Things As They Really Aren't

A couple weeks ago the news story broke of a young football player, Manti Te’o from Notre Dame University, being scammed in an internet dating hoax.  I have known for the last six or seven years that such things are going on on the internet, and  I have since learned that such things are now so pervasive that there was a 2010 documentary film (Catfish) and now a television show (Catfish:The TV Show) that depicts such things.  These things can be terribly dangerous and damaging. 

I have a mother who has Alzheimer’s disease.  She is completely vulnerable and helpless and can no longer act on her own volition, which is now essentially extinct. Her condition is the result of an organic cause beyond her control. The people who get caught up in these cyberspace scams, which are initially within their power to control, tend to be likewise vulnerable and naively convinced and consequently helpless and eventually addicted to a non-reality and it is a tragedy.

What can be done?  Let me suggest some things that should not be done.  

All people, but especially the emotionally vulnerable, should not become involved with anything that could harm their body or inhibit or impair their capacity to discern things as they really are.  “If any man defile the temple of God (man’s body), him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are” ( 1 Corinthians 3:16-17). 

We must not put at risk the very instrument God has given us to receive the learning experiences of mortality.  There are grave spiritual hazards in our technologically-oriented and rapidly changing world that can harm our bodies, our minds, and our spirits.  Unfortunately, that which is initially perceived by many as harmless or merely entertaining--the video games, the inane Facebook postings and Tweets and texts, the chat-rooms, the online friends, the romance novels, the pornography, etc.,--can completely take over our time, our health and put a stop to our eternal progression.  As the Lord declared, “Wherefore, I give unto them a commandment…, Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known.”  God wants us to work and serve and live productively.

Do not let the digital dominate ‘things as they really are.’ “The Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not.  Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls.” Compare your digitally involved time with your Spiritually involved time and see where your emphasis is. 

  

The bottom line is that too many sad and lonely, confused,  and vulnerable people find the ‘virtual reality’ so real, so compelling, that they live an artificial life devoid of real, deep, soul-expanding relationships, talent-developing work and thus personal growth, and consequent lasting happiness and confidence.  They come into life as children of God, endowed with a great potential, and go out with very little to show for their years. Alas, many go out greatly depressed and with a smoking gun found near their body. 

The tragedy is that their lives are built upon a faulty foundation that will cause an inevitable personal ‘fall’ just as nations and civilizations have fallen.  And nations and civilizations have fallen because an entire culture has fallen just as otherwise good, but beguiled, people like Manti Te’o have fallen for the artificial. 

And Satan laughs.  

The Captain of Thy Soul

As much as I loved America's great philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (and I still do), his essay 'Self Reliance' confused me in my youth.  It was truth mixed with error. He proceeded by the light that he had--and he had a very great intellectual light--but it had been eclipsed by the restored Gospel light that had burst upon the world, that few, even today, have begun to walk in.  

Compare this proud poem by William Ernest Henley, who may have been influenced by Emerson's 'Self Reliance,' with the Gospel of Jesus Christ-inspired counterpoint of an enlightened Orson F. Whitney:

             Invictus  

      by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeoning of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.  

      The Soul’s Captain 

     by Orson F. Whitney

Art thou in truth?  Then what of Him

Who bought thee with His blood?

Who plunged into devouring seas

And snatched thee from the flood,

Who bore for all our fallen race

What none but Him could bear—

That God who died that man

      might live

And endless glory share.

Of what avail thy vaunted strength

Apart from His vast might?

Pray that His light may pierce the

    gloom

That thou mayest see aright. 

Men are as bubbles on the wave,

As leaves upon the tree,

Thou captain of thy soul!  Forsooth

Who gave that place to thee?

Free will is thine—free agency,

To wield for right or wrong;

But thou must answer unto Him

To whom all souls belong.

Bend to the dust that “head unbowed,”

Small part of life’s great whole,

And see in Him and Him alone,

The Captain of thy Soul.  

 

 

             

        

Great Expectations--Part 2

I had thought not to finish this famous novel by Charles Dickens because of what I early perceived as its darkness of plot and setting and character of a number of its characters including its protagonist, Pip.  I, nevertheless, persisted and finished it.  It is the story of a prodigal who, over time, realized the folly and sham of his ‘great expectations’ and scarred and sick came back, a wiser man, to his roots. 

As noted previously, I appreciated its narrative technique, and, as I suspected and why I persisted, the triumph of good over evil. 

  

To me it showed the darkness and bonds into which one, even the good and innocent, can fall and become ensnared when captivated by the vain and vainglorious things of the world.  It also shows the cost of ignoring one’s conscience. 

 

We need to be very sure of our ‘great expectations’ or hopes and count the cost before we invest ourselves into anything that will not bring us and our loved ones the peace without regret that we all desire. 

  

The only legitimate reason to seek status or riches, is to “seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.” And the only person to legitimately do that, in this book, was not the supposed or even real ‘benefactor’ who provided money and false expectations to Pip, but Pip’s humble and good-to-the-bone stepfather Joe, the blacksmith.

I end with a short but very wise speech by this good man: “Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together . . . and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith. . . .  Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.  You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else, but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends.  It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes.  I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off the marshes.  You won’t find half so much fault in me supposing as if you should ever wish to see me [again if], you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe, the blacksmith, there at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work.” 

It is okay to have ‘great expectations’ and know what our true ‘work’ is,  but never compromise them at the expense of one’s character or integrity.  To thine own self—and one’s God—be true.