You've really got to hand it to this anything-is-possible country of ours. Even today. Because even now - as things seem more than ever to be crashing down round our American ears (but is anyone listening, I wonder?) - even now, I'd swear we Americans have managed to become wiser than ever before in our history: wiser, I mean, in the ways, and in that ever-popular knowledge, of good and evil. And particularly in all those clever ways in which evil - or what we'd surely recognize as evil in any situation but the one we're in - nearly always trumps good, or makes good seem fussy, or redundant, or irrelevant. Or, worst of all, obstructive to growth and progress.
Fortunately most of the time the trumping evil does is for good's own good, so to speak. The whole problem with Good, you see, is that he's really a very stubborn and ignorant little boy, who too often fails to remember his place, and who has a habit of asking many extremely ignorant, embarrassing and uncomfortable questions. And who, as a result, often stands in the way of our getting so many things done. Not just any old tiddly-wink things either, but things pretty much all of us would like to do - if only we had, we feel, the sufficient gumption and drive. Yes, even big, important, world-shaking things, like amassing great power or wealth, or political influence (and by no means always in that precise order). After all, who's this little punk to get in the way of our dreams? And as for the very worst of the little boy's questions - as to whether these grand things we'd all like to do are really likely to effect anything good, or make anyone's life better - why, you insufferable little snot, where's your spirit of adventure, and opportunity? You never know till you try, right? Surely we can sort out all your precious ethical concerns later? And in the meantime, haven't we all got a solemn moral duty to keep things going any blessed way we can? And doesn't that sometimes involve the breaking of a few unfortunate eggs?
In this clever way, as I've said, what would otherwise be known as evil, along with its seemingly much greater fund of practical knowledge and experience, increasingly trumps the good. Until soon there becomes less and less of anybody worth believing in, or trusting, or taking the word of. And even if we bothered to look, I mean, where would we find the people? or they find the time? We're all too busy thinking of ourselves, or taking advantage of the stupid and the suckers, or in general just trying to get and stay ahead, to be a rock for anyone to lean on. And just as well too, since only by pushing ourselves ahead do we move anything else along. Particularly in the public, the business and political, arenas. Seriously: Would you trust a man who always told the truth to get anything done?
Meanwhile, those few whom - whatever their political instincts or allegiances - we find genuinely worthy of our trust and belief are soon consigned to a lovely, museum-like irrelevance. How many of us remember Illinois governor Richard Ogilvie?
And again, why should we? By now the reason not to should be obvious to anyone with half-a-brain working. It's that we've grown up. We no longer have time for the obnoxiously honest little boy with his heroes and role models. Indeed, we haven't just grown very adept at tarnishing heroes, or at perfecting that process which ensures that all our leaders get tarnished (aka corrupted) eventually. We're way past that point now. We're so grown up, in fact ("I said get that little boy OUT of here!"), that we see very little practical point to heroism of any kind. I mean, this is the enlightened 21st century, right? Progress forbid there should still be anyone entering business or politics with the aim chiefly of serving the public. And least of all one who intends to keep true to her very oldest, most stubborn, most inborn sense of decency, fair play and compassion, and that to all human beings for no other reason than because they're human. Really, who does she think she is anyway - GOD?
Oh, I'm aware some may argue that if she genuinely believes these things, and is happier believing them, where's the harm? But honestly, do you know anyone half-way competent who does? and who is not mentally and physically the worse for it? And even supposing she were boneheaded enough to adhere to such muddled, antiquated sentiments as the incalculable worth of every human creature in the sight of God, just what would she hope to accomplish by it? Certainly whatever can be said in such notions' favor, they're hardly any self-respecting way of taking Life's bull by the horns. Why, at that sort of rate nothing much of any substance would ever get done. Or else it would get done much more slowly, or kindly, or considerately. And since when has any great man (much less woman) ever got that way by being kind and considerate?
Again, we all want to be great, right? The only thing that hinders most of us, as I stated earlier, is lack of nerve or opportunity. So why get in the way of someone else's nerve and opportunity? He's only doing what you would do if you had half the spine, or one-quarter of the character. Of course you're free to be as childishly noble-minded as you like. Go ahead, lie to yourself all you want: you know you'd be as big a "bastard" - if not altogether worse - if only you had a decent-enough chance of never getting caught. Meanwhile, if someone else of real backbone is aiming at success, why should you care a fig how he gets it? And if the real aim of all of us is to win, why give a damn how any of us plays the game?
Call it cynicism if you like. But even so, you must admit, it's cynicism of a far more buoyant, hearty, zestful, even life-affirming kind than most of our other variations on that theme. Indeed, it is to me if anything a kind of reverse-cynicism, in that those same human vices that traditionally have made us most pessimistic about man's prospects - our pride and impatience and effrontery - are made the very basis of our hope. What shall we call it then - the flip side of our famous optimism? Or better yet, the fuel that drives it? For my part, I'm convinced our "new" American cynicism is not just inseparable from our recently unbridled optimism: it is its bone and sinew. For here's basically how it goes. On the one hand we're all "bastards" under the skin (unless we're psychotics or otherwise mentally impaired). On the other hand, where would humankind be without "bastardy" - other than still in swamps and caves? It's what gets things done and keeps them going: what opens every door and washes every floor. All things are possible to him who deceives.
Thus do we get - in case it's escaped your attention - exactly the kinds of business and political leaders (to say nothing of business and political commentators) we deserve. And then we wonder at how their continued success continues to mean failure for most of the rest of us. And we marvel at how they go on winning what may be the biggest high-stakes game of our time: The game of making our country less and less unified, and more and more confused, conflicted and ineffectual, in our actions abroad anywhere. While meantime the whole world is graced and blessed with:
(1) global ideological - and religious - movements, many of a kind unimaginable even thirty years ago;
(2) global organizations of every kind and purpose and ambition, both profitable and not-for-profit;
(3) global syndicates driven by some of the vilest ambitions imaginable to anyone.
And all of them entities, please note, in whose delicate hands human beings may yet prove - or are already proving - to be far more interchangeable, malleable and disposable things than they've ever been for any mere country. Best of all, what with the gross vacuum of power we patriotic Americans are cheerfully creating, more and more of the globe is being parceled out for these newcomers' playgrounds, to which all the other "kids" must quickly adapt or die.
