You are currently browsing the Bruce Smith weblog archives for the day 29. October 2010.
29. October 2010 by BruceSmith.
Spiritual Agnosia
Ever have a moment when you walk past a mirrored window or a storefront window with just the right amount of light, and you notice this image there, you linger over it for a moment, and then, all of a sudden, Bam!, it hits you, “That’s me!”? Its one of those weird experiences in life that happen ever so often. One would think that we are so accustomed to knowing our own selves that it would register all the time, “That’s an image, a reflection of me…”. But it does not happen that way all the time, and certainly not for everyone. In fact, some people are diagnosed with what doctors call agnosia, the inability to distinguish, recognize or recall faces. Some famous folk like artist Chuck Close, and renown neurologist Oliver Sachs, in fact, have the impairment which results from a lack of development in a certain sector of the brain early on. They can see a face one day, and then, not for the life of them, recognize it or remember it just days, or even hours later. They can make out the general shape of faces at times, but cannot always know or discern all the facial details most of us are accustomed to processing right away. That must drive a person to frustration!
Agnosia. The inability to distinguish or recognize faces. What an interesting dilemma. Looking a person in the eye, the window to the soul, and absorbing a “sense” of the person, writ large by countenance, expression, and gaze, and yet not having the ability to discern reality…utterly frustrating, I’m sure. I cannot help but wonder about the spiritual metaphor which comes to mind. There are many realities staring us in the face every day, the lines distinguishable, yet, in our inability to see or refusal to really look, we cannot grasp what is truly there.
Spiritual agnosia. I think its real, and alive in our culture. We see the effects of life lived apart from God’s agenda relationally, emotionally, financially, sexually, intellectually, and otherwise, yet, in our unwillingness to recognize the truth, we don’t grasp who we have actually become. Moms and dads, ignoring the face of truth so clear and compelling, run from their families when it gets uncomfortable or confining, and run to new faces that promise a false hope. Businessmen, whose hearts and minds have been distorted by the call of riches and recognition, abandon the face of integrity in order to find some perceived quality of life which does not actually exist. We chase a mirage, a shattered visage, in hopes that our blindness will actually make us whole. Women, broken by past choices and past hurts, pursue a false image of hope in destructive and seductive relationships, all the while never recognizing the increasing desperation filling their souls as patterns repeat, patterns of willful agnosia, actual blindness. In choosing not to see what is really there, we choose our fate. We rather choose the mindless hours of television viewing, and allow our kids the same, instead of opening a meaningful book and actually learning. We tag anything resembling mind-work with the label of “boring” and allow our children to embrace the same shallow, future defining perspective. And we wonder why things like WWF Wrestling are the most watched TV programming along with the carnage of reality TV, soaps, and sit-coms. Now, I’m all for a good laugh and entertainment at times, but clearly, our minds, as a whole, in our present culture, are turned off by and large. Nothing good can come of this. And what we call music, thinkers of the past, let alone culture-watchers, would have (and thankfully a few still do) called ear and mind poison. Much of what our nation consumes on this front is merely moral and intellectual blindness put to a catchy tune. A good chunk of it, considered for what it actually teaches, communicates, inspires and provokes, is nothing short of God-mocking evil all dressed up and having too many places to go. Turn the mind off, it screams, just go with the driving beat! Don’t look at it too closely, we are encouraged, for then we might see it for what it is.
On a more pervasive platform, on the stage of worldview and thought, we teach our college students to actually abhor the idea of ultimate truth. In teaching them to see nothing clearly, we attempt to convince them that all claims are equal, all faces the same, nothing is truly discernible. 2 and 2 do not always equal four! Who says?! That is a set up for frustration if there ever was one. How are we to function as a people, tossed to and fro on a violent sea of moral confusion and spiritual bankruptcy? If we have no aim, fundamentally, where are we headed? And Hollywood? If ever there was a truly distorted image of reality staring us in the face and screaming with the consequences of spiritual agnosia, modern day Hollywood is it. We are taught that life is about feeling, emotion, quick plot fixes, seduction, violence, money, animal-like instincts, and mind-numbing pursuits, as we sit in front of the silver screen taking in all it offers. Truth, here, is ignored by a willfully blind society looking for another pleasure fix. In looking, often, are eyes have developed moral cataracts. If its up there, we seem to think, then it ought to be for viewing. Again, turn the eyes of the spirit off, just go with it, is the cry of the day.
Lest you think this is a soapbox preach about all that is wrong with us as a country, let me be clear. We ought to enjoy life. We ought to live life to the full. But in reality, we are going about just the opposite. The face of our cultural and personal pursuits are reflecting back at us in the pages of our newspapers, divorce papers, court papers, …and in vivid ways. Over the last few decades, as we have gotten wealthier, smarter, more advanced, and more evolved, drug use is up, therapy offices are more full, divorces increasing, murder spreading, addictions more prevalent, minds softer, hearts harder, and churches less full. The malls have a better attendance record than do churches now on Sunday.
If we are to find the life we were designed to live, we must recognize our agnosia for what it is-a lack of development in the most serious of ways. May God help us to see more clearly, who we are, who we are called to be, and the quality of life He offers us. May we remember, and pursue the face of God. In doing so, we very well may find a more brilliant, luminous, and altogether more lovely life. Not a life of ease and not a life free from difficulty, but a life with more depth, color, nuance, richness, and meaning.
God, give us eyes to see. Amen
Bruce Smith,
optimuslife.org
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