Americans Believe in the Myth of Progress

Indeed, we believe in it so deeply that we take it for granted that whatever direction we surge toward is always “forward”. But when the bishops have to issue directives reminding our civilization that you can’t murder people with starvation and thirst, that’s not a really strong indicator we actually have the foggiest idea what “progress” is. As a friend writes:

Oh, for the good old days when our church was busy settling matters of doctrine like whether the incarnation was by adoption or whether the Holy Sprit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Instead, now we have to get official pronouncements from the magisterium that yes indeed, it is wrong to starve and dehydrate our fellow human beings to death, even if they are disabled and dependent.

Human progress on display for all to see.

Increasingly, I think we *have* to tell ourselves we are “progressing” because we know in our hearts that our civilization is imploding and we can’t bear to face it. Of course, it doesn’t *have* to implode. If we chose to repent our preciousest sins and believe again in Jesus and the gospel, we could see a return to sanity and happiness. But man is a fool and seems to demand that he put himself and all he loves through horrible self-inflicted torments before getting a clue.

That’s why the startling thing about Jesus’ one great outburst of anger in the New Testament, summarized in Matthew 23, is not the anger of an offended God, but of a frustrated one. It’s the tone of exasperated love and even fear–the sort of fear you hear in the voice of a parent who watches as his son flips him off, lights a cigarette, and heads out the door with a crowd of his punk buddies to do some drinking and thievery: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

The hilarious thing is that God routinely gets slammed as the Hairy Thunderer whose gonna send you to hell for “being bad”. Postmoderns love to imagine they are bravely defying him. But any ninny can defy God. It takes not one movement of the grey matter. There’s nothing brave about it. If you want to flip God off and go do your thing, there’s the door. Have at it. All Jesus says will happen is “you will not see me again.” He doesn’t threaten to do anything *to* you. He merely warns that “not seeing him again” is exactly the same thing as being in the place where “their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched”. Not seeing him again *is* the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. We get there, not because Jesus, in a fit of pique, does something vindictive, but because we, of our own stupidity and pride, put ourselves there and then tell ourselves a bunch of BS about how brave we are.

The happy news is that there is always a way back. Jesus doesn’t say “and stay out!” He says we can return when we say, “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord”, drop the BS self-justification crapola and humble ourselves before him. That’s not cuz he loves to see us crawl (that’s just remnants of the “I’m so brave and noble” crapola talking). It’s because we need to be as humble as he is if we are to live with him and be like him.

That’s tough. I hate it myself. But on the rare occasions I’ve tried it (usually after lots of completely unnecessary self-inflicted suffering) I’ve found it to be liberating, not humiliating and soul-crushing. I wish I had more faith so I didn’t constantly repeat the cycle of making my life hell before trying the novel approach of taking up my cross and following him as he had told me to do.