Our Non-Balanced Thinking
|
A “values vacuum” is the name for an obvious shortage of morals and positive values in society today. It is our sense of the absent and missing mortar of values and morals needed to brick in life today. In the poetry of Yeats, the figurative language used is that the “center does not hold.” This seems an apt description of American society as well as many other national and regional world groupings now. Our foundations are crumbling because the values and morals needed to hold things together are missing. In many areas the values and moral vacuums have been furthered if not actually created by the spiritual lobotomy performed upon mankind by the teachings of communist atheism in various possibly non-democratic countries as well as liberal atheism in so called democratic countries Good people caught in the nets of excessively valueless, immoral, amoral and selfish society, just as you and I are today. We may thank liberalism and communism for much, if certainly not all, of the lack of values and morals that have made our living so troubled and outrageously empty of meaning. Spiritual lobotomies performed upon the world and mankind by communism, distorting literalism, spiritually denying liberalism, and solely materialistic political systems have had their effect upon mankind. Value vacuums have formed. The belief in God that is deep in human nature, historically proven over and over again by various religions, all of which show some love and grace, need to be and will be affirmed. Mystics write, “the Alone will call to the alone,” and God, faith and trust, that have never vanished will shine again. No, perfection will never be, but there can be improvement. It is that improvement true believers seek. If the sun of faith in God has gone over the hill in fashion, it will come over the hill again. This is predestined by the nature of God buried deep within us. The desire in us for God will surface again. The "Alone" in us will always call for the "Alone" and be answered. We will discover the unity of self and God that will spread to families, congregations, churches, regions and nationalisms of the world. As for the mistake of "atheism as progress," this has been in the name of money and goods. Acts 8: 20-21 says, “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.” The teachings on materialism in liberalism and communism that there is no God, because God is invisible, have helped to sour people on the existence and meaning of spiritual intangibles which means values and morality. People have been taught to desire material things first and foremost and only, and so the hearts of many people are soured and bitter. Their hearts soured by too much materialism must be sweetened by grace or their societies will crumble and vanish in the off balance and off brand confusion of attitudes that materialistic communism and liberalism have spread. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with material things which God has put here for us to enjoy. But materialism is healthy only as long as it is materialism balanced by a spiritual intuitive sense that allows a healthy balanced creative tension between the material emphasis and the spiritual emphasis to take place. Life is best lived in a creative tension between spiritual goals and material means. One hand washes the other. One arm sustains and balances the other in holding up the world. Jesus in His teachings said man cannot live by bread alone. He did not say bread was not needed. He assumed people knew bread was needed, but He was teaching bread was not enough by itself. HE AFFIRMED the DUAL physical and spiritual nature of mankind. Both claims must be respected. Both claims represent needs that if denied make lives into warped, distorted and unbalanced affairs while mankind is left to enjoy a sad cake named living. What we have seen in the last hundred or so years of dundering idiocy in the history of both church systems and political systems is “either/ or” thinking as has been presented by church and state in too simplistic and one sided a manner. The idea offered is, man is either materialistic or totally spiritual. The spiritual needs of mankind have been overlooked or undervalued which is wrong. The idea has been either/or for all. The truth is, both spiritual and material values are wanted in mankind for moral balance. Both are needed to ensure good values that deliver mankind from having to live in a confusion of values and morality that make good living and efficient actions almost impossible at times. In China, America and other countries of the world, moral and value vacuums that are self-defeating exist. Jesus was the meeting ground, the person between God and man. Why is it so difficult for His followers and those not His followers to see the truth of the profoundly dualistic dialectic that lies in the heart of man? It is put there for mankind’s best interests by the Creator God. While such truths may not seem particularly profound, they are forgotten. The world is paying the price for forgetting this in social and moral vacuums and empty lives. The world is also paying a stiff price to be so stiff necked in insisting that the two wants and needs are not mutually associated in forming a common life. Let us work for a triumph of grace and sense in the world where civilizing and balancing spirituality and morality meet with the necessity of satisfying material wants and needs. Great sections of the world are in poverty. That is to say they are materially underdeveloped while other greatly prosperous sections of the world are existing in societies which are morally and spiritually underdeveloped. Then crime, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, hostility are present all over. Truly we need to develop the world. I pray for two things. They will not be seen in my time or your time, I think. They are that the forces of Communist atheism and Liberal atheism will find Christ. The other is that the Christian churches will learn how to disagree lovingly and put Love above and before creed. I do not hope for Christian organizational oneness at this time, but that Love, should grow beyond and bigger, to include organizations, churches, nations, and the world. After all does not (I John 4:8) say “God is Love.” Love must be taken everywhere and put first and before all things. Let us recall that man’s life is best lived when he lives in a state of creative dynamic between the excess of the physical and material restrained by the simplicity of spiritual sacrifice. Of course this state is not achieved perfectly or easily. But it is in Attaining Bigness, a love of God and His magnificence of mind, that we find how little we would have been without grace and God. The world has yet to learn this. It is up to you if you are a person of faith to join in teaching it to others as best you can, life being both wonderful and troublesome as it is. |
