Tag: Culture

There is a scene in the Movie Devil’s Advocate where Al Pacino, who plays the Devil, takes up a rant against God. In so doing, the scene rather remarkably portrays the attitude and view of God and religion held by many secularists today. If you click through to the YouTube page and look at the comments, you’ll see page after page of clench fists raised saying, in effect “YEAH!” Beware of the abundance of extreme profanity if you look at those comments. It seems not to be enough for some secularists that they find God and faith irrelevant, rather they must go further to hate God and faith.

Fr. Robert Barron has a cautionary note when engaging these sorts of secularists and atheists. He notes that they are not so much rejecting God, as a caricature of God, a false and distorted picture of God, gleaned from selective reading of Scripture, and a selective and a distorted notion of the life of faith. Frankly the “god” some of them reject, we reject too.

Hence, we do well to listen carefully to their notion of God and faith and to learn to distinguish the god they reject and the faith they despise, from the True God and the true faith.

With that in mind lets take a closer look at the Al Pacino (as the devil) rant and analyze it. It may be helpful for you to view the video below and follow the text (reproduced here) before looking at my line by line reflection. I am sorry for the profanity in the middle of the clip….It is Hollywood after all. But the profanity does illustrate the depth of the anger, that not a few have today, of the caricatured god they reject who they somehow think is the True God. Here is the quote in full and the video is below:

What are you carrying all those bricks for, anyway, God? God? Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He is a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you these extraordinary gifts, and what does he do? I swear, for his own amusement, his own private cosmic gag reel, he sets the rules in opposition. It is the goof of all time. Look, but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t take. Taste, but don’t swallow. And while you are driving yourself nuts, what is He doing? He is laughing his sick ……..off…. He is an absentee landlord. Worship that? Never!…I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections I am a fan of man. I am a humanist. Maybe the last humanist. Who in their right mind, Kevin, could possibly deny that the 20th Century was entirely mine? All of it Kevin. All of it. Mine. I’m peaking…It’s my time now.

And now permit a few responses to each line:

What are you carrying all those bricks for, anyway, God? –

Most secular critics of the faith see the living of the faith as a hardship that stifles humanity and lead to unhappy and unfulfilled lives. They see us shackled by dogmas that limit us and confine our search for truth and greater self actualization and development. They see us as carrying bricks.

Sadly, some Christians give rise to these notions by manifesting a sour-faced, joyless faith, which does manifest unnecessary hostility to the world  and the beauty of creation. This of course is not an orthodox expression of the true faith. For at the heart of the true faith is the joy of an empty tomb, the new life of resurrected glory.

As a Christian my deepest experiences are of joy and serenity. I am overwhelmed with gratitude at what God is doing in my life. It is my joy to praise and serve God. His law is more precious to me than gold and it has preserved me from a boat load of trouble!

It is true that the Cross is held high by the Church. But it is at the Cross that the full love of God for me is visible as Jesus dies in my place. And the cross brings life, for it is in dying to lower things that we rise to higher and more wonderful things. I glory in the Cross and, in the laboratory of my own life, I have experienced how it does bring me life and blessing and how its power transforms my life.

I am not carrying bricks for love lightens every load. God’s commandments are not burdensome to me, for the more I love God and my neighbor, them more and more I keep them, almost without effort. Here too it has been my experience that God has given me grace upon grace and that, as his Law comes alive in my life, it is by his gift, rather than my effort. To be in Christ is my joy, my life, my most precious possession.

As for burdens, we all have them, secularists as well as the faithful. But to experience my burdens with faith lightens them and gives me confidence that they only make me stringer and prepare me for glory.

I do not carry bricks, I am carried by God’s love.

Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch….He is an absentee landlord. –

Here is a deistic notion of God, that he sort of sets things in motion, and then steps back to watch or go have lunch or something.

But neither Scripture nor my own experience confirm this notion. The Lord holds all creation together in himself (e.g. Col 1:17). He is more present to me than I am to myself. Though he transcends he also indwells through immanence.

I have come to powerfully experience God’s presence in my life in recent years. As my prayer has deepened I am drawn into close union with God in wordless contemplation. I am privileged to walk with many spiritual directees who have also come to experience deep union with God.

