Soul Thoughts

Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Consumerism (Page 4 of 6)

A Lenten reflection

February 26, 2012 / / 0 Comments

If you were walking around in a supermarket not long after Christmas you could have been forgiven for thinking that you had skipped a couple of months of your life, such was the proliferation of chocolate Easter eggs already for sale. We are a society addicted to consumption. We want it all and we want it now.

The temptation to succumb to the consumerist way of life is with us daily. So as we come into the season of Lent, which is about going without, it is timely to remind ourselves that Jesus faced the same temptations we do. In Luke 4 we read that Jesus was shown all the kingdoms of the world, in all their glitz and glamour, and was told it could all be his if he would just sell his soul. Those forty days in the wilderness for Jesus were a time of extreme testing and trial, and it is during Lent that we identify with this as many of us make our own sacrifices.

Jesus resisted all the temptations thrown at him during that time, because he knew a better way. Not an easier way, but a better way. What the gospels show us, and what Lent reminds us of, is that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. In his day that meant nothing less than a death sentence. When Jesus told his disciples about this in Mark 8, it was the major turning point in his ministry. It was the beginning of the end. Sometimes referred as the Caesarea Philippi Declaration, this was the first time Jesus made clear to his disciples that he was going to go to Jerusalem to meet his death.

What we also see in this enormously significant passage is that the disciples just didn’t get it. How could they? They had a completely different mindset. Their idea of a messiah was one who would overthrow the tyranny of the Roman Empire. After all, that was something that the Jews had been pinning their hopes on for hundreds of years. They had been under the yoke of oppression for that long and they had had enough. So when Jesus came along and spoke to his disciples about self-denial and taking up your cross and that he was going to die, should we be surprised that they couldn’t deal with it?

If we ever needed it, Lent is a time for reminding us that following Jesus is a struggle. When we commit our lives to bringing in the kingdom of God in all we are and all we do, it can be easy for cynicism to easily take hold as we see corruption and injustice always seeming to win the day. How do we go on when it always seems to be two steps forward and three steps back?

Lent though prepares us for what lies ahead. For many it is a time to give up some indulgence, like chocolate or coffee (or something even more difficult like Facebook!). It is a time to identify with suffering, with going without, in order to realise more our dependence on the God of hope. In a world where we constantly face the temptation to want it all and want it now, Lent offers a different way. The way of Jesus is the way of the Cross. It is an unavoidable fact of life. There is no resurrection without death.

This year, let’s consider giving up something during Lent. It can not only bring us closer to God, but it also helps us identify more with those whose entire lives consist of going without. And by doing this, you may just find that you experience a joy that you would not otherwise experience; a joy that can give you strength to continue the good fight. As author Walt Wangerin says, “Joy knows suffering and still does not despair. Joy sees the suffering of others and does not turn away, but moves forward in courage, to comfort and to heal.”

The prophet Nehemiah also says, “the joy of the Lord will be your strength”. Jesus knew this. He knew it on the night he was betrayed and we can be sure he knew it during his forty days in the wilderness. The journey of struggle to set the world right is a long one. But it is one that brings life and joy, and that is why it is worthwhile. May that be your experience of Lent this year.

Another classic from Richard Rohr

February 25, 2012 / / 0 Comments

How easy it is to lose our spiritual hunger when we are so satiated in our society, when we have so many choices that we suffer from choice anxiety and we don’t feel a need for God. In that vein, here is some more wisdom from Richard Rohr that I want to take on board:

Beginner’s mind is a posture of eagerness, of spiritual hunger. The beginner’s mind knows it needs something, just as children do. This is a rare feeling in today’s treacherously seductive culture. Because we are offered so many things that are immediately satisfying (albeit in a superficial way), it is hard to remain spiritually hungry. We give answers too quickly, take away pain too easily, and too commonly stimulate ourselves with nonsense. In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of pain before we have learned what it has to teach us. Much that we call entertainment, vacations, or recreation are merely diversionary tactics,and they do not “re-create” us at all. The word vacation is from the same root as vacuum, and means to “empty out,” not to fill up. One wonders how many people actually have such vacations!

