Geographic gods

Long ago, people entertained the oddest notions about gods. They thought of gods in terms of geographic regions, as if they were tied to or centered around a physical location. The god's power was greatest in his “home” territory, and diminished beyond his boundaries. Physical place, even actual earth, was deemed important to the worship of a god. This explains Naaman's desire to take home with him a couple mule-loads of Israelite dirt (2 Kings 5:17): he wanted to worship Israel's God on Israel's soil, even if that soil had to be taken to the “land” of another god.

It is true that the Israelites also thought this way – after all, God promised them a land of their own, and even set aside a special place within that land, Mount Zion, as the center for His worship. He probably had many reasons for this, one of them being accommodating the preconceived notions of His people, but another thing became more clear as time went by: the God of Israel was truly god of the whole earth, not just the land occupied by Israel. Furthermore, He was no respecter of places when it came to being obeyed. When the Israelites didn't obey His laws, He did not hesitate to deport them from the land, starting with the nation of Israel in the north and ending with Judah in the south. He even gave hints through His prophets that He could be worshiped anywhere on earth, because all lands (and, ultimately, all people) were His.

These days we consider such notions as geographic gods to be quaint and simplistic. As if God had a jurisdiction, like a secular authority, that you could get on a plane and escape! As if the authority and power of God Almighty could be delimited by something as arbitrary as geographic boundaries! We might smile knowingly when we read accounts like Naaman's, thankful that we're sophisticated enough to have moved beyond such elementary views of God's nature.

Or have we?

The older I get, the more I wonder if maybe we post-moderns don't have our own twist on the regional god mentality. Though we may not think in terms of “the god of Oakland County” (or whatever), we nonetheless tend to partition our outlook on the world into “regions”, and behave as if different “gods” reigned over these conceptual regions. For instance, I know businessmen who are Catholic, but whose business practices are indistinguishable from those of their totally worldly colleagues. If you were to ask one of them whether his workplace attitudes conformed to the teachings of his faith, you'd draw a blank look. Teachings of the faith? Those were for Sunday at Mass times – what did they have to do with closing out this month's sales?

See what I mean? Virtual regions – mental areas where people assume other gods have sway. Oh, someone with such an attitude might acknowledge in the abstract that the One True God has authority over everything, but at the day-to-day level, he would behave as if the workplace was controlled by different gods than the one he thought about at Mass on Sunday. He wouldn't call them gods – he'd call them marketing principles, or business precepts, or whatever – but he would certainly consider them to be more influential in his work environment than God Himself. It isn't that he'd think God impotent, it's that he'd consider Him irrelevant.

Here's another one: entertainment. If you were to ask the average person what God thought of what they did to entertain themselves, you'd probably get another blank stare. Why would God care what television shows I watch? Outside of glaring extremes such as pornography (which is increasingly being seen as a matter of taste, not morals,) most people would wonder why you'd mention God and entertainment in the same context. God has no relevance to their entertainment choices – another “region” where other gods hold sway.

You could find plenty more examples: investment, childrearing, education, health and fitness, and so forth. We Westerners tend to have very compartmentalized lives, whether we profess a religious affiliation or not, and over time we tend to see these compartments as being influenced by different forces. This is simply the idea of regional gods in different guise.

This is one thing I think most Evangelicals do better than most Catholics, at least in this day and age: make a conscious, deliberate effort to make Jesus the Lord of every aspect of their lives. This is often presented as a caricature – e.g. the coworker who punctuates every conversation with “Hallelujah!” and “Praise the Lord!” – but the reality is an important one. Certainly we behave differently in the workplace than we do in worship, and differently again at the ball game, but God Almighty is our Lord wherever we are and whatever we're doing. Sure, He's interested in how we comport ourselves at worship, but He's also interested in what influences us as we draw up that contract or make that repair, albeit in different ways. God doesn't recognize any regions over which He has no control, no matter what we think. He will be Lord over every aspect of our lives. We can cooperate with that or not, but there's one thing we can't do: run anywhere, geographically or in our minds, where He is not Lord.

There is no such place.

The Hidden Pharisee

These days, if you really want to insult someone, call him a Pharisee. That term seems to be a universal negative, carrying all manner of unpleasant connotations: narrow-mindedness, judgementalism, rigidity of thought, hypocrisy. Nearly every vice most condemned by modern culture is encapsulated in that single term. Someone might be willing to recognize many personal failings and shortcomings, but it would be a person of rare honesty and courage who would acknowledge himself a Pharisee. That would be beyond the pale.