The normal Christian life is to be in living conscious contact with God at every moment. Nothing is more strange to me than to think God is watching from afar. Even as I type these words my heart is moved with his indwelling presence, a presence that is real and unquestioned by me.

He is a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you these extraordinary gifts, and what does he do? I swear, for his own amusement, his own private cosmic warped sense of humor, he sets the rules in opposition to your instincts. It is the goof of all time. Look, but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t take. Take, but don’t swallow. And while you are driving yourself nuts, what is He doing? He is laughing…

It is a Christian teaching that God gave us our passions (what Pacino (aka the devil) calls “instincts.” It is also Christian teaching that these passions are, of themselves good and necessary. God does not given them to us for his amusement, but for our survival and for our enjoyment of the good things he offers.

It is a truth however, that our passions, after the fall, are unruly and we often struggle to maintain them in a balance that is healthy and helpful.

It is not just God who sets up rules to limit our indulgence of passions. The world does too. If you drink and drink, you’re under arrest. If you eat too much the world laughs at you and calls you fat, and doctors wag their finger and (rightfully) warn of heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol etc. If you vent your anger excessively you may be arrested or sued. If you merely indulge your sexual passion and grope people, sexually abuse or rape them, you are subject to arrest, imprisonment and lawsuit.

There are necessary limits for our indulgence of passions in any setting, secular or religious. If all we do is follow our instincts, we are but animals, and orderly society is not possible.

Self Mastery – So limits are not unique to a Christian or religious setting. What is unique is the understanding that what the world calls limits, we call self mastery. The Christian moral vision is not a vision so much of limits, as of transformation and freedom. I am not to be enslaved by my passions but the master of them. Christ announces freedom not slavery or suppression.

Here too I am a witness. I am joyful in what the Lord has done for me. He has set me free from innumerable sinful habits and patterns. I have gained great mastery over many of my passions, especially anger. In its place are greater compassion, patience, kindness and love.

I do not experience these as impositions or limits, but as gifts. I am not stifled but strengthened. I am joyful over the fact that I am not a slave to pornography, I do not sexually act out nor do I even want to. I am seeing my greed abate and be replaced by greater generosity. I am less resentful, and more easily forget hurts of the past.

I do not say things like to boast, except to boast in the Lord. I am so glad at what he is doing in my life! He is not laughing at me, He is loving me, and transforming me! Thank you Lord.

I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man has been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections I am a fan of man. I am a humanist.

Yes, Satan and the secular mindset like to praise themselves as the friend of man, the friend of the people.

Here Satan claims to be close,  while God is distant and laughing. I have already addressed those notions.

But what Satan here calls “nurturing every sensation” I call temptation. Our passions do not need to be nurtured. We have them naturally from God and, of themselves they work fine. And as noted, since the Fall of Man, sometimes they work too well and out of balance. What Satan and the world do, is to manipulate and tempt us beyond what is necessary or just. All day long, Satan and the world seek to provoke our anger, our fear, our sexuality, our need for popularity and acceptance, our greed, our hatred, our hunger and thirst. The hope is to get us spending too much and to ensnare us in the insatiable desire for more. When our passions own us, we are easily bought and manipulated.

This is not humanism, it is hatred and exploitation. It is slavery that is the goal, not freedom. Most people who have marched under the banner of freedom in recent decades have ended up addicted, diseased and indebted, with broken families, broken lives and broken hearts. Any honest look at the disarray caused by the excesses of modern times tells this sad tale.

Satan also boasts that the he has never judged or rejected man. Nonsense, for both he and the so-called “tolerant” secularists are highly judgmental.

Scripture calls Satan our accuser.

And the secular world is anything but tolerant. Just utter, even unintentionally, something that is not politically correct and watch how fast you are humiliated, called names, kicked to the curb, threatened with lawsuits, and even told to resign. Transgress, even for a moment, the rule that certain protected classes are never to be questioned or challenged, and watch the venom and name calling: bigot, homophobe, hater,  intolerant, insensitive, racist, etc.

