A Spiritual Death

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

The task has fallen upon me to make the announcement that our spiritual death is now upon us. Unfortunately, the warning Martin Luther King uttered 50 years ago fell on barren soil. We have become a spiritually dead nation, and a nation that is spiritually dead learns too late it cannot exist without a spiritual dimension to life. Though there be few now present to pay their last respects, the time will soon come when the world will rue its passing

Our spiritual emptiness is obvious to anyone who cares to regard the situation plainly. You merely have to turn to any source of mass media to see all the evidence you need of a society that glorifies idiocy and vice over wisdom and virtue. Our heroes are the violent, the vain, the arrogant, and the selfish. Those shining and stellar examples of spirituality we might exalt in our society are forgotten or given paltry lip service for their sacrifice and martyrdom. When was the last time you heard Mahatma Gandhi’s name mentioned on television or elsewhere? When was the last time you heard, in school or on radio, an uninterrupted speech of Martin Luther King? What’s that you say, we no longer have time to sit and listen for an hour to the greatest spiritual leaders of the last hundred years? I rest my case. What have we done in the last week/month/year that is more important? Our spiritual doom is here.

Why, do you ask, has not one of more importance than myself been appointed to make such an important announcement? It is precisely because we have reached the time of spiritual death that there is no one of note to proclaim spirituality’s passing. Those whom our society reveres as religious or moral leaders are too spiritually lacking to admit that such a thing has come to pass. Our religious leaders are as far from spirituality as the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day or those who condemned Socrates to death.

Some may still believe that spirituality is alive and well, but it is only because its lifeless corpse has been grotesquely paraded and puppeteered by those who see fit to use it to sell agendas or narratives.

Conservatives push a religion of stone masquerading as spirit, not a living breathing religion but one of rules that shackle spirituality. The spirit is quite dead in such churches and the rules once set down to guide us towards beauty and truth and love for our fellow humans are now weapons of punishment and subjugation. Their dead laws now tower over us like giant carved idols, blocking out God’s light from ever shining upon us.

They call themselves Christians, but they put their faith in the worldly rather than the spiritual. They speak of prayer and spend their time chasing profit. They reject the all-conquering power of love in favor of walls and weapons. They do not see the God of love that reveals Himself in Scripture but only the god of punishment, judgment and power. In the image of this god they fashion themselves, and wrap themselves in cloaks of righteousness as they walk past those who hunger and thirst, the strangers and the sick, those without clothing and those in prison.

Liberals are little better, practicing in smaller ways judgment and hatred while mouthing the words tolerance and love. They have mistaken their unwillingness to make moral judgments as the highest virtue, when in truth an unwillingness to provide any standards at all is just as deadly as making simplistic and absolute ones. Both absolute tolerance and intolerance spring from a lack of spiritual maturity and an unwillingness to make thoughtful and principled decisions.

Liberalism has failed us and it is in the absolute unwillingness of liberals to accept this that can be seen their inability to see the world as it is. Born in the 60’s, liberalism was the twin sibling of progressivism and radicalism. So closely was the resemblance that many viewed them as interchangeable. But there were unmistakable differences for those willing to look honestly. Liberalism was the sibling who was always said the right thing to her parents but never did any of the actual work. Sadly, liberalism was the easier path, and thus the one most traveled.

So they made concessions on their greater obligations in return for a hard line on the secondary moral issues. Their sin was not arrogance as the conservatives’ was, but hypocrisy, of pretending to be opposing but secretly capitulating on all issues of substance. They were a willing co-partner in most injustices perpetrated by conservatives, never confronting evil head-on but always willing to find a compromise position. Retreating time and again from the battle that was thrust upon them because they knew they had personal positions of safety they could retreat to. Busy pursuing their own interests, they were content to utter token proclamations in support of those who suffered most keenly from an inherently unjust and unspiritual society. They supported the rights of blacks and moved to the suburbs. They supported the rights of women even as households found it necessary to have both parents working full-time where once a single forty-hour workweek could provide. They called themselves environmentalists and built their new houses on what was once woodlands and prairies. They considered it the pinnacle of virtuousness to be the (slightly) lesser of two evils.

While conservatives killed truth by oversimplification, liberals broke its back by twisting it into unnatural positions. War became humanitarian intervention, NAFTA was passed to help the average worker, and super-predators were locked away to help those in the inner city. Because class could not be spoken of, race became the issue that could neither be denied nor dealt with. So contorted were the stories they told, it forced those looking for something of substance to turn to the simplistic narratives provided by conservatives.

But while the damage they did to truth was immense, the single greatest sin of which the liberals are guilty is the sin of war. La Rochefoucauld once said hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue. Once liberals at least pretended to pay tribute to the idea of peace, but now they are the greatest champions of foreign intervention. When Donald Trump asks for hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending, the Democrats’ reply is to give him more than he asked for. They constantly demand Trump take a tougher stance with other nations and only applaud him when he orders missiles to be fired. The only hypocrisy that yet remains to liberals is in their justifications for war, which they insist are always fought for the noblest of reasons.

We are now left watching the Pharisees and Sadducees bicker between themselves, dominating every aspect of our lives while the most urgent issues facing humanity are forgotten. They no longer seek the truth, they only wish to blame the other while profiting as much as they can from their positions in government. The last spark of earnest debate or principled position is an ember long grown cold.

The good news is that there is yet hope. For we are talking about the realm of the spiritual and the idea of rebirth is quite natural in such a realm. What dies is the individual but the spirit lives on. The ego dies, that is all, releasing the spirit in the way that the phoenix emerges from the ashes. Renewal is possible, but it requires repentance and reawakening.

Whether or not you believe in a higher power is immaterial. What is important is that you accept the mindset required to bring about real and fundamental change, which is realistically what is required for our society if it is to keep from falling into the abyss. Such change is not easily made. Like an alcoholic, or a drug addict, or anyone else with a behavioral problem that is ruining his or her life, there is a general method by which one climbs from the hole that has been dug. It will require genuine humility, an acceptance that the path that we have been walking will only lead to death and destruction, not merely for ourselves but for countless innocent people who share our planet. It will mean letting go of many beliefs we have clung to quite dearly, acknowledging that they have been hurting rather than helping us.

It is our goal if we are to be saved to once again find our spiritual dimension and the virtues that spring from such a perspective. A spiritual world-view requires sacrifice and commitment, it means placing spiritual considerations above physical and selfish concerns. It means seeing beyond our increasingly narrowing perspective, questioning our most basic of assumptions and reconnecting with the world in meaningful ways. We must step outside the moment and the cultural assumptions that have accumulated and solidified themselves around us like a prison. We must rediscover those great thinkers and great works that have guided and motivated humanity in all its noblest aspirations. We must once again embrace those virtues that were essential in creating and sustaining societies: non-violence, frugality, charity, honor, humility, service.

The key to our own liberation is within our grasp, but first we must free our hands of the unnecessary burdens we have been carrying. We must let go of all that our media and institutions tell us is important. Letting go is an act of faith, and an act of faith is what is required if we are ever to leave he road to ruin we now walk.