"What?" you sputter and mutter with indignation. "Entire countries being sidelined, or even relegated permanently to the margins by these new players? For heaven's sake, what about CHINA? Or even [note the more subdued, cautious tone] India?"
Well, frankly I wish I could be sure how India is going to escape the ever more vise-like grip of an expanding China and an exploding Pakistan. I only pray and hope she does, and quickly. And without becoming more fanatically "Hinduist" - in other words, more globally armed and dangerous herself - in the process. As regards a possible third Asian "giant," let me just say for the record that I'm much more worried over Russia's future than India's. On the one hand it is possible - just - that Russia may again become a kind of regional hegemon or even superpower (though I have the strangest feeling that, whatever future eminence she may attain, it will be one that is closely if not inextricably yoked with Germany's and China's). On the other hand, Russia is at least as much capable of disintegrating - or decomposing - as the result of certain bold and stupid things she initiates, as on account of the bold and stupid initiatives of other parties.
As for the thing we call China, that for me is an entirely different animal. The People's Republic is neither a nation nor a country, but rather a politically-organized (indeed, for the most part politically-brutalized) civilization. And that is something vastly different from the rest of us, for all the many superficial resemblances (though we in the US may be playing a strange game of catch-up in this department - more on that in the last paragraph). Indeed, all prevailing signs suggest China is becoming, once again, the kind of ambitious, aggressive, self-vindicating civilization with which history is so nauseatedly familiar: the kind out of which great empires are made, and whose ordinary folks are bought and sold a dime-a-dozen. And in particular (unlike the case of even, say, Imperial Japan) those folks who make up the empire's "own people." The reason is that in mainland China we have an entity not only fully capable of covering every part of the globe - in one fashion or another - but one that will essentially keep on going, and covering, until it bumps into something or somebody equally strong and worthy of (its) respect. The problem is that, before that happens, it may well have succeeded in covering more or less all of us. And I suspect the more of us it covers, the better will be the opportunities for those three most engaging global monsters I mentioned earlier - or at least those among them who have the biggest stake in the Success of China Inc.
This, in short, is the deliciously slick, clever, cocky little hyper-Americanizing world we've fashioned, in which for some mysterious reason there is less and less room for any coherent, sovereign, self-functioning entity known as the USA. Or likely even - eventually - any sovereign country. A world whose most endangered species consists of citizens who know how to respect one another's common humanity, as opposed to hating or despising each other for something as shallow and trivial as a mere opinion. In sum, just the kind of world we need - don't you think? - to prepare us for confrontation with real evil, real tyranny, real inhumanity. And what a nourishing feast of righteousness and peace for the globe's burgeoning populations! So if nothing else, I hope you've brought yourself a decent appetite. And please don't wait to be seated, but go straight to the buffet-table. See, and taste, the fruits of our wondrously optimistic American cynicism; savor the rich harvest of (roughly) four decades of "Attitude" and "Yeah, right," of "Been there, done that" and "Ask me if I give a s***." Above all, be encouraged. As mere Western nations go, our American influence and credibility in the world, our global leverage and prestige may be nearing their lowest points in the lifetime of anyone living. If not their final expiry dates. But as a defiantly post-Western, world-debilitating, world-corrupting civilization, why, there's no telling what depth of longevity - or depravity - we may reasonably expect to enjoy. All the more reason, it seems to me, for us to thank whatever god we really believe in that our good old American "smarts" - our snide, knowing, ever-so-worldly wisdom - is at an all-time premium.
31 August 2010
14 August 2010
Towards a Leaner Body
Whatever Today's Visible Church may be or fail to be, or do, or fail to do, I think few of us would deny that as modern institutions go it's very busy. Indeed, when I imagine the American Church today - and by that I mean pretty much any and every visible US church - about the most vivid image that comes to mind is that of a vast, unbroken, and not only unbreakable but largely uninterruptible stream of activity. And certainly one that appears to be covering immense ground in its pursuit of that Great 21st-Century Project known as doing more with less. Which, in practical terms, usually translates into trying to do more in five years than any mere organization should ever contemplate doing in fifty. And with less of just about everything one needs to run a church well: Less judgment, less patience, less understanding, less discernment, less charm, less delicacy, less passion, less truth . . . but above all, less people.
And that in turn - assuming my experience is not atypical in the extreme - usually translates into less help, and more bitterness, cynicism and self-pity.
What I fear more than ever nowadays, concerning a Church adrift in the (corporate) World, is more and more of her priests and other religious, her ministers and other workers, getting caught up, pulled along, and so immobilized by the irresistible momentum of the machinery of their work, that they can neither step outside of it, nor reach up (to God), nor reach down (to man), but must keep on doing what they've already been doing, ever more rapidly and mindlessly. Until at length both they and others are locked, so to speak, between the multiplying gears and sprockets, and "crushed."
What I fear, in short, is an organizational Church not only:
(1) less and less able to give much in the way of help to anyone (other than, of course, the usual advanced-reservation parties of six or more); but also
(2) less willing to ask for help; and even
(3) less willing to accept help when it's offered (as in "we happen to like our feelings of overwork, stress and burnout, thank you very much").
And of course
(4) always willing, like any good perfectionist, to pick to pieces whatever help it does bother to enlist. Thereby lending a new and wholly unexpected meaning to the ever-popular phrase "lean and mean."
Or even, perhaps, restoring to that phrase its very oldest meaning of all?
But don't take my word for it. Here's what St Paul had to say to the Galatians:
"But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." (Galatians 5: 15 - KJV)
And yes, I know, that passage is commonly read in light of the verses that preceded it - i.e., against the backdrop of 1st-century "Judaizers" ' demands for Gentile Christian circumcision, and the inevitable doctrinal wranglings that followed. But isn't there a wealth of evidence from the rest of Galatians 5 (to say nothing of I Corinthians 8-13!) to suggest that Paul was also addressing the simple, day-to-day business of believers getting along with each other, and learning to work together, in the same House?
And that in turn - assuming my experience is not atypical in the extreme - usually translates into less help, and more bitterness, cynicism and self-pity.