And yet... there was one attribute of the Pharisees that is more common than many would recognize: they didn't like to hear that they were sinners. Of course, nobody likes to hear that he is a sinner, but some people have the self-awareness to recognize that truth about themselves.You see this in the 7th Chapter of Luke's Gospel, where Jesus is speaking about John the Baptist. John's ministry was a simple as it was disturbing: to the people of Israel he announced that their long-awaited Messiah was near, even at the door - but first they needed to purify themselves. The baptism of John drew its roots from the ritual washings of the Mosaic law, which was the final step in resolving ritual uncleanness. John offered his baptism to people who recognized their uncleanness, their unworthiness to receive a Messiah, and to those who accepted it and made the life changes that repentance implied (see Luke 3:8), the promise of cleanliness.

The most surprising people took John up on this offer. As we see in Luke 7:29, folk such as the hated Quisling collaborator tax collectors welcomed John's message and received his baptism. But it's interesting to note who didn't: the Pharisees and experts in the law (7:30). They didn't want to acknowledge that they were sinners who needed cleansing. They thought their behaviour above reproach, in fact, even commendable by God (Luke 18:10-14). Though any one of them might be willing to acknowledge his sins in the generic ("Well, of course, nobody's perfect"), when push came to shove, they didn't want to hear that they were sinners.

Does this remind you of anyone else? Like, perhaps, our entire society? Nobody wants to hear of their own sins. Most people would describe themselves with the phrase, "I'm a good person." Even the lightest hint of accusation of a specific sin typically unleashes a torrent of denial and self-justification. Even the suggestion of things like penitential seasons, or self-accusation, causes all kinds of concern about "being negative" and driving people away with a "Gospel of Gloom".

In this regard we're very Pharisaical. They didn't want to hear they were sinners; neither do we. They broke their arms patting themselves on the back about how assiduously they followed Torah; we spend a lot of time telling each other that we're basically Good People who have nothing to worry about. The Pharisees not only didn't want to hear that they had sins they needed to repent of, they were gravely offended by anyone who suggested any such thing. From what I can see, we suffer from the same problem.

So, perhaps, we're a lot closer to being Pharisees than we wish to believe. After all, if we can harbor one such significant attribute of Phariseeism, what else might mark our lives?

The pilgrimage of Advent

Celebrating Advent makes no sense to the modern Western mind. With Christmas approaching, with all the arrangements to be made and things to be done, it seems the last thing that one should do is take time to be quiet, to retire, to be still and wait. How unproductive is that? It makes no sense to our mechanistic mentality, with its focus on the bottom line and the return on investment. What's the tangible benefit of this squandering of resources, of this apparent idleness, when there's so much that could be done? Is this the most productive use of our time?

In a few days the film production of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will hit the theaters. This is a film of one of my favorite stories from the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis' classic set of tales for children of all ages. In Dawn Treader, the young King Caspian sets forth from Narnia on a voyage through the Eastern sea. His stated goal is to learn what happened to seven Narnian lords, partisans of his father's, who had been sent on a voyage by his usurping uncle Miraz to get them out of the way. But one of his crew, the valiant talking mouse Reepicheep, hopes for even more. It is his dream to travel as far east as possible, even coming to Aslan's Country beyond the edge of the world (one can do this sort of thing in Narnia.)

The voyage of the Dawn Treader is a classic pilgrimage - a journey of struggle and difficulty toward an altruistic or spiritual goal. Pilgrimages have fallen greatly out of favor these days, primarily due to their low return on investment. Pilgrims carry no cargo, nor do they do business along the way. The usefulness of pilgrimages is opaque to the economic thinker because the reason for pilgrimage is that the pilgrim be changed by the journey. To the economic thinker, the participant is always the subject, the economic agent; that upon which he acts is the object of production. The pilgrim understands himself as the object, to be changed by what he encounters along the way. While the economic agent seeks to do profitable work, the pilgrim seeks to be worked upon.

And so it proves for the voyagers aboard the Dawn Treader: they encounter many things, some of them beautiful and some quite difficult. They learn things about themselves and each other, and grow in the process. The further they travel, the more they see the hidden hand of Aslan behind their travels, and have to submit to His sometimes painful ministrations as they go. It is not a journey of conquest, or exploration for economic advantage, but of discovery for discovery's sake - which in turn implies trusting Someone greater than themselves. Terrible and tragic things could (and almost do) happen to them, yet they continue onward, trusting that they will be rewarded. And their trust proves firm, for the One in whom they trust is faithful. They end their voyage as different people than they were.

