Can The American Wasteland Be Restored? (Part II)

 

Can America be restored?  How does a soul, whirling into nothingness, stop the process of decay? How can a country, degenerating from within, turn around?  Is it possible?

It is far better and easier to raise a child well than to restore adults and a country that have become a spiritual and mental wasteland. Some human beings pass through severe trials and manage to turn their lives around.  Consider, for example, some alcoholics, whose lives had become a restless voyage on “a sea of booze,” who by the grace of God and their utter cooperation with their “higher power” stopped drinking and learned to live soberly and with spiritual purpose. Victory is never gained once and for all, but one must engage in an unending journey out of the darkness of addiction and spiritual emptiness and onto the upward path of difficult and unending spiritual growth. Real life demands enormous mental and spiritual effort. Life is not for the spiritually lazy.

Spiritual turn-around and renewal are heart-wrenchingly difficult tasks for any human being. For a culture of death to become a culture of nourishing life may be well near impossible. More many-worded speeches by politicians whose main attribute is their ability to deceive the masses and the media elites will accomplish nearly nothing of any good, but in fact contribute to the decent into a spiritual wasteland. Promising so much, these politicians in truth deliver next to nothing of any true and lasting goodness. These politicians can rake in and redistribute enormous wealth under cover of the law, but they cannot help human beings out of the spiritual morass in which we live. The damage they do is in convincing people that they have solutions they do not have, and that they have healing powers they do not possess. These men are deceived deceivers, and in time their deceptions increase the cynicism and alienation visible in many Americans.  These charlatan-leaders people all walks of life in our country, and the most deceptive among them usually rise to the top in their chosen profession. Why? Because they are more willing to deceive, to use fraud, to cheat, to lie, to use power to weaken enemies and to advance their “cause.”  These maniacal leaders make ever-greater promises, and dupe ever-larger numbers of people. So rather than help cure spiritual and mental illnesses, they mask problems and keep us from setting about to the real and proper task of recovery.

Considering the unfolding of life in America since the Second World War, if one looks honestly and well, he will see a pattern: in all walks of life, in all of the formative industries and pursuits, increasingly degenerate and deceptive leaders have risen to the fore. Whether one considers politics, media elites, the educational establishment, or mass entertainment, one can see the same pattern: the men and women who should set examples of noble character and guide our people to more healthy, more life-enriching pursuits, are in fact often so full of themselves, so full of self-seeking, self-preservation, self-absorption, self-exaltation, and sheer power-and-wealth seeking that they have been helping to liberate Americans from God and reality and ground us further in the emptiness of our own self-inflated delusions. Consider, for example, how popular television transitioned from fairly harmless light entertainment in the 1950‘s into what has been on public display for several decades: propaganda encouraging all sorts of deviant and destructive “life-styles” (which are really various ways of dealing death). Consider the array of self-important politicians over the past fifty or more years, and wonder how can any country survive, let alone thrive, under such mental dwarfs and pretenders. It seems that the only way to get and to maintain power--the primary goal of our politicians--is through deceptively promising far more than they can or will deliver. And “we the people” are duped, again and again.  We the people are we the deceived.
  
Given this pattern of the rise of incompetent and self-deceived and deceiving “leaders” in various walks of life in America, how can there be a genuine cultural revival? If governments, educational establishments, religious institutions, mass media and entertainment industries, and so on, are more often the source of greater corruption than of genuine mental and spiritual growth, what can be done?  If institutions such as government and churches which should enrich and renew actually mislead, deceive, and further destroy, how can there be spiritual renewal?  Is our country in fact doomed to pass away, the victim of its own material successes and sheer spiritual emptiness?

Perhaps. No one knows the future--i.e., what will develop in time. It is possible that our country will be conquered by a more energetic, spiritually-focused society. It is possible that we will tear apart from forces of division within, and more or less dissolve as a people in history. It is possible that we drag along for decades as an enlarging cesspool of personal, moral, spiritual corruption, held together by power and manipulation. It is indeed possible and perhaps likely that more noble souls will opt out of social life, as they realize that active involvement does themselves and others virtually no good. It is possible that increasing doses of political power and psychologically manipulative force will be applied to a decultured, decadent civil society that will not control itself; and then America, “land of the free,” will become even more a land ruled by sick and self-seeking totalitarians.  What increasingly looks and feels like an insane asylum will become a vast prison governed and peopled by destructive criminal types. 

