This past Wednesday and Thursday we had such strong winds challenging the trees to hold their ground. It picked up so many loose ends and blew them against the hedge around the property.
The strong winds are an apt image of what is happening in our culture. We have disjointed ourselves from our traditional values and the institutions that structure these values into our lives. All institutions are held in suspicion. You can teach your children one particular value and truth only to have it contradicted by others in the very community you live in.
What is truth? What can we ground our lives on to make sense to where we are going?
Human beings need to live in a society/family that has some very clear values. These are the signs that give us stability. We do not have to invent the wheel again on what is right and wrong. Every human being needs to know when they are successful and when they have done wrong. Doing what is right gives us a personal and communal sense of well-being. Failure to live up to the standards opens the door to try harder and repair the harm done.
When the values of the society shift and crumble the human being turns more and more to a very individualistic style of life. Everything centers on my survival. I must use my talents, energy and money to survive; and on my own!
As a culture we are not headed for good times. Individualism, and rugged individualism, heads for social collapse. Individualism on the part of a large section of our cultures paints a very bleak picture.
This is where religion contributes strongly to human well-being. Religion tells us who we are and what our value in society is. Religion is the major interpretation of the meaning and purpose of human living. Religion gives shape and meaning to our society (whatever culture we might be living in).
Now, the more individualistic our culture becomes that less importance religion can have.
It is in this desert of meaning that we must rebirth our Christian faith. For the people that still go to church or participate in the life of their faith community, we are in exile like our Hebrew ancestors were during the seventy years in Babylon.
We need to rediscover what it means to have our God who has chosen us. We need to rediscover what it means to have been joined to the very person and mission of Jesus Christ. Once again, we must get on board with the great things God is doing among us.
The upcoming generation of believers will be women and men who seek the truth that has been revealed to us by Jesus. We will need to rediscover what the truth of Christian revelation actually is. The reason that we know these values and teachings are true is because they work. As they have worked in the lives of the earliest believers, so now they can and must work for us.
Our survival as believers and as a faith community will depend on how we work to rediscover the truths of the Gospel, how well we seek to know Jesus Christ on a very personal level, and how well we mine the teachings of the Church on social justice and the care for the earth.
These are very difficult times but it is working to rediscover the truths of God’s revelation. Our ancestors did it before in their seventy years in Babylon.
What challenges us today?
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