Advent can be a pilgrimage, for even if we don't travel anywhere, we can surrender our time to Him, and "travel" in prayer and solitude toward Bethlehem. We can be downright profligate with our precious time, and squander our attention and our effort, to bring ourselves to the side of the Manger. We can be still, and give the Infant permission to change us to be like Him in humility and trust. We have to be ready to accept that change, to permit ourselves to be made into different people.

For in the end, Advent is about trust. We humans with our economic outlook geared toward optimizing the use of scarce resources have to entrust ourselves to Someone whose resources are infinite. We have to give our time to Him, to sacrifice our urgings to Do Something while we wait for Him to do what He will in us. We probably won't see the resources He brings to bear. We aren't comfortable the idea that He's as likely to do something to us as through us, for while we may acknowledge at the intellectual level our need to change, we don't like those great Hands descending to reshape us. It hurts our pride at least, and probably much more. We resist being changed. If there is reinventing to be done, we want to be the ones do to it to ourselves - with all angles examined and all ramifications considered. But with the most critical changes we need, we have no more power to change ourselves than we have to lift ourselves by our own hair - or the boy Eustace had to remove his own dragon skin in Dawn Treader.

For those familiar with the story, that is an excellent image for Advent. We need to be un-dragoned, to have our sinful dragonish nature ripped off us by Aslan's claws. We may try a few times on our own, but the result will always be futility. We may be able to scrape off a few externals, but we'll still be dragons beneath. We can't rip ourselves as deeply as we need for the surgery to succeed. We need to stop trying, lie down, and let Him do what He wishes.

The question is: will we have the courage to do that? Or will we find something else to distract us? After all, Christmas is coming...

The Light of the World

We moderns routinely hear Biblical metaphors like “Light of the World” and “True Light of every man”. While we might appreciate their poetic value, I think much of their meaning is lost to us because in our day, light is cheap. The introduction of widespread artificial lighting through the 20^th century marked a significant change in human civilization. Certainly there have always been some forms of artificial light, but they were cumbersome, relatively expensive, and nowhere near as efficient as electrical light. Thanks to electricity, we weren't bound by darkness any more – with the flick of a switch, we could have all the light we needed. This in turn “freed” us from the natural timetable of the days and seasons, and even nature herself. No longer were our working hours set by light from the sun. Even our architecture has come to reflect this independence from natural – and hence dependence upon artificial – lighting.

Because we take light for granted, admonitions like St. Peter's in 2 Peter 1:19 (“and you will be right to pay attention to [the message] as to a lamp for lighting a way through the dark, until the dawn comes and the morning star rises in your minds”) lose some of their impact. A people who have never walked in great darkness cannot appreciate the importance of a great light. We might apprehend it intellectually, and perhaps appreciate it poetically. But the instinctive import, the gut-level impact, will not reach a people who have all the light they wish literally at their fingertips.

But even artificial light has value in this framework. As the natural light is a metaphor for the truth of God's Revelation shedding light into the darkness of our sin and rebellion, artificial light could be understood as man trying to self-illuminate our condition by our own wisdom and efforts. For what have the last several centuries of Western civilization been but our attempts to determine our own destinies by theories and principles that we invented according to our own wisdom? We would turn from the natural moral “light” of Revelation so we can have “light” of our own making.

Why do this? Well, one reason might be something that man-made morality shares with man-made light: it functions at our discretion. Artificial light burns when, where, and to the degree we wish. If there's something we don't wish to look upon, we don't illuminate it; if there's something we wish to accentuate, we illuminate it more. In like manner, the morality of man can be very selective. We might decry treatment of a preferred minority, such as the residents of Darfur or AIDS victims, but inconvenient minorities such as the unborn or severely handicapped are tucked away in a dark corner.

Sunlight is indiscriminate – it illuminates everything, the pleasant and unpleasant alike. “Nothing is hidden from its burning heat” (Ps 19:6) There's no ignoring things illuminated by sunlight. I got a little lesson in this just today. I'm currently alone in the house, and since tidying up after the Thanksgiving weekend, the place seems fairly clean – or so it appeared just this morning by light of all the lamps. But when the morning sunlight shone through the east window, it starkly illuminated the dust and dirt on what had seemed to be a clean floor. What by artificial light had seemed acceptable, even laudable, was shown by natural light to be woefully inadequate.

