(The Nationalist, February 2004)
The poet T. S. Eliot wrote that humanity can’t bear too much reality. We create systems of unreality as props to help us through life, systems of illusion and make-believe to give meaning to existence.
The last century saw a succession of these systems and of the pseudo-messiahs who created them – Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot.
Their systems had elements in common:
- they were atheistic.
- they were extremely destructive, especially of human life.
- they evoked great loyalty from their followers.
- they betrayed their followers’ hopes and despised them.
People gave those men and their ideologies the kind of devotion and loyalty that should be given only to God. Political ideologies are super-stitions. (Capitalism is an economic superstition.) They turn the first commandment on its head. They say: adore me, serve me, give me your undivided loyalty. I take responsibility, including moral responsibility, for what you do in the name of the revolution/party/state (or church, if it starts to play the power game, as in the Inquisitions.)
Jesus Christ, the earthly image of God, constantly tried to wake people up. He often complained of the slowness of his followers. His miracles were signs, pointing beyond themselves, saying, ‘Open your eyes, wake up, look reality in the face.’
Faith helps us:
- to think beyond the here and now
- to look at essentials more than non-essentials
- to look from external realities to interior ones.
Faith can do that only if we are willing to receive it.
Jesus invited people to meals. He used the image of heaven as a meal. But if you come to a meal already full because you’ve been nibbling at junk food all day, you won’t benefit by it. It may even sicken you, whereas if you come hungry you’ll benefit by it.
God wants us to know all truth, to know reality as it is. If we come to him already half-full with the junk food of the soul, e.g. about asserting ourselves instead of denying ourselves, then we cannot take what he offers. If we try to, it may sicken us, not because there’s something wrong with it, but with us. We need to come to God empty of self. Blessed are they who know their need of God, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. If you want to see the stars, you don’t look at them in the daylight, but in the dark.