Saturday, February 17, 2018

Thoughts and Prayers?


After the Ash Wednesday shooting
at Stoneman Douglas high school in Florida.

Yes, we need much more serious thinking and much more serious praying.

Our nation has had guns all along, but massacres committed by mentally disturbed nihilists--this is a phenomenon of the past couple decades. Why? Because we have lost thinking and praying. We have replaced them with an atomizing individualism and a media-driven culture of fads. But we are social beings by nature, not loners; and we are spiritual beings that will not be satisfied by mere fads.

Sow anomie and reap death. This cycle will continue until we recognize the collective delusion for what it is. The freedom to make yourself into whatever thing you choose is not freedom, but a slavery to despair. It sets us to frantic grasping after fevered, ever-shifting dreams.

Our media now refer to us as "consumers" even more frequently than as "citizens". Which is telling. For us the act of choosing, and thus self-understanding, is now modeled on nonstop consumption. It is an illness. Because being is not something for which you shop, but rather a gift given by our Maker.

Until we return to the task of thinking through the shape of that gift, and reverencing the One by whom it is given, the vicious cycle we're in will not be broken.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd., and begin the long, hard reckoning.

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