Darkness is one of the themes of Advent. We need to be reminded of our selfishness and pride. While the world would have us raising toasts and celebrating bonhomie and good will, the Church urges us to confront the darkness of sin in the world and in our hearts. Let's dwell here a while. Let's resist the urge to turn on the “artificial light” of self-reassurance and self-consolation. Let's acknowledge what is wrong with us, that we too often allow darkness in our lives by only illuminating that which we wish to see. Let's face this darkness squarely, that we might will to accept the Light when He comes.

“In the tender compassion of our God, the Dawn from on High shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness, and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78,79)

A Greater Economy

One of my daughters lives in an upscale suburb of Washington, D.C. She enjoys a spacious home in a lovely neighbourhood, gets a carpool ride in to work most days and on the days her fellow rider is away, she often gets to drive the car herself. She's very well situated, given her entry-level clerical position that is only intended to last a year or two before she heads off to graduate school – especially compared to the cramped apartment in a seedy neighbourhood that she thought she thought would be her lot when she accepted the job.

The best part about this arrangement is that it costs her nothing. Her lodging, transport, and even board is free. She is able to put away most of her meagre salary against grad school expenses, because her hosts will accept no payment for having her.

By now, you're probably beginning to wonder how on earth she rates such a plush arrangement. What has she done to earn such rich benefits, when so many others are scraping to even get by, especially as young college graduates?

Well, she's done nothing to earn it. It's all gift. She's living with a family who are dear friends with my eldest daughter. The husband works for a D.C. law firm and the wife was once legal counsel to a prominent U.S. senator until she resigned for the nobler and more demanding calling of motherhood. They have a toddler who is a handful, as toddlers tend to be. When they heard my daughter had gotten a summer internship in D.C., they insisted she live with them, and when she got a job at the end of the internship, they insisted she stay on.

I call these kind of arrangements “mutual high-leverage” – i.e. one where a relatively small contribution by one party provides tremendous benefit for the other. The family already has the home with plenty of room, so one more occupant is little strain. He's already driving in to work and her office is just a few blocks away. The family is actually saving money on food because my daughter's help with cooking, or tending the toddler so mom can cook, means they don't eat out as much.

In return for what is for them a very small sacrifice, they get experienced and enthusiastic help around the house – something every couple with a young child can use. My daughter is also delightful company for the couple. But probably most important is her loving presence for their little son. This is no strain – for her, loving children just “comes natural” – but it's an immeasurable benefit for the family.

This wonderful and mutually beneficial arrangement got me thinking along economic terms. Many have thought and said much about the market value of things, even to the point of contending that the only value of a thing is the price it can command on the open market. Some even hold that unfettered market transactions are the summum bonum of human existence, and that all human efforts not only can but should be valued this way.

But a market transaction – payment for goods and services – is at the root an expression of simple justice. Insuring someone gets proper recompense for their labor is only fair. To offer less is to descend into slavery and exploitation. But we need to remember that justice is a minimum standard. We dare not give less than justice, but there are greater things. One of these is charity – agapé love, to use the Scriptural term. There is no buying charity, no talk of its market value. It is pure gift or it is nothing.

If we think about it, it is the most valuable things in life that lie in this realm. I write this on Veteran's Day, when we remember those who sacrificed their freedom to preserve ours. Oh, sure, they got paid, but nothing approaching the value of what they willingly offered when they raised their right hand and took that oath. What they risked and sacrificed was pure gift to the rest of us. Another example is marriage. The mutual gift of self that should lie at the heart of the marriage covenant is of such high value that it seems repulsive to even consider market transactions in the same context (this is one reason why prostitution is always wrong – it takes a human interaction that should be pure gift of charity and reduces it to a market transaction.)

Gifts of charity are always greater things than market transactions. When my daughter moved in with this family, she offered to pay what rent she could for the benefit of living there. The husband literally laughed. He assured her that every penny of her salary could barely make a dent in the mortgage payment for the house, and while that was true, I'm sure that was mostly a façade. They wanted to give her the gift of caring for her, helping her get on her feet. In like manner, were they to offer her payment for the help around the house or child care, she'd laugh right back at them. It's all gift.

Their relationship lies above the realm of market transactions. The charity the family is extending to my daughter is making a huge difference in her present and future life. And the love she is pouring into their young son's life could not be purchased on any market at any price. She's like an aunt to him, and her influence will help him all his life.

It's all gift. That's the kind of life the Lord wants us to live. That's the Kingdom we're supposed to be bringing to earth while we wait our King's return. Would that we had the courage to live it more fully, more often – to give and receive the gift we should be to one another.