What I fear more than ever nowadays, concerning a Church adrift in the (corporate) World, is more and more of her priests and other religious, her ministers and other workers, getting caught up, pulled along, and so immobilized by the irresistible momentum of the machinery of their work, that they can neither step outside of it, nor reach up (to God), nor reach down (to man), but must keep on doing what they've already been doing, ever more rapidly and mindlessly. Until at length both they and others are locked, so to speak, between the multiplying gears and sprockets, and "crushed."
What I fear, in short, is an organizational Church not only:
(1) less and less able to give much in the way of help to anyone (other than, of course, the usual advanced-reservation parties of six or more); but also
(2) less willing to ask for help; and even
(3) less willing to accept help when it's offered (as in "we happen to like our feelings of overwork, stress and burnout, thank you very much").
And of course
(4) always willing, like any good perfectionist, to pick to pieces whatever help it does bother to enlist. Thereby lending a new and wholly unexpected meaning to the ever-popular phrase "lean and mean."
Or even, perhaps, restoring to that phrase its very oldest meaning of all?
But don't take my word for it. Here's what St Paul had to say to the Galatians:
"But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." (Galatians 5: 15 - KJV)
And yes, I know, that passage is commonly read in light of the verses that preceded it - i.e., against the backdrop of 1st-century "Judaizers" ' demands for Gentile Christian circumcision, and the inevitable doctrinal wranglings that followed. But isn't there a wealth of evidence from the rest of Galatians 5 (to say nothing of I Corinthians 8-13!) to suggest that Paul was also addressing the simple, day-to-day business of believers getting along with each other, and learning to work together, in the same House?
04 August 2010
Cravings without Consequences; or, The Fine Line Between Pet and Pest
What a warmly, tenderly animal-loving society we've become! And how unprecedentedly well-attuned to our animals' various needs! Or so at least one might be disposed to judge, from the sheer number and volume of our animal-rescue operations. But what are they being rescued from?
Evidently many of us are about as apt to indulge a craving for a new-born kitten as for a hot-fudge sundae. And to become equally bulimic in our final assessments of both.
Evidently many of us are about as apt to indulge a craving for a new-born kitten as for a hot-fudge sundae. And to become equally bulimic in our final assessments of both.
01 July 2010
The Smartest Guys in the Room
"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility."
- Theodore Roosevelt (Abilene, Kansas, 2 May 1903)
- Theodore Roosevelt (Abilene, Kansas, 2 May 1903)
An Indifferently-Done Job
Remember the book The Peter Principle (1968)? Its author, Dr Laurence J Peter, subtitled it Why Things Always Go Wrong. As I understand it, his basic reason was that people of limited talent, having proven their competence at lower levels of responsibility within an organization, rise to a certain level for which they are not competent, and then get allowed to stay there.
I don't disagree with him - at least not completely. I just wonder sometimes if he answered his own question completely. After all, what is it that makes individuals in key positions of power incompetent? Is it simply that they lack the ability, the native smarts, the raw intelligence to do that particular job well? Or is it rather that (at least in some key instances) they've reached so high and illustrious a level in their operation that they simply can't be bothered? A level where a certain problem has become, almost literally, beneath them? Or so high a level that they consider it an imposition even to listen to those functionaries whose immediate concern that problem is?
I suspect one of the reasons why so many things get done so badly, in this present busier-than-thou world (despite all the rosters of impressively-credentialed people behind them), is that the Peter Principle was off by a few centimeters. Leaders become our biggest liability, not by being steadily promoted through the ranks of an organization, and then reaching their penultimate levels of incompetence. It is when they reach the very tops of their organizations, and so attain their ultimate levels of indifference.
Now I'm not just thinking here of Messrs Hayward and Obama with respect to a certain body of water. I'm thinking too of all the many Donald Rumsfelds, and Hamid Karzais, and Richard Fulds, and even Richard M Daleys, who either continue to flourish at or are rapidly approaching the topmost levels of their respective spheres of power. It seems to me that, quite the opposite of our Maker, we everyday fallen humans don't just do worse with certain details the higher we go up the human mountain. I get the distinct impression there are some details we just don't like. We have a hard time seeing why they should they exist at all. Or in any case why we of all people should have to worry about them. And in particular those details that affect some other people - usually lesser folk living in the foothills - whom we may never get a clear view of from our mighty outlook-point atop the mountain.
How many times, I wonder, on the eve of some unforeseen mishap or even disaster, have certain very busy important people been approached with a "minor" issue needing resolution, only to respond (whether verbally or silently):
"Really? And since when am I supposed to be concerned with that?"
I don't disagree with him - at least not completely. I just wonder sometimes if he answered his own question completely. After all, what is it that makes individuals in key positions of power incompetent? Is it simply that they lack the ability, the native smarts, the raw intelligence to do that particular job well? Or is it rather that (at least in some key instances) they've reached so high and illustrious a level in their operation that they simply can't be bothered? A level where a certain problem has become, almost literally, beneath them? Or so high a level that they consider it an imposition even to listen to those functionaries whose immediate concern that problem is?
I suspect one of the reasons why so many things get done so badly, in this present busier-than-thou world (despite all the rosters of impressively-credentialed people behind them), is that the Peter Principle was off by a few centimeters. Leaders become our biggest liability, not by being steadily promoted through the ranks of an organization, and then reaching their penultimate levels of incompetence. It is when they reach the very tops of their organizations, and so attain their ultimate levels of indifference.
Now I'm not just thinking here of Messrs Hayward and Obama with respect to a certain body of water. I'm thinking too of all the many Donald Rumsfelds, and Hamid Karzais, and Richard Fulds, and even Richard M Daleys, who either continue to flourish at or are rapidly approaching the topmost levels of their respective spheres of power. It seems to me that, quite the opposite of our Maker, we everyday fallen humans don't just do worse with certain details the higher we go up the human mountain. I get the distinct impression there are some details we just don't like. We have a hard time seeing why they should they exist at all. Or in any case why we of all people should have to worry about them. And in particular those details that affect some other people - usually lesser folk living in the foothills - whom we may never get a clear view of from our mighty outlook-point atop the mountain.
How many times, I wonder, on the eve of some unforeseen mishap or even disaster, have certain very busy important people been approached with a "minor" issue needing resolution, only to respond (whether verbally or silently):
"Really? And since when am I supposed to be concerned with that?"
