You are currently browsing the Bruce Smith weblog archives for the day 3. June 2009.
3. June 2009 by BruceSmith.
Which Way Is Up?! Finding one’s way out of the trap of hedonism. (PG 13)
The scenes are played out untold times a day all across our country. Somewhere, on some typical suburban street, in a typical modern city, the following takes place. A husband or a spouse awakes to another day of reality which they have come to embrace as domestic boredom, an unfulfilled life. Having finally reached the tipping point, and after many false starts, near starts, or broken starts, he or she has come to a “decision” on the future. Rather than remain in a situation that is less than emotionally, relationally, physically, or otherwise “exciting”, a new life is pursued. Said husband or wife leaves a note, holds a “family talk”, or just packs a bag and walks away from a spouse and children to step forward into a journey of new experiences. New relationships, new desires, new pursuits, with no boundaries, no naysayers, no restrictions, no time constraints, …no worries. Life is looking UP now! Or so it is thought.
What those who pursue such courses of action fail to realize is a bit more sobering. The silver screen, magazine photos, beer ads, Vegas tourism promotions, and sit-coms don’t give the full picture. While the butterflies and emotional highs of new love affairs and new vistas appear to promise the world on a string, in reality, a storm is just around the next corner. That storm may take many forms, but it is a storm indeed. Moreover, the emotional, psychological, and personal harm done to children involved is beyond description. The attempts to “show up” for the kids and offer prizes and entertainment galore never replace the sense of loss and crushed hope which resides in the hearts of children and teenagers. And the emotional havoc and sense of failure don’t just subside.
Trading real life for a fantasy just never is quite so fantastic. Eventually, everyone comes to realize this, but sadly, many just try to mask the reality and fool everyone around. Eventually, the refusal to see life as it is leads to all sorts of emotional and psychological distortion and misery. What begins as a thirst for “more” ends in more baggage, chaos and loss. One day, he or she “awakens” again, only this time, the eyes are opened to the huge chasm between what should have been and what is. The years of denial and bitterness take a toll too heavy to imagine. Some, decades later, wind up bearing the weight of a totally misguided and wasted life. The pursuit of a career, a name, a ceaseless pleasure quest don’t end in fulfillment. Read the paper.
The gruesome reality in this scenario is that our culture views this kind of decision making as trading “up”. We are told by nearly every form of media, entertainment, and academics that we are all free to do and to please ourselves at every turn regardless of what that may bring for the future. Our addiction to self and our “individual rights” has led us to abandon all form of reason in pursuit of self gratification. If it feels good, at the moment, do it! Don’t worry about the next moment. Just live in the now. Get what you can while you can! That’s the cultural motto, unspoken or not.
In another part of America, not too far from you and I, yet another common scenario unfolds. Again, the promise and the unfolding reality are in stark contrast. In this scenario a young boy or girl, enamored with the idea of a glamorous life and seeing their name in lights, flees the coup upon graduation in pursuit of life’s Holy Grail: fame. Seeing the daily onslaught of public exposure and fanfare, this young person is led to believe that all of life comes to an individual once fame is attained. Homes, cribs, bling, “stacks of paper”, cars, parties, and personal attendants…these are what life is all about! This is the promise. Truth be told, the allure of this promise captures more than just young people. TV ratings suggest our culture is enamored with this quest.
Yet again, however, the payoff is not quite what is hoped for. Surely, there are a few who manage all the excess and keep life in perspective. Yet, as all of the periodicals and news reports demonstrate, too few seem to be able to navigate these waters of fame well. Far more often than not the preoccupation with self leads celebrities (and those somehow attached to them) to a distorted sense of self importance and value. Convinced their value lies in their exposure, the insatiable hunger for attention eats away at a clear sense of reality. Our value, surely, must be found in more than our “name”. But in Hollywood, the name, and its current buzz, are everything. With over one million “aspiring” actors in the Hollywood area, reportedly, it would appear that there are many a frustrated “unknowns”. For far too many, this state of being “unseen” is a land of oblivion. It serves as a metaphor for many others outside of the entertainment industry as well, many who have lived life just hungering to make a name for themselves somehow, some way.
