbitrary; and the heavens are no different in the slightest, wherein saints become despised and evildoers are triumphant. In this way Joshua feared God, and knew God's injustice, and comprehended him better than any minister or priest.

Thus he prayed, offering supplication in exchange for mercy--and he knew every evil was God's will and God's doing; and he understood that the fear of God celebrated by the Law and Prophets implicated this very being with evil, that this fear was justified and prudent. "But if evil reins in this cosmos let it," said a wise man once; "for you cannot erase one drop of innocent blood by shutting the eyes and uttering 'It cannot be, for the world must be perfect.' "