Perhaps. No one knows the future, but the course on which we are set looks dark and destructive, perhaps frightening to some. Yes, there are still to be found in our midst some better, self-giving, generous men and women. But these more healthy souls have increasingly little effect on the American way of life. Goodness is marginalized by socially predominant forms of evil: love of power, greed, violence, deception. The sicker types are prevailing and coming to the fore in the socially predominant walks of life.  That is the reality that shows up, and can be seen by anyone who cares to look.
 
America, look and see what you are becoming: not “a shining city set on a hill” to give light to the world, but a spiritual wasteland mired in self-destructive forces.

As things stand now, my guess is that the United States of America is passing away, killed by its rejection of God and of reality, and immersion in its decadent and destructive self.  As is said, “time will tell.”

America the Wasteland

 

The mind that is not seeking to learn, to love, to live well, to accomplish  various duties, becomes an empty wasteland.  For a while, one can people the wasteland with all sorts of diversions--hours of “entertainment,” of watching television or movies; of listening to purposeless music; of playing games; of endless chatter with others; of eating and drinking; of restless carousing for a paramour; of shopping to shop; of frenetic money-making in one form or another. The empty soul tries to stuff its emptiness with whatever it can find to divert itself from the truth of its reality: the mind that is not seeking truth, learning, applying itself to duties, has become a spiritual and mental void. And that void tastes of hell.  

The human mind must, according to its nature and purpose, love well and seek truth. The intellect needs to discover and contemplate reality in order to fulfill itself. The passions need to be focused on achieving good, and particularly on right loving and energetic fulfillment of life’s demands and duties. When the mind is not properly engaged, it becomes unhappy, sick, malcontented, restless, anxious, depressed, destructive, violent, obsessive, fearful. The soul that will not spend energies seeking truth and doing good becomes, over time--as diversions fail to divert--a haunt of jackals and wild beasts, of demonic forces over which one has ever-decreasing control.  Into the empty mind come destructive, dominating forces that gradually take over, leaving one disintegrating under their power, which effectively severs the soul from its grounding in God and in reality.  This is spiritual death.

I see these forces at work in my friend Mark, who is diagnosed as suffering from depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. These clinical terms do little to assess the real problem: his mind is emptying of truth, his soul not engaged in doing good. The divine presence, the Spirit, which grounds and illuminates and enriches, has been ignored and effectively shut out of his existence. So what happens? Gradually Mark is becoming divorced from reality and living in a kind of hell of imagined reality, a hell of darkness, depression, waves of anxiety, obsessive thoughts, stupid compulsions such as repetitive hand-washing. His spiritually empty soul is indeed becoming a wasteland, and as he disintegrates into the emptiness of self-enclosed-self, he becomes increasingly unwilling and unable to accomplish anything good or beneficial.  He is dying mentally and spiritually, and soon, physically.

Mark is an American, and his soul is a portrait of our culture, of us as a people. We have become a mental and spiritual wasteland. Having ignored the divine presence, having removed God in various forms from our lives, what is left? Having failed to concentrate, to focus the mind on acquiring truth for its own sake, and to love and do what is good and right, what has happened to us? Many Americans spend a large portion of each day in mindless entertainment, in pursuing various lusts, in shopping, in social chatter, in gambling, in sexual fantasies, in viewing sports, and so on. And many Americans spend many hours of their lives under alcohol and drug influences. Our country is spiritually and mentally dying.  Education becomes increasingly about trivial pursuits, bits and pieces of information whirling around in bored and boring minds. Some persons revolt, engaging in senseless violence. Some persons spiral into depression. Others live anxious and worried lives, endlessly, as if on an unending treadmill of joylessness.  America is a portrait of spiritual death.

