We live in a time of great hope and unimaginable despair.  Each of us is both a combatant and a witness to the Great War.

“For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”  (Galatians 5:17)

WARNINGS

Ours is a fallen race.  Esteemed thinkers such as Moses, Jesus of Nazareth, St. Augustine, and James Madison understood that we are prone to selfishness and self-destruction if presented with temptation.  Our constitution guarantees checks and balances against the wielding of excessive power by any one branch of federal government, fully mindful of our inclination as a people to imbibe on excessive influence and power. 

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, we have witnessed global genocide of staggering proportions.  But we tell ourselves that most people are good, and that, by nature, we will choose the moral path.  Modern, enlightened thinkers have convinced most of us that since there is no God for us to fear, we’re all OK.  Humanism and communism are predicated on the assumptions that if we talk about our feelings and structure a society of equality we could build heaven on earth.  They also told us that technology, entertainment, and affluence would make us happy.  Are we happy?  If we are, then why do so many of us kill ourselves every day?  Why is substance abuse rampant among all age groups?  Why do we pop Prozac like Life-Savers?  What are we looking for?  We ceaselessly lust after the next high, the next rush of excitement that will bring meaning and fulfillment to our lives. Nothing satisfies, however, because we are lacking something inside ourselves.  We desperately try to fill this spiritual void with abject materialism, but we don’t.  We can’t.

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) 

Two thousand years ago, the most influential man in human history was born in the Middle East.  He was poor, uneducated, and eventually homeless.  For the crime of telling the truth he was executed, nailed to a large wooden cross.  But before he was put to death he spoke some of the most radical and unsettling words ever uttered.  He commanded his listeners to love and forgive those who hated and persecuted them.  He told them that they would not only be judged by their behavior, but by their very thoughts and desires.  He also warned them to be ever on guard and wary of a great deceiver, the father of lies.  He said that possession of the human soul was the deceiver’s ultimate goal.  He tried to impress into his followers the reality of this liar, as well as the reality of one he called “the father,” who had the power to defeat the deceiver.

Today, we pay lip service to this “father,” and we dismiss the deceiver as a fable of the old-fashioned and ignorant.  We are bombarded with psychospeak from all circles of society, from churches to schools, from psychiatrists to the media, telling us that we need to be empowered to optimize ourselves to achieve happiness and our worldly goals.  Self-help gurus and new age spirit guides hawk the religion of self-mastery, of claiming our own inherent God-ness.  Where has humanism taken us?

LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES…

Let’s rationally examine the results of roughly 200 years of enlightenment.  We have exterminated hundreds of millions of our brothers and sisters through war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and violent crime.  Half of our marriages end in divorce.  Commercialism has sucked the significance out of our religious celebrations.  Corporate greed and political corruption have removed the last vestiges of trust from informed citizens.  The seven deadly sins have been transformed from their criminal status into universally accepted entertainment and advertising staples.  Our political and intellectual discourse has descended into name-calling and profanity laced diatribes.  In fact, the societal acceptance of four-letter words has absolved the majority of us of the responsibility of expressing ourselves creatively.  And we crown our deification by murdering tens of millions of unborn children in the name of choice and freedom.  Can someone say “Praise Darwin?”

Our behavior, and thus our world, ultimately reflects the state of our internal universe.  What is inside has no choice but to come out.  And what comes out of each of us determines our collective reality.  Society is, by definition, a reflection of our intellect, our ethics, and our morality.  Or, perhaps more accurately, our priorities.  And all the self-congratulating platitudes of our illuminated culture fail to convince this writer that we’re headed in the right direction.

WE FAIL TO BELIEVE

Let’s play pretend, OK?  Try to suspend your disbelief for a few moments, like you do when you watch a good movie, or when you turn on Peter Jennings.

What if Jesus of Nazareth told us the exact, perfect truth?  Wasn’t he, in fact, the cornerstone of the predominant religion in the world?  So, the majority of us should believe what he said, right?  I realize he tended to speak in parables, but he always had to later de-code his parables into plain Aramaic because his disciples were as dense as we are.  He spoke endlessly about God, the father.  He told us to pray to this father, have faith in this father, and told us that we needed to humble ourselves as children before this father.  He also said that the greatest command was to love the father with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind.  Now, he could have meant that we were to love ourselves, but he didn’t say that.  He could have said we were to love our careers, our possessions, our accomplishments, our spouses and our kids, but he didn’t.  He told us that the most important thing we were to do on earth was to love God the father.  The second most important thing to do, in Jesus’ humble opinion, was to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Not to do unto others whatever makes us happy, or to do unto others whatever they do unto us.  No, he told us to treat others the way we would want them to treat us.  Easy to say, but hard as hell to do.  But he was pretty clear about this one.   

Now, regarding the deceiver, he may have meant to say that Satan was not a real being, but more of a symbol, a personification of our shortcomings, to make it easier for those dense followers to grasp the concept.  Kind of like Smoky the Bear.  But he didn’t say that.  And he could have ended his suggested prayer with “deliver us from our ignorance and prejudices,” but he didn’t.  He said “but deliver us from the evil one.”  Now, he may have been referring to Richard Perle, but I doubt it. 

“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.  And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” (John 8:44-45)

So here we have Jesus, the essential character of the most popular faith on the planet, telling us in rather blunt language that we need to love God, treat others better than they treat us, and grant infinite forgiveness to those who persecute us.  It logically follows that our world must reflect these actions, right?  But, obviously, it doesn’t.  Why not?  Because we don’t believe him.  We like to picture him as a helpless babe in a manger.  That’s easy.  We don’t like him as much when he learns how to speak.  George Bush, our Christian president, doesn’t require us to love our enemies, does he?  So we’re faced with this reality: our world’s moral and ethical priorities are diametrically opposed to those of our most important spiritual teacher.  It’s a battle.  Not just a battle, but a war…the only legitimate war.  It’s being waged inside each of us, so logically, outside of us as well in our external world.

IN DESPAIR, HOPE

“But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.  But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Matthew 9:12-13)

This obvious dichotomy in our society closely parallels the state of  being of an alcoholic or other addict, who professes certain values with his tongue, but find himself unable to control his selfish, self-destructive behavior.  In our distorted quest for true spiritual union with the power of God, we turn to the drug of our choice, which provides us with a temporary illusion of meaning and transcendence.  But this inevitably fails to fill the spiritual void, and only serves to further separate the addict from truth.  The addict lies, and increasingly believes his own lies.  Only when faced with destitution or imminent death do most addicts admit their desperation and seek help.  Miraculously, millions of addicts have recovered through AA and other 12-step programs.  The principles of 12-step programs are profound in both their simplicity and their similarity to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.  “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10)       

First, an addict must admit he is absolutely powerless over his addiction, and make a conscious decision to turn his life and his will over to the care of God, as he understands God.  In short, one has to stop playing God.  But we, as Americans, are taught from infancy to play God.  This concept is ingrained in us in our schools, in the mass media, and in the marketplace.  We are fully expected to assume the role of God in the political arena.  We literally beg our psychiatrists and therapists to play God for us. 

The key guiding principles of recovery are complete honesty, candor about one’s character defects, making amends to those we have harmed, and total surrender to God.  A recovered addict is blessed with true humility and recognition of his dependence on a power greater than himself.  He is unselfish, merciful, honest, and fully aware of his own potential for evil and deceit.  Most importantly, while he remains in this world, his profound spiritual union with God, as he understands him, allows him to be not of this world. “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” (1 John 2:16)  He realizes that his sobriety requires that he avoid many internal states that our culture celebrates:  pride, greed, anger, lust, and fear.  Recovered addicts come to realize that these mindsets are not only poisonous in and of themselves, but that they are indeed the very character fertilizers that initially precipitated his addiction, and can easily trigger a relapse.  So it is accurate to say that, through his quest for survival, a recovered addict has somehow found a pathway to spiritual peace through a manner of living that demands honesty, humility, and unselfish love for one’s fellow man. 

Amazingly, when an addict diligently and honestly applies these steps and principles, they work.  The program works because it fully acknowledges the dual realities of good and evil, of truth and lies within ourselves.  The program accurately diagnoses our malady as truly spiritual, and requires our humble and total submission to the will of God as an absolute prerequisite to our wellness.  “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.  Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” (Mark 11:23-24) It is radically at odds with our modern, enlightened cultural ethos, which celebrates independence, psychopharmacology, and the inherent benevolent nature of mankind.  AA and other 12-step programs, while not at all religious, are profoundly spiritual, demanding conscious contact with God in all facets of life.  Paradoxically, recovery and power are achieved only through surrender, and freedom only through submission.  What if the lowly, the meek, the poor in spirit, and the merciful really are blessed?

TRUTH

Two thousand years ago, he told us the truth about this battle for our souls, and gave us the keys to victory.  He warned us about the deceiver, who is cunning, baffling, and powerful.  Today, our corporate, political, and media elites lie to us, but most of us choose not to see because we desperately need to believe that they truly have our best interests at heart.  They lie the way addicts lie, fully convinced that we should believe them.  And we don’t dare question them, because that would force us to examine our own lies.  We allow them to spin a web of manipulation by appealing to our base instincts of pride, avarice, lust, and revenge while couching their true motives behind ideals of freedom, patriotism, and prosperity.  Our society is addicted to alcohol, drugs, sex, entertainment, and greed.  It believes its own lies, and is headlong on a path of self-destruction as it denies the realities of God and the deceiver. “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:  That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12)  Love versus fear.  But hope must still exist, for Jesus told the repentant thief from his cross: “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Alan Homcy     January 22, 2004

ahomcy@hotmail.com