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Sunday, June 13, 2010
That We Might Have Life: A Sunday Rumination
A cynic's maxim of long standing holds that Smith who praises you and Jones who reviles you are equally likely to owe you money, but Smith will owe you much more.
There's a lot of truth in that. We tend to value everything at its cost. Even when an item has become essentially useless to us, merely a piece of trash that takes up valuable space, we don't discard it without a pang over how much it cost us -- and the more it cost, the sharper the pang. It's a recognition of the lifespan and the effort that went into paying for it. Moreover, that recognition and the associated response extend with little diminution to the expenditures and losses of those we love.
I'm only a cynic on weekdays, but I can see the application of this bit of knowledge on Sundays as well. It has particular application to the theological virtue called faith.
Life doesn't have an antonym. It's not a binary state. It's a measurement on a continuous scale with no stops. It can be unspeakably blissful or unspeakably hellish. Indeed, there are places in the world, and sufferers therein, whose lot is so low, and so excruciating, that a Christian is sometimes moved to ask God why He permitted it.
Americans tend not to think about such things without the assistance of clever TV commercials. Our own "bubble of comfort" (Peter Kreeft) is so pleasant, even for the poorest among us, that we're indisposed to think beyond it. But it's well to do so, now and then, not to loosen our wallets -- that impulse is capable of doing quite as much harm as good -- but to stimulate reflection on the faiths of the much less fortunate, the truly wretched of the Earth.
Every account of such things I've read indicates that those who believe, and who must endure great suffering and sorrow, are greatly strengthened in their faith thereby. That faith enables them to strive mightily, and to endure privations that would make the typical American cry out to make Job's lament sound casual and diffident.
No, this isn't an argument that Americans should practice privation, self-mortification, or anything like that. It's an exploration of what faith does for the believer: the utilitarian value of faith, if you like.
Because of our material and technological advancement, we seldom suffer much. When we do, it seldom lasts very long. An advanced society will necessarily be good at relieving pain and recouping from loss. Not all sorts of loss; little can be done for a man who's just buried a loved one. But the sorts that don't actually take a life are all generally remediable, or at least manageable enough to avert paralysis by agony.
One consequence is that our experiential scale has a very high "lower bound." We think much more about what we want but don't yet have than about the things we've lost. This, after all, is a nation that responded to the near-total destruction of a city so swiftly and effectively that despite the ineptitude of their public officials, even the worst affected survivors had safe places to sleep and wholesome food to eat within a calendar day, and enduring provisions for their sustenance thereafter. By and large, they were grateful to be succored, but their objective sufferings were shallow and brief.
Thus, we tend not to appreciate the sustaining power of faith under circumstances of intense, prolonged trial.
Faith isn't something you can impose on yourself by an act of will. Like life itself, it's a gift from God.
Faith is like life in more ways than one. Other persons might play a part in helping you toward faith, just as your parents were God's agents in bringing you to life. All the same, the ultimate Giver is the Almighty Himself, Who wrote the laws of this universe and embedded us in them, and them in us. We have a natural grasp of those laws; except for those we call sociopaths, we know when we're about to break them or are breaking them. This is mistakenly called "empathy" by some, but it has nothing to do with how others feel. Rather, it's the operation of our sense for the symmetries that apply to all men in all places and at all times. Reflection on the consistency of those laws with the Commandments and the teachings of the Redeemer has unlocked many a man's heart to the gift of faith.
Faith gives rise to hope in times of darkness, to courage when faced with difficulty or danger, and to love of God for His gifts. To the extent we hold strongly to our faith when chance or the hands of others turn against us, we are rewarded by its increase, and by the renewal of our appreciation for the gift of life.
Our consciousness of our faith, and the degree to which we use it and recur to it, measure many things, but chief among them the intensity with which we live.
The above might seem excessively abstract, even for a habitual abstractionist like me. It has its genesis, insofar as anything I write has a specific genesis, in some events of the past few weeks which I'm reluctant to recount to you. Suffice it to say that I've recently been sorely tried in several ways -- sorely for me, not for a starving Somalian or a Sudanese Christian -- and it was my faith that underpinned my endurance and my will to prevail.
Atop that, I recently received an effusively complimentary E-mail from a reader who was overwhelmed by my novel On Broken Wings. Admittedly, every writer loves to be praised, and to be told he's made a positive difference in someone else's life. I'm no exception, especially since I give my stuff away, and thus receive no material benefit from having written it. But this particular note came at a fortunate time. It was a reminder of the experience of writing that book, which was extraordinarily powerful and profound. It was, in fact, the experience that reawakened my faith, and brought me back to Christ and to His Church.
You can never know when such an event will occur, nor what its overall effect will be. In my case, by reminding me of my journey back toward faith, that note provided part of the fuel that allowed me to rise above my difficulties. The difficulties passed, as all things do, and I remain, and I am grateful.
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
Francis,
Thanks for the post. I’ve been blessed with the gift of faith, as you put it, mustard seed sized though it may be.
Posted by John Venlet on 06/13/2010 at 11:24 AMLife doesn’t have an antonym. It’s not a binary state. It’s a measurement on a continuous scale with no stops.
That alone makes for a fine meditation on a Sunday afternoon. Simply profound.
Posted by Joan of Argghh! on 06/13/2010 at 03:43 PMYet another fine Rumination. Thank you.
(Any praise On Broken Wings gets is well deserved, filled as it is with wisdom, startling insights and profound truths. I’m no literary critic but any book which keeps me up all night and provides so much food for thought is very far from ordinary.)
Posted by on 06/13/2010 at 06:26 PM
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