We must be taught HOW to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer. It is how contemplative prayer differs from the mere recitation of prayers (which can actually be another diversionary tactic instead of any kind of self-emptying).

Adapted from Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, pp. 43-47

Thoughts on the American psyche

September 11, 2011 / / 1 Comment

My wife and I recently returned from spending some time in the United States. Having been there a few times now, and having some family over there, I have decided to pen my thoughts on this country of contrasts, of opportunity and of deprivation.

We were in Florida on the 4th of July, and we spent the evening with a few hundred other people watching the fireworks and celebrations. As I watched and took on the reactions of the people, I was impressed by how much Americans love their country, and by how genuinely patriotic they are. While I do believe that Americans go over the top with their sense of patriotism, there is a reason for it, and on the other hand, I don’t think Australia goes far enough with it. And frankly I am sick of people who constantly bag America for this and other reasons when they have probably never even been there. It is easy to be judgmental from afar.

Americans really believe they are the greatest country in the world, not necessarily in the sense of being superior (though of course there are indeed many Americans who believe their country is superior than others; and that attitude is not just limited to those who believe that America is somehow God’s promised land), but in the opportunities they have in this country. Freedom is everything in this land; it is what has made it great. But it has also led to an arrogance that will one day be its downfall. For example, for Barack Obama to say, in response to the recent downgrade of the US credit rating, that “no matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country” was the height of American hubris.

But despite the claims of freedom that this country is built on, I am convinced that Australia has more freedom than the US. Our health system is not out of reach for millions of our citizens, we do not live in nearly as much fear of a major terrorist attack on our shores, and our level of poverty is generally not as high as in many places in the US.

As I watched the fireworks and was impressed by the love of Americans for their country, I was equally impressed by the view that America does not have a right to impose itself on the rest of the world. No country, however powerful, has that right.

Martin Luther King once made the point that a true patriot is one who loves their country enough to criticise it. He was responding to those who said his criticism of America came out of a hatred of its ideals. King though, loved his country, and wanted it to be the best it could be, to live out its ideals of equality and freedom for all. His criticism did not come out of any resentment or an attitude of judgmentalism or superiority. It came out of a dream he had for his country.

Any criticism must come out of a motivation of love. Otherwise it is tainted with self-interest. I tend to think that there will be many people gloating over the problems America is facing at the moment, looking forward to the decline of the American empire. I have to admit I struggle win that myself at times, but it is not the way of Jesus.

It is easy to be seduced by America and the very consumer culture that is the source of many of its problems at present. The ideal of freedom of enterprise, private ownership of property and individual opportunity are the unshakable bottom lines of this nation, and they have provided both opportunity and heavy costs over the years.

My relationship with America is one of both love and anger (as opposed to hatred; I don’t believe in hatred). Having a brother who has lived there for half his life, and having been there myself a few times, I see both sides of what, in my limited opinion, is both good and bad about this country.

One of the privileges we had while in the US recently was watching in person the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis, the final launch of the shuttle. The word ‘awesome’ is bandied around everywhere these day to describe things which are really incredibly mundane. But watching this live was, for me, truly awesome. To watch as people are blasted into space was to realise, as my brother who was with me at the time said, that this is the very frontier of exploration. It was estimated that 750,000 people lined up on the Florida coast that July morning. It was a sight to behold, seeing the enormity of what a country can do in terms of technology. No wonder the patriotism on that day was so strong.

It must always be remembered though that, while this technological brilliance of America has certainly driven its innovation, it has been at the expense of social safety nets for the millions of less fortunate and less free, those who miss out because of billions of dollars spent on the space program.