15 June 2010
Staying Off Love's Hook
"And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, 'FOLLOW ME, AND I WILL MAKE YOU FISHERS OF MEN.' And they straightway left their nets, and followed him." (Matthew 4: 18-20)
". . . for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." (Matthew 7: 2)
". . . but speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into him in all things . . ." (Ephesians 4: 15 - all KJV)
One often hears talk of how hard it is to reach people with an urgent message. Of how difficult it can be to "get through." You can hear this complaint from people with every sort of message, from all walks of life, at every level of success and endeavor. Sometimes even, amazingly, from some very grumpy, disagreeably-mannered individuals. Folks whose whole presence, tone and demeanor are enough to make you wonder how they ever manage to stomach the people they're trying to reach - much less ever get round to reaching them. Misanthropes are always despising the human creature and then wondering why he doesn't take their advice. As if the fellow who is perennially disgusted with me is sure to have the best idea of what will give me real joy, real fulfilment, real wholeness and peace. Indeed, it's rather a fair bet that, however good or necessary his message may be, I'll always find a way - conscious or unconscious - of fortifying myself against it.
No, whatever the reason may be, disdain of ordinary people, and virulent disgust at all their pathetic little vices and failings, remains a sorely ineffective way of convincing them that you either know or want their best interest. And here you'd think the great god Contempt, with his singleness and ferocity of purpose, could easily batter down any human defense but the most implacably hardened and wicked.
And yet - again and again - I find that, no matter how wicked or well-fortified a given heart may be (my own included), somehow Love always finds a way in past the sentries. Even when it winds up being utterly expelled - ridden out on a rail, as they used to say - Love always manages to secure a foothold of some duration, large or small. And not just any foothold, but as often as not, I'm told, one reaching all the way into the citadel of our most august, resolute, indomitable ambitions and life-strategies.
I mean here, of course, not just any old clumsy, overbearing, obnoxious love, but the very oldest kind - otherwise known as the kind that gets results. I mean that wise, patient, watchful, stand-ready-and-waiting-to-act-when-bidden sort of love, which most of the time is so quiet you barely know it's there. The kind that knows you better than you know yourself, and doesn't despise you for it. Indeed, from what I hear, it actually enjoys the knowledge - at least after a fashion, and no doubt, again, a very old fashion. After all, what is the love that works, if not the power to see past the glorious mess you and I have made of ourselves, to the exquisite blueprint the Knower had in mind in the first place? It works, again, because it's got something to work with - in this case, the very same work from which God rested on the seventh day. You remember, that work of which He said (and apparently meant it) that it was "very good."
Now from what I gather, that includes even you and me even now - or at least until we get our grubby fingers in the pie. For some reason it almost never occurs to us children of Adam, that the One who made us very good might also know how to make us even better.
And so He does. Though exactly how Love gets past our noses, and sometimes all the way into the heart of the camp, remains a mystery. Indeed, it's likely just as well we sapient humans are not able to get His particular method down to a scientifically repeatable formula - as in lather, rinse, repeat. In no time at all our Scientific Love would become, like almost everything we do, a matter of mere power, technique and manipulation, eventually coming to resemble something much more like - well, hate - in our ever-so-industrious hands. As it is, our most sophisticated precision instruments remain very poor tools for following, much less charting, Love's movements.
And so, partly because He moves so quietly, and not only seems but is so useful, Love maneuvers past all our best sharpshooters, extends to the proud watchman the countersign, and slips in. And unless our command centers move quickly to intercept Him (as we usually do at this point), we'll find He has changed - quite beyond recognition - not only the plan and point of attack, but lookout points, supply lines, battlefield, indeed the enemy himself. After all, the very worst enemy - of anyone or anything human - is that one who, however good he may be at massaging our self-importance, is even better at (to use Mick Jagger's immortal phrase) laying our souls to waste. Love knows that. Love understands our real enemy. He knows it is something, and someone, far bigger than those familiar, annoying weaknesses of ours that stand in the way of our most cherished self-images and self-projects. Love remembers, and not just the outward impressiveness but the inward hatefulness of Satan - and particularly in those busy, world-depends-on-us moments when we're most apt to forget.
But now suppose instead we're on "God's side," to put the matter very loosely. Suppose we're on the other side of the line, and trying our darndest to get in to somebody's heart. Not all the way in, which might actually move us to greater kindness than we'd planned on, or greater mercy than we'd made provision for. But just enough to make our chosen target seriously uneasy, without inflicting much of any real discomfort on ourselves. Suppose, in short, our plan is merely to "use" love to "get at" or "get through to" somebody - to make our indelible point, to drop our verbal bomb, and then move on. It may even be someone with whom we have a standing "issue": perhaps somebody we still find, after all these years, very hard to forgive, or haven't found the time to ask forgiveness of. Remember, there's nothing like the double-pointed arrow of Truth spiced with offended grievance for driving home one's point - besides making it doubly painful. Nor is there anything like the cudgel of blunt, heavy-handed Truth for covering over the offenses we've caused, or papering over the wounds we're much too busy too heal.
In either case we do well to keep one thing in mind. Love never goes anywhere - not even deep inside the most landmine-enclosed, barbed-wire-barricaded heart - without taking us with. Once inside, of course, and under His direct orders, we'll also be under the very strictest directions as to where we go, and for how long in each place. But once in, we're in it for the long haul. And that's true regardless of how weak or strong our own native capacity to love may be. Even the feeblest, most primitive love doesn't mix well with "hit-and-run," and then going off in search of new, more exciting war-fronts. Though it remains a formidably effective recipe for keeping communication and supply lines open. Besides being the worst of all bacterial cultures for nursing the war-germs of unforgiveness.
In sum, if your aim is to cut to the chase, get in and get out, etc, etc, by all means do not add love to the mix of your various motives for speaking the Truth. Especially if you have some difficult or painful truth to impart, be sure to convey it in the bluntest, most in-your-face, right-between-the-eyes, "it's-all-the-same-to-me-if-you-accept-it-or-you-don't" manner you can. Also be sure to choose all the most door-slamming, lay-down-the-law, "now-listen-that's-just-the-way-it-is" words you can think of for the occasion. Above all, do your level best not to understand what's it's like to be that individual: what she's afraid of, has to contend with, etc. I mean, that's God's department, right? Besides, really savage bluntness not only vastly improves the odds of that door's being slammed in your face, but actually helps to ensure that it stays slammed. In addition to making it that much harder to reopen from either side. And of course the greater the lapse of time, the harder it will be to reopen. Nobody waits forever. And then, before you can say "Prodigal Son's Elder Brother," one of you will be safely dead, and the other of you will be - dare we hope? - off the Hook.
