We Americans are caught in a buzz saw. The future can only be financial collapse or at least a slide to bare third world status. The selfish few and their co-conspirators have devastated our economic prospects along with the prospects of most of our friends and neighbors. However, there really are no innocent parties left standing for we have all tried to work the system to our own advantage. There are those who bear the brunt of responsibility but having understood our journey, how do we Americans proceed? Are we doomed to dire future economic circumstances or is there any hope?
Surely our politicians have proved hopeless. Despite the “jobs” rhetoric and decisions based on an expected economic rebound, they will continue habitual destructive spending that is a slow painful suicide for the people. We must look to ourselves. Possibly the best course of action would be to admit our inability to effect meaningful change. Are we there yet? Please allow these small words to those of us who believe politics is not the answer and that we must look to some greater authority for hope.
Easy, this is not a spiritual exercise. Biblical scriptures will not to be thrown at our problems with a call to prayer, this is not Sunday morning. There may be some help for us, however, if we consider the possibility that this is a moral as well as a physical universe. To address the human condition from merely a physical perspective does not answer the question of why? C.S. Lewis argues in “Mere Christianity” that there is a moral law in our world just as there is a law of gravity. He believes that human kind is starving for the moral law for we are incomplete without it and we make a heavy investment attempting to manage this universal need in all the wrong ways.
A variety of religions of many forms have arisen in every society to better order their lives around this moral law. The point being, if there is this universal need for a moral awareness, there could also be a corresponding universal presence or originator who has so influenced humanity. This linkage is not a “proof” that God exists but His possible existence can be argued from a rational, thinking perspective. For the sake of argument let’s assume that this thinking God exists and that he has so designed His world that is also our world, to be in balance, a balance of the physical and the moral.
Two thousand years ago an obscure wandering prophet in the countryside of Palestine, announced that such a life balance was possible, even a necessity. He named this place “the Kingdom of God” and invited all to live therein. Rejecting the religious dogma of their times, Jesus and C. S. Lewis would both agree that the moral law is not about an ethical standard. That was the long derailment of the ancestors of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That was the wrong popularized priority of the Pharisees who harassed Jesus. That is the wrong priority of the fundamentalist Christian aberration of the last one hundred years.
Lewis spoke of self sacrifice as a moral principle and Jesus spoke of love. Are they not one in the same and so rare? It is normal for every religion to lift up a seemingly attainable standard ethic and avoid a morality as God defines it. This argument may have progressed to the point where you would allow me a Scriptural reference (Luke 9:51). Having become a popular country preacher, “Jesus resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem”. It is hard to catch the magnitude of that “resolute” decision. He knew he would be walking into the hornets nest of religious orthodoxy and survival was doubtful. The decision was to leave the comfort of the countryside for the way of pain. In Roman Catholic terms Jesus was offering himself up for the possibility of good spiritual change for others.
The way forward is to give it up and rejoice in the face of suffering. This blogger is a minimalist who prefers to claim as truth only the obvious. The second moral principle of this world is that painful suffering in this world will breed positive change. There are eight million, four hundred and seventy thousand hits on Google when “no pain, no gain” is searched. Of the first two hundred, only two have a spiritual context. We need not share the same religion but the no pain no gain principle seems to be widely accepted as factual.
The Message translation of the Scriptures translate this verse, “Jesus gathered up His courage and steeled himself for the journey to Jerusalem”. Jesus accepted that the road ahead was pain but traveled none the less. The American economic road we have journeyed is painful and will be more so. We really don’t have a choice and we must accept our fate as Jesus accepted His. At present we are in pain avoidance mode, in an attempt to dump the most pain possible on the other guy and the next generations. Does that sound like a Christian mode? Does that sound like courage mixed with the determination for the journey?
Wouldn’t America be the most true to it’s history and it’s beliefs if we as a people were to seek shared pain instead of another economic bubble? The task ahead is to be a part of the solution. After all, is it not Christmas?
G.Goslaw
Victorville,CA
