Feeling settled

You have riches and freedom here [in the West], but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love? Lech Walesa (leader of Poland's anti-communist movement in the 1980s)

Feeling comfortable can lead easily to complacency. Summer is the season of fresh fruit and exotic tasty fruits. I transition from dried to fresh but there are some that are large and tasteless. These have been forced, picked early and ripened en route. Our lives are often tasteless and full of stuff without meaning or shape. It was Augustine who said in his autobiography that he was restless until he found his rest in God. Perhaps we need to maintain a pilgrim-on-a-journey stance right through our lives.

In Allport's work, a psychologist of religion, the idea of an intrinsic and extrinsic faith was developed. The latter is a faith grounded in practices attending church, Bible studies etc. The former, rooted in internal values and motivation. Followers have developed a further category of quest where seemingly this dimension is a contributor to significant maturity. We get stuck and often in the extrinsic place. We sound and look right but there is no interior transformation.

This last weekend I was speaking at a church conference about the dangers of our current image culture it's shallowness and meaninglessness. We are so focussed on being noticed and recognized and looking right. This has been a shift from our idol culture which placed money, sex, and power as gods to be worshiped. I wondered if we need to think of ourselves as icons either as windows to God or representations of God. if we are are open and willing we can truly be God's artworks.