Conventional
Wisdom
“Our
culture's secular wisdom does not affirm the reality of the Spirit;
the only reality about which it is certain is the visible world of
our ordinary experience. Accordingly, it looks to the material world
for satisfaction. It's dominant values are what I call the three
A's—achievement, affluence, and appearance.”
Marcus
Borg (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time)
I
wonder how many of you have read the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne
Collins. The books are written for a young audience, but I loved
them. For me they are a satire on our times in the same way that
Moliere's plays were in the 17th century. In the Hunger
Games post-apocalyptic America, there are 12 districts whose people
serve at the pleasure of the Capital, which keeps a strangle hold on
them. For the most part life in the districts is miserable; the
people are starving, their work does not benefit them, and there is
no getting out because of high fences and constant surveillance. In
the Capital, things are very different. The people are dressed and
painted up like peacocks, enjoy lavish banquets and find enjoyment in
watching selected children from the districts fight to the death in
the annual event from which the book takes its title. They are
completely oblivious and indifferent to the suffering of the people.
Does this sound at all familiar to you?
In
Borg's book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, he paints a
picture of the society of Jesus's day and draws a parallel to our
own. He writes of the “conventional wisdom” of the culture, as
opposed to the spiritual wisdom that Jesus taught. In the
conventional wisdom, value is placed on the outer manifestations of
wealth and status—how you look, how you dress, where you live, what
sort of car you drive, where you went to college, what job you hold,
etc. We construct a hierarchy from top down and assign value to those
at the top, and less and less as we go down to the bottom. Poor
people, especially children, and people with differences, such as
mental illness or physical disability, are at the lowest rung. In
Jesus's day, they were simply “unclean” and therefore to be
avoided. In our day, things haven't changed much. The very first
programs cut from government budgets all over the country were those
for the mentally ill and disabled. Spiritual wisdom places value on the worth of every individual regardless of status or beauty. The major value is compassion.
This
Christmas, as you're thinking about gifts for your family, remember
the folks “in the districts.” Gather things you don't need and
donate them to shelters. Send food to your community food pantry. In
my church, we are gathering warm clothing for nursing home folks.
When “the Capital” fails us, we must take care of one another.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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