A More Subtle Idolatry

Today the churchgoer is more influenced by the digital image than the ancients were by the graven image. A lifetime of absorbing the images and ideas of the media establishes the very foundations of our thinking. The Bible, at best, is auxiliary. Its influence pales in the light of the flatscreen.

The effect is that this more subtle idolatry allows The World, that the Bible tells us not to love, to make us who we are.

We in the Church strive to be moral and good. We do not strive to be Holy. We love The World. We love sitting with the mockers. We make Hollywood our children’s babysitter. Like the ancient Israelites, we burn incense to other gods. We are much more faithful to The World than we are to The Lord.

To our Christian ancestors we would appear irresponsible and spiritually ridiculous.

I’ve been struggling with this idea for years. Personally, I find myself incapable of repenting of my life-long love affair with The World. But I’m hopeful that acknowledging this idolatry, this sin, is the first step towards spiritual fidelity and an unencumbered consciousness.

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 Greatness in the Crosshairs

The most galling outrage peculiar to greatness is that after death you will be criticized by insipid little men, uninterested in, and  ignorant of, the context in which you made your decisions. These shallow, forgettable little souls who possess neither your courage nor your decency, will bark, bellow, and rage as they seek to reduce a complex life filled with agonizing struggles and heroic efforts into a superficial cartoon that their unaccomplished comrades can understand.  

Robert E Lee personified greatness.

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Racism  is About How You're Treated

In the Appalachian mountains there are families who have lived in poverty for decades. Drug use is usually involved and living on government assistance is passed on from generation to generation.

These people are white, but whiteness is not the issue. You don't have to look far in America to find a white family that has overcome life's challenges and is doing well. If we concentrated on the whiteness of Appalachia we would not help these people trapped in poverty, but would rather stigmatize an entire race of individuals as being somehow incapable of rising above their particular circumstances. 

In America there are many perennial losers. Losing families. Losing cultures. Losing neighborhoods. But concentrating on race does not benefit these individuals but rather masks the solution and the way out. Concentrating on race reopens a wound... A wound that sustains no one... A wound that raises no one... A wound that benefits no one but the politician who is willing to use people to advance his Party or his career. 

Racism is the cause celebre' in America today. Not the obvious racism of the Klan, but the deceitful racism of the Left which uses the circumstances of minorities, not to help, but to gain power for itself. It's the insidious racism of the Democrat Party which wears a pitying smile and offers a condescending pat on the head. 

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