867. Why do human beings yearn for security?

scanned pdf

Why do human beings yearn for security?

Human beings yearn for security because they are secretly filled with care and anxiety, which all but overwhelm them when they forget the beyond, i.e., forget the security that God gives and demands that they obediently accept. Having turned away from this God-given security, this "'righteousness of God," they are filled with care an anxiety, and thus with yearning for security and a perversion of  their need for acceptance (Geltungsdrang); and so they seek "their own righteousness," or, at any rate, seek in one way or another to secure themselves.

At the end of this road, however, is despair; for the attempt to secure themselves is always in vain. There are encounters and matters of destiny that they cannot master; and they can never secure endurance for their works. Their life is fleeting, and its end is death. And history goes on, pulling down all the towers of Babel that human beings erect.