A Season for Hope?

This morning I read a very insightful article from Father Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, regular columnist seen in our Angelus News.  While Fr. Rolheiser may not answer the question he's posing, he certainly defines the problems exceptionally well.  As someone who works in initiation ministry, that is, welcoming and preparing new people into the church, these are all issues I wrestle with regularly.  I have been giving this a lot of thought as of late, and I have to wonder if all of this doesn't fall under the category of "the decline of the family structure."  Follow me on this...

For countless millennia the basic social unit was the family.  It was understood that one's duty was to one's family, no matter how often flawed.  The family was the method by which all the members were physically protected and was the engine of an economy.  The agrarian family worked together to keep their farms going and growing.  Urban families shared responsibilities to keep their enterprises going.  Even through the industrial revolution the family remained the basic social unit.  While in many cases family units became smaller due to immigration from their home countries to find freedom and fortunes in another country, the family stayed together and worked together.  Why was that?  Because no matter how flawed a family can be, everyone understood that they owed some kind of duty to others in the family.  It was an outward approach to love and cooperation.  Selflessness.

Now fast-forward to our current age.  Now the dominant force in society is a sense of self.  It's all about me:  what I want and what I have to say and the likes I get and the photos I take of my self - the "selfie".  We are in the midst of the age of the selfie.  Selfishness.  The very glue that once held families together - selflessness - cannot exist in a world centered on self.  Family is no longer a group of people who help each other, but become stepping-stones to higher personal ambitions.  And this selfishness has led us to a sense of entitlement - I deserve this because I am who I am, and you can't infringe on my sense of self.  I challenge you, pick the issue of the day and it all comes back to selfishness.

Now let's look at church.  A group of people, a family, focused on our Lord Jesus Christ, who gives us the ultimate example of selflessness as he taught his apostles the merits of servant leadership.  Brothers and sisters, there is no room in our Lord's kingdom for selfishness.  God may love us for who we are, no matter how flawed, but as he gives us life we must reciprocate by loving others as we love ourselves.  This is not a philosophy that can survive in the age of the selfie.  It is completely incompatible with our Christian faith.  It is no wonder church and religiosity in general is on the decline.  And I think Fr. Rolheiser does a good job of naming the assorted groups that fit this distinction.  I would also argue that common to all these groups is selfishness.

So how did we get here?  As with everything, it's complicated.  No one moment, no one instance, no one movement can explain the roots of the age of the selfie.  Rather, it can be attributed to several elements.  One could go back to the populist movements of the early 20th century that had people recognizing that allegiance to a leader or king just because they demanded it was a bad idea and stifled personal choice.  One could go back to the mid-20th century to the post war economies, whether it was the prosperousness seen in the US that lead to the mobile society and the nuclear family giving people the chance to go out on their own, or the struggles the rest of the world faced with shortages and rationing that led to a sense of isolation from a state that had failed them.  One could go back to the social movements of the 1960's and 1970's where marginalized peoples finally stood up and said no more, reminding us that they counted as part of society and should have the same rights and benefits as others, and offering freedom to many people (especially women) that never had it before.  Perhaps the crowning moment, however, was the technology revolution, the internet and the invention of the iPhone, where once people who never had a voice could become the center of their own universe, and one's sense of worth rested not on what they did but who they were and who "liked" it.  Instant gratification brought to you on a platform that creates an addiction to nothing tangible.  What was a way to strengthen personal connections and improve communication among one another has done neither.

Now I don't think any one moment brought us to where we are today, and all these moments in and of themselves are not necessarily bad, but they all have helped to swing the pendulum of selfishness to an extreme not ever seen in history, with the result being a dissolution of the family unit as we have known it.  That's not to say that one's definition of family must follow archaic social norms or gender-based roles of the past (which have their own problems), but the concept that we as people must work with each other to advance the many.  As our marriage vows state, through good times and bad, in sickness and in health - we vow to stick together to raise each other up.  A reminder that we owed a duty to each other.  And when one loses a sense of duty to others, it's a small step to losing our sense of duty to God.  We have been taught that our very lives are a gift from God and our bodies are temples of the divine within all of us.  But like the ancient Israelites we have kicked God out of the temple and the age of the selfie has brought us to a new age of Exile from the Lord.  

But just as during the first Exile, all is not lost.  There still remain many people who know the Lord and reach out to others.  And even those who are largely selfish still see the benefit of doing something good for others, even if it is from their surplus wealth, especially during this time of year.  So I have hope.  And so should you.