Is our modern age special? Well, it is certainly different in many ways than the ages that have come before. But is it more difficult? It is harder for a soul to be saved in our modern age? Only God knows this.
It is true that many of us have a harsh reaction to the sicknesses of the modern age. But we do not know and perhaps cannot know what it was like to have a reaction to the sicknesses of previous ages.
We often look to the past with longing and to the future with despair. The present is for us an itching. Whatever the justification for our longings and despairing, the itching of the present for us is a sign not necessarily of their sickness, but of our sickness.
It is impossible for us to get out of our own times. It is perhaps also not possible for us to remove ourselves from the sins of our time. There is a tremendous momentum in an age that sweeps us along, uncaring of our opinions of its course and manner.
All critics are absurd. We sit in foreign-made shorts and shirt, drinking Kentucky bourbon while listening to Indie music, reading Goethe and staring at nice religious icons. Our kin are at the computer and our littlest kin sleep in alien garb. We are all clowns.
And maybe this is it. Maybe, contrary to the whole tone of this writing, if we were to diagnose one of the specific maladies of the modern age, it would be this: that is has made clowns out of all of us. And then, with the door of diagnosis breached, we might say that this is the very purpose of the modern age: to teach us that we are all asses.
My friend's father, a California Republican, heavy drinker, husband in his life to three women, Evangelical/The Secret reader, loser of many jobs, aimless and aware of it, confessed recently to his son: "I think I am one of God's jokes." It was not meant to be cute. It was a confession that life really didn't go as it should have. It was a confession that human beings are stunted and immature - yet aged in the fact that they can see this and name it.
Then again, our misbehaviour in this age, our murder and destruction, should lead us to be cautious in chalking up this age to humour. It would be cruel of a god to use millions of death as an object lesson.
I was reflecting the other day that it seems to be pretty easy to save a life in our age. I say this without sarcasm. You can spend a few minutes with a needle in your arm, and save up to 3 lives every 60 or so days. You can donate $30 and provide food to someone in E. Africa and quite possibly that will be what they need to keep from starving. I thought how big a deal we make it when there is some hero story on the news, and yet we could, and do, save people's lives more often than that. I think if people from past ages could hear that, or maybe they will in the end, and they hear how many lives people from our age have saved from death (and this is a good thing), they will be awed.
ReplyDeleteIt is also, unfortunately, a lot easier to commit or assist evil. One can fire up the computer, and start browsing websites for unclothed and active humans, some of whom are almost certainly slaves. Clothes and food that we buy cheap are cheap because someone thinks human lives are cheap. We pay taxes, and help support the death and displacement of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of others.
How terrifying this age is!