Having turned from God, from the Spirit of truth and of genuine love meant to fill and guide our minds, we are a decaying, deadening, dying culture filled with human beings suffering all sorts of spiritual and mental illnesses, or just engaged in mindless diversions--intended to prevent people from recognizing their emptiness and the futility of their lives, and turning around to the source of life. Our self-inflated politicians can talk endlessly, and order all manner of policies to be effected, and pass volumes of excessively detailed laws, but they cannot prevent the decent of America into the wasteland of spiritual and mental death. Indeed, they share in the same wasteland, whether they know it or not. For our political and social leaders seem oblivious of the causes of our decay. Human being without the Divine is destructive and endlessly unhappy. America is killing itself: unborn, children, adults, elderly. We are killing ourselves and others. America has become a spiritual-mental wasteland.

"If You Have Seen....Beauty, Remember." (Enneads V:8)

Judaism and Christianity contain within them unique and extraordinary experiences of divine reality.  The experiences must be studied and remembered. These experiences ever form the living core of Jewish and Christian faiths.  

Christianity is essentially derivative.  Its primary and grounding experiences occurred in Jews, who in turn had been formed by the experiences, beliefs, practices of Jewish culture, including Hebrew and Aramaic languages. To these we could add Hellenistic and Greek linguistic influences on nascent Christianity. Later, the Christian experiences and surrounding culture underwent continuing modification and development through more Greek, Latin, and German cultures, and so on. The process is unending.

Christian faith is not fully original or unique. The core experiences--such as the vision of Christ risen, faith in the atoning death of Jesus, and so on--occurred, as noted, in souls already steeped in Jewish faith and culture. The experiences never existed in a vacuum, nor can the original experiences be fully recovered, but are always known through one’s interpretation. The struggle is to minimize the filtering effects of one’s personality and culture, and to understand the original experiences as well as possible. That is the work for disciplined scholars well trained in philosophical detachment.

Christianity as it exists is highly dependent on other thought forms. It is impossible to read any Christian writer, even the best, and not see the mental influence of other mental cultures. And the best Christian thinkers were immersed in the best philosophy available to them. Of Christian mystics, perhaps only Paul and John (and if there be other NT forms of mysticism, perhaps they, too) moved within Jewish thought forms without much influence of Greek paideia and philosophy. But even here, one can see Greek thought influences in both Paul and John. As for later Christian spiritual writers, they are all derivative: both from the original Christian experiences (as in Paul and John, evident in the Gospels), but from the mental culture in which each writer was steeped. Augustine’s Christian theology, for example, seems inexplicable without Plotinus nurturing his mind; and Thomas Aquinas shows the influence of Plato and Aristotle, as well as Plotinus and Augustine, and others, on every page.  

One must seek to understand both the original Mosaic, prophetic, and apostolic experiences, and the philosophies in which these experiences have been articulated, explored, developed, lived. Someone who seeks to understand the best that Christianity has to offer must study not only the Scriptures with their formative experiences and religious cultures, but such philosophical minds as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus. And one should be well acquainted with the ancient Gnostics and other religious cultures that became kneaded into Christian faith and practice.  

Much of contemporary Christianity is superficial because it lacks experiential grounding and philosophical articulation. A major problem in the contemporary churches is that Christian experience is not only neglected, but articulated in highly defective thought forms, such as modern psychology, Marxism (and its derivatives, such as liberation theologies), Hegelianism, liberal democratic thought, and so on. These contemporary ideologies and thought forms are insufficient for articulating the experience of divine union in Christ, which lies at the core of Christianity.  As a consequence, Christians in the pews--or those who have walked away--are left poorly nourished and largely unacquainted with the treasures of Christ. 

Jesus and the "Good News"

Ordinary Time begins and unfolds, we hear much about Jesus and his gospel or “good news”--his message of “the Kingdom of God,” which means for us eternal life in God. The same truth of reality is presented from various angles and with different emphases, but ultimately it is the same reality: God, Christ, and our movement into God in and with Christ. The Gospel, the “good news” of God-for-us-in-Christ, is essentially the message of our life in the God who suffered and died in Christ to bring us into full union with God and with one another in Him. “God was in Christ, reconciling [or, rejoining] the world to Himself.”