Oh, to be sure, the other way - the Way in which we choose to convey an urgent message - must have some measure of importance, however hard to determine. But then again, really - in this fast and furious Age of not-a-second-to-lose deadlines, and life-or-death profit margins, how important can that measure be?
". . . for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." (Matthew 7: 2)
". . . but speaking the truth in love, [we] may grow up into him in all things . . ." (Ephesians 4: 15 - all KJV)
One often hears talk of how hard it is to reach people with an urgent message. Of how difficult it can be to "get through." You can hear this complaint from people with every sort of message, from all walks of life, at every level of success and endeavor. Sometimes even, amazingly, from some very grumpy, disagreeably-mannered individuals. Folks whose whole presence, tone and demeanor are enough to make you wonder how they ever manage to stomach the people they're trying to reach - much less ever get round to reaching them. Misanthropes are always despising the human creature and then wondering why he doesn't take their advice. As if the fellow who is perennially disgusted with me is sure to have the best idea of what will give me real joy, real fulfilment, real wholeness and peace. Indeed, it's rather a fair bet that, however good or necessary his message may be, I'll always find a way - conscious or unconscious - of fortifying myself against it.
No, whatever the reason may be, disdain of ordinary people, and virulent disgust at all their pathetic little vices and failings, remains a sorely ineffective way of convincing them that you either know or want their best interest. And here you'd think the great god Contempt, with his singleness and ferocity of purpose, could easily batter down any human defense but the most implacably hardened and wicked.
And yet - again and again - I find that, no matter how wicked or well-fortified a given heart may be (my own included), somehow Love always finds a way in past the sentries. Even when it winds up being utterly expelled - ridden out on a rail, as they used to say - Love always manages to secure a foothold of some duration, large or small. And not just any foothold, but as often as not, I'm told, one reaching all the way into the citadel of our most august, resolute, indomitable ambitions and life-strategies.
I mean here, of course, not just any old clumsy, overbearing, obnoxious love, but the very oldest kind - otherwise known as the kind that gets results. I mean that wise, patient, watchful, stand-ready-and-waiting-to-act-when-bidden sort of love, which most of the time is so quiet you barely know it's there. The kind that knows you better than you know yourself, and doesn't despise you for it. Indeed, from what I hear, it actually enjoys the knowledge - at least after a fashion, and no doubt, again, a very old fashion. After all, what is the love that works, if not the power to see past the glorious mess you and I have made of ourselves, to the exquisite blueprint the Knower had in mind in the first place? It works, again, because it's got something to work with - in this case, the very same work from which God rested on the seventh day. You remember, that work of which He said (and apparently meant it) that it was "very good."
Now from what I gather, that includes even you and me even now - or at least until we get our grubby fingers in the pie. For some reason it almost never occurs to us children of Adam, that the One who made us very good might also know how to make us even better.
And so He does. Though exactly how Love gets past our noses, and sometimes all the way into the heart of the camp, remains a mystery. Indeed, it's likely just as well we sapient humans are not able to get His particular method down to a scientifically repeatable formula - as in lather, rinse, repeat. In no time at all our Scientific Love would become, like almost everything we do, a matter of mere power, technique and manipulation, eventually coming to resemble something much more like - well, hate - in our ever-so-industrious hands. As it is, our most sophisticated precision instruments remain very poor tools for following, much less charting, Love's movements.
And so, partly because He moves so quietly, and not only seems but is so useful, Love maneuvers past all our best sharpshooters, extends to the proud watchman the countersign, and slips in. And unless our command centers move quickly to intercept Him (as we usually do at this point), we'll find He has changed - quite beyond recognition - not only the plan and point of attack, but lookout points, supply lines, battlefield, indeed the enemy himself. After all, the very worst enemy - of anyone or anything human - is that one who, however good he may be at massaging our self-importance, is even better at (to use Mick Jagger's immortal phrase) laying our souls to waste. Love knows that. Love understands our real enemy. He knows it is something, and someone, far bigger than those familiar, annoying weaknesses of ours that stand in the way of our most cherished self-images and self-projects. Love remembers, and not just the outward impressiveness but the inward hatefulness of Satan - and particularly in those busy, world-depends-on-us moments when we're most apt to forget.
But now suppose instead we're on "God's side," to put the matter very loosely. Suppose we're on the other side of the line, and trying our darndest to get in to somebody's heart. Not all the way in, which might actually move us to greater kindness than we'd planned on, or greater mercy than we'd made provision for. But just enough to make our chosen target seriously uneasy, without inflicting much of any real discomfort on ourselves. Suppose, in short, our plan is merely to "use" love to "get at" or "get through to" somebody - to make our indelible point, to drop our verbal bomb, and then move on. It may even be someone with whom we have a standing "issue": perhaps somebody we still find, after all these years, very hard to forgive, or haven't found the time to ask forgiveness of. Remember, there's nothing like the double-pointed arrow of Truth spiced with offended grievance for driving home one's point - besides making it doubly painful. Nor is there anything like the cudgel of blunt, heavy-handed Truth for covering over the offenses we've caused, or papering over the wounds we're much too busy too heal.
In either case we do well to keep one thing in mind. Love never goes anywhere - not even deep inside the most landmine-enclosed, barbed-wire-barricaded heart - without taking us with. Once inside, of course, and under His direct orders, we'll also be under the very strictest directions as to where we go, and for how long in each place. But once in, we're in it for the long haul. And that's true regardless of how weak or strong our own native capacity to love may be. Even the feeblest, most primitive love doesn't mix well with "hit-and-run," and then going off in search of new, more exciting war-fronts. Though it remains a formidably effective recipe for keeping communication and supply lines open. Besides being the worst of all bacterial cultures for nursing the war-germs of unforgiveness.