Our so-called tolerant society specializes in destroying those who transgress, even obliquely. There is no room for apology, clarification, context, or any presumption of good will. The transgressor must be destroyed.

Is this humanism or is it what the Pope has called the “tyranny of relativism?” Is this what the devil in this scene means when we says he and the secular world does not judge although God, and presumably, religionists do? It does not seem that being judgmental is a problem only of the religiously observant. Frankly, some of the destructive vindictiveness of the secular world far surpasses what the Pope or the local pastor can mete out.

Who in their right mind, Kevin, could possibly deny that the 20th Century was entirely mine? All of it Kevin. All of it. Mine. I’m peaking…It’s my time now –

Ah, and here is where “Satan” goes a bridge too far. I am really rather surprised that Hollywood allowed this line in the final cut. For here is where the mask comes off, and we see the real face of Satan and the true fruits of the secularism of these times. The woes of the 20th Century have little to do with religion. Rather, they emerge directly from secular principles, as well as from sin set loose by Satan.

Most of us who have lived through the 20th Century realize what a dreadful fall we have had.

It is true our technology, science and medicine are off the hook and wonderful things have been seen.We have also made progress in turning back the most severe forms of racism.

But the dreadful and bloody wars where millions died, the genocidal mania that swept Germany in the 40s, the Balkans and Rwanda in 90s. The over 100 million killed by Stalin and the Chinese in their Communist crack down. The incredible bloodshed in southeast Asia, the unfathomable toll of abortion and on and on.

The West has also suffered dramatic decline and our families have been destroyed by promiscuity, divorce, and cohabitation. Contraception and abortion have also fueled a kind of death wish as our birthrates have plummeted. It is the children who suffer most.

Church attendance has severely declined, social unrest grows, the economy throughout the West is laden with debt and near disaster.

Most of us who are older remember times that were safer and simpler, where people made commitments and kept them, and where self control and a common moral vision were more the norm. They were not perfect times by any means, and some things were worse, but any casual observer will note a sudden and shocking decline in the 20th Century of the basic fabric of culture, faith, family and country.

Yes, I would easily agree, the 20th Century has surely been a playground for Satan. It recalls the vision of Pope Leo who came to understand that Satan’s power would grow for the period of 100 years. He asked that the Prayer of St. Michael be thus recited everywhere, especially after low Mass. Keep praying, for, even if Satan’s time is up, the ripples in the water take time to calm down.

Yes, I am surprised Hollywood allowed this last line to stay in. For, despite all the talk of how religion has caused wars, and how religion imprisons people in a lack of self fulfillment, and dogmatic rigidity, the problems of the 20th Century cannot be laid at the door of faith. The ruins of the 20th Century are the “fair-flower” of utopian secularist thinking. Divorced from God, and insisting it is accountable to no one higher, and convinced it can cast aside the wisdom of previous ages like filthy rags, secular culture has shown us the fruit of its premises. Welcome to humanist paradise.

As for me, I have come to love the Kingdom of God. We in the Church have not lived it perfectly or manifested it well. Indeed, we too are accountable for the ruins around us, for it has happened on our watch. We failed to effectively hand on the faith to our children, and we were inwardly focused while our culture melted down. Other Catholics were too busy trying to fit in, rather than joyfully live the faith.

But in the end, it is not the faith that was the cause, it was the failure to life the faith that caused our witness to the world to fall flat. Now it is the time for Christians to authentically come to a true and lively faith, a joyful and confident faith. For, as Fr. Barron has said so well, it is not God that most atheists and secularists reject, it is a false picture of God that they reject. It is up to us to encounter the living and true God, and to manifest him to the world. We must soberly assess the world, joyfully embrace our God and our Faith and manifest him personally to the world.

There is a story of St. Paul’s arrest, beating and imprisonment at Philippi that serves as a kind of paradigm for the radicality of true Christianity and why it so perturbs many in this world. For, of itself the Christian faith, its message and the transformation it can effect, is very unsettling for a world that quite literally and figuratively banks on sin. Lets consider this lesser known story of Paul and see what it ought to mean for us, if we take the Christian faith seriously and do not try to “tame” it.

