"
This is why, despite my own temptations to just shut off the TV and move to the boonies I can’t. Correction - that’s partially why I can’t. Part of it is that I’m simply drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I want the city. I want to go see movies. I want to sit down once in a while with a beer and a good real-time strategy game. I want to be a part of everything that’s going on, to get right square in the middle of it and separate the wheat from the chaff. Maybe that’s dancing the edge a little too much for some, but anything else just isn’t living as far as I’m concerned. If I were still single, I’d move in a heartbeat to New York or Rome or Tokyo. Or even Los Angeles. Because whatever assessments we have about the good and bad things that stem from our culture, that’s where the culture is coming from. And we need to be aware of it to know where it’s headed, and what we can do.We struggle to find a balance between belonging to the world and belonging to Christ. We are children of the world, our cultures, our nations and the love of those things is one of the natural goods. As Bart Simpson once said, "How can we be a community if we don't watch the same shows?"
And I can’t, can’t, can’t stand hiding from it. It’s not who I am.
This is why I get uppity about arbitrary anachronisms, or the adoption of homeliness as a fashion statement by Catholics. We shouldn’t be throwbacks just because we’re afraid of today. We shouldn’t adopt the look of the FLDS because we’re afraid of immodesty or impropriety. We need to work to be the best we can within the parameters of what’s going on, right now, every day. And it’s possible, I know, because I see it. It’s out there, often unwittingly. There are people with no connection to our belief system out there wearing modest clothes because they find them fashionable, or making good art because it’s beautiful, or making and enjoying good food because it delights the senses."
I see that I have aroused questions.
Good.
The Letter to Diognetus is a nice summary of how Christians have (and ought to) live vis a vis the world.
ReplyDeleteRobert,
ReplyDeleteI am one paragraph into this letter and I want to thank you. This is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for.
It's one thing to assert that the Amish Catholic approach is wrong; it's entirely another to figure out how to substantiate that argument.
Maybe the Amish Catholics are just naturally Amish. Maybe they would be Amish hippies if they weren't Catholics. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteI don't know - I live where I live because it's my home and I've rarely lived in the city here (which is really just a big country town of about 200k inhabitants).
It would be wrong for people to assume I dress as I do (which is not Amish; just sort of "daggy") because that's how I've always dressed - even as a practicing Atheist.
Just my 0.02c
It would be wrong for people to assume I dress as I do (which is not Amish; just sort of "daggy") because that's how I've always dressed - even as a practicing Atheist.
ReplyDeleteWhich should read:
It would be wrong for people to assume I dress as I do (which is not Amish; just sort of "daggy") because I'm Catholic. This is how I've always dressed - even as a practicing Atheist.