A Dose of Reality

Order in the soul, order in the life of human beings, remains the source of order and goodness in society at large. When human beings are mentally and spiritually disordered, society suffers waves of unrest, political disturbances, social upheavals. The breakdown of order in our society and civilization, evident for decades, becomes acute.  Order in soul and society can be restored in one of two ways: by responsible action in individuals, or by increased doses of force applied by civil (or not-so-civil) authorities. The kind of order that results from applied force is not a truly civil society, but to one degree or another, an uncivil and even nightmarish police state. If human beings will not govern themselves, they will be ruled by power and more or less arbitrary commands.

Order in the soul depends on acquiring and practicing virtues. The most foundational virtue is faith in the sense of trust in the presence of God, who orders a person by love and wisdom. This kind of faith is not mere religious beliefs or intellectual thoughts, but a trusting, loving opening of the soul to the presence of the unseen God. The soul unattuned to divine presence will live a life of disorder, rebellion, self-centeredness, addictions, deceit, lying, and so on. The human soul open to God’s presence, responsive to God, cooperating with the divine, is capable of true love, fidelity, prudent and responsible action, self-control, human friendship, generosity.

An essential part of ordering one’s life is openness to the truth of reality.  Acceptance of truth requires one to break from untruths, from fantasy worlds, from delusions and illusions. The human being unaware of divine presence in the soul and in the cosmic order (reality) becomes a prey to destructive forces, to manipulation by power elites and propaganda, to the wiles of advertisers, to “values” and empty-headed opinions, to unruly passions. To be attuned to the truth of reality, on the contrary, means an active awareness of one’s sharing in the mysterious Whole in which beings and things exist. We are partners in the Whole of reality, and this Whole remains largely beyond our wishes and control. Reality can break into lives with a suddenness and fury that leave one bewildered and humbled. How foolish we human beings are to think that we can remake or control the vast, mysterious Whole in which we exist for a short period. 

Reality can and will break in. Many of us experienced a powerful reminder of the uncontrollable ways of reality this past week when a sudden fury pounded us with wind, rain, hail. It came, it shock up our little worlds, and it departed. Destroyed crops, damaged trees, wounded gardens, broken windows: reminders of our vulnerability to natural powers beyond our control, and of our own littleness in the scheme of things, in the timeless cosmic Whole existing time and time after. 

“Make us know the shortness of life, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” 

Avoiding Pitfalls in Faith and in Religious Practices

Living faith in God is one of the simplest and most basic activities possible for a human being. Although faith is a response to “hearing the word of God,” as the Apostle Paul wrote and as prophets before him declared, it remains a starkly simple activity on our part. God initiates faith by moving us to turn toward Him; but the response is ours to make, or not. Faith does not require studying the Bible, or performing various religious practices, or being taught what to believe and what to do. It is a simple act, that one makes in the moment, and which a soul needs to choose to do repeatedly. The essence of faith in God is a loving, trusting turning of the gaze of the mind towards the living God, who is ever beyond our grasp or knowledge. Hence, it can be called the opening of the soul towards the unseen source of all that is. To believe in God, to trust in God, is essentially an act of loving surrender and wonder. It happens in the moment, now, when one says, “Yes,” to God’s gentle pull. 

Each of us has his or her own set of obstacles or hindrances to naked faith. Some are emotional: a fear of trusting; a fear of trusting what we do not know; a fear of losing control; a fear of change; a fear of dying; fear generated by stories suggesting that God is not truly good and just. Other obstacles arise less from fear than from an excessive love of ourselves, rather than of God: Self-centered life; love of power; love to dominate; over-evaluating our own abilities; love of money, love of “stuff.”  We also can see the excessive love of play, of self-gratification, a refusal to grow up and to live responsibly. All of these vices and bad habits surely are contrary to childlike trust in God. 

Among church-attending Catholics, two main substitutes for simple faith keep showing up, both of which are in effect mental or spiritual diseases:  Traditionalism and secular social activism. Traditionalism substitutes a clinging to “traditions” and various forms of worship rather than to the unseen God. Traditionalists are those who “cling to the side of the pool, rather than swim,” as I like to put it. Traditionalists, like the Pharisees who resisted Jesus, love their laws, rules, religious practices and beliefs more than they love God.  At the heart of traditionalism is a fear of change, and a foolish love of one’s own judgment and opinions. They nit-pick and complain, and feel moral outrage at what they do not like.

