They have treated superficially the brokenness of My dear people, claiming: Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they acted so abhorrently? They weren’t at all ashamed. They can no longer feel humiliation. Therefore, they will fall among the fallen. When I punish them, they will collapse, says the LORD. – Jeremiah 8:11-12
Americans are nothing if not shallow. It’s almost a badge of honor these days. Skin-deep relationships are considered normal and acceptable. The effects of our rampant superficiality range from religion to education, politics to medicine.
Education is shallow because it is about graduation rates, competency tests, and SAT scores rather than teaching citizens to think and grow intellectually. Politicians refuse to govern by principles, focusing, instead, on polls and short-term fixes. Responding to the current problem is much easier and more lucrative than addressing the underlying cause. The same is true of medicine which finds there is more money in treating symptoms than in curing people or preventing illness. Religion, too, has abandoned foundational issues to work on creating positive results.
Pragmatism is misleading. A few nights past Larry King was talking to Donald Trump about Bernie Madoff – an unholy trinity if ever there was one. King was complaining that he had lost money in Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme. Trump was almost mocking the fact that Larry had invested in the scam. Larry’s response was: “He never had a down month.” Trump gleefully countered, he never had an up month either. The collapse of Wall Street was the result of “pragmatic” investment strategies. The current bankrupting of the United States government is a “pragmatic” response to the economic collapse.
A steroid user looks like a robust, strong, healthy person – for a while. Someday the price must be paid. Pumping chemicals into the body or surgically enhancing it seems practical. It appears to have the same results as clean, healthy living. It appears to prolong youth and beauty.
When the soul is seriously diseased and deeply wounded, the inclination is to seek immediate relief and salve over the problem. If we follow the pop culture, and even pop religion trend, we will ignore the depth and seriousness of the injury. We will fool our friends, and perhaps even ourselves with happy self-talk and a cleaned up appearance. Like the Black Knight we insist it is a mere scratch – merely a flesh wound. The wound it covered over with positive thoughts, television trances, incessant activities, achievement, and good deeds.
Prayer and meditation are shunned because they will show us the malignancy of our condition. There is nothing pragmatic or practical about spending time, alone and silent, in the presence of God. It seems pointless at best. It may even be painful. Who wants to dredge up faults and flaws and failures? It sounds like the old joke. If it hurts when you do that, then don’t do it. If it hurts when I thoroughly examine my heart, then skip the examination and go on as if I were all right.
But God says I am not all right. Saying, “Peace” does not give me peace. Look, God is the Healer. That’s what He does, but He cannot heal where I do not allow Him access, if I do not allow the probe to go all the way to the festering rot at the bottom. The Lord heals from the inside out. As long as my “religion” is external and practical, results-oriented or performance-based, I will remain mortally wounded.
4 comments:
As long as my “religion” is external and practical, results-oriented or performance-based, I will remain mortally wounded.
That's a gong-ringer, right there. Our culture is nothing if not "performance based." Sometimes, often, that's a good thing, but it all depends on the circumstances. Faith as a practice seems most effective when we let go of our own expectations, our plans for such and such "progress" in such and such amount of time (or your money back, guaranteed!). We have to let go of terms, conditions and expectations, because when one live with feet in the clouds and head dangling squarely over the ground, one doesn't really have the ability to make demands. The objective is to surrender - a simple concept, remarkably difficult to accomplish (and just as difficult to maintain). It comes in as many forms and as many time frames as there are people.
Each paragraph is worthy of a long coonversation. Alas, we live out our lives in Blogger boxes, trying to let our minds run free in cramped spaces!
You wrote:
...ignore the depth and seriousness...
You recall how GB has written about "follow the depth"? And we all try to do that, in our own ways, in order to counteract the cultural shallowness.
But what can be expected from a people that perceive almost entirely a two dimensional existence, i.e. flat, without depth? A people whose experience of the third dimension consists only of today's "thrill," or fix ("fix" as in "pragmatic" as in "what feels good")?
What would we expect from heroin or meth addicts? Nothing, I'd bet. Why do we expect anything from Flatlanders? I confess that, as little as I like what's going on in the world at large, very little of it surprises me.
What I find truly scary is how often I find myself in a two dimensional state, basically a member of today's society. Maybe not as often as some, but like you say: Can God access us? Assuming Grace can penetrate to the second dimension, can it be received there?
Why do we expect anything from Flatlanders?
Ain't that the truth.
This kind of goes with what both of you are saying.
For about ten years I walked around in this -- I don't know what you call it -- like a cloud of grace and power. It was really cool. When it finally lifted, I thought I had done something really horribly wrong. I wasn't sure what it was -- there were plenty of possibilities, of course. And this kind of relates to yesterday's Abraham post. It was God's gift. I couldn't see why He would take it away from me -- He apparently did not do other people this way.
After wandering in the wilderness literally for years in despair, the last couple of years -- with much credit to OC and all the coon-0-sphere -- I've finally started to realize that those gifts were temporary. It may have been beneficial, but it was dangerous. It fooled me into thinking I was something when I only had something.
That rings very true, Mush.
Except that I was such a fool for luck, or child of Providence- take your pick- that I fell in very early with a spiritual teacher who was quite clear about "Know the good, do the good, then feel good about it (or not, you never know)".
But not for any practical end, other than being a saint. Which is the most practical thing of all.
I'm trying to read, just to be fair, some of the alternate, grass-root movements, fair-trade-and-ecology authors, but it's a hard slog. Our base assumptions are so different.
And I've been shocked at the utter "what makes me feel good" shallowness of the 'spiritual' publications available today.
No concrete.
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