The Broken Heart

I'm not a big one on hanging onto childhood art projects. Don't get me wrong – I loved looking over projects brought home from school, but multiply six kids by at least six productive project-years each by forty weeks per year by one project per week, and the volume gets overwhelming. Add to that the ad-hoc kitchen table projects that occur throughout a creative childhood, and you've got the potential for construction-paper-and-Elmer's-glue overload. So, outside of a handful of projects that go up every Christmas season, our unwritten policy was to quietly and tactfully broom the artwork once interest faded.

With one exception.

It's sitting on my dresser in a 5x7 picture frame, and it has an interesting history. I think it was about Valentine's day, and one of my daughters set out to make a card for me to express her love. She got off to a good start, but muffed part of it along the way. Disappointed and discouraged that she'd “ruined” her card for me, she was about to throw it away when Ellen stopped her. Knowing that fathers have different standards for such things, Ellen assured my daughter that even a flawed card would be appreciated. So it was saved from the trash, and presented to me, and I'm sure at the time I gave it the usual “that's lovely, sweetheart” before tucking it in my drawer.

Some time later I came across the card while I was having a tidy fit over my cluttered dresser. Recognizing it as a childhood art project and wondering why I'd hung on to that one, I was about to pitch it when Ellen stopped me. She told me of my daughter's work to make it, of her crushing disappointment at “ruining” it, and how she'd been encouraged to present it anyway. Hearing that, I looked at the card in a new light. This was a hand made expression of love to me from one of my darling children, and in a way stood for all the birthday and Father's Day and Christmas and whatever cards they'd all made for me over the over the years that we simply hadn't been able to keep. It wasn't perfect, but it was all the more charming for that. A purchased card, no matter how elaborate and eloquent, couldn't have begun to touch the simple expression of love that the smeared paint represented. I decided that this one I'd keep, and found a frame for it. Now it sits on my dresser, where I can see it every morning as I get ready for the day. Over the years of mishaps the glass has cracked, but the frame still perches there, holding the card. And as I've been reminded every morning of my children's love for me, a deeper meaning has become more apparent.

We adults think we can do so much for God. In fact, we're so great that sometimes we wonder how He'd get along without us. But the truth is that we can't bring anything before Him but our own weakness and humility – our broken hearts. That's what He really wants of us, and that's all we can bring. Of course, we don't want to bring them, because they're smeared and smudged and imperfect and not at all as good as He deserves. But that's what He wants, because it's the intention behind the smeared and damaged work that interests Him.

Yet how often do we keep away from Him, not wanting to draw near because the project that is our life isn't ready yet? We keep Him waiting for us while we take another stab at it, because this time we're sure to get it right. We can't conceive of a love so deep that even our failures are precious to Him if we bring them in love. We scramble and scurry and hang back because He's so important that we want everything to be perfect for Him – even though He's assured us that we'll never be perfect, but that's okay, because He loves us and treasures even the smallest, most damaged things we do for Him.

It's a lesson I'm still learning. As a reminder, I keep on my dresser a Broken Heart that was given to me by one of my precious children. It isn't perfect, or expensive, or even impressive art. But I treasure it because it is a gift of love. I try to let it remind me that my Heavenly Father wants my imperfection, and my poverty, and my emptiness. He wants my heart, even though it's broken. That's the only treasure I can give Him.

A matter of perspective

With the rest of the world, I anxiously watched the situation of the Chilean miners over the past couple months. I was amazed that they not only survived the collapse but were in circumstances where they could stay alive until help arrived. I monitored the progress of the rescue effort, half expecting to hear at any time that some obstacle had hindered or stopped progress. I could hardly believe it when the drillers finally punched through, and was overjoyed that all the miners were rescued safely.

I found myself wondering what it must have been like for the miners trapped miles beneath the surface, their lives in the hands of the rescue workers as they worked against terrible odds to get through. I can only imagine how ecstatic they must have been to see that shaft, and the promise of life that the rescue capsule represented.

One thing I'm certain didn't happen when the drill broke through: none of the miners said, "That shaft is all very well, but it's not quite to my taste. Let's wait a bit, and maybe look around - I'm sure we can find another way out of here." I'm also confident that nobody looked at the rescue capsule and said, "Fitting into that thing is going to be uncomfortable. I imagine they'll want me to hold my arms close to my side, or stand very still, or something. And look how small it is! Imagine squeezing into that for the long time it'll take to be hauled to the surface! No, thanks." Given the entombment they'd suffered for two months, they were hardly going to complain about the path back to life provided for them. They harbored no illusions about how desperate their situation was. I imagine a golden chariot wouldn't have looked as good as that cramped, rusty rescue capsule, and the minor inconveniences of using it wouldn't have been worth considering in comparison to the hope that it offered.

