Professional Life of Jonathan Edwards - Essay Example

?Order 569592 Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards was one of the most prominent leaders of “The Great Awakening” that took place in Colonial America.“The Great Awakening” was a fire and brimstone approach for the revival of Puritanism in Colonial America. Edwards felt that this society was on a path to hell and through his fiery preaching, he could scare people out of hell. Today, those preachers who preach in the same fashion are called evangelicals. They and some parts of the media exploit disasters. The preachers do it to frighten people; the media does it for ratings; all they talk about are wars, natural disasters and crime that seem to be running rampant in society and how they are signs of the “last days.” Christian evangelicals say that God sends a message of His displeasure through natural disasters. Yet many people question why a supposedly loving God would allow such things as devastating as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis to occur. Edwards and the evangelical preachers of today answer that human lives are at the hands of God. They claim God is angry at the sin of the people. Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” just like much of the evangelical preaching of today, was composed to put fear in many people who are in doubt of their faith and worried about the seemingly upcoming end of times.  Edward’s uses some standard rhetorical methods to make his point: repetition, hyperbole, and parallelism just as many speakers have always done and still do today. The repetition of phrases such as: “As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning.” In this sentence, Edwards repeats the word “fall” or “falls” four times. The word itself has meaning beyond just the act of falling in a slippery spot. The connotation of “the fall from grace,” as in the Garden of Eden and the state of humankind, is pretty clear. But, the concept of falling itself is frightening. One of the scariest dreams people have is the one where they are falling. Who has not woken in fright from a realistic dream of falling? Many believe that if the dreamer hits bottom, that is the moment of death. So, besides reinforcing the metaphor of slipping and falling from a slippery place, Edwards’ repetition of the word “fall” also emphasizes other associations people make with the word. Through hyperbole, another rhetorical device, Edwards dramatizes his point and reinforces the fright he means to instill as a persuasive tactic. As all good speakers do, he tries to paint a visual picture with his words for his audience. When he uses melodramatic phrases like: “The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back,” clearly he is exaggerating. God is not standing above the audience, angrily waving a sword, ready to swipe off the head of someone who further irritates Him. Although, one can picture the audience shrinking their necks and looking over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of an angry god. Clearly, it is tactics to frighten people out of their complacency about what Edwards deems their evil deeds and turn them, in fright, to God. Unfortunately, as a rhetorical technique, hyperbole should be used sparingly or it loses its effect, and Edwards overdid it as many evangelical preachers of today do also. This tendency to overdo such approaches makes more cynical people believe that the overuse of hyperbole to frighten listeners is not done out of genuine concern for the sinner’s soul, but more out of the speaker’s own agenda—greed, power, or attention—whatever it may be. However, Edwards is a consummate speaker and he knows how to temper the terror with a soothing cadence. One of the most literary techniques Edwards uses is parallelism which has the effect of emphasis and repetition, but also of making the prose he speaks sound more poetic. The balancing of phrases adds a lyrical rhythm to the words and lulls the listener. It is easy to listen to something like this: Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Every one lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. Not only does Edwards repeat the word “flatters” followed by a sentence with the same grammatical structure, but he also uses the same grammatical structure after other verbs: depends, intends, contrives. Edwards uses the parallel grammar to repeat the same thought, using different words to evoke it. The fact that he throws in the rhyming words “matters,” “depends,” and “intends” does not hurt the rhetoric either. A listener can be easily lulled into following along aurally and the repetition of the concept in different yet poetic words reinforces the emotional message. That same type of emotional message is repeated every Sunday from many a pulpit in the United States even though much of the population is now educated and much more skeptical about the intentions of one who would use a position of power and rhetorical tactics to scare people. Yet people like Fred Phelps the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church whose members stand outside of the funerals of fallen war heroes, brandishing signs that say: “God Hates Fags” and shrieking their message of damnation for those who would tolerate homosexuality because those who belong to the Westboro Baptist Church believe it is evil. Their message is that because the United States in general is becoming more tolerant and progressive in its politics that God is allowing soldiers to die. Their hate message extends also to the funerals of soldiers of the Catholic faith where they wield signs that refer to the priests as pedophiles. While lawmakers have tried to limit the Westboro Baptist Church’s access to soldiers’ funerals, the Supreme Court has ruled that they are only exercising their First Amendment right to free speech however heinous that may be. Most Americans disagree with such Westboro Baptist Church’s methods and see them as the evil ones, not the people against whom they protest. Even though that blatant type of scare tactic seems to be solely for attention as it has backfired in its attempt to “bring Americans back to God,” others still use the same sort of rhetoric as Edwards did. However, those who would continue to use the scare tactic to satisfy their own personal agenda have gotten savvier about how they do it. Some wait until the nation is reeling in shock and sadness from a catastrophic event like the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The whole world watched the media exploit the horror over and over as the replayed the planes flying into the World Trade Center and the buildings falling down hundreds of times. Then the evangelicals went to work, spouting their message of fear. The Reverend Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, and the ACLU among others for making God mad and causing Him to stop granting His grace and protection to the United States. Had he still been alive on September 11, 2001, Edwards may have said something like this: God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is nothing to make it appear, that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy any wicked man, at any moment. All the means that there are of sinners going out of the world, are so in God's hands, and so universally and absolutely subject to his power and determination, that it does not depend at all the less on the mere will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell, than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned in the case. Instead of viewing the terrorist attacks of that horrible day as the work of religious extremists of a different sort who saw it as God’s will, the religious extremist in America agreed that it was God’s will and blamed those who they deem as sinners for the horror instead of others like them who would frighten people into performing such ghastly and evil acts in the name of God. As shocked and disgusted as the nation and the world was about the 9/11 attacks and the way some evangelicals exploited the horror to promote their message of fear, politicians are still using crises to scare people. Just last month after the earthquake that shook the entire east coast of the United States and Hurricane Irene, which followed within a week afterwards, Michele Bachman, a candidate for the Republican party’s nominee for president of the United States used the two disasters to evoke the wrath of God. Instead of saying that God was angry at gays and lesbians or abortionists and the ACLU, Bachman said that God was mad at Democrats, and one in particular, the president of the United States, Barrack Obama. Bachman said that the natural disasters were messages from God to those politicians with whom she disagrees that they should agree with her because apparently invoking the name of God makes one’s politics right. Edwards may not have been political but he also believed in “an elect” as Bachman seems to think she and her believers are. Edwards said “God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great out-pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles' days; the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded.” This refers to “the last days” theology that says Jesus will soon rapture His “elect” to heaven and the rest of humankind, except for 144,000 Jews, will be destined for hell for eternity. Edwards thought it imminent in his day, 250 years ago, and many evangelicals think it is imminent today. The imminence of the rapture and ultimate damnation of those who are not saved fuels much of the scare tactic used today by politicians. President Bush believed he was bringing about the rapture of saints by starting a war in the Middle East for example. Even if they truly believe they are doing the right thing, the thing God wants them to do, surely evangelicals cannot continue to believe that scare tactics work. Their effects are emotional and transitory. Only logical reasoning and facts can truly persuade a person to change their beliefs. Maybe instead of scare tactics, Edwards and those who follow his example today should have tried love and kindness. Read More