Because we are created as relational beings, we long to know and to be known. In some capacity, the explosion of Facebook and Myspace and other social networks are a manifestation of our innate desire to be connected in meaningful ways. However, when our understanding of what it means to know and to be known is distorted, we merely settle for having our name out there. The misplaced thirst for more and more people to “know” who we are leads us toward this hunger for fame. The irony is that, in most cases, the more “well known” a person is in terms of celebrity, the ability for them to be truly known is diminished. Every human interaction becomes, for them, an exercise in public relations. Further, the inner public relations battle which rages within them makes it very difficult to relate to people on a truly human and loving level. For many, the inebriation with the public persona overtakes the real humanity. For the one who has achieved “success” thus defined, a loss of soul can ensue. The roles, and the public acceptance of them, can overtake the human being. Once they have made it “up” there, the truth sets in. That truth, as the addictions, relational madness, suicide attempts, and counseling statistics of the stars suggests, is not so lovely.
These are but two scenarios, and countless others could be offered. The path up we search for takes many forms; the one who chooses to find relief in a pill, a bottle, a needle, in a fitful attempt to get “up” high; the girl or woman who jumps from one bed to another hoping one day to really be “known”; the boy or man filled with rage and bitterness who knows no way “up” but to fight, cheat, destroy any that would appear to be hinderances to his advancement… The scenes are endless, but all the same in the end.
The point here is not to call out those that have fallen in marriage or to call out those who have pursued fame and success, or anyone else. Rather, the truth offered is that which calls us to consider what life is really about in the end. As the movie UP, a great movie in my view, suggests, life is more about the quality of our everyday human exchanges than it is about the pie in the sky dream life we think up. If we are obsessed with all the stuff we long to do and the name we wish to attain, we miss the joys, beauty, and wonder of everyday life. When we choose escapism through endless temporary pleasures and various “highs” we miss out on real peace and soul satisfaction. Such pleasure ultimately leads to boredom of the soul and eventually emotional burnout.
Skipping out on family in order to find ourselves leads to immense loss. The loss of everyday wonder cannot be replaced by any thing the world offers. Trade your family for your own journey and you will miss out on moments you will never get again. You miss the everyday smile of a small child. The smirk of a teenage girl caught somewhere between childhood and womanhood. The uncertain bravado of a teenage boy trying to find himself. The tenderness of siblings learning to love each other. The cattiness of a teenage girl gone mad because she has “nothing to wear” despite the endless parade of clothes which fill drawers, closets, bathroom floors, and the underworld beneath the bed. Hugh Hefner and all the other iconic serial hedonists of our day may offer the perception of fun and unending pleasure, but if you looked a little more closely you would find emotional, mental, psychological and relational disasters, not to mention soul weariness which staggers the mind. It does not work. Pleasure can never trump goodness and a life filled with honest, sincere, and soul inspiring love. Moreover, true pleasure comes only in the context of true goodness. Beauty arises amidst righteousness not perversion and pretense.
What the “girls next door” want you to believe (amidst their own sinking voyage and in order that they might get paid) is that they have found the pinnacle of life. Yet, in the moments when they are forced to really look at themselves, not the silicone enhanced, lip injected, bleached, and liposucked version, …what they really see is that little girl who has always longed to be known and loved as a human being with honest aspiration and a desire for relationship. Not too many, to my knowledge, grew up with the aspiration of becoming a physical toy used up for the pleasure and enjoyment of men, and increasingly women, who see only a way to fulfill their lusts. Surely life offers more fulfillment than that for a woman.
So, we must ask ourselves as we wander on the seas of distorted messages and imagery. In a world where most on the planet have less than 10% of what we have in America, a world where millions have no clean water, suffer from horrible disease, die starving, and have no help, we must ask ourselves if the American crush on pleasure and self is really what life is all about. What have we traded? Far too much. But what now? How does one escape the pleasure ride to darkness? How does one who has ridden the fun train to emptiness find the will to get off and find another way home?
