Surveys of self-reported religious identification continue to yield interesting, if not always encouraging, results. This one has a straight-up Baylor connection:
Forty-four percent of the respondents to a 2011 Baylor University study reported spending no time whatsoever seeking “eternal wisdom,” and 19 percent replied that “it’s useless to search for purpose.” In the same year, Lifeway, an evangelical research agency, found that 46 percent of those it surveyed never wondered whether or not they will go to heaven, and 28 percent reported that finding a deeper purpose in life wasn’t a priority for them.
This variety of “none” is more confounding and dismaying. It’s one thing to respond to atheists who think you have the wrong answers or seekers who think you might have part of a bigger answer, but what of those who think you are answering questions that don’t even need to be asked? Higher purpose? Eternal joy? Meh.
(source: From “Meh” to “Amen” | Molly Oshatz | First Things)
Perhaps I can use this research to point out a truth which, though it cuts both ways, still cuts true:
One way this cuts is that there is nothing absolutely new in this situation. Our moment in history is unique and nonrepeatable, but so are all the others, and it shares with many of those others almost all the essential features of this situation. “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be.”
But the other thing to notice here is that it is essentially this finity of mortal possibilities which leads us to anticipate an illimitable God’s action to radically and finally alter the situation; and when we live with the illusion of mass-produced “personal experiences” and a notionally illimitable right to choose every feature of our being–an illimitable right which must nevertheless be constantly monitored for compliance with the totally illimitable rights of every other being–we are being distracted from that boundary. We will constantly need to rationalize, regulate, and revolutionize our “personal experiences” to keep them in line with the latest popular notions, or find ourselves constantly standing athwart the totally illimitable rights of our neighbors to choose every feature of their beings.
We live, that is, in a society rapidly deconstructing itself into the Dark Ages, into the era when Christendom had not yet emerged and the barbarians lived by their interpretations of the ruins they lived among–ruins of a paganism that built highways and fora and galleys manned by slaves, that exposed inconvenient infants to death and conducted transcontinental trade negotiations–the paganism that worked out definitions of justice we have long abandoned, while we cling to their habit of treating all decisions of the few whose socioeconomic status granted them freedom of the city as prototypically human, and defining as defectively human more and more of those who will not accept the literally patronizing representation of their class among the dominant elite classes.
If you do not believe me, try to walk through an airport like a free human being and a citizen, without submitting to the useless ritual humiliation demanded of you; try to pay a reasonable share of taxes without providing every detail of your household to a “real” citizen–a member of the DMV class–for their patronizing approval of your claims. Try being heard, even on a parking ticket, without having a “real” citizen–a lawyer–to patronize you at court. Try even speaking to a doctor without being patronized by a “real” citizen–a member of the DMV class, whether notionally “private sector” or notionally your “civil servant.” Explain your rights, and see if the derivative sense of “patronizing” does not describe the kindest reactions you get.
And try even making it to birth, if your mother’s OB-GYN detects trisomy 21 in your genetic makeup. Exposure of infants returns whenever humans revert to unrestrained paganism–count on it.
But we live there precisely because there really is no new thing under the sun; because God has made our universe less than the total of our capacity for experience, for desire, for love; because we are not designed to find our institutionalized lies fulfilling.
I could go with the famous Augustine line, here. I could go with more Ecclesiastes.
But let us hear it from “a prophet, and one of their own”–not a Cretan, this time, but a German:
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there.
Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man–and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whiz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.
Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star.
Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?” — so asks the Last Man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small.
His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness” — say the Last Men, and they blink.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth.
One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome.
Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd, and one herd!
Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
“Formerly all the world was insane,” — say the subtlest of them, and they blink.
They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision.
People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled — otherwise it upsets their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
“We have discovered happiness,” — say the Last Men, and they blink.
(source: Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (excerpts))
And a source still closer to home:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas! Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellarShape without form,
shade without colour,
Paralysed force,
gesture without motion;Those who have crossed
With direct eyes,
to death’s other kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
(source: The Hollow Men, T. S. Eliot)
And do please note that each of these writers lived at a different moment on the same arc that bends toward eternity–and therefore certainly beckons past our falsely secure reckoning of history.
There is a specific for these maladies. To start gently, try these.
.
.
.
The nones need messengers whose presence makes it impossible to say “meh”—in other words, saints.
(source: From “Meh” to “Amen” | Molly Oshatz | First Things)