Self-Awareness
I am looking again at The Future of Success to prepare my sermon on Jesus cleansing the Temple in John 2. The Future of Success is a book by Robert Reich on the shaping of our souls by american business. I don't think he ever sets it up that way, but thats what its about. I really want to read it straight through ... it feels like a book everyone should try and read sometime.
"Society as a whole suspects that something is awry when it's shocked by events like children in an upscale suburb opening fire on other children at school. Such events are sadly expected in poor inner-city schools, but not in tony, carefully sorted suburbs. For a time, pundits, preachers, and politicians wonder publicly if our values are wrong, if we lack "balance" in our lives, if we're failing to spend enough time and energy on the "important things," such as our children. Then the crisis subsides, the headlines disappear, and we all go back to paid work, often more frenzied than before."
Or as Brian Walsh records in his opening to his commentary on Colossians in reference to 9/11 the day after "an astonishing assault on the temple of free enterprise in New York City and the cathedral of American military might in Washington, D.C." the presdident announces "America is open for business." Wasn't that rather callous and irrelevant under such circumstances? Not at all ... The myth of salvation in this country is "found in the ever-expanding global economy. If "America is open for business," then freedom still reigns! ... the highest patriotic duty of the American population was to go out and consume."
Well you pundits and preachers ... I am tired of our civic religion. It is time for a sustained proclamation of "important things" in life ... forget Focus on the Family ... Jesus said "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" Time for us to let the household of God shape our souls instead of this beleagered corporate identity that has no rest and has no relationships.
Reich also says: "For many men, the painful discovery comes when something in their lives explodes. It may be their marriage, or their health, or their child who suddenly gets in trouble. Or it happens when their job begins to demand so much that they wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Or when their job becomes so rewarding that they suddenly discover the other parts of their life have all but disappeared. ...
Or earlier "As noted, the typical American is working 350 more hours a year than the typical European, more hours than the Japanese. And this feverish pace doesn't include time tkaen up with the ever more ubiquitous intrusions on personal life--phone, faxes, emails, business trips. Nor does it include the preoccupations, exhilarations, and anxieties that overflow paid work and flood the rest of waking life and sometimes even sleep. Many of us don't run out of time as much as we run out of juice. Constantly being on--creating, teaching, convincing, and selling---can be emotionally draining. ... Even if there's physical time for friends, family, community, and personal reflection, there's no psychic space left. Alternatively, we're so juiced up by work that we don't want to spare juice for anything else. The rest of life is becoming downsized, outsourced, and sorted. Is this the choice we've made? Is this the future of success?"
In the words of Howard Beale from Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and niether should you.
"Society as a whole suspects that something is awry when it's shocked by events like children in an upscale suburb opening fire on other children at school. Such events are sadly expected in poor inner-city schools, but not in tony, carefully sorted suburbs. For a time, pundits, preachers, and politicians wonder publicly if our values are wrong, if we lack "balance" in our lives, if we're failing to spend enough time and energy on the "important things," such as our children. Then the crisis subsides, the headlines disappear, and we all go back to paid work, often more frenzied than before."
Or as Brian Walsh records in his opening to his commentary on Colossians in reference to 9/11 the day after "an astonishing assault on the temple of free enterprise in New York City and the cathedral of American military might in Washington, D.C." the presdident announces "America is open for business." Wasn't that rather callous and irrelevant under such circumstances? Not at all ... The myth of salvation in this country is "found in the ever-expanding global economy. If "America is open for business," then freedom still reigns! ... the highest patriotic duty of the American population was to go out and consume."
Well you pundits and preachers ... I am tired of our civic religion. It is time for a sustained proclamation of "important things" in life ... forget Focus on the Family ... Jesus said "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" Time for us to let the household of God shape our souls instead of this beleagered corporate identity that has no rest and has no relationships.
Reich also says: "For many men, the painful discovery comes when something in their lives explodes. It may be their marriage, or their health, or their child who suddenly gets in trouble. Or it happens when their job begins to demand so much that they wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. Or when their job becomes so rewarding that they suddenly discover the other parts of their life have all but disappeared. ...
Or earlier "As noted, the typical American is working 350 more hours a year than the typical European, more hours than the Japanese. And this feverish pace doesn't include time tkaen up with the ever more ubiquitous intrusions on personal life--phone, faxes, emails, business trips. Nor does it include the preoccupations, exhilarations, and anxieties that overflow paid work and flood the rest of waking life and sometimes even sleep. Many of us don't run out of time as much as we run out of juice. Constantly being on--creating, teaching, convincing, and selling---can be emotionally draining. ... Even if there's physical time for friends, family, community, and personal reflection, there's no psychic space left. Alternatively, we're so juiced up by work that we don't want to spare juice for anything else. The rest of life is becoming downsized, outsourced, and sorted. Is this the choice we've made? Is this the future of success?"
In the words of Howard Beale from Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and niether should you.
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