Yet my personal ambivalence of each New Year’s posterity for new resolution seems to wane in the feeling that there is a subtle change in the air, a growing shadow across the western civilization landscape. In the immediate distractions of making new resolutions for losing weight, accomplishing a new goal, or changing something for the better… I wonder how many deal with the onslaught of sensuality and the acceptance of self-indulgence of pleasure that dwarfs dealing with spiritual growth.
A moment of transparency seems to overwhelm me as after typing that I break from the computer keyboard to dash to the kitchen for a quick hot drink because my throat seems parched…or I just had a quick desire for it. Such a temporary and harmless desire may hardly qualify to be the issue at hand in this topic that keeps me from being more attuned spiritually to growing in Christ, knowing God, and being open to the direction of the Holy Spirit. Or…can it? What if the “temporary desires” grew to a constant drizzle and like rain eventually keep my spiritual ears awash with white noise and deafen me from even the desires of spiritual growth or yet regulate such pursuits to when “I’m not so busy”?
There may be something about constant distractions even though the initial pleasures of life may not be bad of themselves. CS Lewis in his The Screwtape Letters had the senior devil mentor telling the junior:
“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden”. [ii]
Is it possible that pleasures have then been distorted or over-used (and possibly abused) to completely shadow the spiritual needs of humanity? It is clear that western culture and people therein live in a constant vying for pleasure and the accent on the sensual has increased even to technology.
The interpersonal contact for each person has decreased in significant degree even as one can videoconference for free around the world. It is easier to get someone to video chat or text with someone in another country or the same room of a house than to get that same person to converse socially and have a personal investment in presentation of themselves to others. Yet even our phones and screens have “touch” capability of control and surreptitiously make us “feel” connected. It is viable that we are duping ourselves into growing connected with each other when in fact we’re just becoming deader in the spiritual fiber of our community because we hardly meaningfully connect with each other…and more importantly much less with God through Christ.
Okay…so cell phones and new tablets may not be the downfall of western civilization spirituality alone. However, if self-indulgence is not a factor that shows our deepening spiritual decadence then how is western preoccupation with the sensual factor in? Even if one or the company one keeps does not view pornography or explicit material on a regular or infrequent basis …the very language and slang in the Western world seems to revolve around sensual terms. If it is bad…”it sucks”. Someone who is told to buzz off is said to “bite me”. As I ponder these references instead of having to prove each one’s sensual beginning, can one even think of a spiritual concept or phrase that is en vogue or in use for today’s slang in western culture? The language we have may also be the result of the media we allow to receive or the company we keep. Yet we need to consider such influences in this New Year.
“… every irregular passion and wrong disposition, which are indulged by their companions. It gently leads them into habitual self-indulgence, and unwillingness to deny themselves; into un-readiness to bear or take up any cross; into a softness and delicacy; into evil shame, and the fear of man, that brings numberless snares. It draws them back into the love of the world; into foolish and hurtful desires; into the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, till they are swallowed up in them. So that, in the end, the last state of these men is far worse than the first”.[iii]
If the sensual and habitual self-indulgence crowds our lives out of bearing to hear God’s leading and growing spiritually, then how can we temper our desires? The narrative in Ecclesiastes 2 sure gives us pause and warrant to consider restraining what we get in this New Year. For the writer had
“…kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun”. [iv]
I fear this change in the water, the new resolutions with the New Year and the mass ignorance of my community towards the need for spiritual growth and salvation through Christ. It will affect our communication with God and each other. It alters our worldviews, our politics and affects what stirs us to move towards real change and resolution.
When one considers how to be different or what to change in this New Year of 2012, may it be a good contemplation and checking of the spiritual fiber within to see how connected one is to the vine of life everlasting…which is Jesus the Christ.
[i] Ecclesiastes 1:9
[ii] C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters With Screwtape Proposes a Toast (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2001).
[iii] John Wesley, Sermons, on Several Occasions (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1999). Semon 81, #16
[iv] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Ec 2:10–11.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment