Trapped in the System

I was thinking about something that I’ve observed, and it’s this idea of worldly wisdom and the way of Christ.

This is probably a reflection that could use lots of examples, but I don’t know if I can think of enough of them.

What I’m trying to get at here is that if you think of a child and how a child interacts with the world, it’s a very precious and sacred thing, and there’s an innocence and a trust.

As we get older, often many of us encounter the world in all its ways, aggression, greed, fear, contempt, jockeying for position, making our identity based on our accomplishments or our job titles, and pretty soon we find ourselves trapped in a system, or as we tech bros would say, an ecosystem that completely enslaves us and completely overrides or suppresses that innocent child-like way of interacting with the world, which, as far as I can tell, that way is innocent and brings joy.

Jesus talks about if you want to enter his kingdom, you have to be like a child, and that children are the closest to the kingdom.

Now, many would rush to qualify Jesus’ words there and try to take the edge off, and I don’t know if that’s appropriate or not, but I’m not going to do that.

I think when Jesus says we have to become like a child, we could take that as literally, but it begs the question, if we are a child, then who is our parent?

And the answer, as I understand it, is Jesus’ Father, Jesus’ Abba, that is our Father.

And one of the great challenges, as far as I can tell, is understanding who Jesus’ Father is, and what he is like.

And I remember my favorite, or my favorite guys, Thomas Hopko, and his wonderful lecture called The Word of the Cross, said that we can have the exact same relationship with the Father that Jesus has, the exact same relationship.

Now, that doesn’t mean rainbows and roses, look what Jesus had to go through, look at the crucifixion.

This is a strange God, but this is a God that loves us, and as Jesus demonstrated in the parable, The Prodigal Son, is willing to abandon all decorum to run and greet us and show us how much he loves us.

I have said that God’s love for us, the Father’s love for us is psychotic.

And I’m not the first person to say that.

Isaac the Syrian, as I recall, said something similar.

Although some would say that he’s on the border, or maybe even across the border of orthodoxy, he’s an important voice in the tradition.

And so if we become like a child, we look to our Father, we look to our Father for guidance on how to live in this world, which is full of traps and diversions and prisons, like the worldly wisdom that we were talking about before.

And of course, this begs the question about Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, where Nicodemus, as I recall, was a Pharisee.

He might have been a Sadducee, but I think he was a Pharisee.

And he’s curious about Jesus, and he comes to him at night, and Jesus says, you have to be born again.

And you have to be born again.

And then Nicodemus talks about, do you have to go back into our mother’s womb as a fully grown adult?

And Jesus kind of chides him a little bit and says, how can you be a teacher of Israel and not know these things?

And I think the way to be born again is to surrender, to be humble.

It comes back to that old saying or that old story about that guy that started monasticism.

There was one other guy that I never can remember his name, but basically St. Anthony was credited with starting monasticism, I think, at least the desert tradition.

But basically St. Anthony has a vision of, he’s got to get to a certain place, but in between where he is now, where the place he’s trying to get to are all these traps.

And he’s like, how in the world am I going to get there?

And the father says, humility, humility is how you’re going to get there.

And humility, that is listening to the father.

And the father has different ways.

I mean, the father can communicate with us.

My understanding of Catholic tradition is we can’t force God to reveal himself to us in an intelligible way, but we can make ourselves ready.

We can dispose ourselves to whatever he wants to do with us.

And I’ve said, God knows all of us, he made all of us, and he knows how to communicate with us.

So we don’t have to figure that out.

We don’t have to be, God can reveal himself in punctuation marks, he can reveal himself in bad theology if he wants to.

I don’t think that’s ideal.

Part of what I’m trying to do in my blog is just to share my experiences, which includes a lot of detoxing from bad theology.

But that’s a side discussion.

But what I’m trying to get at is, I mean, I’m not a therapist, I’m not somebody that’s an expert on human development.

And maybe the saints can skip the worldly part, I don’t know, or some of the saints.

But I think that we, what I’m trying to get to is I think that at least in my life and in the life of others that I know, we kind of go through this period where we’re raised, we’re innocent, and then we’re thrown into this world, the big bad world, with all of its deception and power struggles and manipulation and greed and all these things.

And we’re trying to make our way and maintain our integrity.

And we all have our ways of dealing with that.

But I think what Jesus is doing is he’s saying, don’t get stuck there.

I’ve seen guys that are 70 plus years old and they’re still stuck there.

The way they see the world is still through that competitive lens.

And I think that the challenge and the opportunity that Jesus offers is peace and surrender and joy, and at least less stress.

Because if you’re trying to follow Jesus’ Father, you’re not having to game the system, you’re not having to think ten moves ahead like a chessboard, whatever.

And you can have peace.

Even if you end up crucified like Jesus, you can have peace.

And you’re actually escaping the system that you think is helping you, that you think is protecting you, but it’s actually enslaving you, and it’s taking your humanity away from you.

And you can be born again.

That doesn’t mean you have an altar call.

That means you trust the Father, and you start the journey.

And everybody’s journey is different.

The best advice I can give is to say, seek first the Kingdom, seek the Father.

And all these things shall be added unto you.

That’s something I wrote about recently.

It’s not like God doesn’t want us to have the things we need.

He’s just trying to turn the light switch on so that we’re not in the dark and we’re not stepping on traps and going after things that are not going to bring us what we want.

We may want peace and joy, but we may be going after things that are not going to do that, but we think that things that are not going to give us that peace and joy, but we think that they will.

So it’s about making contact with reality, and that’s what it’s about.

And I think that when we’re in that competitive driven type of framework, it’s easy to look at either it be blind to it or to think that anything outside of that is naive and simple.

And that’s why St. Paul calls it foolishness.

The way of following Christ looks like it’s completely foolish, and it is.

But the reality is that it looks foolish because the people that look at it are all they’re fools.

I’m a fool because I’m trapped in this system, the system that is all talk and no cattle or all hat and no cattle or whatever you want to call it.

It promises the moon, but it doesn’t deliver.

And even if you get the moon, you’re still miserable, and you lose your ability to be human.

And that’s what it is.

When you get to the other side, the humility, then you can be a child again, not in the sense of being immature, but then the sense of trusting your Heavenly Father and being able to be present and available and discerning and not running around like a madman trying to figure everything out.

So that’s my thought.

The main thought I have that I want to communicate here is this idea that is the idea of trust, trusting the Father, versus trying to hustle everything up yourself.

And there’s a place for it.

I’m not saying that you should be lazy.

I’m just saying that you can be peaceful and discerning and deliberate and for some joyful.

It’s actually a counterintuitive and foolish to the world way of living, but it is better.

It is God’s way.

And Christ says there are few who find it.

The road to destruction is broad, but there are few who find the narrow way, the narrow gate.

And it’s not easy.

Hopko says in an address to a bunch of seminarians graduating that it’s a messy process, but I think that it’s worth it.