Perhaps my response to the shuttle launch was also linked with my thoughts on the cultural hegemony of this nation. When we were in America, it hit me about how much we are infiltrated by American culture through television. It is so constant that we aren’t even aware of it. This cultural hegemony is largely what makes America so powerful. Through television, American culture has for years been exported around the world. The idea of American freedom and the American way of life has been shown to billions around the world, non-stop, 24/7, and, quite simply, it is part of our identity. That is why, when many people visit certain parts of the US, it feels familiar, they feel like they know the place; there is a level of comfort with the surroundings. Such familiarity also gives America more power. Image and perception is everything, and the America that is exported around the world is the America of Hollywood and dreams, whereas the other side of America is often hidden, for instance the side that has 46 million of its citizens living in poverty. This is one example of the lack of liberty that many people experience in the land of the free.

A final word must be taken from the Gospels. America was founded on the belief of many that they were a nation blessed by God, a light on a hill. And the constant refrain we hear from American Presidents at the end of every speech is ‘God bless the United States of America’. Well, my word toAmericais “be careful what you pray for.” The God in whom the Pilgrim Fathers placed their faith said “blessed are the poor, blessed are those who mourn, and blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” The way of Jesus is inevitably the way of suffering. And this is the tension with which America lives. It is truly a remarkable nation, one that has given much good to the world, but it is also one which has inflicted untold suffering on innocent millions in the name of the very freedom which it proclaims to the world.

The psyche of America is indeed a wounded one. Today of all days the nation will be feeling this. The Founding Fathers seemed to have great motivations for the new country, but it has been greatly misguided over the years, leading to equally misguided hatred on the part of those who would destroy it.

On the statue of Liberty in New York harbour, the sign proclaims “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. And in Matthew 25 when the nations are brought together, it will be those who treated these very people as Christ did who will go into the glory set aside for them. Will America heed the call? On this day when many are mourning, may God truly bless the United States of America.

Truth in a postmodern culture

January 25, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Showing Christ to be relevant in a postmodern, largely secular society has its share of conundrums. I will say upfront that I am not an expert on postmodernism; the following are simply my observations of being a follower of Jesus in 21st century Melbourne, as well as some insights picked up from other followers on the way.

I have a deep conviction, and in fact I can say – and I understand that this will seem like an incredibly arrogant assertion to make in a postmodern culture – that I know that Jesus is the answer to the question of life, of what it’s all about and how we deal with it. He is the only one who delivers on the life that humanity is after. This conviction has been borne out of years of surrendering my life to this Christ, asking for His will and not my own to be done in my life each day. As C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” You can’t prove that by the logic of reason, and that is one of the benefits of bringing across Jesus today. Many people are not seeking ‘proofs’ these days. As John Smith has said, you could convince someone that Jesus really did rise from the dead, but they could at the same time turn around and say, ‘so what?!’.

People want to know that Christianity works. But whilst it is important to bring that across, it is equally important to remember that Christianity isn’t true because it works; it works because it’s true. Again, this will come across to many people as another seemingly arrogant assertion to make. But I learnt from Rikk Watts some time ago, and I agree with him, that truth is something different to what I had always thought. In these postmodern times where what’s true for you doesn’t have to be true for me, I believe we have forgotten what the definition of truth is. I believe we have been looking at it the wrong way. We are still caught in the trap of our post-Enlightenment thinking that sees truth as a concept. But the Scriptures never describe truth in such a way. Have a read through John’s gospel and you will see it. Truth is personal. The truth has come to us in a Person, the person of none other than God incarnate. A concept is impersonal, and truth is not that.

When talking about truth we have been asking the wrong question. Ever since Pilate asked Jesus that great existential question, ‘what is truth?’ (John 18:38), we have thought of truth as a concept. But John tells us that truth is a person. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). And John in his gospel says that the law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). This Truth is the great ‘I Am’, a designation that the Jewish hearers of Jesus would have instantly recognised as nothing other than the outrageous statement of someone who is claiming to be the living God. No wonder they tried to kill him. How dare he make such claims in front of those who claimed to have a monopoly on truth!

I wonder how society would react if He made those claims today. I don’t think it would be much different to 2,000 years ago. We live in interesting times. While we live in a time when modernity seems a relic of the past, there are still strong glimpses of it. People know integrity when they see it. You will not meet many people have major problems with the church who will also write Jesus off. As Dan Kimball has noted in his book of the same title, ‘they like Jesus but not the church. And, as N.T. Wright says, “we generally know deep down what is good. When we see someone living out a Christian life, we don’t ask ourselves if it’s good or not; we just wish there were more people like that around.”

Throughout the ages, from modern days to these postmodern days, actions still speak loudest. If we want to find out whether or not Christian faith is relevant in the 21st century, we need only look at the actions of those Christians who are walking their talk. The fact is that Christians have had a profound impact on society. I have written elsewhere of the massive contributions that people of faith have made over the centuries. It is that more than anything that has convinced people of the reality of God in the world.

If we want to see what Scriptures speak best to a postmodern culture, I think the relevance of Christ today is seen most profoundly in those magnificent words of Colossians 1:15-20. This is what brings it all together for me. Check it out:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

I think this is one of the most radical passages we can think of for the 21st century. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And, contrary to popular church opinion, God did not make everything for our glory. Colossians tells us that it was all made for Him. The creation and all that is in it was not made for us. We don’t own it. We are stewards, and stewards take care of what they have. If the church would only grasp this and get over its mind-numbing superficiality and obsession with growth and success, we would be more of a fragrance of life than a fragrance of sameness and conformity. And we would actually have something powerful to say to a society that is drowning.

We need to be more aware that society has largely given up on modernity and its failed promises of the good life and inevitable progress. But, as alluded to above, people still want to believe in something bigger. Witness the extraordinary outpouring of hope in Barack Obama in 2008. It’s interesting that such an outpouring of emotion and hope occurred in a country with Christian roots, nominal though its Christianity generally is now. It has largely been overtaken by a consumerism that has taken it to the eve of destruction, as Barry McGuire put it so many years ago.

In such a consumerist society, with so much choice, we suffer from choice anxiety. When our only commitment to life is the commitment to – in that postmodern catchphrase – ‘keep our options open’, we become confused people. We become terrified of missing out because we’re addicted to experience. As a result of this we become wired, unable to settle with being committed to something for the long term. That’s why I think Facebook has taken off like it has. It is a service that both reflects and shapes our times. On the other hand, as I have said previously, it is why marriage is so good for the soul: it’s about a commitment for life to one person.

When we ‘keep our options open’, we rarely take up any of those options and we miss out on much of the joy of being alive, of standing for something, of living with purpose. The line from a John Mellencamp song from the 1980s rings true today more than ever: “if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”

Having said all this, some thinkers, notably Mark Sayers, believe we are moving away from postmodernity back into something more akin to modernity. Sayers adds though that while there has been a decline in the concept of postmodernity in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of the ‘New Atheism’ with its modernist catchcry of ‘celebrating reason’, the reality of postmodernity is being lived out by average people in the suburbs. Consider this comment by Sayers:

“Postmodernity is seen most clearly in the ethically incoherent lives lived by Western people. Its beat of relativism is heard most clearly in the contradictory hedonistic/altruistic, nihilistic/optimistic, spiritualistic/materialistic lifestyles of average people everywhere in the West.”

Sayers goes on to say that therein lies the challenge of mission in the 21st century. We do well to remember that postmodernism too has made the same mistake as the church. It too still has traits of modernism about it in that it still sees truth as a concept. It just sees truth as relative instead of absolute.

