The Hell of Having

I remember as a child, my parents would limit the amount that would be lavished upon me. I certainly was not deprived of anything. Chocolate, good food, toys, trips out to the park, all these would be common occurrences.

Good things would be measured, if they were not there was every chance that I would take them for granted.
Above all, they did not want me to become 'spoiled'.

I am sure we have all seen it, someone who has everything but cares for nothing.
This is reflected in peoples' attitude toward material things. When things are not received as beautiful and useful objects worthy of thanks, they become 'mere things', commodities.
Of course this is encouraged by the people who sell the things because as long as people are unsatisfied with what they have, they will always want more.

For example, I recently was given an Apple iPhone for my birthday. Wonderful, it has made things much easier to keep in contact with those I love. Less than a month later, the updated version was released. Though I knew better, I still had a nagging feeling of envy, something which has been instilled in me for over two decades.
Even though the updated model is not dissimilar from the model I have, I know that if I were to get the updated version, I would not be satisfied. Infact, I would probably be annoyed at myself for playing into the hands of those who feed upon this cycle of novelty and envy.

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. - Oscar Wilde

One of the remarkable things about the Christian life is that, through the Eucharistically minded vision, all things are made beautiful. The world is a wonderous gift which celebrates God. I do not mean this in the "look at how beautiful that sunset" way, but on a more every day basis. The food we eat, the sleep we have, the clothes we wear, the air we breathe; it is all restorative to ourselves and holds us together as community.
For a person to eat well, the food must be farmed. To be clothed, someone must grow the plant to make the fibre, which is then spun and knitted or woven into a textile, which is tailored to make the final object. Everything is manufactured, and this speaks of community.

When we, as consumers, fail to see the chain which leads to the finished article, the object becomes dehumanised and of no intrinsic value other than 'fashion'
Everything becomes disposable, and in so doing, we desensitise ourselves to the co-operation of living, as well as our duty to support those who labour for us.

A world without people, without relationships, is a lonely place.
The French existentialist philosopher John Paul Satre famously wrote "Hell is other people".
I refute that, "Hell is isolation".

Satre was saying that it is our interpersonal relationships which cause us the greatest misery and despair. Though there is certain torment in that, it is favourable by far than isolation. This is because all existence is found in relation.
What good is a gift it can not be given?
What use is love if it can not be shared?


And so I return to my first point.
When we receive to the satisfaction of our own desires and are blinded by the objects to the point where we cannot see the creative act behind them, it is a sad thing. It is a sad thing because that part within us which has delight in receiving the gift as an act of love becomes idle. A state of entitlement and self-worth develops; this in turn causes a person to fail in relating to people. People in themselves become commodities. This leads to dystopia.



It is thanks to a post on another blog site that I was encouraged to write this article.
"The Dream"

The World: an end in itself?

I have been re-reading a lot of Alexander Schmemann recently and I find him to complement Stăniloae very well, particularly in their mutual understanding of the world as the means by which humans maintain communion with God. The material therefore having a purpose not only of itself (for material needs), but also beyond itself (as a means of accessing the metaphysical). 

I quote a paragraph from Schmemann's popular work 'For the Life of the World' (p. 17)

When we see the world as an end in itself, everything becomes itself a value and consequently loses all value, because only in God is found the meaning (value) of everything, and the world is meaningful only when it is the "sacrament" of God's presence. Things treated merely as things in themselves destroy themselves because only in God have they any life. The world of nature, cut off from the source of life, is a dying world. For one who thinks food in itself is the source of life, eating is communion with the dying world, it is communion with death. Food itself is dead, it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse.

The world is dead. Distressing as that sounds, it is not the end. The world is animated by life, the presence of God within the world, permeating through all by being glorified by His own creation. 

The Eucharist is where the world and the divine (the life), is met. To receive of the Eucharist is to receive of the living food, the food which does not perish. Rather than the human, being the hungry consumer, eating of the dead flesh in order to receive energy to survive, the reception of the body of Christ, mystically present in the Eucharist, infuses himself (the life of eternity) with the communicant. 

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. (John 6:35 KJV)

The world therefore is a medium by which we come to know and recognise God. It is the means by which God reveals Himself to us, and it is the means by which we are reconciled with God through the sacraments. Sacraments make use of worldly physical things in order to restore them to their ordained purpose, but also on account of our creaturely weakness to perceive the metaphysical 'realities' of the heavenly host etc., as being present.