There is a story we moderns tell ourselves. As it has been contributed to for many decades by countless psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, politicians, and pastors, it has taken on a folkloric quality; it is the myth of our time.
It is this: every person, perhaps every living thing, is a world of responsibility and possibility unto him/her/them/itself. We have the right and perhaps the imperative to determine the basis of our own lives, to self-actualize as if each of us were the protagonist of our own first-person bildungsroman (age or maturity notwithstanding). Beyond the individual is a world of lesser importance compared to the primacy of self.
There are, of course, positive aspects to this shift away from the more communal, spiritual, and hierarchical understandings of life accepted by our ancient forebears. By elevating the worth of the individual, we have the opportunity to avoid the indignities of monarchy, fiefdom, and slavery. By empowering the underprivileged we can raise our fellow man out of the mires that keep him stuck in poverty and brokenness. We ought to value each and every one in this way.
Unfortunately, in more than one way, the results of our modern approach deliver the opposite of what it promises. Naturally, when these seemingly benign philosophies of existentialism are put into practice by human actors, the perfection we had expected becomes very distorted indeed.
In Jake Meador’s In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World, we see the same thing that we see in headlines across the U.S. and the world. We are confronted by the real consequences of the resoundingly selfish tenor of our modern society. We hear about tragedies constantly, and we feel sympathetic aches in our gut.
Adolescent girls are being torn apart by social media (as we all are). Rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety have skyrocketed over recent years in increasingly younger and younger groups of our daughters. The internet has promised to connect us more beautifully and immediately than we had ever thought possible. In some ways perhaps it has. In many other ways it is doing exactly the opposite of what it should.
Young men likewise feel the negative effects of our modern world. More and more of their lives are being filtered through a screen, the same means by which they are consuming the dehumanizing media of pornography, violence in video games and movies, and extreme ideologies spouted by anonymous voices on 4chan, Reddit, and much seedier online forums. Our sons continue to perpetrate horrifically anti-social behavior, including assault, rape, and increasingly, mass shootings.
On top of all of this, every one of every age suffers from the breakdown of family. We feel less and less of a responsibility to care for one another, giving our time instead to our own “priorities” (read, “entertainment”). The old are left to whither in facilities. The marginalized are left to fend for themselves, to merely survive. We deny the support of community to others and in turn are denied the benefits of that same community. And as we are unmoored from our fellow man, we lose all sense of responsibility to anything outside of our own mind, body, and ideologies, regardless of how twisted any of these may be.
Community is broken, and though there are certainly examples of flourishing families, churches, and local societies, the general theme of the world today is loneliness. We are more disconnected than ever when we have the technological means for the opposite to be true.
So, what’s the issue?
Well, as Meador suggests, although we have all the appropriate channels in our modern world to overcome the ravages of loneliness, we unfortunately seem to be lacking the types of people who must fill roles within those channels. A fighter jet may be a technological marvel, but it means nothing without a skilled pilot to fly it. Likewise, our society seems to be lacking wise, virtuous, and humble individuals to steer us back on course.
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The Christian Church in America and across the West has been in clear decline for decades, primarily due to the failure of Christians to practice what they preach. Each succeeding generation detests their parents’ hypocrisies, and the shortcomings of the Religious Right are clear and many. Inspired by their belief that the correct political policy on topics like abortion and prayer in public schools would fulfill their religious obligations to society, Christian Boomers prioritized the ends over the means and simultaneously conflated good, godly goals with the irreligious and more unrighteous aims of the Republican party.
The results of this strategy are clear. If being a Christian necessitates a blind obedience to the politics of the Right, Millennials and iGen have no interest in religion. So the Church suffers. But of course, the consequences of a diminished Christian Church are not confined to those remaining in the pews. “The Proverbs tell us that when the righteous prosper, the city rejoices” (pg. 22), and conversely, when the righteous abandon their God-given role, we all suffer.
It is not merely America’s religious life that is in decline. Most of its other communities are failing as well – families and businesses and neighborhoods and cities and voluntary organizations have all been diminished in recent years. The result is rampant loneliness, a longing for anything that offers some kind of solace, and ultimately a society where the only thing we really share is a desperation for community, and the besetting doubt that we will ever experience those goods.