Philippi was the first “European” city that Paul evangelized as he came across from Asia Minor. Arriving at the port the port of Philippi in Macedonia, Paul and Silas went right to work evangelizing. One of their first Converts was Lydia, a wealthy woman from Thyatira, a dealer in purple cloth. Other converts followed. And here is where we pick up the story.

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.”

The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. (Acts 16:16-24).

Note, in this story, the heart of the problem. St. Paul, in setting the slave girl free of her demon has deprived her “owners” of the income they derived from her sad state. They were banking on her bad condition and trafficking on her trouble. In the name and Power of Jesus Christ, St. Paul sets her free. His action draws deep anger from the “owners.” He has rocked their world and touched their pocketbooks. They see the Christian message for it is: revolutionary, disconcerting, threatening, and deeply unsettling.

A threat not only to profit, but to power. In having Paul arrested they stir up the hatred and fear of others as well indicating that Paul was not merely preaching some “strange new religion” but were advocating customs forbidden to Romans. The word “customs” here in Greek is ἐθη (ethe) and refers to “religious rites or forms of worship.” Cicero in De Legibus, ii. 8,  says, “No person shall have any separate gods, or new ones; nor shall he privately worship any strange gods, unless they be publicly allowed.” While the Romans often overlooked the private worship of unapproved gods, to publicly proclaim new and unapproved deities was an occasion for dissension and controversy and forbidden.

And frankly, the charges against Paul and Silas are true enough. They have hindered profit in the healing they wrought. Further they were openly proclaiming that Jesus was Lord. To our ears we hear a religious phrase. But to Roman ears the phrase was provocative and revolutionary.  It was directly contrary to their proclamation that Caesar is Lord. Yes, Paul, Silas, Luke and the others were shaking the ground in Philippi. While they were not advocating the overthrow of any government, they were announcing a power greater than Caesar and a higher King demanding first loyalty: Jesus is Lord!

This is not the tame and domesticated proclamation of the faith so common today. This is not the faith that is trimmed to fit into worldly categories and to be tucked under political, philosophical and moral preferences. This is the faith that shakes the world and brings a revolutionary challenge to the world’s priorities. Yes, Paul and Silas are a serious threat.

And what of us today? We have gone through a long period where, in many ways we have thought the faith could be lived quietly and that it generally fit quite well into the world in which we lived. Harmony and getting along were highly prized. Particularly here in America, Catholics wanted to reassure the general populace that our faith in no way hindered us from being full participants in the American scene and that we could fit right in, be just like everyone else. With the election of the first Catholic President we could say we had finally made it and been fully accepted. Finally we fit in.

Of course the culture was not in such disrepair in those days and we still had a fairly wide moral consensus rooted in the Judeo-Christian vision. But having finally “made it” we assumed room temperature and the fire of our distinctively Catholic culture faded away. At the same time Western culture has also largely died. (Coincidence)?

And now we are coming full circle where we have got to rediscover how revolutionary our Catholic faith truly is to this world gone mad. And as we proclaim healing and an allegiance to something other than this world, we will become increasingly obnoxious to the world around us.

Consider both things for which Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned:

1. They ate away at profit – Paul drove a terrible demon out of a slave girl, a demon that afflicted her, but profited her slaveholders. In this world today there is a lot of trafficking in sin and addiction. Terrible demons afflict many people regarding sexuality, drugs,  and alcohol. And there’s a lot of money to be made selling pornography to sex addicts, and others. Sex sells, Hollywood movie producers, contraceptionists, pimps, escort services, abortionists, and even traffickers in the sex slave industry also feed at the trough. Drugs and alcohol  are big money makers too. Not to mention the huge numbers of products that are sold using the demon of fear: You are not pretty enough, you are not healthy enough, you are getting old, you don’t drive the right car, you haven’t impressed your friends enough. You need to buy our product right away so you are not so pathetic. And thus the demon of fear and low self-esteem is exploited, along with the demon of greed.