In our parish Bible study, we've been working through the Gospel of St. Luke. One thing that's struck me this time through has been how firmly Jesus tries to get His listeners to look at their lives and circumstances differently. "You think you want an honored position, so you elbow your way closer to the head table? That's a path to humiliation; think about taking the lower place and waiting for your Host to honor you." "You think you have to scrabble and scramble for the basics of life? You're forgetting your Father in heaven, who clothes the grass and feeds the birds. Be about His business, and trust Him to care for you." Much of what Jesus is trying to get across seems to involve not so much learning a lesson as changing our perspective, and looking at things as God looks at them.

Which got me thinking about the miners and the rescue effort, and how that in some ways represents our condition. It's easy for us in the peaceful, affluent West to be deluded about our true circumstances. Because our bodies are safe and our minds engaged, or at least amused, we think we're in pretty good shape. We harbor a lot of illusions about our condition.

But if Christ is to be believed, our situation is much more desperate. In our sinful condition, we're just like those miners trapped thousands of feet beneath the surface. We're cut off from the Light of God and the life with Him that we were made for. Being entombed alive is a good image, because that's exactly what we are: walking dead men. We're still animate and active for a while, but it's only a matter of time before our brief, miserable lives come to an end, and we're as dead as the rocks around us.

But just as the miners had people on the surface working to save them, we sinful ones had a loving God working for us. His rescue shaft is Jesus Christ, promised through the ages and finally breaking through at the Incarnation. His escape capsule is His Church, and the means of grace which He has provided for us. There is One Way out of our desperate predicament, a Way that has been provided by heroic effort and at terrible cost. Against all odds, a path has been opened from our tomb back to Life and Light, and a way to travel that path has been given us.

Yet how often do we scorn this Way, and the means that have been provided for our rescue? "Jesus? But are there not surely several ways to God?" "The Church, with all those burdensome rules and formalities? I don't think those necessary to draw close to God."

It's all about perspective. As beautiful as this life can be, and as wondrous as the Creation is, we need to take our predicament seriously. We live in the shadow of death. Sin is serious, and the possibility of damnation all too real. If we're not careful, we might be trapped in this mine forever. Yes, our God is a loving God - which is why we need to take His plan of salvation seriously. The shaft is drilled and the capsule is ready. It's no good continuing to poke about in the dark to find another exit that better suits our fancies. It's futile to hang back because we don't like the look of the capsule, or the procedures for using it. We need to believe what Jesus tells us about our condition, and do what He says for getting out of it. We need to help our fellow "trapped miners" to understand that we really are in a dark, dingy hole, and that we need to escape or we'll die down here.

The Chilean mine collapse gave us just a glimpse of heaven's perspective on our human condition. We were watching from "upstairs", hoping that the efforts would be successful, anxious until every trapped miner was safely rescued. Right now, the saints and angels await our decision. Will we climb in the capsule and be lifted to safety? Or will we hang back, thinking the dark hole is normal and hoping for a better deal?

It's all in how we choose look at things, and Who we choose to believe.

Institutional Thinking

Our culture seems enamored of the achievements of youth. We see them hailed in newspaper articles and human interest featurettes, written up everywhere from websites to snack food bags. The basic framework of the story is fairly standard, with particulars mutable: some young man or woman sees or experiences a medical tragedy, or a community problem, or some other lamentable circumstance, and decides to Take Action. The Action taken might be raising funds, or directly assisting, or making some personal heroic effort (though it inevitably involves that most precious of modern activities: Raising Awareness.)

These Actions are lauded, since everyone agrees that Young People should be encouraged to do Good Things, but I've noticed that the actions by themselves are never enough. What garners most applause and attention is that the young person starts some group, or foundation, or initiative through which the Good Things take place. So it's not enough that young Johnny Smith wanted to help poor downtown youth so he went down and organized a weekend basketball tournament. What really matters is that Johnny founded the Poor Downtown Youths Basketball Organization to organize tournaments. Questions of how many others are involved with the PDYBO, or how effective its efforts are in addressing the problems of PDYs, are secondary to the fact that the organization was started, and its intentions were Very Good.

