A Response from Silence

I believe Joe Miller has done an excellent job showing a disease in American culture. Indeed, there isn’t much for me to add. However, I will quickly extend a related examination of our paradoxical human nature. That is, a look at our original sin and our original blessing. But first, a quick look at the culture.

Consumerism takes many shapes and forms. The need to have individual technology is rooted in the need to always be entertained. The need to be entertained is rooted in a feeling of lack. As so many mystics in many traditions have posited, we try to use things and ideas to fill a God-sized hole, but in the end the only way to fill this hole is with God. We won’t be whole until we fill that hole with God. God doesn’t make us with this need for him because he is a needy child who can’t dream of having people be independent of himself. Rather, all love comes from God and an all loving being who designs creatures for love can’t give them this love apart from himself.

Original sin is our inability to automatically feel, remember, and know this love. The job of religion, and spiritual practices is to help remind people of the presence of God in their lives which is always there! This is our original blessing—God’s desire to live in communion and harmony with his creation—is what Richard Rohr has tried to share.

Rohr has noted that Meister Eckhart (And I would add the Jesuit’s founder St. Ignatius) is the mystic for those who are busy. It is alright to have a busy life with busy technology. The point is that technology should act as a tool for one to help share love to a world which needs to be reminded of its special place in God’s present in-breaking kingdom.