Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. Matthew 24:12
“We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy… The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity. This psychosis permeates even our mythology. The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor. … Covetousness we call ambition. Hoarding we call prudence. Greed we call industry.”
Richard Foster (b. 1942) in Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998) 79-80.
Jesus warned us that the prevailing way of thinking in society would become sick, wicked, and psychotic. Today, bad is elevated as good, and good is outdated and irrelevant.
This profound point caught me off guard: “The modern hero is the poor boy who purposefully becomes rich rather than the rich boy who voluntarily becomes poor.” Recently, my study of monks and saints who made a difference for God through the centuries often had “the rich boy [or girl] who voluntarily becomes poor” in the narrative.
Today’s post inspires me to call readers to abandon prevailing patterns and consider how radical obedience, unconditional surrender, and countercultural living might rekindle our love for God.
That’s ultimately what’s at stake here. Sick, wicked, and psychotic people cannot grasp or impart the generosity and love of God to others. And my big concern here is with the next generation.
I was up in the mountains this weekend with my family and noticed many dying trees. This one, however, was full of life, it had much new growth. It came to mind when writing this post. See the new growth on this tree, the long new shoots like fingers. Most trees did not have this. It made me think that most trees might be in the sick category.
If we aim for healthy living we will produce new growth, our health will be evident to all, and like the saints through the centuries, our otherworldly, godly living will impact society in unfathomable ways.
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