More on Contented Worldliness
"The world, the flesh and the devil." An unholy trinity. In Ch. X, Screwtape notes that while "the Enemy's servants have been preaching about 'the World' as one of the standard temptations for two thousand years, . . . they have said very little about it for the last few decades." Warnings about "Worldy Vanities" have fallen on deaf ears apparently because people classify them as "Puritanism" -- a kind of extreme asceticism, something "weird" and unnatural, like St. Thomas More wearing a hair shirt.

In Ch. 28, Screwtape urges keeping his nephew's "patient" alive a good long time so he has time "for the difficult task of unravelling [his] soul[ ] from Heaven and building up a firm attachment to the Earth." Screwtape hopes either for "attrition" - drabness and resentment, or "prosperity," which "knits a man to the World. He feels that he is 'finding his place in it,' while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home on Earth, which is just what we want."

Compare that with the following definition of culture: "The genuine culture is not necessarily high or low; it is merely harmonious, balanced, and self-satisfactory. It is the experience of a richly varied, yet somehow unified and consistent attitude toward life. . . It is, ideally speaking, a culture in which nothing is spiritually meaningless, in which no important part of the general functioning brings with it a sense of frustration, of misdirected or unsympathetic effort." (Edward Sapir, "Culture: Genuine and Spurious,"American Journal of Sociology 29, January 1924, p. 402.)

Sounds like what the devil aims for and culture achieves are about the same! -- a comfortable, "contended" at-home-ness with the world.

Now listen to how Cardinal Ratzinger describes Christianity's "breaking in" on culture in Truth and Tolerance, pp. 97-89:

"Exodus, making a cultural break, with its death and regrowth, is a basic pattern in Christianity. The story of this begins with Abraham, with the command from God: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house. (Gen 12:1). . . . We can say of the Christian faith, in line with the faith of Abraham, that no one simply finds it there as his possession. It never comes out of what we have ourselves. It breaks in from outside. That is still always the way.

"Nobody is born a Christian, not even in a Christian world and of Christian parents. Being Christian can only ever happen as a new birth." Citing Guardini, he continues, "Christianity, the Christian faith, is not the product of our own experiences; rather it is an event that comes to us from without. Faith is based on our meeting something (or someone) for which our capacity for experiencing things is inadequate. It is not our experience that is widened or deepened . . . but something happens. The categories of "encounter," "otherness," "event," describe the inner origins of the Christian faith and indicate the limits of the concept of experience." (See Lewis' criticism [in Ch. 28, p.133] of "experience" as being the "mother of illusion" [the philosopher Lewis quotes is Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p.313]).

Ratzinger continues: "This is exactly what we mean by the concept of revelation; something not ours, not to be found in what we have, comes to me and takes me out of myself, above myself, creates something new. That also determes the historical nature of Christianity, which is based on events and not on becoming aware of the depths of one's own inner self, what is called 'illumination.' (Here Ratzinger contrasts the Gnostic way of looking at the redemption, not in the suffering and death of Christ, but in 'the message concerning the holy path', the 'wise and wonderful' teaching. For the Gnostic, illumination comes, not through pain, but through the communication of knowledge.)

Raztinger concludes, "The Trinity is not the object of our experience but is something that has to be uttered from outside, that comes to me from outside as 'revelation.' The same is true of the Incarnation of the Word, which is indeed an event and cannot be discovered in one's inner experience. This coming to us is scandalous for man, who is striving after autonomy and autarchy; for every culture it is a presumption: when Paul says that Christianity is a scandal for the Jews and foolishness for the 'nations' (1 Cor. 1:23), he is trying to express this feature peculiar to the Christian faith, which for everyone is something coming 'from without.'" (emphasis added)

If you want an idea how revelation feels, I recommend the story of the same name ("Revelation") by Flannery O'Connor, and her story "The Coat." By reading these stories (and others by her) you can get an idea of how revelation "breaks in." Maybe what Saul felt upon being thrown to the ground on his journey to Damascus. Usually it isn't pretty.

What is the price of being immersed in our culture, "contented" in our worldliness? One consequence is that, to that extent, we are slaves. Jean Bethke Elshtain, in her Gifford Lectures (published last year as Sovreignty: God, State and Self, p. 206), points out that human freedom consists in part "in refusing overidentification with the sea in which we swim . . ." People who are absorbed in the zeitgeist parrot and live its platitudes -- such as the desire for "self-sovereignty" (autonomy and autarchy in Ratzinger's words) -- and to that degree are enslaved by them. (Elshtain tells the story of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century in which plenty of "Christian" leaders climbed aboard the "better world" bandwagon. We see a "eugenics" reprise today in embryonic stem cell research, "selective reduction" of implanted eggs, and "termination" of "unintended" pregnancies. For, in the inaugural words of our new president, we must "put science back in its rightful place."

Elshtain quotes Luther, who opined that "sloth" clings to us because we are born into it. Continuing the sea metaphor, she observes, the slothful "never come up for air." And, of course, they drown. (Fits right in Screwtape's game plan!)

Are there antidotes for "the world, the flesh and the devil"? The most effective, I think, are the evangelical counsels: "Poverty, chastity, and obedience." Poverty defeats prosperity, chastity the flesh, and obedience devilish willfulness. We need to keep spading our ground so the seeds of revelation may find a home here, germinate, and bear (much) fruit.