In sum, if your aim is to cut to the chase, get in and get out, etc, etc, by all means do not add love to the mix of your various motives for speaking the Truth. Especially if you have some difficult or painful truth to impart, be sure to convey it in the bluntest, most in-your-face, right-between-the-eyes, "it's-all-the-same-to-me-if-you-accept-it-or-you-don't" manner you can. Also be sure to choose all the most door-slamming, lay-down-the-law, "now-listen-that's-just-the-way-it-is" words you can think of for the occasion. Above all, do your level best not to understand what's it's like to be that individual: what she's afraid of, has to contend with, etc. I mean, that's God's department, right? Besides, really savage bluntness not only vastly improves the odds of that door's being slammed in your face, but actually helps to ensure that it stays slammed. In addition to making it that much harder to reopen from either side. And of course the greater the lapse of time, the harder it will be to reopen. Nobody waits forever. And then, before you can say "Prodigal Son's Elder Brother," one of you will be safely dead, and the other of you will be - dare we hope? - off the Hook.
Oh, to be sure, the other way - the Way in which we choose to convey an urgent message - must have some measure of importance, however hard to determine. But then again, really - in this fast and furious Age of not-a-second-to-lose deadlines, and life-or-death profit margins, how important can that measure be?
Out of Control
I'm not a complete pessimist when it comes to Man's earthly prospects - any more than I'd worry over the future harmfulness of an intelligent, resourceful, and comprehensively nasty pit-bull in the hands of the right trainer and owner. I believe most things we do are good - or would be good - within the bounds of their proper times and circumstances. "He maketh every thing beautiful in its time," says the King James Version of Ecclesiastes. He in this case being our Maker. The converse point of which, it seems to me, is that we make every thing ugly when we take it out of its time. That is, we humans manage even our best-laid plans badly when we fail to wait upon - or run rough-shod over - the proper times, and manners of unfolding, of those persons and things who have been appointed to our care. Indeed, one of the last points we may learn before the final Scroll gets rolled up, is that while the Lord Man may have succeeded in making most things efficient, it yet remains for the Lord God to make all things well.
But, again, that doesn't mean most things we do are not good - or even beautiful - within their rightful places and times. It is the occasions when they step, or slip, or spill out of those boundaries that make for either slow-leaking or sudden-erupting disaster. Somewhere, in other words, there may be a place where even the most boldly aggressive and presumptuous good we intend to do has no disastrous issue. Where even our most odds-defyingly courageous attempts at cost- and personnel-cutting result in no casualties, and no leaking rigs. I have little doubt, for instance, that even our most unbridled technological growth would be an unmitigated blessing in the hands of saints and angels of some future heaven. It is what that same unbridled growth can do, and has done, in the hands of human beings of this present earth that leaves me more than a bit worried. And yet, concerned as I am over the effects of our so-called Progress on the things around us, I'm even more uneasy about its effects upon the things inside us. Let's face it: hardy and strong as we may be when exposed to other viruses, we humans on the whole have shown the very poorest resistance to most strains of sin, both new and old. The result is that, in our present delicate condition, we continue to learn much more from failure than from success, much more from defeat than from victory. Certainly it is the former things that have taught us most of the little we know about love, and patience, and mercy. It would be nice, of course, to think that one day success, wealth and power shall have the same consistent - and even humbling - effect upon Man that they continue to have upon the Son of Man. But so far it seems to be the one result that even the hardest of work, and the most frenzied multi-tasking, cannot accomplish.
What is it, then, about the human nature prevailing in this present world, that so often the "better" we make our conditions, the worse we make ourselves? What is it about modern man today, that the "better" we get at straining the gnats of racism, sexism and homophobia, the worse we gorge ourselves on whole camels - head, hooves, tail and all - of the most shameless conceit, and arrogance, and vindictiveness? Try thinking, for a moment, of all those features of this past decade which even now make it most distinctively Today, as opposed to the yesterday of the 1980's, or the day before yesterday of the 1960's. Regardless of whether we call ourselves Right or Left, isn't this the Age in which we've exalted our favorite political righteousness into a kind of sanctimonious, hounding, even persecuting religion? While meantime world-class religions have become debauched into militaristic ideologies sanctioning mass slaughter. Certainly, I hope, at least with hindsight it will become clear that our McVeighs and their bin Ladens were not cut from so different a cloth. Observe for instance, in both cases, how righteous indignation at the direction in which the world was going became the pretext not only for murder, but for mass butchery of the most fiendishly indiscriminate kind. And the sheer wonder of it all is that these acts of purifying righteousness - and others - took place not in the godless, socialistic Sixties and Seventies, but in those gloriously God-fearing, free-marketeering decades on either side of AD 2000.
What is it about us, then, that through all our many phases of self-reinvention, the more intent we are on controlling, manipulating, and altering our material circumstances, the more inept we become (or half-hearted?) at restraining our own worst impulses? And in particular those urges that secrete the most subtle, insidious and infectious kinds of evil? So that even today - whatever the success of our massive ad campaigns against those age-old vices, anger, bigotry, sloth - we're becoming ever so quietly indulgent of, and ever so adept at disguising and dressing up, those other, more industrious and forward-looking sins - like pride, greed and envy? (With our latest fashions in lust and gluttony meanwhile taking increasingly bizarre - to say nothing of perverse - turns and twists.)
It was H G Wells, I believe, who once wrote that mankind's best immediate hope of surviving the 20th century lay in the outcome of a race between education and disaster. Personally I think it's still much too early to pronounce education the winner. But even if we could, I'm not nearly as sure as Wells that man's survival prospects lie wholly within his present grasp - or even within the compass of his own future wisdom and ingenuity. And so for me the big question is not how far man can make it on his own; it is how bad the earth and its inhabitants will manage to get, under the benevolent lordship of Old Adam, before the New Adam finally steps in. And that is a question, for me anyway, which can only be decided by the outcome of a very different sort of race than Wells had in mind. I mean a race between knowledge and control. And more specifically, a race between
(1) the most unflinching, unsparing knowledge of ourselves - including all our most ambitious and seemingly productive vices; and
(2) our urge to control everything else - including those parts of us that may not be the most ambitious or productive, but which are definitely the least vicious and controlling.