I've pondered this phenomenon and what it says about our day and age. To begin with, I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders how long these organizations survive the departure or loss of interest of their founders. But to me the question of enduring effectiveness is less interesting than that of the initial interest, indeed almost obsession, with the founding of organizations. This seems to say much about where we place our trust these days.

It wasn't all that long ago that heroic people were held up for emulation. Young people were told of athletes or pioneers or scientists or whoever that accomplished notable feats. The young were assured that they, too, could attain greatness with enough effort, learning, courage, or whatever. But now that seems passé. In our time, The Hero seems to be mistrusted, almost deprecated. People are not to be trusted, for they will inevitably fail in some way.

In what, then, should we trust? The ready answer offered by our culture seems to be The Institution. Institutions are the essential entities, so it is the founding of them which is the Best Thing. Regardless of how compassionate Johnny might be, or how motivated he might be to help, that won't really matter until Johnny subordinates his compassion and motivation to an institution, with its boards and bylaws and policies. Only then will Johnny have done something truly notable.

Of course this is pure folly. Anyone with a shred of life experience knows that any institution is only as good as the people running it. At best an institution is a formalized wrapper to focus and coordinate the efforts of individuals. Why would anyone consider the wrapper more important than the contents?

I think part of it springs from the "leveling" mindset which C.S. Lewis describes so well in works such as Screwtape Proposes a Toast. Heroes are not just suspect because they might have feet of clay, but also (and probably primarily) because they show up everyone else. They are to be torn down, or encouraged to tear themselves down, in favor of impersonal entities which are nonthreatening and, above all, Fair.

While that's part of the answer, I think there's more. Another aspect seems to be the inversion of thinking expected from a materialistic culture. Again, Lewis - drawing on others - observed that the materialist sees the individual as the temporary and transient thing, while governments, corporations, and other institutions are more enduring. Those trusting God's revelation understand that everything of this world will pass away while human souls endure eternally.

While these are certainly major factors, I'm coming to believe that there's yet another motive behind this cultural attitude - a motive so subtle as to pass nearly unnoticed but more sinister than any. It is the oldest and most tempting of perversions: that of bowing down before the works of our own hands. Yes, the same phenomenon so wickedly denounced in the Bible - idolatry. But as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out in his book Introduction to Christianity, since the Incarnation the temptation to idolatry seems to have turned away from that of physical images such as described in Isaiah 44 and Wisdom 13 and more toward the worship of ideas. This can be seen from the heresies that threatened early Christianity to the varied forms of statism that plague modern times. The core is the same: man subjugating himself to something he has created, either a work of the hand or of the mind.

Small wonder the Hero himself is set aside in favor of the institution, to the point where the founding of the institution becomes the truly heroic work. In our hearts, we know that to honor a man is to honor something that was made by God. To make it worse, truly heroic men have this irritating habit of deprecating themselves, instead thanking all those who assisted and encouraged them, giving credit to other people, and even (gasp!) God Himself. It is far less embarrassing and humbling to honor an institution, and its founders indirectly through that.

Does this mean that to recognize Johnny and the PYDBO is to commit idolatry? Of course not - but I do think the obsession with the founding of organizations reflects an interesting and disturbing change in our mindset. To me, this change seems to have largely happened during my lifetime, which makes me wonder where things will go in the next 50 years.

Wisdom from two fathers

My father taught me many good things, but one of the most valuable was the day he sat me down and explained that he wasn't really my father.

He was just my biological father, he explained, and that didn't count for much. My real Father was my Father in Heaven, and it was His love that gave the life that really mattered. The biological life my earthly father gave me would run out in at most 80 or 90 years, possibly much less, while the life that my Heavenly Father could bestow would last forever. My Heavenly Father was the source and supply of all good things in my life, and the most loving thing my earthly father could do was put me in touch with my Heavenly Father.

(For the record, my mother totally agreed with this, and reinforced what my father said.)

This is a lesson I remembered, and passed along to my children in turn. And helpful as the lesson was to me when I was young (once I eventually learned it), the it was even more helpful when I had children of my own. It helped me keep my task in perspective: my role as father was important, but ultimately I was merely their earthly father, and the most important thing I could do was put my children in touch with their heavenly father.

Another bit of fatherly advice I got was from a kind evangelical gentleman with whom I became acquainted toward the end of my Coast Guard years. I hung out with his two sons, so he sort of took me under his fatherly wing. One time he was talking about principles that guided his raising of his sons, and I've never forgotten it.

