Spotting Counterfeits in the Current Cultural Climate

 

I had a beautiful experience recently that I would love to share with you all today, and while it is important to my story, I would like to first begin with a little explanation and another short story that I picked up along the way. 

Right now, it can often feel as though we are in the battle of a millennium. Things feels so upside down and inside out that it can feel very confusing and hard to find our equilibrium right now. Lies are being thrown (or shouted) at us from every corner of the country. We find them every single day. You only have to wake up and breathe, and there they are, it seems. Confusion is at an all time high, and yet, everyone seems more sure that ever that they are “right” and have it all figured out.

The big question at every turn seems to be “what is truth?” Where do we find it? How do we weed through the massive amount of information that comes at us from every angle, every single day, in order to discern what is right and what is wrong? To be honest, I have also felt really frustrated with some of the hierarchy in the Church, because many are so silent on so many tough topics at a time when we desperately need a little guidance. I have written letters. I have begged. I have pleaded. Please…give us the truth. And while I still think that there is much that could be said, much that is so important to discuss in the way of political topics, it strikes me as eerily similar to what I have gone through in my discussions with people of other denominations. And I’ve learned one thing...you won’t win anyone on doctrine alone (or slinging Bible verses, but I digress). Nor will any heart be won over by character assassinations. So, as I sat one night in prayer, begging God for the truth in the midst of all the malarkey lately, begging Him to give me guidance, and asking Him to open hearts and minds minds, I felt like I got pretty much the same answer that the apostles did when they once tried to figure out how to divide 5 loaves and 2 fish among 5,000 men, besides women and children. Funny that the answer came during the Mass...

“You feed them.”

Huh? Come again? Not in so many words, but suddenly, in one gesture from the priest, it all came into clear focus. I warn you, this will take some space on the page to explain, but please, if there is ever anything I have written that you wanted to pass by, this is not it. I can take little if any credit for it.

The priest presiding in the Mass that particular day was first explaining the importance of relationship when trying to help a fallen away Christian to come back to their roots. He went on to tell a story of a Vietnamese bishop who was imprisoned for 13 years (his story can be found in a book entitled “A Testimony of Hope”). They asked how this man had survived for so long in prison. He said that he had a little wine and a little bread and he consecrated it each day and had heaven on earth in his cell. The priest here in the Mass held out his hands at the very last of his homily and gestured with each, saying, “the bread,” and looking at his other hand, “and the wine.” I was blown away. Here I have been making things so complicated and the answer to all of my many questions lately just suddenly seemed so startlingly clear.

As I was thinking on how to find the truth, an idea came to mind that was once passed along to me somewhere along the line. I once learned that when law enforcement are being trained to spot counterfeit money, they learn to do this just by spending time with the real thing. After a lot of exposure to real money...the feel, the smell, the sight, etc., they can easily spot a fake. And oh, does this ever apply to the spiritual life. And this isn’t the only example of this in action. For example, how do doctors learn to diagnose illness? By spending a lot of time studying a healthy body. When one is very familiar with what true health looks like, anything less is much easier to spot and diagnose.

As I look to politics right now, I don’t think the best question to ask is “Which policy is right?” or “Which candidate lied today and how do you figure out which news source is the right one?” Nobody will believe anyone else on such flimsy evidence these days anyway. The personal bias is usually not even recognized within most people anymore. We all tend to have our own trusted sources, our own way of viewing whatever facts may be on the table. The messenger or the author of the article will likely be character assassinated instead anyway. I think the right question to ask instead is, “how do I find truth to begin with?” Phrased another way, “How do I find the source of what spiritual health looks like so that I will more quickly spot the dysfunction?”

In our society, we have largely abandoned God. Maybe not intentionally, but all the same. People are trying to remove any remembrance of Him, of history, and in that movement, they are removing the source of truth itself. Many have even gone so far as to abandon natural law. And complete chaos is the result...mind, body and soul. We have become fragmented and disintegrated within our very beings and that is what feeds into society. I am finding in my conversations, that the people struggling the most with confusion can also tend toward being the ones that have spent the least amount of time with the real deal, the Word of God. They also tend to be the ones who have also started to compromise on God’s laws with what the current culture tells us is the right thing instead. And if we abandon God and revealed truth, the truth He wrote onto our very hearts and in the natural law that is built into every atom of His grand creation, then who are we to suppose we know anything? All we are left with is our own personal opinion. An opinion that is loudly shouted from the rooftops lately and is crammed down the throats of any passersby, but still really amounts to nothing more. And do we really want our country to be led or run by the tyranny of the personal opinion of the group that shouts loudest? And where exactly will this personal opinion lead? We are finite human beings.

But really, who are you? Who am I?

Better yet, Who is God? And what does He say is truth?

I had forgotten something recently. I got so focused on what is going on that I forgot just how BIG God is. And I think that is also our problem. When we worry and sweat about it all, we have forgotten just how big He is and just how small we are in comparison. And I realized that the version of myself who sailed through COVID-19 with the faith that could move mountains is a little weary of the journey lately. I warn you, I’m about to get really Catholic for just a minute, but I'd like to share a recent worship experience. If you are a non-Catholic, I ask you to just read with an open mind. Please just humor me. And for the Catholic audience, please do not get hung up on the words ‘Vatican II,’ it’s really not the point here.

I have often heard Catholics criticize the changes to the Mass since Vatican II, but recently I sat through a Mass, old school style...Latin, bells, smells, all the works. At first, I was hugely out of my element. I didn’t have the book and I was hemmed in on either end of the pew by a person, so obtaining one during the Mass wasn’t in the cards, so I just closed my eyes and listened. I couldn’t understand a word during the litanies or the songs, and yet, I understood it all. I watched as the priest turned to face the altar during the consecration. The whole room was captivating to behold. It was such a faithful group of people. And everything in the room pointed up to the crucifix, and the heavenly realities that lay beyond our natural sight. The laity were in their pews, totally absorbed in the scene. The altar boy was behind the priest with incense lifting and swirling all through the air, as it mingled with the vestments of the priest and floated up to the Host in his hands and then up towards the heavens. The host was lifted up, the altar candles were lit just above this and it was all directed toward Christ. The entire room was lost in worship of our Creator and King. It was stunning! And suddenly, I got why people complain so much about the modernization of worship. We tend to forget. We forget that Jesus is so close as to care about the number of hairs on our head, but He is also the King of the entire universe, and He alone gives us the truth. He alone designed every atom of this universe for our enjoyment and keeps our world turning. His name is written onto every single speck of it, and it is only in His designs that we can ever be truly happy because it was for Him that we were made. Everything else will fall short and flat and leave us with at least a gnawing sense of emptiness on one end of the spectrum, and at the other end, leave us completely wrapped up in addiction, seeking to desperately find anything to fill the cavernous void within.

We should be directing people to God, not to another news article. I am not saying that news is not important and I will still probably post more things myself, because these issues are very important and should be discussed, but if we stop there, we have missed the point entirely. And since we can’t even come to a simple consensus as to whether one news source or another is trustworthy, we need to turn to the one source of truth that is totally and always trustworthy, in order to make our decisions right now. Yes, news is important. Yes, doctrine matters. But at the end of the day, that relationship is what matters most, both with God and with others. Yet, without finding some common source of truth with which to measure all this news and new ways of thinking against, finding answers and continuing dialogue will be difficult at best, necessary though it may be.

Over the years, I have developed a personal practice of spending time in Eucharistic adoration. I will go to my church, find a comfy pew and just sit in prayer near the Tabernacle, near the physical and spiritual presence of Christ. There is no other place on earth where I feel that much peace, where all my confusing jumble of problems melts away in quite that palpable of a way. When I leave there, I have actually, on occasion, seen people take notes or ask for notes from things I say, regardless of denomination. I've seen this with others given to this practice, too. Not that I or they are anything, but because God is everything. Truth is truth. We just know it in our bones when we hear it. It may not be what we want to hear. It may not fit our persona,l political or denominational narrative. But it speaks to our bones, it leaves a peace within that is deeply and richly satisfying.

But the problem is, too often these days, people want to create their own truth. They don’t want to work so hard to learn what is right. Or maybe what is right just asks too much of them. So they fudge. A little at first. Maybe someone around them, maybe even someone who is living with them, in a way that is confusing in some way, creates a little cognitive dissonance within. And so they can be tempted to compromise a little on the truth, to absorb a little (or a lot) of what this culture is feeding us instead. After a time, this can turn into bigger and bigger compromises until all truth is lost or a lot of confusion sets in. Or, worse, they can find themselves closing their ears to God’s revealed truth in order to quiet the dissonance within. This can be even a subtle danger for all of us, if we aren’t careful to nourish our spiritual life with God’s Word on a regular and ongoing basis. For Catholics, we also have the benefit of Tradition to guide us.

We may not always be able to tell what is going on in life. We may be confused by an article sometimes or by something someone says. We may not even know what to think of all that is going on in the world. But some truths are timeless. I’d like to go for just a minute to the scene of the Last Supper in John 14,

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’” (John 14:1-7 NRSVCE)

We may want clear answers. Specific answers. Sometimes the best we can get is just to rest for now in the arms of Jesus, and wait for Him to show us the way. And when we do this, when we seek Him first, as the way in all things, slowly but surely our priorities will be put back into right order. We will begin to want to do what He says, and to seek out how it is that He loves and asks us to love in return. We will be drawn back to His commandments, not because we need an arbitrary list of rules to follow, but because these so-called rules are actually the very essence of how love is manifested into being. As that truth starts to settle more deeply into our bones, as we become more and more like Christ, we will more easily and with more peace and assurance see the right way, and lovingly feel compelled to walk in it. We will have the peace and confidence to act on what we now know and hold to be true. And slowly, it will be in line with what God says is actually true, not just what we want it to be. We will also have the confidence to trust that God sees and leads others as well, rather than to feel the need to control everything and everyone around us. And when we do need to correct another, it will be done in love.

When we choose the world’s ways, we are left with a whole lot of confusion. We are left to figure it all out ourselves, a job that we were never designed to do. We will try, like Adam and Eve, to decide for ourselves what is right, apart from God, and to do for ourselves what only He can do. If we persist in this, sometimes God will let us have our way, and chaos will reign in our lives as we try to be what we are not. And I see this everywhere lately. People have fallen so far from His grace that they have turned to mob rule. But this type of living only lasts so long. It becomes like a never-ending game of “King of the Hill” (or mountain, however you call it). You will be forever trying to secure your place as the king on the hill, forever looking over your shoulder for an adversary seeking to throw you down, and you will only hold that place as long as someone stronger doesn’t come along. It’s good to be the king...until you’re not.

We are blessed to live in a republic where all voices count, or at least...they used to. The idea was that no simple majority would just take over by mob rule, but that even the outcast and the vulnerable would be remembered, represented, and have a voice. But these days, too often, a minority has taken over by force, and has caused havoc on our nation. And we’ve allowed it. Because we have too often lost our confidence, we have become confused, and we have made compromises. We have become afraid. You can ask God’s people in the book of Jeremiah how well that worked out, to make treaties with Egypt for safety, rather than to trust God alone for provision. In the process, they began to sacrifice their babies on altars to Molech, a thing God never commanded or had in mind (Jeremiah 7:31). Sounds familiar. The scene is graphically described in Jeremiah 2, particularly in verses 13, 23-28, when God refers to them as a “frenzied she-camel” (v. 23). Frenzied she-camels that had forsaken their God to dig “cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water” (v. 13), running after empty idols and becoming empty themselves (v. 5).

The most basic fundamental right to we can have is the right to live. After that, it is the freedom to choose what is good, because anything else is only another form of slavery. Everything else can be negotiated in differing policies, but nothing else matters if we deny that most basic right to everyone, from conception to natural death. It’s like religious talks all over again. We can focus too heavily on the doctrine of political policies or personal character or historical attacks, to the loss and detriment of the most basic thing...relationship and love and life.

As this week draws to a close, I invite you to find a quiet time, somewhere where hopefully where you won’t be disturbed (I know, it’s hard right now) to come into the presence of our King, Jesus. I invite you to pour out all your troubles and confusion and worries. He longs for you. He longs to speak to your heart. He longs to show you your identity in Him. He longs to show you what is right and good and true. Mostly, He just thirsts for your love and presence. If you have nothing to say, just sit in silence. That’s His favorite language. That silent gaze of love, where we know someone so well that we don’t even have to talk much anymore. Turn to His Word. Let Him shape you into a new creation. And when election day comes, walk into that voting booth and vote for truth. And life. And the freedom to pursue what is good.

Photo Credit: Burst, stocksnap.io