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August 27, 2003
Hello everyone,
As I was driving home from a “nature outing” this past Saturday, I was listening to a radio station that plays “rock hits from the 80s, 90s, and now,” as their moniker goes. A song from the 80s came on that I hadn’t heard in years entitled “Who Can it Be Now?” by Men at Work. This song is meant to be somewhat humorous, or at least I take it to mean as much. This band has a sort of happy-go-lucky quality that could be well attributed to the success of this track and the other hit “Down Under” from the same album, Business as Usual. Whatever the case, the lyrics of the first verse begin:
Who can it be knocking at my door?
Go ’way, don’t come ’round here no more.
Can’t you see that it’s late at night?
I’m very tired, and I’m not feeling right.
All I wish is to be alone;
Stay away, don’t you invade my home.
Best off if you hang outside,
Don’t come in—I’ll only run and hide.
Followed closely by the second verse (quoted here in part):
Who can it be knocking at my door?
Make no sound, tip-toe across the floor.
If he hears, he’ll knock all day,
I’ll be trapped, and here I’ll have to stay.
One gets the impression that the character about whom the song is written may be just a bit unstable or paranoid in his reclusive tendencies. Whatever the case, I couldn’t help but think how fitting of a caricature these lyrics often are of my own “bachelorhood.” I go home and I close the door; I don’t come back out again until it is time to go to work the next day. Of course, college complicates this arrangement a bit, but let us simply say that I have grown used to my own company and I often don’t realize just how isolated I am or how lonely. This past week, however, my privacy has been invaded, not so much by people knocking at my door (though that did happen twice), but rather by people calling me up on the telephone. When the phone rang I was outwardly polite and civil when I picked up the receiver, but inwardly I was seething because my precious study time was dwindling to nothing, the list of things I wanted to get accomplished before my first week back in college foremost in my mind. Perhaps I am one of those people who could never truly be on vacation when he was on vacation, but that, I suppose is a story for another day.
I noticed that as I began to apply my attention to the conversation, however, I was soon drawn in and when the final word was spoken, it was me who was “dragging my feet,” my desire to prolong the conversation taking over. All of these instances and more have convinced me that one of the reasons my spiritual life flags as it often does is because it is rarely sharpened with hands-on experience. It has not always been this way. I suppose that living on my own as I do with the schedule I often keep does not encourage the formation of relationships—those that do form are usually short-lived—and I have simply gotten used to this way of life, supplanting interaction with further involved study. However, there have been a thousand arrows too numerous to enumerate that have pointed me in this “old new” direction. We simply cannot be all that we can be if our faith never has a chance to grow its wings.
I will have many more chances for interaction if I choose to take them, for school started this Monday in correspondence with many elementary schools across the country. It looks like it will be a promising semester, though my French class has me somewhat concerned and the two history classes are of limited interest (to me, that is). However, one of the courses I am taking this semester is called a capstone course. As I understand it, these classes are designed ideally for the junior in college to tie together all the rest of his or her general education requirements, though one can take them any time after one’s third year in college and before one’s graduation date. Whatever the case, I was looking forward to the class, recognizing that it was going to be a sort of course in philosophy, a subject near and dear to my heart. The title for this particular capstone course is Education and the Seduction of Modern Culture, our texts comprising in part Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, Bloom’s annotated translation of The Republic of Plato, Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, and Aldous Huxley’s grim Brave New World.
Dr. Jones reminds me somewhat of the descriptions I have read of Charles Williams—the lesser known Christian author, fellow Oxford professor, and friend of C.S. Lewis—a man said to have possessed a great deal of infectious charisma and respectability in spite of his thin and wirey build. Dr. Jones, like Williams, is outwardly unassuming, of slight build and bespectacled, yet I swear fire and ice flow through the man’s veins. (It has long been said that dynamite comes in small packages.) You get the impression he really cares and feels a deeply seated passion for both his subject and his students: he seems strict with the “loving intent” to challenge the minds he agonizes over reaching. Like Williams’ descriptions, Jones’ is the embodiment of what he preaches, namely that (from the course syllabus): “Materialism, a naïve cultural relativism, and a preference for amusement are among the things that make knowledgeable and dedicated civic participation too rare. This course helps students name and confront these seductions not only in forecasting the kind of education some of them will try to make for students they teach, but, more particularly, for themselves and the education and self-making they are experiencing in their collegiate studies.” Among these three false seducers, I particularly liked his commentary on the all-but ubiquitous cultural relativism (again from the course syllabus):
The idea that truth is relative is taken in our culture—and, in particular, the culture of our schools—not as a theoretical insight but as a moral postulate. There is a kind of “openness” that we espouse in the name of intellectual fairness and multicultural sensitivity. Cultural relativism does not demand fundamental agreement on beliefs and it is open to all kinds of people, all kinds of life-styles, and all ideologies. We see openness as allowing a kind of intellectual pursuit that narrow-minded or prejudicial parochialism does not. But while this seems true, certain kinds of education and important cultural myths that gave point to social and intellectual endeavors appear to have given way. The “search for truth” characteristic of liberal arts study is one such endeavor, that, according to some, is lost to most if not all of our students in a culture where one truth is as good as any other. These issues will be explored in this section of the course.
