All That's Left Is Sex

There are tons of causes for the loss of hope in contemporary culture. Maybe I'll hazard to dive into that messy soup some time to show how many contemporary spiritualities contribute to the loss of hope. For now, however, I'll simply state the case. We are a people who have lost hope. For years I've told people that the saddest spiritual disaster among the people I meet is not that they've ceased believing in hell, the devil, and sin. No. Sadly, the real tragedy is that people have lost their belief in heaven.

An old philosophy professor of mine made an astute observation in class one day. He declared to the class that most contemporary people in western society were atheists. He said that's if you include all those Christians who live as if they were atheists, even the devout. I was stunned by his assertion. Experience has taught me that he was right on the money.

If there's no God, there's no heaven. If you live as if there's no God, then you live as if there's no heaven. The net result is the same. Either way is a life doomed to be bereft of hope for the future glory promised to those who repent and believe in the Gospel. One without this hope is bound to seek happiness only in transitory goods. In other words, one is relegated to live a life seeking those things which delight only the senses. Man's spirit is neglected; it atrophies and dies.

At least in ye olde days the vast majority of people lived in a world filled with mystery. The trees had sprites. An elf was around every corner. The gods reigned on Mt. Olympus and the Valkyrie welcomed the noble souls into Valhallah. The rationalism of our time has murdered mystery with the microscope and the pocket calculator. It seems, that on a practical level, Christianity has been similarly wounded. Christ was just one more boogie man to fall victim to the focused analysis of myopic empiricists.

Sadly, believers haven't helped the situation. There has been too much anti-rationalism among believers. Faith has been set in opposition to reason in spite of the heroic efforts of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The result is that these two valid sources of truth have been set as odds against each other. Everybody, as a result, suffers from this intellectual civil war. Hope, it seems, has been one of the conspicuous casualties.

A simulacrum of hope has become a weak replacement in the lives of so many people. Since there is nothing to look forward to after this life, or if we live as if there is nothing to look forward to after this life, then we end up simply seeking those goods we find laying about us. The great good of fulfillment has been replaced by the limited goods of satiety and pleasure. The great good of immortality has been replaced by propagation. The communion of persons has been replaced by casual encounters. In short, heavenly bliss has been replaced by sexual promiscuity.

This isn't simply a case of falling prey to our baser human inclinations. No, the pagans did paganism with far more panache than we could ever muster. We've fallen into a far worse state than our former pagan ways. We've reordered the heavenly and the infinite to the earthly and the finite. We've aborted our hope. We've placed our salvation in our sexuality.

Idolatry

I'm disturbed.

I'm really, really disturbed.

The more I listen to people, even priests, the more I'm convinced that most people have replaced God with an idol of their own making. My first realization of this came to me when one of the brothers was recounting a story about a class he was taking. The professor wanted to know how we can account for God condoning and commanding violence in the Old Testament. One student said that she was uncomfortable with a God like that. Wait. What!!!?? Seriously!!!?? 

This sort of thing sends me SO ANGRY!

This is only one example of the way people recreate God in our own image. I hear people do it all the time. Philosophers and Theologians are always trying to make God less than what he is. I think they are genuine in their desire for God. However, they often lose sight of the ramifications for their statements.

They want God to be surprised. They want God to be changed by our prayers. They want God to suffer along with us. But, what they don't realize is that if God does any of these things then he is not God – he is unworthy of worship. Let me break it down:

• Surprised God = God lacking knowledge
• Changed God by prayers = God lacking in knowledge & goodness
• Suffering God = God lacking power

In the end, all of these things do violence to the absolute perfection and transcendence of God. If God is limited in his knowledge, power, perfection, goodness, etc., then he is not God, he becomes a thing among other things.

The young lady wasn't comfortable with a God who commands violence. I'm not comfortable with a God who lacks the ability to command violence. I'm not comfortable with a constrained God. I'm not comfortable with an image of God that isn't God!

I don't want this post to be about the philosophy of God. I simply want to point out that God is more than all these things. The world says that God needs to be relevant. What it means by this, however, is that God needs to be an emotional salve for my emotional wounds. On the contrary, God is not relevant in this way. The world wants us to believe that God needs us.

No!

God doesn't need any of us. It is the fact that God doesn't need us that makes his love for us all that more great. We don't increase his glory, we don't add to his goodness, we can't change him, we can't effect him. We can't DO anything for God. But, it is because of all this that his act of creation is so awesome. We do nothing for God, but he does everything for us. His love for us is unmerited, undeserved. There is no way for us to merit or deserve his love. He simply grants it because he loves us.

It's that simple.

So, who cares if you aren't comfortable with God! The reality of God doesn't hinge upon your comfort level. But, your existence hinges upon God's reality.

We can't punish God with our doubt or disbelief.

We must learn to not explain away God's actions. We simply need to try and understand the vastness of the mystery of God. We need to smash the Golden Calf in our mind and turn again to the true God who is infinitely transcendent.

God is beyond anything you can conceive of in your mind.

If you can conceive of God ... that's not God.