Dear Abner, I fear God and no one else.
The effect of this word transforms Abner. While he is an impatient, zealous, anxious and indecisive person, when he hears these words, he finds peace in his faith, and at that moment he trusts both himself and the power of the Almighty God. How does the 'fear of God' talk achieve this miraculous 'conversion to religion'?
Before his transformation, according to Abner, worldly life was full of dangers that made him tremble with fear, and he was waiting for God and his representatives, whom he considered to be on his side, to lend a helping hand and enable him to overcome the difficulties in the world.
When the worrying uncertainty of the realm of earthly dangers is pitted against the reassuringly peaceful love of the realm of theology, Joad is not content with trying to convince Abner that the divine forces are strong enough to overcome earthly turmoil.
He allays Abner's fears in a very different way: He presents God, the opposite of the world, as a being more frightening than all earthly dangers. And – this is the 'miracle' of the seam – this 'one more fear', this fear of God, retroactively changes the character of all other fears.Notes:
From the Supreme Hysteric
Turkish: Işık Barış Fidaner
Slavoj Žižek, ‘Variations of the mØther—The Two Sides of Perversion’
Slavoj Žižek, ‘Modalities of the Absolute’
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