Because the news is truly so good and life-affirming, why is it that from the opening chapters of the Gospels, Jesus encountered so much opposition and resistance? What is there about God, Christ, and Jesus’ message that elicit such different responses from human beings? Why do some people encounter Jesus, and respond with faith filled with love, but others refuse to listen, or rebel against what they hear? And as we know, the religious establishment of Jesus’ day, and then the Roman political powers, tried to silence Jesus in one way or another. Why?

You and I have heard the gospel message many times over the years. We have tried, each in his or her own way, to heed and to obey, to do the LORD’s will and work. So from where comes the resistance to such a good God, to the most loving Jesus, to the message of eternal joy in Christ? “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Why, indeed? “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”

Each of us must face the mystery of evil in our own hearts, for at times each of us refuses to listen, to heed, to obey the LORD. And each minister in the church, every disciple of Christ in fact, must ask himself or herself again and again: “Am I truly presenting Christ in his goodness and glory, or am I distorting our LORD into something he is not? Am I helping to lead people into God, or am I a hindrance? In what ways am I assisting, and in what ways am I hindering human beings from hearing the gospel, and seeing it lived in me?” Such questions must be asked again and again. God wants all of us, and each of us completely.

The good news of God is ever the same: that victory in Christ is assured, that despite our human flaws and failings, the LORD will triumph in us and through us. Despite human weaknesses and sin, God will indeed become “all in all.” When the battle looks lost, when human vices and evil seem to gain the upper hand, look at the glow of light in the eastern sky before sunrise, realize and rejoice, that as the sun rises, so the all-good God is breaking through, that nothing ultimately can hinder the power and glory of God’s love in Christ--not even death. “And all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well,” when every creature will be filled forever with the living God. To Him be glory and thanks forever. Amen.

On The Feast Of The Epiphany

What a contrast: God comes to us in Christ, is manifested in the flesh, revealed to believing hearts, and the world yawns. Some fanatics proclaim that an imaginary “end of the world” is at hand and the result is mass hysteria (with fortunes made). In our country, it is far easier to sell nonsense and destructive “entertainment,” ugly “music,” and violent films then to turn a mind or two towards the living God.  As a people in history, we are choosing our fate:  we want ease, wealth, pleasures, entertainment, even as we spiral out of control, lost in addictions, mindless entertainments, sheer verbal nonsense (such as “end of the world” fantasies).  Is this what it looks and feels like as a society growers sicker and moves towards death?  

There is much more mass interest in a new “block-buster” movie generated by degenerate Hollywood than there is in God. The “heroes” of American youths are drawn from the world of money-making sports, mindless music, and mass-indulging entertainment, not from the world of simple goodness, devoted service, courageous acceptance of death to protect human lives.  We are shouting “crucify him” by the way we live, clutching the gods of self-love, self-esteem, self-importance. Over a hundred years ago, the Russian writer, Dostoevsky, warned that our civilization is dying because we rejected Christ:  “The West has lost Christ.  That is why it is dying; it is the only reason it is dying.”  The loss of God and Christ is more manifest now, a century later.  We are indeed dying as a people and as a culture. What we must wonder is whether or not we passed the point of no return?  By prudent loving kindness we can help individuals to “get their lives together,” but there seems to be nothing one can do for the common good, for our society as a whole. Christ came for individuals persons, not to spare the destructive and dying Roman Empire, or Hellenistic culture, or even his own Jewish traditions.

So even as our culture and society grow sicker and die, there remains hope for individual human beings who will break from mass culture, from the sickness of our society, and tend the garden of their souls. Jesus came into the midst of the decadent and brutal Roman Empire; and although the civilization collapsed, with millions suffering in the process, some individuals responded to Christ. Some made the break from cultural decadence and found true and abundant life in God. That choice remains ours to make. The light that comes must be received, accepted, and lived in order to have its effect in us. Just “celebrating feasts” and not living Christ does nothing for our personal spiritual renewal. 

Christmas Is Not Suitable This Year?