But what would happen if the Church were to start effectively preaching unabridged Christianity which says, “You don’t need to be afraid of your health, your age, or what people think of you. You can also find serenity in Christ and so you won’t need all that extra alcohol and those drugs. And you can be set free from your enslavement to sex, take authority over your passions and discover the beauty of traditional marriage. What if we got back in the business of driving out demons?

Well, of course the answer would be that we like Paul would be and are, under attack. We are especially hated by the sex industry and the abortionists, since that is the most focused issue these days. To them we are public enemy number one. We threaten the vision, the addiction and the despair that fills their coffers. If we are too successful, and for now our successes are meager, their profits may go away. Yes, we must be dealt with.

But really, we will only be effective if we preach the unabridged faith. Not the faith that is trimmed and tucked under worldly priorities, the faith that insists on being “realistic” and makes endless apologies to the inevitable objections of the world no matter how much we water things down. The true faith is revolutionary in the freedom it offers from sin and the demons.

Paul and Silas didn’t end up in prison by preaching a watered down, tamed and domesticated moral vision. They unabashedly drove out a demon that was afflicting a girl, and in so doing they engaged in a revolutionary threat to a world that profits well on sin.

2. They threatened power – Calling Jesus Lord was a revolutionary threat to the incumbent power which seeks and demands our first and full loyalty. And thus today, many strive to make Catholics fit into neat little political categories. Both Republicans and Democrats want the Church to fit into their narrow little categories and march in lockstep with a party system. Even Catholics in those categories want the Church to conform. Many Catholics in fact are more loyal to their party than their Church, and are more passionate about their political views than their faith. If there is a conflict between a Church teaching and the party line, guess which usually gives way.

But in the end the Church will not just fit into some neat political category. The true faith is too revolutionary to fit into some worldly box.

And thus there is a lot of hatred and anger directed at the Church. Republicans say we’re too liberal, Democrats say we’re too conservative. More and more we are being shown the door, kicked to the curb and our very right to religious liberty is threatened. Religious exemptions to increasingly pernicious laws are being slowly removed, and lawsuits against Catholic Institutions are increasing. It will surely get worse as secular systems demand increasing loyalty and Church must refuse that loyalty.

Because, Jesus is Lord, not the Federal, State or local government. Jesus is not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. He is God, and the faith he announces cannot be defined down or compromised to fit into a friendship with the world.

But here too, no tame, domesticated Christianity, will threaten or change this world. When Paul preached the people rioted, but too much modern preaching incites only yawns and indifference.

What should we learn from St. Paul’s arrest at Philippi? That the true faith is revolutionary, and threatens the world right where it hurts: in the profit and power centers. As the world turns more secular the revolutionary aspect of the faith will become more evident.

Are you ready?

In this video Fr. Barron comments on the movie “The Matrix” which depicts an interesting Christian motif. The Matrix is a machine from which people need liberation. The solution can only happen when some one from outside the Matrix (Neo) enters in and announces liberty, dies rises and defeats the Matrix.

An interesting article appeared the in the Wall Street Journal on the Saturday after the passing of Steve Jobs. Written by Andy Crouch, it does a good job (pardon the pun) of distilling the philosophy of technology that is common today. Steve Jobs, a master at technology and business, articulated and exemplified many of its tenants. We do well to examine this philosophy for it is a strong rival to the Christian outlook and has growing numbers of loyalists who see technology as a kind of saving god which has over thrown the older paradigm of the Judeo Christian heritage. It is a kind of substitutional philosophy that deserves so analysis.

I want to present excerpts from the article which is excellent. The full article can be read here: Steve Jobs: Secular Prophet. The text of Mr. Crouch is in bold, black italics, my comments are in red plain text.

Disclaimer: I am a fan of Apple products. I use them and will probably use more in the near future. I respect what Steve Jobs has accomplished and that what he has done has provided benefits for many to include good products, employment and the promotion of excellence. In responding to the philosophical claims of Mr Jobs and others, I am using a form of response that is akin to “rant.” I mean no personal disrespect to Mr Jobs (de mortuis nil nisi bonum).  I disagree with his outlook and philosophy but personally respect what he has accomplished. I regret he did not have faith, yet still I hope to see I hope to see him in the great parousia.

