WHAT'S THE WORLD REALLY LIKE?

Questions for Questioning Times

Emergent themes :

• Theme 1 : underlying
• Theme 2 : virtual
• Theme 3 : cosmic
• Theme 4 : choice
• is religion just your choice of fable?
• Theme 5 : change
• An Un-Rant : what we're really after
• some fresh-thinking links

THEME 3 : WHERE AM I IN THE COSMIC PICTURE?

There's both spiritual health and spiritual sickness in the constant ego-lifting rant. You know : 'Dare it!' 'Do it!', 'You deserve it!', 'Pursue your dreams!' But where is the wisdom and the lunacy?

• What can I do? Too many of us still expect, and demand, too little of ourselves. We think we can't, or worse, we think someone should do it for us. Confidence is successful, it's sexy, and it can also be quite holy. With God, nothing is impossible. Nothing is out of reach when you operate with God. You can accomplish great things knowing that.
• But how much 'me' is too much? Hint: notice that the biggest user of today's 'self' talk are the advertisers. Do you know why? Salesmen don't sell products, they sell dreams -- dreams which can't really be had through the product, even a very good product. No beer or cigaret can make you sexy, no car can make you upper-class just by owning it, no software program can suddenly make your family life work, no clothing can make you hip if your personality isn't hip, no investment plan will make you as rich as Bill Gates. The problem, ultimately, isn't the product or the salesmen, it's the dream itself. We want the wrong things. Are any of those kind of dreams really as worthwhile as we've been told? Once you get into that kind of a dream, it doesn't take much to make your whole way of thinking turn surreal. That's why God is sometimes referred to as 'Ultimate Reality' or 'the Ground of Existence', because God is who makes it 'real', and God ultimately insists that you get real too.
• Where am I in all this? The world just keeps getting more complex, and no matter how complex you get you can never keep up. You just keep seeming like an ever-smaller speck in the big cosmic picture. But God chose to become a speck like you are -- it's what Christmas was all about -- and went on to show us just how meaningful and powerful a 'speck' could be, through Jesus, and through Jesus' followers. You're no speck to God. You're a colleague in the reshaping and rebirth of all that exists. You're a son, like one who left and returned or like one who stayed home. You're potentially part of a whole which Christ calls His bride. This is the Big Picture, and you're in it!
• Where are others within ourselves? You may pursue monetary gain and its many benefits for yourself, but is that what it's really all about? Do you hold your own privacy as an absolute that's worth destroying others to defend, while snooping into someone else's privacy to get a competitive edge on them or to get leverage so you can make them do your bidding, or just for revenge? Or even just to be snoopy? Is it 'me' versus 'them'? Where within 'me' is there a place for 'us'?

THEME 4 : CHOOSING

Our era is the era of choice. Choice is a good thing. It gives dignity, adaptability, fit, and the chance to show forth character. But we live in an era when choice has become a new commandment: everything is subject to the new iron law of choice. We can choose to ignore common sense, history, and even truth. There are ideologies around which claim one can choose not to be ill or choose to have one's mind escape the limits of time and space. Some even say we can choose to pretend away the very existence of others' lives, especially if we can't see them or if they can be wrapped in an enemy flag or lost in a statistic. But modern choice is not really a god. It is a tool we choose to use in order to carry out the pretense that we can fashion our own version of reality itself. Today, the idol Ba'al (potent power)is joined to the goddess DiY (do it yourself). This is the lot of the postmodern human being. It's obviously nonsense when pushed as far as it is being pushed, but all of us buy into it to a surprisingly large degree. Yet because our powerlessness is obvious to anyone who thinks about it a while, or to anyone who's poor or oppressed, there is this nagging doubt, which shows itself as cynicism.

This creates a spiritual problem: we're so busy fashioning something we pretend is reality that we don't have the time or patience or desire to pay heed to the One who created us, the One who is what is ultimately real in a way we can never reach in so-called 'real' life. Even your surreal, self-designed virtual world has an underlying reality which you can pretend away only at your own peril. The underlying reality will eventually hunt you down.

Most of us confront this spiritual reality only when we finally have to face it. When the only choices are few, limited, or even Hobson's, we come face to face with our limited-ness. It is when we hit the wall, or hit bottom, that we are brought to even try the one thing which will most benefit us: to let go of the controls, of the obsession with choices, of fashioning our own version of reality. To let go -- and let God.

Try reading Surfing and Spirituality, by Peter Kreeft.