After all, what does it matter how productively and efficiently the brilliant but spoiled child runs the entire household, when all the while he's becoming ever more dangerously out of control himself? What difference does it make how fast he gets stuff out the door when the entire warehouse is in daily, imminent danger of burning down or blowing up?
Today, more thoroughly than ever, I suspect, Man is become that brilliant spoiled child, and sadly this time around there seem to be few if any adults left in the house. Certainly none among his own kith and kin, and meanwhile God help the dogs and cats, the hamsters and goldfish. So what do you suppose, then, are the chances of our child-prodigy-sociopath at last bringing under manageable control, not those sins of which he's always been more or less ashamed, but those sins he has always tended - at least in his rare moments of self-honesty - to be most proud of? Those sins that, say what you will against them - well (dammit), they sure do get results.
For my part, I'm pretty confident of our species' eventual success in beating, more or less brutally into submission, our most lower-animal-like vices and sins. Maybe not enough to make us happier and wiser, but certainly enough to make the vast majority of us fairly confused and miserable, if not in many cases largely dehumanized to boot. But, again, what difference will it finally make if Wrath and Sloth end their natural human careers as the most irretrievably shamed and disgraced of fallen women, while Pride, Envy and Greed (PEG) go on to become the most ostentatiously gilded, honored, above all respectable dowagers and society matrons?
Some will tell me the answer is a world run, dominated and permeated by Christians. And not the merely professing kind either, but (one can almost hear the snarl in their voices) reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal Chris-ti-ans! But frankly I can't imagine even the most intensively Christianized world ever getting a proper handle on PEG. Indeed, given the historical success rate of most well-meaning theocracies, I'm inclined to think such a world would be as likely, if anything, to make us still more Pharisaic - which is to say, more proud, envious and greedy. All speculation of course. What I'm really wondering is this: Given the furious rate at which today's world is improving, in a generation or two shall any of us have even the presence of mind to recognize our three deadliest as sins at all, and not virtues?
Not, mind you, that we haven't managed to step back from that brink before - though we Christians, I'm sad to say, have not always been at the forefront of those who saw the approaching cliff most clearly or most early on. Churchill was no sort of Christian that I am aware of, yet at the critical moment he seems to have been as handy and flexible a mere human instrument as ever God took in hand. At all events he backed us off from the edge quite as well as any contemporary bishop or preacher.
And yet there's something about our particular Now which makes me feel that that's not going to work this time. Something which makes me wonder if we, both Christians and non-Christians, are not faced with a rather different kind of urgency than that which confronted Churchill's generation. Maybe now the critical question, for all of us, is not whether we shall or even can step back again, but rather, as we stand once again on the brink, and muster the courage to look all the way down inside, how widely open our eyes shall be, or how tightly shut. Shall we have the grace to reinvent ourselves just this once more, simply in order to see more clearly? And not just one more time, but just in time? That is, before what, in any other Age, would have been recognized as the uttermost monstrosity of human Pride becomes so well-dressed, and so impressively groomed and polished, as to be unrecognizable? Before an Arrogance against which Hitler would have seemed meek and mild gets spun to look and sound like Mahatma Gandhi? Or worst of all, becomes transmuted into some apocalyptically urgent and virtuous necessity for the Survival of Humankind?
And what if even we Christians don't quite pull it off? What if those eyes and ears, on whom the whole world depends to keep watch and guard through the night, themselves begin to drift off? What sort of world will begin to disclose itself, to emerge and take shape, through the drooping lids? What will that world feel like, when the last of the watchers have all but gone to sleep, and the whole of mankind has finally succeeded in controlling just about everything - except, of course, the very worst of itself? What will that world taste and smell like, when every thing in it that presently seems least manageable is at last brought under the proud, hard dominion of Man - everything, that is, except those very things in us which have always been most proudly obdurate to the dominion of God?
And long afterwards, I wonder - in the days that follow upon the End of History as We Know It - how will the very last, the millennial earth, remember us lately-departed Christians? Will it remember us gratefully, as having been its salt - or its solvent? As having been honest, decent, clear-sighted folk who did our best, as the old world stood teetering on the edge, to keep its eyes wide open? Or as essentially pious-but-blind guides, who unwittingly did our worst to fasten those eyes wide shut?
But, again, that doesn't mean most things we do are not good - or even beautiful - within their rightful places and times. It is the occasions when they step, or slip, or spill out of those boundaries that make for either slow-leaking or sudden-erupting disaster. Somewhere, in other words, there may be a place where even the most boldly aggressive and presumptuous good we intend to do has no disastrous issue. Where even our most odds-defyingly courageous attempts at cost- and personnel-cutting result in no casualties, and no leaking rigs. I have little doubt, for instance, that even our most unbridled technological growth would be an unmitigated blessing in the hands of saints and angels of some future heaven. It is what that same unbridled growth can do, and has done, in the hands of human beings of this present earth that leaves me more than a bit worried. And yet, concerned as I am over the effects of our so-called Progress on the things around us, I'm even more uneasy about its effects upon the things inside us. Let's face it: hardy and strong as we may be when exposed to other viruses, we humans on the whole have shown the very poorest resistance to most strains of sin, both new and old. The result is that, in our present delicate condition, we continue to learn much more from failure than from success, much more from defeat than from victory. Certainly it is the former things that have taught us most of the little we know about love, and patience, and mercy. It would be nice, of course, to think that one day success, wealth and power shall have the same consistent - and even humbling - effect upon Man that they continue to have upon the Son of Man. But so far it seems to be the one result that even the hardest of work, and the most frenzied multi-tasking, cannot accomplish.
What is it, then, about the human nature prevailing in this present world, that so often the "better" we make our conditions, the worse we make ourselves? What is it about modern man today, that the "better" we get at straining the gnats of racism, sexism and homophobia, the worse we gorge ourselves on whole camels - head, hooves, tail and all - of the most shameless conceit, and arrogance, and vindictiveness? Try thinking, for a moment, of all those features of this past decade which even now make it most distinctively Today, as opposed to the yesterday of the 1980's, or the day before yesterday of the 1960's. Regardless of whether we call ourselves Right or Left, isn't this the Age in which we've exalted our favorite political righteousness into a kind of sanctimonious, hounding, even persecuting religion? While meantime world-class religions have become debauched into militaristic ideologies sanctioning mass slaughter. Certainly, I hope, at least with hindsight it will become clear that our McVeighs and their bin Ladens were not cut from so different a cloth. Observe for instance, in both cases, how righteous indignation at the direction in which the world was going became the pretext not only for murder, but for mass butchery of the most fiendishly indiscriminate kind. And the sheer wonder of it all is that these acts of purifying righteousness - and others - took place not in the godless, socialistic Sixties and Seventies, but in those gloriously God-fearing, free-marketeering decades on either side of AD 2000.