Secularists in the church predominate in some areas. My home town of Missoula was a hot-bed for these social manipulators. Rather than love God and develop a genuine spiritual life, they have their worldly substitutes:  change the Church; change society; end war; provide for the needs and wants of everyone; and so on. Secularists are worldly, or “in love with the world.”  Rather than face their own personal short-comings and mortality, secularists want to tamper with everything they can get their hands on.  Never at rest, they seek power, control, dominance, all in the name of “doing good,” or “social justice,” or some other slogan of the day. Although secular souls may do some good, such as helping to feed the hungry, they lack an awareness of their own sin, ignorance, mortality, and need to turn around and face the living God. They want to “change the world,” not live now in God.

"New Order of the Ages?" Some Fireworks on the 4th of July

 

On the obverse of the Great Seal of the United States of America are two quotations in Latin, which translated mean: “He has favored our undertaking” and “New order of the ages.”  That our country’s founding was undertaken by men and women with trust in the Almighty is well documented from original sources.  As we survey the history of our country from its early 17th-century colonial founding, we can indeed find many reasons to be grateful for this land, our people, our institutions, and the American way of life. That the United States of America can in truth be called “the new order of the ages,” or even “a new order of the ages,” suggests a kind of millennialism or Messianic consciousness which can scarcely be deemed reasonable, but rather displays overly enthusiastic expectations for this country during the period of the Revolution and our constitutional Founding.

From the perspective of the 21st century--if not long before--a human being moved more by reason than by excessive passions would have to marvel at what happened to our founding experiment, to the country that most citizens of our country still love. What we experience daily is far less a “new order of the ages” than another heavily disordered body politic whose fate is not at all assured. How long the United States of America will survive in the course of history, before it goes “the way of all flesh,” no one knows. But one experiences daily strong and disturbing symptoms of disorder, of decay, of what surely feels like the passing away of this country--or at least of its historical way of life, of “justice under law.”

There is, it seems to me, a great chasm in the political consciousness and heart of every American born several decades or more ago--say, born and raised before the Viet-Nam debacle. We love our country and feel considerable patriotic pride; and yet, especially in moments of sober honesty, we recognize and feel in our whole being that this country is spiritually, morally, and politically sick. The “New Order” is experienced on a daily basis as disorder. And the sickness, the disorder, is seen in many citizens, in our political and civil rulers, often in our own families, perhaps in ourselves. If we are willing to face reality, each of us can list a number of disturbing symptoms, signs of deep corruption at every level. And facing the truth of reality, we can echo the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson when he said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just....”

America is paying the price for her corrosive spiritual negligences. Unfortunately, those who bear the most burden are the young. With minds often corrupted and damaged--but surely not properly developed--by broken or wounded families and by a poor and often perverse educational system, our young are all-too-often rudderless, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, adrift in a seemingly meaningless life of destructive music, mindless mass media, alcohol and drug abuse, lack of good economic opportunities, a vast spiritual wasteland that is breeding anxiety, depression, narcissism, egomania, violent behavior, suicide.
 
America is losing its soul.  As a people in history, we have turned away from the one source of true order in human lives: God. Wanting what we want, when we want it, regardless of the consequences, we have shrunk ourselves down to such a level that even our “great ones” appear to be very small indeed to anyone with eyes to see.  Political, educational, cultural, business elites should inspire our people to strive for excellence, to cultivate virtuous lives, to sacrifice selfish ambitions for the common good. Instead, what we see is a virtual free-for-all for power and wealth among “elites” who are often about as uncontrolled and uncontrollable as many of our youth.  It is not the most noble and virtuous who rise to the top in America, but generally the more unscrupulous, the deceived and deceiving, the most power-driven.  

Forty years ago, the Russian writer and prophet Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned our country that we were spiritually sick and dying. Rather than listen to him, our educated elites chose to ignore him, or to vilify him, and to continue deceiving us. We must consider again Solzhenitsyn’s basic truth: That a people in history who have rejected God will break apart and perish, regardless of how we raise our wine glasses and flash fake smiles. My hope is that the undertaker is not yet at the door, and that a genuine spiritual and intellectual renewal is possible.  But before undergoing renewal, we must at least acknowledge the spiritual, intellectual, and moral wasteland that we have become. Unfortunately, recognizing this truth is least likely by those who hold the reins of power and mass manipulation in this country.