“I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemy without cause; they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, I am lost. I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’ You have taken up my cause, O LORD; you have redeemed my life.” (Lamentations 3:52-58)
“The Jardin des Plantes, that wonder of Paris unknown to the Parisians, had become my private park. The whole of Creation was encompassed by its walls, a Noah’s ark, a Paradise Regained, in which I could saunter without danger, though in the very midst of the wild beasts; my happiness was too great. Taking the minerals as my starting point, I made my way through the vegetable and animal kingdom and came at last to Man, behind whom I found the Creator. The Creator, the great artist who Himself develops as He creates…who takes up abortive ideas afresh, who perfects and multiplies His primitive conceptions. Most certainly, everything is the work of His hand.”
—Inferno by August Strindberg (London: Penguin, 1979.), 177.
Written in the 1890s, Inferno documents one of the most painful and difficult times in the life of August Strindberg. Suffering from what was probably schizophrenia, insomnia, terrifying hallucinations, alcoholism, and alienation from friends and family, he had embarked on a delusional odyssey through the cutthroat world of scientists, occultists and theosophists of fin-de-siecle Paris, becoming a published and renowned alchemist, who was later ridiculed and avoided by the very ones who sang his praises. Yet, even in the midst of this spiritual darkness, physical suffering, the detrimental effects of sin, and sheer loneliness, Strindberg still felt the magnetism of the Unknown God (Acts 17), the Creator and Savior calling to him from beyond the darkness of his interior nightmare. Though life seemed like a cruel joke most of the time, he still sought the Shaper who had made nature and his own being.
The world is full of suffering and crime; it is full of sickness and heartache. And yet, through this darkness, the light of the Lord shines, beckoning to those who seek light, order, and meaning. It calls to those who desire what is good, and seeks to bless Creation with the grace and truth that comes from the Creator , or the Word (John 1). No matter how dark things may seem, it is in the pit, when the waters close over our heads, that God comes near and shows us that our powerlessness does not matter, for the Lord God is powerful, and the Crucified Son of Man has already paid the price for our sins and darkness, so that we will come to know healing and light.