It is safe to say Jones’ course is all about challenging the assumptions of our culture, particularly as they relate to the educational system in America. Politically correct subjects such as feminism and inclusiveness—items that simply are not addressed from a counter-perspective in a state university—will be challenged just as fiercely as they have been known to attack; perhaps a gladiatorial dual to the death in hopes of seeing the Phoenix rise from the ashes. This course, unlike many that “bend over backward” in their attempts to be tolerant and inoffensive (thereby teaching their own unwritten curriculum), will instead draw forth from a reserve of dialectic discourse of centuries gone by, headed up by the deceptively slender framed professor who packs a powerful wallop. His intent is not deconstruction purely for the sake of deconstruction, but deconstruction along the lines of a certain verse of Scripture (if I may be so bold): “Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward” (1 Corinthians 3: 12–14). Simply put, this course assumes that there is such a thing as truth and in the clash of ideas it is hoped all will come closer to its mutual attainment.
One thing that cultural relativism accomplishes—a point often made salient by Ravi Zacharias—is the privatization of faith. Each of us carries our own truth with us but we keep it to ourselves: “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The thought occurred to me, however, that part of the reason my own spiritual life suffers as it does is because I have absorbed some degree of this cultural seduction and see faith largely in the sphere of the individual, all part of my basis for distrusting organized religion as I do. I realized that many of my writings are labeled by my readers as being introspective for a reason, largely because they center around myself and my own issues, a microcosmic slice of the vast body of Christ. To some degree, of course, this approach is unavoidable: how can I be anyone other than me, hear with any ears other than my own? But on another level it misses the whole corporate side of the Christian faith, and it is precisely this element that is once again being reawakened within me. Perhaps the most damaging aspect to our faith is that we, as believers, have become isolated and marginalized, distrustful (however rightly so) of the very organization Christ instituted here on earth to strengthen us.
Another aspect of my education being challenged in Jones’ Education and the Seduction of Modern Culture is that of equality and fairness, all part of the tolerance ideal of egalitarianism. Along these lines, C.S. Lewis shows no mercy in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. In his interesting sketch entitled simply “Membership,” Lewis rather shockingly argues that all people are not intrinsically valuable and we would do well to purge this notion from our Christian conception.
. . . It is idle to say that men are of equal value. If value is taken in a worldly sense—if we mean that all men are equally useful or beautiful or good or entertaining—then it is nonsense. If it means that all are of equal value as immortal souls, then I think it conceals a dangerous error. The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value He perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in relation to itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because He is Love. It may be that He loves all equally—He certainly loved all to the death—and I am not certain what the expression means. If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us. (115)
I was a bit taken aback when I read this passage, but I do believe that he may be on to something. However, I do not wish to dwell here, as fruitful as this concept might be to contemplate. I wish to continue on with Lewis’ thought on inequality. He feels that the laws regulating equality are a useful “fiction”: that this is not how God designed the hierarchy of life. Further, Lewis writes that the rationale behind a democracy is not wrapped up in the romantic notion that such a system is a beautiful thing because all men have an equal voice. Instead, he insists, a democracy serves as a much needed safety valve, for all men are sinful and a corporate system of checks and balances helps reduce corruption, avarice, and greed. He continues:
That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen, Filmer would be right, and patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused.