Further, If I seem to be disagreeing with Mr Crouch, I am not, for he is but reporting the philosophy of technology and in the ends raises many of the same questions I do. Remember, to some degree I am using “rant” here in order to pull memorably in the other direction. It is a form of speech that requires context and some degree of appreciation for hyperbole (exaggeration).

Steve Jobs was extraordinary in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (demanding and occasionally ruthless) leader. But his most singular quality was his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple’s early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and turned it into a sign of promise and progress. That bitten apple was just one of Steve Jobs’s many touches of genius, capturing the promise of technology in a single glance.

To be honest, I never really connected the Apple logo with a shot across the bow of the Judeo-Christian vision of our fallenness. I recently bought an iMac, which I like very much. But frankly the world of Apple and Mac have not been on my radar that much until recently.

But to be clear, I want to personally testify, that neither Macs nor PCs have made even a dent in the problem of sin. Any look at the typical combox of a blog will show that. If anything we’ve become more coarse and divided in our dialogue, as we tend to retreat from real interactions to virtual ones.

Granted, many new connections can be made, and some of them very beneficial,  but not all of them are good. Internet porn sites are by far the most visited sites on the Internet, most them completely blowing away the nearest competitors.

Viruses also shout sin. Imagine some one sitting at home writing code to infect my computer and crash the hard disk. Talk about evil.

If there is a rainbow over the bitten apple, it’s a hologram, not real at all. The promise of technology to save or redeem us seems hollow, indeed, empty.

The philosopher Albert Borgmann has observed that technology promises to relieve us of the burden of being merely human, of being finite creatures in a harsh and unyielding world. The biblical story of the Fall pronounced a curse upon human work—”cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” All technology implicitly promises to reverse the curse, easing the burden of creaturely existence. And technology is most celebrated when it is most invisible—when the machinery is completely hidden, combining godlike effortlessness with blissful ignorance about the mechanisms that deliver our disburdened lives.

To say that our lives are “disburdened” is a stretch. It is true that there are many creature comforts today and many once tedious tasks have been eliminated.

But honestly, the more we have, the less satisfied we seem to be. Stress and living at 90 mph with endless interruptions, e-mails, text messages, voice mails, tweets, and Facebook pokes, ain’t no paradise. Psychotropic drugs are sold at record levels to help manage the stress and depression that often results.

The wealthier and more well apportioned we have become, the more anxious we become. Frankly, we have too much to loose and so we are fearful.  And, all our many possessions breed a kind of addiction to them.

Steve Jobs was great at showing us how that phone he just sold a year ago us is no longer enough. In fact, since his new phone came out, the one he sold us last year is now a piece of junk. You ain’t nothing until you get the latest iPhone 5! And there is something sad and pathetic, seeing people lined up for three days in front of a store to buy a stupid phone (oops, I mean “smart phone”), especially when the one they just bought a year ago, is working fine.

Further, the promises of advertisers et al. to make life peachy, also breeds unrealistic expectations, which in turn breeds resentments and disappointments.

Don’t get me wrong, I like technology and use it, but I am not sure it has “relieved me of the burden of being merely human.”  The basic contours of life remain essentially unchanged, and that is, that life has its pleasures and pains, it’s joys and disappointments. Technology hasn’t changed that.

In the end, nothing in this world can fill the God-sized hole in our hearts. This world is not home and we’re always going to feel that we’re living out of a suitcase, because we are.

Politically, militarily, economically, the decade was defined by disappointment after disappointment—but technologically, it was defined by a series of elegantly produced events in which Steve Jobs, commanding more attention and publicity each time, strode on stage with a miracle in his pocket.

But wait a minute, I thought technology was supposed to relieve us of the burden of being merely human! What this I hear about military political and economic disappointment? Isn’t there an app for that?  Looks like we need more than a miracle in a pocket.

He believed so sincerely in the “magical, revolutionary” promise of Apple precisely because he believed in no higher power.

Well, this “magical promise” that replaces the “higher power”  has a lot of work to do.  We still ain’t back in paradise, no matter what the holographic rainbow over the bitten apple says.

In his celebrated Stanford commencement address (which is itself an elegant, excellent model of the genre), he spoke frankly….”No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.”

Sad really. The human person’s dignity reduced to “doing something,” and then, when your usefulness is over and you get in the way of “change,” you need to be cleared away. Sounds like the voice of pure utilitarianism, wherein we are reduced to human doings, rather than human beings. It is clear that, by this philosophy, you do not exist for your own sake. Rather you exist for the purpose of being a “change agent.” And when you start getting in the way of blessed “progress,” holy “change” and other utopian notions, you need to be cut down and cleared away.

[Mr Jobs went on to say] “Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition.”

Of course dogma is a “no-no” in techno-religion, since it tends to block blessed and holy “progress” and “change.” For, “dogma” is actually more than “other people’s thinking,”  it is the wisdom of past ages, and we can’t have any of that around here. That would get in the way of holy and blessed progress and change. And remember, as soon as you get in the way, you too must be cut down and carried away. Imagine! Learning from the past. No indeed, we certainly can’t be “trapped” by dogma for the reasons stated. Change is all, progress is the pearl of great price. Away with any wisdom from the past (a.k.a “dogma”)!

This is the gospel of a secular age….but the gospel of self-fulfillment does require an extra helping of stability and privilege to be plausible……

Exactly, a philosophy like this can only emerge among the comfortable and well healed, those who are most insulated from life’s often shocking turns. The “do your own thing” dictum is simply not possible for most of the less privileged who are not as free and privileged as Mr Jobs. I wonder if Mr Job’s own employees felt free not to let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. It would seem he did give a lot a freedom to some on his staff, but I doubt the guy in shipping,  packing boxes,  felt free to ignore Mr Job’s opinion and follow his own inner voice, heart and ambition. I suspect he felt very obliged obey Mr Job’s thinking (i.e. “dogma”).

 

 

Is it possible to live a good, full, human life without that kind of hope? Steve Jobs would have said yes in a heartbeat. A convert to Zen Buddhism, he was convinced as anyone could be that this life is all there is. But the rest of us, as grateful as we are for his legacy, still have to decide whether technology’s promise is enough to take us to the promised land. Is technology enough? Has the curse truly been repealed? [Technology] works wonders within its own walled garden, but it falters when confronted with the worst of the world and the worst in ourselves. Exactly

OK, so there’s my rant. How say you?

Portrait above, by Tim O’Brien

 

 

I don’t know that I agree with the final line of this video, but it does bring home the point that there are a few thorns and thistles in techno-paradise.

 

 

I know! I apologize for using one of those rather haughty theological words: Hermeneutic! I also know that many DO in fact know what the word means. But just in case you don’t let’s define. Fundamentally a “hermeneutic” is an interpretive key, a way of seeing and understanding the world.

So what do I mean when I speak of a “hermeneutic of suspicion?” Well, consider the times in which we live. Most people are suspicious of just about everything and everyone! It is a common and usual worldview that politicians lie, the Government is lying, big business is lying, advertisers are lying, the Church is lying. It is presumed that cover-ups are common and, even if there is not outright lying most people and organizations are just acting out of selfish motives and self-serving agendas. If their motives are not selfish they are otherwise bad motives: Liberal! Conservative! Bigoted! Homophobe! Hater! Infidel! Socialist! Selfish Capitalist! Reactionary! Well, you get the point. Everyone is simply dismissed because they have an ”agenda” and this agenda is somehow less than pure, fair or neutral.

You may well think that some or much of what is said abouve is true. But in pondering this all-pervasive “hermeneutic of suspicion” I wonder if there do not have to be some limits to its application and conclusions. Is “everyone” really lying or just acting out of a less than pure agenda? Is it always wrong to have an agenda? Is self interest always a bad thing? Is it always wrong for groups to seek to influence the national discussion even if that influence serves their interest and worldview? Clearly lying is wrong and there is such a thing as lying but is everything I call lying really lying?