Whilst in our conversations, the use of modernist concepts like reason (an essentially Christian idea by the way) and logic can have its place, there is a challenge to be given to those who live a contradictory lifestyle. But the challenge first has to be faced by people like me who often decry the subversive effects of the very materialism we secretly still hang on to at times; in my case the very technology I secretly want more of. We too need to walk our talk. That will speak louder than anything.

I wonder if we have let ourselves be walked over by the claims of postmodernism. Can we say that truth still has a claim on the hearts and minds of people today? Can we talk about truth in a world where there is no meta-narrative, no greater over-arching story anymore? We can, but only if we remember the nature of truth, that truth is a Person, that it is about relationship, something that goes to the very core of our identity as human beings. Jesus never spoke in abstracts; he told stories, and people respond to stories because there is usually something in them they can relate to. The Christian message is a story. It is the story of creation, fall, Jesus, redemption, and new creation. Stories touch something deep in us. That is why the Christian Gospel will always touch the deepest part of our soul, that part which wants a place to call home, which wants to know absolutely that all will be ok, that there is love in the universe, and that good will triumph in the end.

My conviction is that Jesus makes internal and external sense. Internal in the sense of giving meaning and real hope as well as joy and the ability to become more loving and more whole. And externally in the sense of being the initiator of the new creation, a world where justice rules, where everyone knows both their own and everyone else’s dignity, a world where all is renewed and in its rightful place, where people are truly humble – seeing themselves rightly in relation to God, a world where grace rules. And it is all because of Him, it is all for Him. He satisfies the hungry soul with goodness (Psalm 107:9) and fills our cups to overflowing (Psalm 23:5). A postmodern culture longs for such Truth.

Reflection, information, obsession, and Jesus

September 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

“All the books you never read, just started; all the meals you rushed, never tasted” – U2, Falling at Your Feet

I lament our loss of reflection in this information age. We are the most informed generation in history but we are losing the art of reflection. We are constantly wired, and I don’t mean just connected to an iPod or iPhone but emotionally wired. When we are constantly consuming information we are no longer being still and thinking about the deeper issues of life. Everything is rushed. We are overwhelmed with choice and we no longer feel at peace with ourselves. We have everything at our fingertips but don’t know anymore how to be. We think we have to always be doing something; we feel guilty when we aren’t being ‘productive’; and we wonder if we’re being lazy when we’re lying around on a Sunday afternoon.

Linked to this loss of reflection is our culture’s obsession with experience. We have a terrifying fear of missing out. We are the addict who thinks we cannot do without more and better. We talk about things being boring or cool. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe in leading a boring life. The life of following Jesus is anything but boring; it is counter-cultural and filled with opportunities. But what this means is that we live a life that is other-centred and not based on how we feel at a certain time. A life of other-centredness is one that doesn’t have to look for the next fix, because it is inherently satisfying. It is borne out of a deep knowing that we are loved by God and therefore don’t need to spend our days and years trying to prove ourselves to others. We are free to love and serve our fellow human beings. This is what it is to be a follower of Jesus. This is life, and deep down we know it is the right way to live.

The way of Jesus gives the most satisfaction, the most depth and the greatest enjoyment of life. This is anything but boring, but it is not a life that seeks to avoid boredom as an end in itself. It is a life that has a higher end; a life that has found something better. For if we do not find what we are really looking for we will inevitably go back to the life we lived before, and, such being human nature, we will pick up where we left off and it will be worse than before. Jesus spoke of this when he told about the house from which a demon has departed but then has other demons more evil than the first one come back and make the house worse than before (Matthew 12:43-45).

Life in the information age promises so much but delivers so little. We are still dependent beings. The fact of human nature is that we simply cannot live without outside help. We are created with a God-shaped hole and as St Augustine and others down through the ages have said, we are forever restless until we find our hope in Christ. No wonder Edward Mote could write the words of that famous hymn back in the 1830s, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand”.

We are indeed in trouble when our information age gives us so much to take in but leaves us with so little time to reflect on it. The Christian message is one which offers a way out of our malaise; a way out of the self-centred slavery to which we are addicted. The way to life is to fall at the feet of the One who is Life itself; Jesus, who says to our tired and information-burdened age, “Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). It is when we reflect on this that we come back to reality and find the life that is truly life, where we share with those people down through the centuries who have had their lives unburdened and their hopes transformed.

Some more words from Falling at Your Feet sum it up eloquently:

all the information
all the radio waves
electronic seas
how to navigate
how to simply be
to know when to wait
this plain simplicity
in whom shall I trust
how might I be still
teach me to surrender
not my will, Thy will

The End of Hyperconsumerism

July 31, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The latest issue of The Atlantic has an article about the fact that Americans (and by extension the rest of the affluent world), are finally waking up to the fact that the accumulation of stuff is not the be-all and end-all of life. I’m not so sure it will last though. Human nature is such that as soon as we become comfortable again, we automatically become complacent, unless there is a conscious surrendering and conviction that our previous way of life really did not work. My personal view is that this can only come when we realise we need a power outside of ourselves to guide us through life and put us on the straight and narrow.

Check out the article here.

Book Review – The Vertical Self

April 26, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Mark Sayers’ second book, The Vertical Self, further develops the theme of his earlier work, The Trouble with Paris, by emphasising that only a deep and passionate relationship with Jesus can save us from falling prey to the whims and whispers of our culture of consumerism.

The book is generally aimed at the young adults of Generation Y. This generation is often known to be one that is characterised, at least in part, by self-centredness and a sense of entitlement. What makes me both sad and angry is that this level of self-centredness is almost equally characteristic of many Christians who really live no different to the rest of the world. What a far cry this is from the Christians of the 1st century. Author Robert Wilken says that the early Christians often did not have an answer to the philosophical attacks thrown at them by the pagans of the day. But that wasn’t how they won the Roman Empire. They won the Empire by the quality of their lives, to the extent that by the time Constantine made Christianity the State religion early in the 4th century, half the Empire was Christian. It is a tragedy of modern-day Christendom that much of the church has nowhere near that level of influence and impact. An example of this is seen when Sayers reveals the seduction and confusion that many Christian leaders are exposed to, leading to them “unconsciously starting to confuse their calling with self-promotion as they were lured into the cult of cool”.

It is difficult to review this work without wanting to quote large slabs of it; such is its importance to and insightfulness of the malaise of the 21st century church. Like the frog placed in cold water that is slowly being brought to the boil, much of the church is not even aware that it is being held captive more to the culture of the day than to the liberating life and message of Jesus. To this end, Sayers makes the point that “in earlier centuries, the belief that humans were made in the image of God was…the cornerstone upon which identity was built”. No longer is this the case today though. Sayers believes that “we are now in an age where, for the first time since the birth of the church, the vertical self is not the dominant influence on Western culture’s understanding of self”.

Sayers defines the vertical self as a combination of Judaeo-Christian belief in God-given identity and a Greek belief in virtuous living. It explains the way that identity is developed by being part of a greater order. Further on, he says that the idea of the vertical self is a worldview that leads to a belief in the eternal, the desire to cultivate one’s spirituality so that one moves upward on the path toward becoming more like God. Compare this to the horizontal self, where we try to gain our sense of identity from our peers and from trying to measure up to what is sexy, cool, and glamorous. In fact, this book is divided into chapters that take into account such cultural phenomena as the social self of sexy, the social self of cool, and the social self of glamorous, all of which are ways we act out an image of ourselves. This is what Sayers calls our public image, and it is what many Christians now base their sense of self on instead of basing it on the fact of being made in the image of God.

The message that Sayers conveys throughout this book is one which I believe needs to be the core message of the church to the 1st world; that is, that only more intimacy with Jesus will save us from being sucked into the lie that the lure of our current culture will bring us the life we have always wanted. Tragically, it is a message that the church needs to hear just as much as the rest of the world.

The roots of the malaise of the horizontal self go deep indeed, so deep in fact that they speak to the very core of who we are as human beings. One of Sayers’ most profound insights is that “in a secular culture…religion, spirituality, tradition, and culture cannot tell a wider story that offers the individual a sense of place and meaning, hence the creation of the horizontal self and the creation and cultivation of a public image being paramount”. The meta-narrative of the Bible is no longer the foundation of our culture.

Sayers goes on to say that, in our culture, we no longer try to find ourselves. Instead we act. Identity is exchanged for imagery. Said in this way, Sayers’ message reveals Jesus’ message of building one’s house on the rock of the vertical self rather than on the shifting sands of the horizontal self as being incredibly relevant to our 21st century Western culture. For those who are tired of the failed promises of the horizontal self, Jesus once again shows himself to be the answer. The age-old words, ‘come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest’ whisper across the ages to a culture lost in a sea of failed promises and long-forgotten ideals. The tragic result of a culture lost in the sea of the horizontal self is a life that gradually tears at our psyches.

An interesting observation that Sayers makes in this book, and one with which I agree, is that, often, the more you embed your identity in a vertical sense of self, the more people living under a horizontal self will see something I you that will draw them to you. The vertical self can be recaptured when we commit ourselves to the God who has set eternity in the human heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Overall, the main ideal that Sayers is calling people to in The Vertical Self is a mark of character that seems so old-fashioned that even for many Christians it conjures up negative connotations. That mark of character is holiness. Holiness, as Sayers describes it, is when we are the people God created us to be. It is wholeness, centredness and connectedness. Christians have often given holiness a bad name. We have given off an image of holiness as being closer to legalism than grace. We have given off the image that a holy person is someone who doesn’t swear, doesn’t smoke, and doesn’t have extra-marital sex. All of these things may indeed be marks of a holy person, but they do not by any means define holiness on their own. Ultimately a holy person is a person of grace. And the best example of a holy person I know is Jesus. Being God in person, we are told in the Old Testament that we are to ‘be holy as I am holy’. Then in John’s gospel, we are told that grace and truth came through Jesus. The irony of how holiness is often viewed compared to the life of Jesus is seen in the fact that Jesus was the one who spoke out against the Pharisees for their excessive legalism, and he was the most holy person who ever lived.

Having said all of the above, I did not find myself agreeing with all of what Sayers was bringing across. For instance, he says that, in a culture ensconced in the view of the horizontal self, when we see public figures found out, we chide them for being caught, for not being able to keep up the game of illusion. However the recent example of Tiger Woods would seem to contradict this view. The case of Woods’ infidelity is one where I believe the huge media interest was not because he failed to keep up an illusion, but because he really was living a lie, especially as he claimed to be a family man. And Australians still don’t buy in-authenticity.

That criticism aside, The Vertical Self is a must-read for church leaders today, particularly those in ministry to Generation Y. For me, the marvel of this book is seen in its final paragraphs. Sayers sees this book as his gift to us, the readers. In words that could have been peened by C.S. Lewis or Philip Yancey, he describes his hope that this gift will “work as a key, opening a doorway out of the cramped, stale confines of the horizontal self, filling you with the gusts of fresh air perfumed with the scent of eternity”.

It is only when we are enmeshed in Jesus, in the life of the vertical self, that we are able to resist the lies and deceptions of our culture which tell us that we can have the life we have always wanted and we can have it now. The Vertical Self is a wise and timely book that speaks volumes not just to our culture, but to the culture of the church in the 21st century. Sayers’ thinking has matured since The Trouble with Paris. I don’t know Sayers personally, but this latest book reveals a maturity that I believe is borne only out of a deepening faith and passion for Jesus and His ways – a life lived in the vertical self. That is what makes it so authentic.

Clive Hamilton on boredom

March 8, 2010 /

There’s a great article by Clive Hamilton in The Age today on the madness of our consumerist lifestyle and how it strips away our ability to just be. As I have been reminded by some friends of mine over time, we are human beings, not human doings. I particularly like the comment from Hamilton about the Twitter phenomenon, when he says that

“new modes of communication keep appearing to prevent us from owning our attention. The most absurd must be Twitter, which spreads like a virus for one reason only; our waning capacity to be alone with ourselves. Our brains have been rewired so we crave external stimulation to avoid succumbing to boredom”

Mark Sayers deals with this issue in The Trouble with Paris when he talks about our culture of hyperreality and how it is basically a sin to be bored. I have mentioned in a previous post a reference to a TV ad for the benefits of particular mobile phone games which you can play while you have to go through the hassle of waiting for the bus.

Our society tells us that we need to constantly fill our lives with ‘noise’. Clive Hamilton, in this article, as mentioned above, refers to this as our inability to face ourselves by saying, “we are terrified that if we strip away everything to reveal the essence we will find there is nothing there”.

What a sad place our culture is when we are afraid of being with ourselves, of looking ourselves in the mirror and facing life on life’s terms. I believe it is only Jesus who gives us this ability to see ourselves more as we really are and cope, with the fact that we are loved beyond measure despite our tendency toward self-destruction. Jesus offers and delivers on life in all its fullness. And this involves a life of being, of reflection and contemplation as well as passionate action and commitment to ideals greater than ourselves.

The dumbing down of culture

February 5, 2010 /

I’ve been reading Colossians Remixed recently and I find I’m having to stop every page or two to make my own notes. This book has such profound things to say to our culture. Basically, this book looks at what Paul might say to our western culture if he were writing his letter to the Colossians today. One of the issues this great book discusses is how we are so captive to the consumerist culture we live in. Consider this quote, taken from Walter Brueggemann’s Interpretation and Obedience:

“The key pathology of our time…is the reduction of our imagination so that we are too numbed, satiated, and co-opted to do serious imaginative work.”

The authors of Colossians Remixed call this ‘disempowering us from dreaming that things might be otherwise’. Do you ever feel like you’re so busy that you don’t know what to do with all the choices you have? It’s sometimes called ‘choice anxiety’. Or as U2 put it some years ago, freedom looks like too many choices.

Our culture keeps us so busy, so wired, that we never stop to question our lives. As my Dad has said numerous times, “we’re living all wrong”, but we’re either too wound up in getting through each day to realise it, or it occasionally flickers like a dim light in the distance but then disappears again like a ship in the night. The fact is that we have fallen hook, line and sinker for the lie that more ‘stuff’ and being busier is what life is all about. And then we wake up one morning when we’re 65 and wonder where our life went.

I’ve said it before, but I find Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:26 to be some of the most timeless ever said – “what will it profit you if you gain the whole world but lose your very self in the process?” (my paraphrase). Deep down most of us know there’s something wrong with the way we live, we know we’re not really happy with our lives, but we feel powerless to stop it or we are paralysed by indifference to it. As Brueggemann says, we are numbed, or satiated to the effect that we are sleep walking our way through life.

A life focused on self and being ‘comfortable in captivity’ (another quote from Colossians Remixed) is an anti-life. Unfortunately much of the middle-class church is just as captive to this cultural numbness as the rest of society. Keith Green, referring to the church in this way, said it was asleep in the light.

Some years ago, Tim Costello wondered if God was actively working against the church. I have wondered sometimes if Tim is right. Like a frog in boiling water, we don’t even know we’re dying.

Fortunately there is a better way, the way of the Jesus, the road less travelled, a life less ordinary, to use a few clichés. But a cliché is a cliché because it is true. Jesus offers, and actually comes through, on a peace that passes all understanding, a joy that transcends our circumstances, and a freedom to be the people we really want to be – giving to others without counting the cost and loving extravagantly because we are loved beyond measure.

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