This present world - for all its spiritual near-rottenness and decrepitude - yet has many practical talents and strengths. Yes, even NOW: in the midst of what may be the grossest misuse/abuse/dereliction of cream-of-the-crop, globally-sifted talent - and in the face of a global health threat no less! - that our world has ever seen.
Strengths, for instance, like our American Gift of Making Money, and drawing extraordinary profits from investments, in the most ingeniously circuitous ways. Ways that in turn can generate whole new industries, commonly called "financial," which in times of economic uncertainty may seem like the sturdiest house of cards you ever breathed on.
We have other talents too, like the devising of technologies so miraculous, as it were, in their power to obtain and disperse "instant" results, they just might lead you to believe there's a technical - if not a technological - solution to every human problem. Until we wake up one day - in the midst of a world of global pandemic, violent domestic social unrest, and all-around massive public fear and distrust, alienation and confusion - to find that not only the problems but the (offered) solutions are more political than ever.
But if there's one talent we continue to have and use in abundance - and even more so in this present Age? - it is the power to extract a loud, furious BUSYNESS out of the quietest, most inward, most penetrating things one could never imagine. Or, at any rate, things you and I likely could never have imagined, not if we lived another thousand years.
Things like, for example, the God of the fire and fury of Exodus coming to enter into the inmost corridors and recesses of the soul of His creature Adam. And then staying there permanently. And in a way so starkly, whisperingly quiet, that almost no one knew about it. Indeed hardly anyone even begins to suspect it - His Mother being perhaps the sole exception - until some 33+ years later. But please note how He does this: not by perching Himself atop some glorious, immovable summit of human maturity - like, e.g., the state in which our first parents were created in Eden - but by Himself living through every pre-adult biological phase, wise or "foolish," of our natural lives. Even as a fully helpless, fully human infant. "He came all so still." And what could be more silent, or more completely operative only in and through silence, than the Divine presence plunging right into, not just the "thick of things," but the thick of US - to calm all our human Seas of Galilee?
So how did we fallen humans manage to muck it up? What did we finally wind up making of this strangely still, unbroadcast, unfanfared First Coming? It's an oft-told tale, but all the more worth repeating, especially if we can hear it with fresh ears. In brief, our work was nothing less than the glorious spectacle - the wind, earthquake and fire - of a trial- and torture-prefaced crucifixion. Talk about scenes from a blockbuster epic. Which I suppose, when you think about it, is only too appropriate. The Spirit of (Self-made) Man tends to manifest itself through pretty much any glorious medium it can find - other than, of course, the still small voice.
"But the Crucifixion was utterly necessary for our salvation," you tell me. Indeed: and AMEN. My question is what made it necessary. Was it really the best in us, or the worst? Was it the depth of our secret human yearning for holiness, or self-sacrifice, or suffering, or spiritual heroism - real enough motives even today, I'll grant you - that made the crucifixion of God the Son both necessary and inevitable? Or was it the depth of our sin?
On the other hand, are the two factors really - always - as mutually exclusive as we're so often wont to think?
Indeed, what I'd like to suggest is that the two are often intertwined. That it is precisely this Depth of Sin - imbedded even (or especially?) in the very tissue of our noblest aspirations - that tempts us to make such a Big Angry Deal out of things that in themselves may be very simple, or loving, or kind. Or that tempts us, in this instance, to make such a big, bustling, noisy, nerve-wracking Production out of not just God's own coming, but sometimes every other major event and action in our lives.
Now the popular narrative, as I understand it today, is that the great mass of human beings are in essence pleasure- and comfort-seekers. As opposed to sacrifice- and glory-seekers. Most of us - so the legend has it - want nothing better than to live a safe, quiet, comfortable life.
Things like, for example, the God of the fire and fury of Exodus coming to enter into the inmost corridors and recesses of the soul of His creature Adam. And then staying there permanently. And in a way so starkly, whisperingly quiet, that almost no one knew about it. Indeed hardly anyone even begins to suspect it - His Mother being perhaps the sole exception - until some 33+ years later. But please note how He does this: not by perching Himself atop some glorious, immovable summit of human maturity - like, e.g., the state in which our first parents were created in Eden - but by Himself living through every pre-adult biological phase, wise or "foolish," of our natural lives. Even as a fully helpless, fully human infant. "He came all so still." And what could be more silent, or more completely operative only in and through silence, than the Divine presence plunging right into, not just the "thick of things," but the thick of US - to calm all our human Seas of Galilee?
So how did we fallen humans manage to muck it up? What did we finally wind up making of this strangely still, unbroadcast, unfanfared First Coming? It's an oft-told tale, but all the more worth repeating, especially if we can hear it with fresh ears. In brief, our work was nothing less than the glorious spectacle - the wind, earthquake and fire - of a trial- and torture-prefaced crucifixion. Talk about scenes from a blockbuster epic. Which I suppose, when you think about it, is only too appropriate. The Spirit of (Self-made) Man tends to manifest itself through pretty much any glorious medium it can find - other than, of course, the still small voice.