I don’t have simple answers to these questions and PLEASE understand I am not some moral relativist who is simply asking for everything to be murky and gray. But our culture is really overheated at the moment with suspicion. There is a pervasive presumption of the worst in terms of motives, sincerity and the like. It is getting harder and harder to have any kind of a conversation at all about issues without the names and the labels sallying forth and the impugning of motives. I don’t have a simple formula to come up with the right balance between a healthy skepticism and pathological suspicion but I would like to propose a few benchmarks toward a better balance.

1. Everyone DOES have an agenda and that is OK. It’s not wrong to have a worldview and to seek to influence others to that way of thinking. The very word “agenda” is intended as pejorative but it need not be. The problem seems to come up when everyone is defensive about having and “agenda.” Since that is somehow supposed to be “wrong” we start to do unhealthy things. We often try to hide our truest agenda and paper it over with less than sincere descriptions of what we think and what we want. We start to talk in code and engage in political correctness, jargon and other circumlocutions that are not always true or at least frank. We become less transparent and this fuels suspicion. If we can just accept that we all have agendas and that’s fine, then we become more frank and honest, and suspicion recedes. In terms of full disclosure let me share my agenda: I am a Roman Catholic Christian and I believe everything that the Church teaches in matters of faith and morals. I believe Jesus Christ Founded the Catholic Church, that it is the one true Church. It is my desire that everyone on this planet become Roman Catholic and thus embrace the fullness of the faith given by Jesus Christ and revealed through the Apostles. Clear enough? That’s my agenda.

2. Self interest is not always bad– I do a lot of organizing work in the neighborhood working with the Washington Interfaith Network, a local chapter of the Industrial Areas Foundation. One of our key principles is to help people identify their interests and then act upon them. If they want more affordable housing, great! Then let’s work to find others who have a similar interest and build power around that shared interest. Self interest can be a powerful motivator toward great ends. Instead of being suspicious and cynical that people have self interest in mind, what if we just accepted that this is the universal human condition and used it to engage people for good ends? It’s not wrong to care about myself. I really ought to get my needs met and that also helps others because I am less of a burden on them. If ALL we care about is our self that is a problem. But most people instinctively understand that their self interest is linked to the good of others too. My life is more secure and stable if there is a healthy, strong and vibrant neighborhood. So I can be engaged around my own interests to work for a just and healthy world. The fact that I get something out it does make my motives somehow impure. But the hermeneutic of suspicion demands “pure” motives and unrealistically defines pure as completely selfless. What if we just stopped all that and accepted that people act on what interests them and that it isn’t necessarily bad. Accepting this makes us less suspicious and cynical.

3. Faith and Trust in the Church are an essential balance to the hermeneutic of suspicion– While it is true that we have to be sober that live in a world where lies are told and where motives are not always pure, it is also true that we have to refuse radical suspicion and cynicism. There IS truth, and there are those who do speak and teach the truth. We must find and seek those harbors of the truth and build and lower our anchor there. For Catholics, the harbor of the truth is the Church. Scripture describes the Church as the Pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). One of the great tragedies of the hermeneutic of suspicion is that many Catholics have adopted this attitude toward the Church. Yes, there is sin and even corruption in the Church, but despite that the Church has never failed to hand on the authentic truth of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ does speak through his Church. I emphatically trust that fact. I believe and profess all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to have been revealed by God. I can do no other. This is my faith. I trust God and believe that he speaks through the Catholic Church despite whatever human weakness is evident in the Church. God can write straight with crooked lines and he can teach infallibly even despite human weakness in the Church. Without a harbor of truth the hermeneutic of suspicion can and will overwhelm us. We will mistrust everyone and everything and have no real way to sort out all the conflicting claims and counterclaims. Without faith and trust both in God and in the Church I am lost, adrift on a sea of suspicion and cynicism and the hermeneutic of suspicion overwhelms me. This is sadly true today of so many who are cut off from the truth thinking they can trust no one. In them the hermeneutic of suspicion has its most devastating effect. The lack of trust locks them into a tiny world, dominated by suspicion and doubt. Only the gift of faith and trust can diminish such deep suspicion. With faith we can measure all things by God’s truth and know what is true from what is false. We have a measuring rod to judge what is true and thus we need not flee to suspicion.

This video fits with my agenda! 😉