Tumult and Disquiet

Man possesses a Divinitatis sensum: an awareness of divinity. This is the seed of all religion. Despite protestations against religion, men will worship something, even though they may strongly deny it. Some use this as a means of control (a swipe at Western Catholicism?) But in the end they cannot avoid a holy God from whom, deep down, they wish to escape.

For an ‘old dead guy’ this is pretty good! It has an amazingly contemporary feel to it. Calvin says of men in whose lives true religion is absent:

Subject, then, to many forms of wickedness they drag out their lives in ceaseless tumult and disquiet. (I.III.3)

If man is made to know God then it is of no surprise that when God is ignored then there is an unsettledness of spirit. Sounds like modern life. The constant grasping for more, the dissatisfaction in relationships, the ‘lets party’ attitude to life, the quest for ‘spiridualidy’. All ‘tumult and disquiet’.

Christians are not immune to this phenomenon. We are affected from within (our sinful nature) and without (we live in this unsettled world). Our end is to know God, but we too forget.