Did the world end on December 12, or December 21, or any day you know? If everything came crashing to an end, I guess we missed it. Unfortunately, we could not miss the foolish mass hysteria and childish fears. So many predictions about “the end,” so much money made on selling such nonsense, so many unsuspecting young and more gullible adults taken in. Now, what is the next date of the imaginary “end”? December 31? Or 13/13/13? Oh, no! Or maybe several years from now--allowing predictors plenty of time to hype the event (remember Y2K?) and rake in plenty of fresh dough. Don’t hold your breath waiting for an imagined “end of the world.” That nonsense is an escape from reality and from doing one’s real duties.

Because the world did not “collapse,” we are here to thank God for life in this world, and for the greater Life, the divine Life, that breaks into our hearts and minds, and which is endless. For those who follow him faithfully, Christ is indeed “the light shining in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” Not even the darkness of human foolishness and gullibility.

Darkness. Even evil. We recently learned of the massacre of innocent little children and their teachers in Connecticut. Yes, the deed was extremely evil, and left in its wake human agony beyond imaging. Apparently, Newtown, CT, decided that they had to take down public Christmas decorations this year. I suppose the town leaders thought the decorations for Christmas meant good times, joy, pleasures in abundance. Long forgotten, perhaps, is that the red of Christmas is for Christ’s blood, and that what we celebrate is not a party, not a good time here, but the reality of God coming to free us from evil by dying for us. Some will say of mass murder: What evil? “Just mental derangement.” If the slaughter of innocent little ones was not evil, what would be? Evil is a lack of goodness--and extreme evil, such as we saw in Newtown, displays a radical lack of goodness, and most likely a deliberate and sustained playing with evil in various forms. If this inverted, radically fallen Adam did indeed spend hours with violent video games in which murdering human beings was made a sport, and “fun,” should we be surprised that a sick mind would attempt similar deeds in “real time”?

In the face of evil, should we refuse to celebrate Christmas? Should we strip down our churches and homes because of so much evil in this world, even at times in our hearts and minds? Or should we all the more renounce the darkness within ourselves and in our human condition, and turn again and again, with longing cries, towards the Light that no darkness can ever overcome? Stripping away Christmas decorations in the face of evil shows that the officials calling for de-decorating do not understand the meaning of Christmas at all. Folks expected Christmas to mean parties, and booze, and care-free laughter. Now they wonder: Who can have “fun” when murder destroys so many lives? We need Christ far more than most people realize. Without Christ, we would all be like that radically fallen Adam in Connecticut.

"O Israel, Prepare To Meet Thy God"

Driving through Colorado in the 1970’s, a sign on a barn caught my attention. Weather-beaten, dangling from the sagging old barn the sign warned: “O Israel, prepare to meet thy God!” The sign’s dilapidated condition added authenticity and urgency to its message, penetrating the heart. I stopped my car and photographed the sign, whose message was made more poignantly powerful and effective by its fading condition. Recognizing the words of the prophet Amos, I realized that I, too, living in withering time, stand exposed not only to the elements, but to the approaching Judgement of God. Although a young man in my twenties, I knew that I could escape neither the ravages of time nor the pending Judgment of meeting God “face to face.” The thought that life is brief indeed, that very soon in the sweep of time I would die, and must live now prepared for that reality, burned itself into my mind as I headed back towards our family home in Missoula.

Advent-Christmas tells a similar message, if we will but listen. The world and all we know of it is passing away. “You see this building? Not one stone will be left on another.” “Even now the ax is laid to the root of the tree.” In its sober wisdom, the Church’s ancient tradition proclaims the ever-pending end of the world as we know it, and God’s Judgment, at the same time we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. Lest we turn our eyes away from the truth of passing reality, the day following Christmas the Church celebrates the death of Stephen, the first disciple to be martyred for his faith in Christ. Death in the world / life in God remain the two inextricably bound themes of Advent-Christmas. The poet T. S. Eliot gives voice to the wise men who travelled to Bethlehem to witness Christ’s birth:

“... Were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different: this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.” (Journey of the Magi)

Many of us clutch our gods on the edge of death: beer, mixed drinks, perhaps other drugs to numb awareness of the encircling night. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow....”

The birth of Christ is joy to those on their journey into God.