(pg. 10)
Meador goes so far as to suggest that the reason for the general failure of community is the specific failure of Christian community. But the author, even after spelling out in some detail the lamentable position in which we find ourselves, has a beautiful source of hope, the hope of each Christian who has made a genuine profession of faith and is actively seeking to live into their salvation within the context of the Church Catholic. We have the means to invigorate a revival of community if only we might return to a healthier view of God’s world and our place in it.
As the author makes abundantly clear, if we were to abandon our grand plans of political dominance and turn toward a simple fidelity to basic Christian principles and practices, we would have access to God’s greatest blessings and inch closer to the redeemed purposes of our lives and world.
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We have lost a sense of meaning, Millennials stereotypically so. We just want our lives to mean something. But if we do not accept anything as worthwhile outside of the self, where can we ground any kind of real meaning. We are reminded that the individualism that we have come to accept is entirely lacking in this sense. If we are to regain meaning, we must orient ourselves toward something external, objective, and grand: God, for example. By practicing Sabbath rest in a community of believers, by centering ourselves regularly on God’s goodness and provision, we would again realize that all the meaning we have ever desired will be derived from God’s character and his relation to us as his creation.
We have lost a sense of awe concerning the world and what we are. All life is objectively a biological and existential miracle, something that every human should appreciate. But a bald materialist perspective limits our sense of wonder to the magnitudes of limitless statistical possibilities. Contrarily, a Christian understanding of God’s creation as a wonderful tapestry of integral interrelatedness causes us to pause with wonder. We sense the profundity when we hold our new baby in our arms, when we witness the marriage of two faithful friends, or when we can lift hands to God together with folks of all skin colors, political persuasions, and socio-economic backgrounds. The Membership of the Kingdom of Heaven is a mysterious blessing, and just one indicator of the beautiful complexity of God’s purposes for us.
Lastly, we in large part have lost the value of good work and the satisfaction of a job well-done. Western employees, whether on an assembly line or more likely behind a monitor and keyboard, have been mechanized and depersonalized as much as possible to ensure machine-like efficiency in our workplaces. We have bought into efficiency as the ultimate good in the business world. But the world was not always like that. When we see our work as contributing to God’s plan and refuse to accept employment that has no intrinsic productive value, we might again realize how good work can be. And importantly, by giving ourselves proper bandwidth by not overfilling our planners in the name of professional development, we might also be able to work diligently within the Church community, serving each other and contributing further to the Membership, that beautiful tapestry.
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Jake Meador believes in the same idea that David Dark (subject of my last review) and I also subscribe to. The Kingdom of Heaven is not just some reality that will come into existence on the other side of Armageddon. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; each of us has the opportunity to impact the goodness of eternity with good action now.
In order for us to begin to contribute to eternity in this way, we must align our own wills with the will of God. We must shed any political allegiances that are not aligned with the Kingdom (necessarily, all political allegiances). We must resist faulty logic on both sides of the political spectrum (on this point, Meador is one of the most balanced social commentators I have encountered in recent memory). We must commit ourselves entirely to pursuing God’s goodness.
Thus the most important political action Christians can engage in is simply practicing ordinary Christian piety – practicing the sabbath, making ourselves at home in the world, and as much as possible, giving ourselves to good work.
(pg. 106)
For decades the Religious Right has assumed that it has been doing God’s work. Perhaps, somehow, it has. However, regardless of other benchmarks, Meador’s words ring true. I have been trying to convince myself for years of the sermon that he is preaching.
Like a typical Millennial, I crave meaning. I want my work and my passions to align. I want to contribute to something big and important. And at the same time, I crave connection. I want to be deeply committed to those around me, and I hope to help them as they help me through this difficult life. Especially after my own brain injury (which sounds a lot like Meador’s father’s medical issues), I realize the importance of communal support and never want to lose my friends, nuclear family, and church family.
But instead of aiming at the distant and indistinct mark of ‘my ultimate purpose,’ Meador reminds me that I must focus on the small ways God calls me to be obedient daily. The simple fidelity of the Christian life orders our steps and leads us down the right path, even if we can only ever see one step ahead. Let us never neglect to joyfully take those steps side by side, furthering God’s beautiful community into the perfect eternal glories planned for those who would remain faithful.