Narcissus: “a youth who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool and wasted away from unsatisfied desire, whereupon he was transformed into the flower.” Greek Mythology
Several months ago, I watched the movie “The Giver,” with my wife, Toni. While this movie was about a futuristic society, it is relevant and a wake-up call for all of us today. We are quickly becoming the society depicted in this film as emotionless, colorless, and vaccinated against thinking and reason. Yes, the film depicts families performing daily and routine vaccinations before leaving their “family units” for predetermined vocations on behalf of the Collective.
I recommend watching the movie trailer before reading on…
We have allowed ourselves to become programmed by the programmers. Whenever we accept “truth” from others without research and discovery we enter into another level of being programmed.
Not only are we losing our critical and analytically thought processes, but we are losing our language, and therefore our ability to communicate clearly and creatively.
In a similar way, we are losing our spirituality. Rather than connecting directly to God, through Jesus Christ (The Word) and the Holy Spirit (Teacher, Comforter, and Guide), we limit our connections to the Godhead by extensions of corporate worship of 15 to 20 minutes per week. Our spirituality is lived vicariously through our spiritual leader’s personal intimacy with God.
We’ve abdicated our inherent rights as sons and daughters of God to personally hear His Voice, not as “new revelation,” but rather a deeper intimacy. We value pastors as to how well they can hold our brief attention, rather than teaching us to feed ourselves on the Word and voice of God. Too many pastors have assumed the role of the Holy Spirit, which further alienates us from the Third Person of the Trinity. Whom, by the way, is the real Gift-Giver.
There is no process to practice ministry, as the ministry has become nothing more than spectating and being ministered to. There is little, to no outlet for functional ministry being practiced by the average believer, and so we remain giftless.
This reminds me of the days long ago when the government removed wood shops, metal shops, mechanic shops as well as home economics from public schools. Children are left with no physical application or the opportunity to learn a trade. The advantage of tactile learning has vanished.
Many churches have done the same thing. They’ve removed all of the application and ministerial outlets for members to exercise their gifts as they learn the truth, therefore becoming perpetual students and not masters of their unique spiritual gifts and service to others.
Many teachers, not all, have become programmers also. They dispense pre-selected and government-approved curricula to the masses. Classrooms are no longer a place of free-thinking of free ideas and ideals. God is not welcomed there, also. Excellence is shunned and replaced with fairness, and high standards are lowered to mediocrity, so no one fails.
Common grammar school literature of the 16th century could not be read, nor comprehended by the average high school student of today.
Progressively, technology and the internet are replacing fundamental human contact and interaction. Technological corporations are sanitizing the meaning of life and are reprogramming the masses to “living” for pleasure and consumerism. Our lives and interests are becoming nothing more than algorithms, measured by impersonal machines, reporting to corporate mongrels who fight for a greater market share of our existence.
Our divine purpose and uniqueness have been replaced by political usefulness; mere polling data for those in power to gain greater control over our individualism until it too vanishes.
Utopianism is impossible in a fallen world. As soon as it is politically achieved, it immediately turns into despotism. But the tyrannical of every generation wants its opportunity to do it better; with utter ignorance of past failures and abandoned hindsight, they press forward with backward thinking and demonic ideology. Their deranged ideology creates a deranged society and a warped and selfish culture.
And so, are there any humans out there? Do you feel anymore? Do you love people, or only the device, which you use to connect yourself to them?
Is your skin stained with enough ink yet? Do you have any more natural skin left? Are you pierced enough? Are you satisfied with all your selfies plastered throughout social media? Are your relationships about what you can get until you can’t get anymore?
We have made our outer bodies into billboards of our own inner selfishness and self-worship. Our self-absorbtion has absorbed most of our humanness.
It would appear that the more technologically we’ve become as a society, the more primitive we’ve become as a culture. It seems that technology, as wonderful and useful as it is, is diminishing our humanity towards one another and to nature.
The number of tattoos, piercings, abortions, and Botox is not an indicator of a progressive technological society, but a society that is regressing into tribalism and primitivism.
Are people, you know, humans; are they disposable, like the unborn, infants, and the elderly? How about relationships? Are you a dumper, or are you a dumpee?
People are challenged to dump ice-cold buckets of water on themselves and others or ingest Tide pods or dance outside their moving vehicles, which are appearing more and more unintelligent. I challenge you to think and act for yourselves so that you may act wisely and think kindly towards others.
Our humanity is at risk, and if it is lost, our humaneness towards one another will end. Our loss of humaneness always starts with a loss of saneness.
Narcissus: “a youth who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool and wasted away from unsatisfied desire, whereupon he was transformed into the flower.” Greek Mythology
Our culture is fast becoming a collection of “flowers.”
“She looks at herself instead of looking at you and so doesn’t know you.” – Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) by Marie-Henri Beyle
As a society, we can not peer into the mirror for too long before we’ve become wasted and unsatisfied. When we spend too much time looking at our own images, we tend to build our lives around ourselves. We merely seek relationships with people who remind ourselves of ourselves and that look and act as selfishly as we do. The over adornment of tattoos, body piercings, self-obsession, and body emphasis is proof that our culture is transforming into nothing more than a bouquet of flowers.
And this is how historians will say America was lost.
The more we look at and emphasize ourselves instead of each other, the less we know one another.
We can only rediscover our original humanity in the Creator and in Jesus Christ. God created us in his image, which time and again we’ve lost, but Jesus Christ is the Image Restorer and the Restorer of Life.
Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Deuteronomy 8:3 (NLT)
We can do this. We can become less distracted with ourselves and become more attracted to God and to one another.
If we feed ourselves more on what God is saying than on what others are texting or tweeting and preaching, maybe, just maybe we can save America again.
Call To Courage 