He told me that when he had to discipline his sons, especially as they approached adulthood, he made clear to them that they were only under his authority for a short period. As their earthly father he had responsibility for them for a while, but in time they would pass out from under his authority and be directly responsible to their Heavenly Father. His tutelage over them was like "training wheels", to get them accustomed to fatherly discipline, but the day would come when it would end.

Because of this, his discipline was not arbitrary: he didn't just order them to do this or not do that because of what he felt like, but because he wanted them to get used to being responsible to their Real Father. He also made clear that even just because he, the father, didn't have an earthly father ordering him around, that didn't mean that he could just do as he pleased - he was directly responsible to his Heavenly Father, as his sons soon would be.

This helped me clarify my task as a parent. When we have children under our control, it can be very tempting to exercise power arbitrarily. Raising children is troublesome, and sometimes the easiest immediate path is to say "no". Also, life can be difficult and even abusive, and it's tempting to lash out in frustration. Since we can't lash out at our boss or the grocery store clerk, we're tempted to lash out at those over whom we have power: our children. Whenever those responses tempted me, I remembered my friend's lesson that his fatherly authority was not arbitrary, but entrusted to him by Someone Else, to whom he would be responsible for its use. It was useful ballast to keep in mind that my parental authority was temporary and provisional, and the goal of its exercise was to get my children to a point where they could step out from beneath it and be directly responsible to their Real Father.

I'm immensely grateful for the wisdom of the fathers in my life, both my biological father and my fathers in the Church. Their advice helped me, and I only hope it helps others.

A part of me I don't like

I've never thought of myself as covetous person. I've been aware of my struggles with sins "further up the list" - especially in light of Jesus' warning in Matt 5:21-32 - but coveting? I knew the commandment was there, but never thought it applied much to me.

Then again, I suppose fish don't know they're wet.

I've been getting a lesson recently in my own pettiness and covetousness thanks to reconnecting with a high school friend through a social networking site. We don't interact much, but she uses her presence there mostly as a personal blog, with lengthy posts about her life and circumstances. Through these posts I learned that shortly after high school she married a man who worked for an auto company. They raised three children, and he is now retired.

RETIRED?

I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for next month. I have a paltry retirement fund into which I haven't been able to put a cent in over two years. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to retire, and here one of my high school classmates ALREADY IS! On top of that, one of the hobbies she and her husband enjoy is taking cruises. That's right - cruises on liners to places like the Caribbean and Alaska and Spain. They do at least two of these a year, and sometimes more if they catch a good deal. I've never been on a cruise, and consider myself lucky if someone asks me out for a ride on their boat.

How does she rate? That's what the covetous part of me growls - that covetous part that I wasn't aware of.

Of course, her posts also intimate that she has experienced a good deal of relational turmoil in her life. She's still happily married, but apparently there have been problems with the children, and painful rifts with siblings and cousins.

Ahh, so that's it! She might be retired and enjoying ocean cruises, but she's paying for it with relational pain of the sort I haven't had! At least that's how the covetous Roger reasons, with an outlook that would do credit to an author of Greek tragedies. The great cosmic pan-scales will be balanced, so though she's retired while I have to work for the living into the foreseeable future, she's having to PAY for that!

Pretty ugly stuff, eh?

Of course, I don't really wish any of that on her. She's an old friend and sister in Christ, and I pray that her family relationships heal and bring her no more pain. What I really want, when I give the Redeemed Roger a chance, is that she enjoy the blessings of the life God has for her - the retirement, the cruises, the seemingly good relationship with her husband, and God's grace in the places which aren't what they should be. I don't want her to suffer as some kind of metaphysical payment for marrying a guy who got a retirement package.

So I guess I'm not as free from covetousness as I thought. In fact, it seems I'm shot through with it, waiting just below the surface, waiting to emerge in the proper circumstances. I covet her early retirement and ocean cruises, and it's astonishing how quickly that covetousness eclipses all the blessings God has given me. When I'm coveting, I don't think about the wonderful Stratford weeks that God has given us, or the generosity of friends, or the blessing of our children. I don't even think about the blessings in Heaven that I consciously and deliberately chose to build up, over blessings on this earth. I just think about what I don't have. And the next step beyond that is envy - the part that would gloat if she had to post "my husband's retirement has been impacted by changes in the auto industry, and it looks like he'll have to go back to work." It shames me to admit that there is part of me that would be gratified to see that.

Clearly, I need a lot more work. I don't want those covetous and envious parts. I want all of me to be generous and rejoicing when good happens to others. How can I reflect Christ to the world if I'm full of covetousness and envy?