"But the Crucifixion was utterly necessary for our salvation," you tell me. Indeed: and AMEN. My question is what made it necessary. Was it really the best in us, or the worst? Was it the depth of our secret human yearning for holiness, or self-sacrifice, or suffering, or spiritual heroism - real enough motives even today, I'll grant you - that made the crucifixion of God the Son both necessary and inevitable? Or was it the depth of our sin?
On the other hand, are the two factors really - always - as mutually exclusive as we're so often wont to think?
Indeed, what I'd like to suggest is that the two are often intertwined. That it is precisely this Depth of Sin - imbedded even (or especially?) in the very tissue of our noblest aspirations - that tempts us to make such a Big Angry Deal out of things that in themselves may be very simple, or loving, or kind. Or that tempts us, in this instance, to make such a big, bustling, noisy, nerve-wracking Production out of not just God's own coming, but sometimes every other major event and action in our lives.
Now the popular narrative, as I understand it today, is that the great mass of human beings are in essence pleasure- and comfort-seekers. As opposed to sacrifice- and glory-seekers. Most of us - so the legend has it - want nothing better than to live a safe, quiet, comfortable life.
Which may be true. I just wish I could find more 21st-century evidence of it. The general rule I've most often encountered is that we mere humans tend to take glory any way we can get it. Even via the ministrations of a certain Tempter. And especially when it seems we have reason to suspect our Maker has been holding out on us (as no doubt Eve felt on first listening to the enlightenments of the serpent.) But all the more so, it seems to me, when the Glory-in-question is our very own self-made, self-won holiness or righteousness or spiritual heroism. Of course it can be a difficult road - indeed, as often as not it may prove not to be just hard, but excruciatingly hard work. Then again, even in mere carnal terms, do we humans always balk at the long, hard, grueling slog? Especially when the prize is a glory of one's own, and Nobody else's?
II
But now let's go back for a moment to the Crucifixion, as almost a kind of prototype of human self-glory. To many of us today it seems the very apex of human evil; I doubt if it seemed quite that way to many, if not most, of its participants. One point is clear to me: human beings are not monsters, at least not from birth. Or normally even within the first six to twelve years of life. And however many adult, well-adjusted, "mature" monsters may have been complicit or participant in the Crucifixion, for many of the others I have no doubt it was real, and really hard, work. The kind of work which often goes most directly against our natural human grain. Work in which, yes, anger, outrage, indignation towards Jesus surely played their part, at least among the more fanatically correct Judaeans and Romans. Along with a sort of anything-but-innocent satisfaction, or self-vindication. But real joy? Of all natural human sentiments, it's the one I find hardest to imagine there. On the other hand, I can well imagine some of our Lord's more idealistic tormentors - say, the Sauls of Tarsus among them? - applying themselves all the more vigorously to the ugliest features of the most odious task ever completed.
And all the more reason too, I suppose, when it might be argued that both offended parties, Judaean and Roman, were aiming at a certain angry, narrow, yet - on their own terms, at any rate - by no means indefensible Perfection. One of simple, un-nuanced secular Law and Order in the case of Pilate; one of the most authentic fidelity to Divine Law, together with vindication of the absolute unity and utter transcendence of that Law's God, in the case of Annas and Caiaphas. Both choices also being marbled, it's true - at least when measured against the strict letter of either code's standard of justice - with no small degree of corner-cutting, together with the vilest of worldly compromise. Still in all (a really hands-on, practical person might argue), the "real world" being what it is . . . and given the nature of omelettes . . . what else could they do?
Which "real world" is still, of course, very much with us. And if anything even more stridently and, well, uncompromisingly demanding of compromise, than was the Roman world of the 1st century. For now, suffice it to say that, in any age, we humans have garnered an impressive degree of expertise in making the most glorious Productions out of relatively small, manageable events, annoyances, obstructions, etc. Even in our own personal lives. (Which may go some way towards explaining our unflagging US divorce rates.) Not to mention public events on a much larger scale. And in particular, I notice, we restless, ever-dynamic and -impatient Westerners. At all events, we've proved ourselves no laggards in the fine art of crucifying innocents for the sake of some political expediency or necessity.
But perhaps you'd like something in the way of more recent or current examples. What can I say? Other than to take your pick from our Western/US track record of the past 20 years: Full-spectrum dominances; Wars on Terror; MEGAbig outsourcing arrangements with post(?)-Communist China; Middle East hostile takeover-reorganizations; massive drone operations that, for all their superhuman precision and accuracy, have no light civilian impact; SARS and other epidemic rebounds; TBTF recession bailouts; sky's-the-limit national debt; Libyan civil wars; NATO enlargements; Russian encirclements; Iran embargoes/provocations; Yemeni genocides - yep, right down to our all-time show-stopping Mega-SARS Encore, unfolding even as we speak. I mean, the list itself may not be endless, but very likely the long-term consequences are.
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