REFLECTIONS OF A
THURSDAY
James
R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
©
May 24, 2018
The
chaos and consolations of the past still haunt us in the 21th century with the
relationship between religious faith and public discourse differing with what
it was even a generation ago.
With
the “war on terror,” religion no longer is confined to history books, whatever
millennials or others think, but on the front page of our minds.
Christian
churches are in a state of ferment about sex, creationism, culture and the
struggle between fundamentalism and liberalism, which is not new but no longer
civil or just.
We
live in a time of fragmentation. The
Western world no longer aspires as it did in Martin Luther’s time to be a place
of faith, much less belief in God. Nor
is there a drive to find and preserve a common culture; in fact, the idea is
repellent.
The
world of popular culture has become a cage which jangles and sings off key in
the background of our controlled lives with TV soap operas, pop music and 24/7
media bombast in an all-but-lost world of shared values.
There
is no place in this world for courtly love as it has been superseded by a quest
for social justice, a noble objective on the surface. But what if a Just Society had a place as
well for the Ideal of Love and a Quest for God once found in the imagination?
For
a century now we have been moving away from love and God and what do we have
for it, but permissiveness, promiscuity, corruption, chicanery, war and
nihilism?
Regardless
of your religious belief, what if the links of our times could stretch unbroken
with the origins of our Western culture where there once was room for such
preferences?
Alas,
being reared Irish Roman Catholic, I can recall in my maturing years the
Papacy’s silence in the Holocaust, the slowness of the church’s admission of
the scandal of priests’ abusing children in their care, and the church’s still
stubborn policy on birth control in an already overcrowded planet.
Great
cathedrals still pencil the landscape of Europe but there is a cultural
collapse when it comes to love, God and a tolerance of peoples of differing
than Western persuasion.
What
happens to the culture of a civilization when it no longer relates to what is
going on inside the heads of individual men, women and children; when there is
constant subliminal agitation to think, feel and behave in a certain way; when
ubiquitous conformity has little room for variance with its draconian norms;
when people are so much on automatic pilot that they don’t recognize the
absurdity of their lives?
It
is a sign of the debasement and confusion of our times that pop music (e.g. Bob
Dylan, 2016 Nobel Laureate for Literature) speaks to the many far more
poignantly than academics, politicians, corporate leaders, and philosophers.
Our
democratic republic offers us an opportunity to place a vote in a spirit of
positive optimism for our candidates of choice, but what this process has
devolved to is merely a chance to vote against the other party’s candidates
whom we choose to hate because we are programmed by media to do so.
Mainstream
Christian churches have become detached from the inner lives and inner concerns
of ordinary mortals as have the two dominant political parties. On the one hand, there is an abject
disillusionment with societal institutions; and on the other, the Church with
its mission to provide safe haven for troubled souls has turned out to be
corrupt and dysfunctional and no haven at all.
The
quest for a Good Place and a Good Church detached from everyday life is not the
unknown secret of the universe but evidence that we have lost our moral compass
and our way.
This
is the central dilemma of our times. We
once assumed we shared the same language and the same inner life. That is no longer the case. We instead share the detritus of a world lost
in its own confusion.
In
checking Facebook, YouTube or surfing the Internet, we realize we no longer
share a common culture but rather a common emptiness with millions if not
billions of other souls. Human beings
have never been as alone as they are today while they are constantly reassured
that they are connected. But are
they? And if so, what do they hold in
common with anyone?
Swiss
historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818 – 1898) claims we are all conscious of our own
secret life. But with the concatenations
of dissonant noise, how can we tell?
Obviously,
there is conflict today between nascent spiritualism and transparent
materialism, but there should be room for both as complements rather than
contradiction to everyday life.
Whether
you are in the process of losing your Faith, whatever that may be; or are
returning to a new version of your Faith; or whether you are utterly
disillusioned with politics and politicians; or are hopeful of political
solutions to the injustices in your community or about the world; or whether
your deepest experience of love with a sense of belonging happened a long time
ago when you were a child, and has never been successfully rekindled since, you
can abort this common cage if you have but the will to recognize you have such
a capacity.
The
first step is to find the patience to have a long silent conversation with
yourself, the person you carry about whenever you go. Then trust yourself in this exercise and that
world you once knew in your innocence will reopen with such wonder that it will
appear as if it has always been right outside your window.
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