Equality is for me in the same position as clothes. It is a result of the Fall and the remedy for it. Any attempt to retrace the steps by which we have arrived at egalitarianism and to reintroduce the old authorities on the political level is for me as foolish as it would be to take off our clothes. The Nazi and the nudist make the same mistake. But it is the naked body, still there beneath the clothes of each one of us, which really lives. It is the hierarchical world, still alive and (very properly) hidden behind a façade of equal citizenship, which is our real concern. (114)
The title of his essay, “Membership,” draws on the idea of a “member,” by which Lewis brings balance to his concepts. He levels the claim that we often think of a member as being simply another warm body serving as part of some organization: perhaps a parent who is a participant of the PTA, or PTO as it is often called these days. However, Lewis believes that in the body of Christ, we are members in the same sense that a hand is one member, an arm another, a foot yet another. Each is different, some parts are weaker, some stronger, some practical, some pretty, but each indispensable because it was made to fit where it was made to fit by God. He further maintains that we will not find completion until we find our God-given niche for our lives; he is so bold as to say that we were made for our niche rather than our niche for us. To this whole idea of inequality, Karl Marx and the whole of sociology would be in a dither. This runs contra to the whole premise of sociology, which, if my source textbook is any indication, resembles socialism and communism at times despite some of its truly noteworthy contributions.
The basic premise of sociology can be summarized with the following thoughts: a) the world has a limited amount of resources, and b) the solution to the ills of the world can be found in the fair and equal redistribution of these resources. Sociology concerns itself greatly with the “haves” and the “have nots,” and is not always known to be consistent in its perspectives. A part of this complication is brought about by anyone wishing to objectively deal with the problem of a pluralistic society: with so many voices represented, how does one deal with them all in a way that does not favor one over the other? Sociology makes a noble attempt at doing this very thing, though I remain convinced such an effort is destined to fail, for several reasons, among them being that truth is truth and we can only speak in relative terms for so long before there begins to be a breakdown in the consistency of our logic. There is not a single human being alive who does not hold some basic assumptions or presuppositions and sooner or later these are bound to be exposed, however subtly.
Earlier in the year, I had a conversation with an individual who was keen on sociology and as I have stated other times in the past, I have always tended more toward psychology when it comes to the study of human behavior. The idea of the microcosmic view versus the macrocosmic perspective surfaced in this exchange and I left persuaded to re-investigate life from a macrocosmic view rather than my usual philosophic meanderings. For those of you who are a bit sketchy on all the “ology’s,” sociology is the study of groups and society at large, whereas psychology deals with the single individual (hence the micro- and macrocosmic descriptors). I noticed then, however, that her thoughts tended toward a much more socialistic response to the world and that she was very down on capitalism. This factor could be attributed to the clash between those highly controversial political parties—the elephants and the donkeys, the donkeys and the elephants—but I don’t really think so. In any case, I told her that I agreed with her that capitalism was not the utopian ideal but I also pointed out some of the well-documented problems with socialism as well. My conclusion was that we are dealing with sinful man and there will be no perfect form of government under the sun until Christ returns. This will be the only form of perfect government, not only because its ruler is Divine, but because the citizens of that City will be inwardly motivated by adoration for its ruler and love for their neighbor as themselves.
With this serving as our backdrop, allow me to pull a quotation from the sociology textbook with the no-frills title: Sociology (Seventh Edition) by Richard T. Schaefer.
Émile Durkheim was perhaps the first sociologist to recognize the critical importance of religion in human societies. He saw its appeal for the individual, but—more important—he stressed the social impact of religion. In Durkheim’s view, religion is a collective act and includes many forms of behavior in which people interact with others. As in his work on suicide, Durkheim was not so interested in the personalities of religious believers as he was in understanding religious behavior within a social context. (Emphasis in original, 375)
Before I extend this quotation, I will simply say that this social context as opposed to the individual is yet another signpost pointing me to the lopsided perspective I have developed in recent months as the introverted, self-absorbed Christian. I could blame it on my culture, which, as we have pointed out, would not be without a degree of merit, but in the end, Christ transcends culture and it is He that lives within me. Now then:
Durkheim defined religion as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things.” In his view, religion involves a set of beliefs and practices that are uniquely the property of religion—as opposed to other social institutions and ways of thinking. Durkheim (1947, original edition 1912) argued that religious faiths distinguish between certain events that transcend the ordinary and the everyday world. He referred to these realms as the sacred and the profane.
