We do not pray or fast as we should. No, it is not some kind of authoritarian demand but the Lord never says if we pray or fast but when. We have adapted too well to the ways of the world and its insatiable demands to be satisfied that we no longer bend the knee in prayer or give up anything for any cause, not even the Lord. Yes, I get it. The arcane and bizarre rules of Rome governing when to fast and when not were confusing and demanded a greater attention than the act of fasting itself but is that an excuse to indulge ourselves without regard to the godly discipline? Yes, I understand. Perfunctory prayers prayed because you have to pray them not only defeat the purpose of prayer but corrupt the words and make a mockery of our amen. But is that cause to forget our Lord did not teach prayer as a method but as a particular set of words? Rome and Wittenberg seem to be at the same place here with both traditions forgetting the tradition of their forefathers in favor of a casual relationship with God that requires nothing from us and deems sincerity the queen of all virtues.
We do not esteem the Church or the place where the liturgy of the faithful takes place as anymore or less than our own living rooms. We carry in our designer coffees in our climate friendly cups and we cannot go an hour without our water jugs to keep us hydrated. We are so very conscious of our hunger or thirst but almost oblivious to the wholly other place and the wholly other activity of that place in the liturgy. It is always about us and our comfy dress and shoes and our expectations of soft seats only admits this unpleasant truth. God would not want us to be anything but comfortable and do only that which reflects us and our tastes and preferences. He definitely would not want us to say or do something our heart was not into and so this has become the rationale for believing little and looking even less holy.
We presume that our happiness is more important than marriage or children and so even Christians are having less of them both. It is as if we have upped the ante in the world and created virtue out of the default positions of the masses -- choosing not to be committed and more comfortable in the digital world than reality. The same is true of abortion and birth control. It has become the unassailable right of the Christian to consign to the trash the babies God gives and to pursue safe sex over fruitful. Once Christians made a mark for insisting upon the sanctity of marriage, upholding this marriage in a world of throw away spouses, and of resisting the cultural practice of devaluing the children. Now Christians by their own admission look and act like those not of the Kingdom in their esteem of marriage and family -- or should I say lack of esteem.
The problem is not how people treat us because we are Christians but that we give them so little evidence of our faith that it surprises them that we even believe. Even a mere performative piety would be better than no piety at all. No, I am not at all suggesting that we settle for a mere external faith content to live with an empty heart. Instead, I am suggesting the radical nature of Jesus' own words. We are called to believe and live in Him. Lex orandi, lex credendi and its reverse were always the counterculture of Christendom. We do not choose to show or to hide but to believe and live out the faith. Yet how does this square with the digital reality of worship on a screen and the now usual attendance of once monthly?The comfort quotient now parses every part of piety from attendance in person to what we believe to how we live to how and what we pray. God cannot be expecting to be impressed by our failure to even try in these areas and freedom was not given to make Christians less identifiable in an anonymous world. Imagine that. Performative humility -- as bad as it is -- almost makes you nostalgic for the days when we actually cared what people thought of our faith. Then Pope Francis was good at performative humility but bad at being as generous and merciful behind closed doors as he wanted people to think him in the public square. I am glad he no longer offers us the chance to hide behind a mask of humility or talk about it with words. Instead, we all need to actually be holy as our Lord and the Father are holy. This is the work of the Spirit, too.
2 comments:
Performative humility = Virtue signalling.
Many verses in scripture refer to humility, but my favorite is James 4:6, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” The reason humility is often repeated is because the Lord knows we are by nature selfish. We are stiff necked as the Jews of Isaiah’s day, and we seek our own pleasure and boast about our own attributes. Even the most outwardly humble person may inwardly rejoice in their humility. If we wear humility as a mask, and it is not genuine, we may fool others, but not the God we serve. As Paul notes in Romans 12:3, “and do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable will of God.” Thus, the Lord knows this is no easy task in light of the exceedingly self willed natural instincts of man. But in His mercy and grace, the Lord knows that our sanctification is a process. And in order to align one’s thinking around the Lord as you navigate through the spiritual minefields of the world, the flesh, and the devil, it may take some time. When we look at our own lives and its many phases, we can see that our thinking and behavior patterns changed, as the seasons. We might say this is also part of the sanctification process for the believer, as the milk of the word leads to the meat. We must read the word regularly, and meditate on it. Than we realize how John 3:30 is true, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” When we arrive there, albeit through an imperfect journey, we have found truth. Soli Deo Gloria
Post a Comment