What is it about us, then, that through all our many phases of self-reinvention, the more intent we are on controlling, manipulating, and altering our material circumstances, the more inept we become (or half-hearted?) at restraining our own worst impulses? And in particular those urges that secrete the most subtle, insidious and infectious kinds of evil? So that even today - whatever the success of our massive ad campaigns against those age-old vices, anger, bigotry, sloth - we're becoming ever so quietly indulgent of, and ever so adept at disguising and dressing up, those other, more industrious and forward-looking sins - like pride, greed and envy? (With our latest fashions in lust and gluttony meanwhile taking increasingly bizarre - to say nothing of perverse - turns and twists.)
It was H G Wells, I believe, who once wrote that mankind's best immediate hope of surviving the 20th century lay in the outcome of a race between education and disaster. Personally I think it's still much too early to pronounce education the winner. But even if we could, I'm not nearly as sure as Wells that man's survival prospects lie wholly within his present grasp - or even within the compass of his own future wisdom and ingenuity. And so for me the big question is not how far man can make it on his own; it is how bad the earth and its inhabitants will manage to get, under the benevolent lordship of Old Adam, before the New Adam finally steps in. And that is a question, for me anyway, which can only be decided by the outcome of a very different sort of race than Wells had in mind. I mean a race between knowledge and control. And more specifically, a race between
(1) the most unflinching, unsparing knowledge of ourselves - including all our most ambitious and seemingly productive vices; and
(2) our urge to control everything else - including those parts of us that may not be the most ambitious or productive, but which are definitely the least vicious and controlling.
After all, what does it matter how productively and efficiently the brilliant but spoiled child runs the entire household, when all the while he's becoming ever more dangerously out of control himself? What difference does it make how fast he gets stuff out the door when the entire warehouse is in daily, imminent danger of burning down or blowing up?
Today, more thoroughly than ever, I suspect, Man is become that brilliant spoiled child, and sadly this time around there seem to be few if any adults left in the house. Certainly none among his own kith and kin, and meanwhile God help the dogs and cats, the hamsters and goldfish. So what do you suppose, then, are the chances of our child-prodigy-sociopath at last bringing under manageable control, not those sins of which he's always been more or less ashamed, but those sins he has always tended - at least in his rare moments of self-honesty - to be most proud of? Those sins that, say what you will against them - well (dammit), they sure do get results.
For my part, I'm pretty confident of our species' eventual success in beating, more or less brutally into submission, our most lower-animal-like vices and sins. Maybe not enough to make us happier and wiser, but certainly enough to make the vast majority of us fairly confused and miserable, if not in many cases largely dehumanized to boot. But, again, what difference will it finally make if Wrath and Sloth end their natural human careers as the most irretrievably shamed and disgraced of fallen women, while Pride, Envy and Greed (PEG) go on to become the most ostentatiously gilded, honored, above all respectable dowagers and society matrons?
Some will tell me the answer is a world run, dominated and permeated by Christians. And not the merely professing kind either, but (one can almost hear the snarl in their voices) reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal Chris-ti-ans! But frankly I can't imagine even the most intensively Christianized world ever getting a proper handle on PEG. Indeed, given the historical success rate of most well-meaning theocracies, I'm inclined to think such a world would be as likely, if anything, to make us still more Pharisaic - which is to say, more proud, envious and greedy. All speculation of course. What I'm really wondering is this: Given the furious rate at which today's world is improving, in a generation or two shall any of us have even the presence of mind to recognize our three deadliest as sins at all, and not virtues?
Not, mind you, that we haven't managed to step back from that brink before - though we Christians, I'm sad to say, have not always been at the forefront of those who saw the approaching cliff most clearly or most early on. Churchill was no sort of Christian that I am aware of, yet at the critical moment he seems to have been as handy and flexible a mere human instrument as ever God took in hand. At all events he backed us off from the edge quite as well as any contemporary bishop or preacher.
And yet there's something about our particular Now which makes me feel that that's not going to work this time. Something which makes me wonder if we, both Christians and non-Christians, are not faced with a rather different kind of urgency than that which confronted Churchill's generation. Maybe now the critical question, for all of us, is not whether we shall or even can step back again, but rather, as we stand once again on the brink, and muster the courage to look all the way down inside, how widely open our eyes shall be, or how tightly shut. Shall we have the grace to reinvent ourselves just this once more, simply in order to see more clearly? And not just one more time, but just in time? That is, before what, in any other Age, would have been recognized as the uttermost monstrosity of human Pride becomes so well-dressed, and so impressively groomed and polished, as to be unrecognizable? Before an Arrogance against which Hitler would have seemed meek and mild gets spun to look and sound like Mahatma Gandhi? Or worst of all, becomes transmuted into some apocalyptically urgent and virtuous necessity for the Survival of Humankind?
And what if even we Christians don't quite pull it off? What if those eyes and ears, on whom the whole world depends to keep watch and guard through the night, themselves begin to drift off? What sort of world will begin to disclose itself, to emerge and take shape, through the drooping lids? What will that world feel like, when the last of the watchers have all but gone to sleep, and the whole of mankind has finally succeeded in controlling just about everything - except, of course, the very worst of itself? What will that world taste and smell like, when every thing in it that presently seems least manageable is at last brought under the proud, hard dominion of Man - everything, that is, except those very things in us which have always been most proudly obdurate to the dominion of God?
And long afterwards, I wonder - in the days that follow upon the End of History as We Know It - how will the very last, the millennial earth, remember us lately-departed Christians? Will it remember us gratefully, as having been its salt - or its solvent? As having been honest, decent, clear-sighted folk who did our best, as the old world stood teetering on the edge, to keep its eyes wide open? Or as essentially pious-but-blind guides, who unwittingly did our worst to fasten those eyes wide shut?
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