The sacred encompasses elements beyond everyday life that inspire awe, respect, and even fear. People become a part of the sacred realm only by completing some ritual, such as prayer or sacrifice. Believers have faith in the sacred; this faith allows them to accept what they cannot understand. By contrast, the profane includes the ordinary and commonplace. It can get confusing, however, because the same object can be either sacred or profane depending on how it is viewed. A normal dining room table is profane, but it becomes sacred to Christians if it bears the elements of a communion. For Confucians and Taoists, incense sticks are not mere decorative items; they are highly valued offerings to the gods in religious ceremonies marking new and full moons. (375—emphasis in original)
There is much truth in this assessment of religion within the culture, and, more specifically to our purposes here, Christianity within our culture. Yet I maintain there is a hidden church, a “secret society” of men and women, whose body—just as Lewis suggests of egalitarianism veiling the divine hierarchy as clothes a naked body—may be hidden by her bridal gown from those looking in from the outside. They may easily see her outward appearance, but only Christ can see her heart. Whatever the case, we have clearly been called to offer our bodies as living sacrifices and it has often been said that Christ is not interested in our time, our talents, or our things so much as He is interested in our entire selves: interested in our entering into relationship with him. As such, there is a sense in which there is no such thing as the sacred and the profane, or as I am more likely to say, the sacred and the secular; put another way, all that is secular is sacred and the sacred encompasses the totality of the secular: the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. I do not wish to remove the word secular from my vocabulary, because there are times it comes in handy as an adjective to help communicate the fact I am not referring to the overtly spiritual. But in principle, if we are living sacrifices participating in divine communion with God, everything we do, everything we touch, and everywhere we go can be offered up as a spiritual act of worship. In a sense, then, there becomes no such thing as the common or profane; put another way, all profane objects become appropriated and transformed taking our text’s definition above and expanding it to include the totality of life.
The difference we here describe suggests that rather than looking at religious practice as being an object of sociological inquiry (from the outside looking in, as it were), we are instead describing it from the inside looking outward. A sociologist does well to keep the conceptual terms “sacred” and “profane” for the sake of studying the external, but for the believer, these terms are transcended in practicality even if not from vocabulary. Subjectively, sacred and profane disappear even if conceptually they serve a useful purpose. Along these lines, one of the big emphases that Evelyn Underhill holds, especially in her later years as a spiritual guide and light, is finding communion with God in the ordinariness of life. In Evelyn Underhill’s Guidelines For A Sane Spiritual Life, Mary Brian Durkin, OP, writes:
Though certainly not a new concept, Underhill frequently stressed the sacramental value of the finite and temporal in mundane activities and the importance of seeing or finding God in everyday life. She wrote to an advisee: “Take the present situation as it is and try to deal with what it brings you, in a spirit of generosity and love. God is much in the difficult home problems as in the times of quiet and prayer, isn’t He? Try especially to do His will there, deliberately seek opportunities for kindness, sympathy, and patience.” (Letters 137)
In The Spiritual Life (a short book I recently uploaded), Underhill writes:
. . . Adoration, widening our horizons, drowning our limited interests in the total interests of Reality, redeems the spiritual life from all religious pettiness, and gives it a wonderful richness, meaning and span. And more, every aspect, even the most homely, of our practical life can become part of this adoring response, this total life; and always has done in those who have achieved full spiritual personality. “All the earth doth worship thee” means what it says. The life, beauty and meaning of the whole created order, from the tomtit to the Milky Way, refers back to the Absolute Life and Beauty of its Creator: and so perceived, so lived, every bit has spiritual significance. Thus the old woman of the legend could boil her potatoes to the greater glory of God; and St. Teresa, taking her turn in the kitchen, found Him very easily among the pots and pans.
I wish to once again cull a portion of the same quotation I used in the previous issue of Le Penseur Réfléchit—though here in a different context—where Lewis is quoted as saying:
Put in the most general terms, our problem is that of the obvious continuity between things which are admittedly natural and things which, it is claimed, are spiritual; the reappearance in what professes to be our supernatural life of all the same elements which make up our natural life and (it would seem) of no others. If we really have been visited by a revelation from beyond Nature, is it not very strange that an Apocalypse can furnish heaven with nothing more than selections from terrestrial experience (crowns, thrones, music), that the devotion can find no language but that of human lovers, and that the rite whereby Christians enact a mystical union should turn out to be only the old, familiar act of eating and drinking? . . . (Italics mine, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses 56–7)
Outwardly, the man or woman of God does not do many things drastically different from any other mortal human being who combs the face of the planet. What is more, the man or woman of God goes through dry seasons and even times of rebellion and sin. But when the man or woman of God is truly living in close fellowship with God, he or she operates out of an entirely different motive for the things he or she does. He or she may very well peel potatoes, but within his or her heart is a recognition that this humble act is being offered up to God. This type of offering does not come naturally or automatically, but with time and practice, we can begin to do all the things we do for the glory of God. When we are truly operating from within this basis, we will have a strength that sustains us when others around us topple. When we center the motivation for our actions on Christ, we will not be led astray by the flattering lips that seek to inflate our egos for their own gain. We will not be partial to pride, for we are putting God first. We will not be motivated by that infernal, carnal self of ours, because the focus of our actions is on going about our life as an offering to God. In sum, there are a thousand and one things that would pull us off course, weaken our strength, or cloud our vision which cannot touch us when we are motivated from a sense of service to our Master. It may appear that the things we do are of the same natural origin as the things other mortals do, but that hiddenness in Christ—the focus of our motivation—transforms these acts into towers of quiet strength. It is then we will fulfill the words of Oswald Chambers when he writes (or rather his wife does, as it was she who compiled his lectures after his death) in The Ministry of the Unnoticed, the August 21st devotion from My Utmost for His Highest:
Which are the people who have influenced us most? Not the ones who thought they did, but those who had not the remotest notion that they were influencing us. In the Christian life the implicit is never conscious; if it is conscious it ceases to have this unaffected loveliness which is the characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.
While I do well understand what Chambers means, I would have difficulty choosing the word never, when he says “the implicit is never conscious; if it is conscious it ceases to have this unaffected loveliness . . . .” I think it is possible for a Christian to be made aware that he or she is influencing a particular person at any given moment; I do not think it always has to be unconscious. However, I will say that I do believe that there is a great deal of influence that will be accomplished by the believer who begins to cultivate the habit of making every task and every moment a humble offering to God. The sacred, as our sociology excerpt was kind enough to point out, is merely the “profane” put to spiritual ends. If such be the case, the ordinary, “profane,” secular aspects of our day will become holy not only to our Lord, but by extension will also influence others even during those times (which are admittedly most) when we are blissfully unaware we radiate His presence, or as I have said before, an ordinary bush can become a message board for the holy. I think I could honestly echo Chambers’ words, even the absolute word “always,” when he finishes his paragraph by noting “We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring.” This advice is further set off by his final words in Prayer—Battle in “The Secret Place,” the August 23rd devotional: “But if you will swing the door of your life fully open and ‘pray to your Father who is in the secret place,’ every public thing in your life will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God.”
Think of the lesson from the potter: which dish, of all the dishes on the potter’s table, is the most invaluable to the potter? Take a careful look. See all the finely beveled bowls, the beautiful elongated vases, the cups crafted carefully with clay? Now then, see that bowl right next to the potter? Yeah, that’s right. It’s that unsightly one with muddy water and bit of wet clay clinging to it. Of all the vessels on the potter’s table, none of the beautiful pieces could be made without this one that holds the water and the clay. It pours itself out into the others, accompanying the potter at all times, awaiting his hand to refill it again. It doesn’t often get noticed but I guarantee that if you removed it from the potter’s table, its presence would be missed. Some of those flashier, eye-catching creations are seen and admired immediately, but remove them from the table and no one will ultimately notice. Why is it then, that the unbecoming bowl at the potter’s side is so often overlooked and yet would be sorely missed the day it did not find its way onto his table? This is a parable worth considering, particularly in light of the false dichotomy of the sacred and the profane. It is the common, everyday bowl that produces the treasures of beauty and grace. It is the common, much ridiculed, rough-edgéd church that still, in spite of all her faults, produces the individual vessels fit for her Master’s use.
Perhaps others won’t notice us for our charming good looks or our debonair ways. But if we are truly a part of the hidden body of Christ, the “secret society” of men and women whose heartbeat resounds in rhythm with the Master’s, a vacuum appears when our presence is removed, not so readily filled. Together we will change our culture for the better: an inward life of prayer and devotion and an outward participation with one another in the world at large. Each of us is a member of this body, which is to say, as Lewis reminds us, each of us serves his or her integral function to the operation, edification, and betterment of the whole. My prayer for us today is that our lives would become the open book upon which the red letters of our Lord are emblazoned for all the world to see.
God bless,
Eric
“. . . make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in need. . . . Live in peace with one another. We urge you brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people. Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
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