The Way to Freedom
Freedom is a gift, but it is also a choice, and we have to decide if we want it.
We live on a mountain, exposed to a greater degree than we had anticipated to the elements and to the vicissitudes of technology. The exposure is compensated by views of mountains that go on forever, and by proximity to the Monastery of St. Dominic, where cloistered nuns intercede for their Order, the Church, and the entire world. The effect of their prayers and the depth of their piety cannot be underestimated. As for the views, we are constantly praying the Psalm, “I lift my eyes to the hills…”
Still, when Internet service goes out, as it did last Thursday afternoon, it gives one pause to consider whether our dependence upon technology is altogether good.
Of course we know the answer: it’s “yes, but.” Yes, technology is a useful tool, but it has its limits, and its limitations. As for limits, it can only do so much. Bob Weil has writing a compelling piece on ChatCPT over at New Oxford Review; I commend it to your attention. For me, the salient points of Chat CPT and AI are their soullessness and their narrowness. They’re not really capable of creative thought, and they never will be, for they have no souls. AI-generated images and ChatCPT writing both have a certain correctitude about them, but it’s clear they are machine-generated: they lack the third dimension. They respond to queries the way they are programmed to respond, and they reflect the biases of their creators, which are clear: thought outside a narrow range is readily defined as hate speech, extreme, right-wing, disinformation, misinformation, etc. You know: not good. And so those who rely upon those devices find themselves censoring themselves, because, to get along, go along, right?
What comes to mind is the Lord’s warning in the Sermon on the Mount about the hard path and the easy path.
What happens to society when kids in school lose the capacity for discerning reading — a term I prefer in this case to “critical thinking,” laden as that latter term is with Marxist overtones and with a preference for destroying rather than understanding—? I think we know the answer, because we are living it. The real attack has been against sustained concentration, examination of conscience, examination of motives, and examination of sources. The superficiality of our collective national life is causing ennui and vertigo, not the two characteristics we want to dominate as we head into a national election which really is the election of a lifetime, one that will determine the direction of the Nation for far more than the next four years. One can sort of hobble together a coherent world view by paying attention to both the legacy media and the internet sources, if one can stand it and one has the time and inclination, but still, it’s only ad hoc, since the sources of information are controlled and the permissible assumptions are hard-baked into the sources.
Or one can develop a worldview that is independent of and deeper than the ephemera that claim our attention and demand to be considered as the most important things right now! You have to! Danger abounds! There’s never been an opportunity like this! If you snooze, you lose….
Perhaps it’s the old educator in me, but still, I have to say it: pick up a book. But don’t just pick it up: read it, dialogue with it, ruminate over it, consider what truth, or untruth, it is offering. Use your mind in sustained concentration; and if you can no longer do that, the good news is that you can recover the ability.
Perhaps it’s the Catholic in me, but still, I have to say it: pick up The Good Book. Pick up the Bible and read it, see what it actually has to say. The other evening, in that pause between work and dinner, I picked up my New Testament and read the Letter to the Colossians. There is deep, rich fare there, and it isn’t that long: you can read it in about fifteen minutes to a half-hour (it’s a letter, right?). I could read that text, or any other biblical text, every day and find more meaning in it with each reading. It’s the Word of God: which means it is inexhaustible. This is what happens when I pray the Psalms. I recite the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary almost every morning, and I am struck at how the Psalms never lose their freshness — or that when they do, the problem lies within me and not within the text.
The Word of God has the power to create us anew every time we come into contact with … Him. Yes, you read that correctly. The locus classicus, the proof-text if you will, for the authority of Holy Scripture is found in Hebrews 4:12, “The Word of God is alive and powerful,…” and you know the rest or can look it up. It’s verse 13 that commands my attention: “and before him no creature is hidden…” (emphasis added). Jesus Christ is the Word of God, the Word made Flesh. Holy Scripture is the mind of God written, those truths we need for our eternal salvation. So if you want to know the Word of God — Him—, you need to know the Word of God — it.
It’s the way you read Holy Scripture that makes the difference. Consider verse 13 again: “before him no creature is hidden….” Isn’t one of the central challenges of our lives that we want to hide? There are things we just don’t want other people knowing about us: we don’t want the vulnerability. Now obviously there are things that others should never know about us; that’s not the problem. The problem is the things we are hiding from ourselves, those sins we’d rather forget about, those embarrassing situations we have created for ourselves that now handicap us in some way. Those are the things we want to hide and pretend aren’t there. And the internet, that electronic carnival that runs 24/7, is there to help us do just that, capitalizing — literally — upon our impulses to feint and dodge, duck and hide, bury with a surfeit of goods all the stuff we would rather not face.
The thing is, we will face it sooner or later. And the other thing is, it is better, always, to face it sooner rather than later.
The other thing is, we have to look in the mirror, and we get a choice as to which mirror to use. We can use the carnival mirror — you know, the one that distorts into hilarious shapes and makes us laugh because we just know we don’t look like that and lets please have some more funnel cake. We can even use this mirror when we are spiritually-minded or religiously observant: and, let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s the self-deceptions and the letting ourselves off the hook that make the non-spiritual, the non-religious, look at us and say, with contempt, “no thanks.” We use the carnie mirror when we want to deceive ourselves that things are not really all that bad, I’ve been making decent progress, …
Or we can use a real mirror, like the one you use in a tailor shop, three-sided, no lying: it’s all there to be seen. That’s a harder mirror to use, unless we’ve grown accustomed to using it and have come to see that the truth is our friend, no matter what it reveals to us. We cannot address what we don’t know needs addressing. Once we use that mirror well, the carnie mirror holds no attraction. This is why the internet carnival demands our attention all. day. long, like a toddler that insists on being the center of the universe. Break free of its grip, and you might really see. Let hundreds of millions of people, billions, do the same, and the world as we know it…
will cease to exist.
That’s what the Internet tenders are afraid of. We are in their spider web, you see, and that’s right where they want us to be.
“You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” Jesus said. But only if you want to know the truth.
Some years ago the CCP did a detailed study of what was the cause of the West’s dynamism, what made the West so creative. Know what the answer was? It was the New Testament. The New Testament breathes freedom in those who read it and meditate upon it, and then act upon it. It creates the capacity to act by strengthening the faith, hope, and charity infused into us at baptism. It shows us our great Exemplar, Jesus Christ, the Captain of our Salvation; and it shows us ourselves. Rather than letting us fall into the pit of despair at the gap between Him and us, it shows us that HE is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; and it teaches us how to walk His Way, embrace Him as Truth, and live His life.
The initial passages on this journey are exciting and exhilarating. But then it gets hard, and sometimes quite hard, and sometimes for quite a while. And then it gets easy. It’s the middle passage that has to be managed, and, frankly, sometimes just endured. That’s when we pray, meditate upon Scripture, practice our devotions, go to Mass and Confession even when we don’t feel like it, even if we think we are getting nothing out of it, even if it’s painful. No pain, no gain, right? It’s the Way of the Cross, and that Way and that Cross hurt. Yes, the Lord gives the helps so that we can traverse the Way and die with Him on His Cross — but we have to accept the helps and we have to keep walking, refusing the internet carnival and the rest of the siren calls that beckon us to ruin.
Freedom is a gift, but it is also a choice.