Look around, look within. Are you aching for something? Is that next party you have lined up going to fix you? Is that woman across the room, full of allure and savage sexuality going to be there for you when you break down, fail, wonder if you are worthy as a real man? Is that pile of powder going to finally stem the tide of that emotional tsunami that has been there your entire life? Is the next enhancement going to make you ultimately desirable to that one who will ride off into the sunset with you and make your life perfect? Are you going to put on your tombstone, “I went to an A List party and it made my life complete!” Is the next fling in a hotel while on business trip really the last one? Will you ever really be able to come home after a night out with the boys or girls and look your family in the eye guilt free? Wake up.
What does a man or woman do when the sudden appearance of reason strikes on the scene out of nowhere, amidst the party, drink in hand, lusts aflame, and with all the hungers of hedonism raging? The thing to do, along with the Prodigal Son, is to take note of your empty state, your squandered life, and turn back in the direction of your Father.
The striking truth of the Gospel is as real for Hugh Hefner as it is for Mother Theresa. Without Christ both are lost. In the former case, the one has neglected that reality for far too long and has tried to hide from the truth amidst the lie of fame. Fame for what? Convincing women, young girls, teenage boys, and an entire culture that a pair of great breasts and a vagina make a female worthy of some value? Who really wants that on their tombstone? The latter, having realized life was more than the pursuit of self earlier in life, gave of her self, her female self, to build a world for a few that would speak of the marvelous wonder of grace and compassion. Which of us has ever been more inspired by Playboy than by Mother Theresa? Which life lifts the human heart? What quality of character are we more apt to long for? Which of us, with our minds, hearts and souls intact, would rather spend a day with a “girl next door” rather than Mother Theresa? Are you kidding me?! Please. That is an easy trade.
If you are looking for a life with an upward trajectory, let me strongly urge you to look UP, UP indeed. If you look around at your surroundings and you are lost in the heap of moral waste, wake UP! That emptiness, that hole you are attempting to fill will never be filled with another party, another pay check, another accolade, another man, another woman, another toy, another trick, another hit, another trip, or another anything outside of Christ. He has said, and He meant what He said, “I am THE way, THE truth, and THE life.” No one finds the way to real life, He asserted, apart from Him. Try as you might, it will not happen. He may not offer you the girl next door, a party every night, or your name in lights for all to see. But, rest assured, what He offers is of far greater value than those temporary traps. He may bring you to the world of the arts, but it will be to showcase His attributes in a world that needs them desperately. He may give you untold success, but be careful to use it for His agenda, otherwise, the riches will own you and master you. He may give you physical beauty or wed you to physical beauty, but be reminded, such beauty comes from the creative hand of a wondrous gift-giving God, and you were created for relationship with that beauty. The true beauty unfolds with him or her when you know her/him, and are fully known yourself. That happens as love grows apart from the bedroom. As the knowledge of each other grows so does the wonderment and ecstasy, undefiled, of the bedroom, as a celebration of the relationship God has granted. We tend to crave a cheap substitute when it comes to sexuality. God created it. It just makes sense that it comes fully alive within his plan. Outside of His plan we only find distortion, distraction, dirt, and debris.
The upward life, friends, is lived as we find ourselves in Him. As Augustine has suggested, we will find no rest until we find ourselves in Him. We were created for Him. We were created for relationship. We cannot understand the wonder of life and the beauty of relationship apart from Him. That vacation of the soul we so desperately seek, is found only along the shoreline of God’s plan for our lives. Try to get there any other way than the course He has drawn out for us, and, like the victims on the Titanic, amidst the sounds of safety and the blissful ignorance of reality, you will wreck your life, your soul, and your eternity.
There is a way up. That is the good news. He stands ready to lead you there. Take Him up on His offer. You will never be the same.
Bruce Smith
optimuslife.org
blog.optimuschoice.com
soulstormsite.com
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »