We must look beneath the surface of the public personae the media masks, and the false selves. We see a desire for truth, albeit misguided. We know that deep down we desire to connect and be ourselves with people who are whole, people who echo a sense of the eternal. Certain individuals are intriguing to us because they seem to be alive. Survey after survey tells us that confidence is the most attractive quality we find in other people. We value a sense of knowing one's self and a sense of mystery that hints at both tranquillity and strength.
As people with a horizontal view of self, we spend so much time cultivating our outward appearances and shaping our public performances that we neglect our interior lives. That is to say, we neglect our souls. As theologian and writer Eugene Peterson said: "In our current culture, "soul" has given way to "self" as the term of choice to designate who and what we are. "Self" is the soul minus God." If we are to rescue ourselves and our culture from the crisis of self, we must re-image ourselves in the image of God.
Our culture associates being bad with fun: the term naughty is now associated with sexual pleasure; ice cream advertising encourages us to give in to temptation; motorcycle ads tell us to be bad. Why should you try to be good in a world where being naughty is the way you have fun? In fact, having fund by being naughty is almost celebrated as a counter-cultural act of freedom fighting. Time and time again, popular culture pits the pleasure-seeking "good guys" against those killjoys who wish to stop the party people from having a good time (which is normally equated with getting high, losing your virginity, throwing a wild dance party, or all of the above).
The struggle to be "bad" in the face of a mythical enemy who wants you to conform is almost a political struggle. This cultural myth means that our societies change little. The hard work that is required to change unjust laws and policies, or the long-term commitment to community development that is needed to help the poor, does not look very "sexy" when compared to the mythology of a "party on" revolution of being bad. Thus, social systems don't change and the irony is that the false freedom fight of pleasure only serves to keep unjust structures in place.
Some past saints were influenced by a worldview that saw the material world as evil and as something to retreat from. That is why so many of them fled to the desert or the wilderness or to monasteries. While some of these saints became literal martyrs, others saw their separation from the world for the sake of holiness as a kind of martyrdom. Thus, it is little wonder that many young adults look at holiness as a form of social death.
Sadly, Christians have proven that sin can and does happen in the Christian ghetto; it just usually happens behind closed doors. Such dualistic views of holiness seem millions of miles away form the reality of our lives and our spiritual capabilities These views are based on a worldview of escape and detachment. Biblical faith, however, gives us a spirituality based on struggle and engagement.
Therefore, we require a more robust approach to holiness, one that takes seriously the temptations we face daily, one that recognises that we are able to act in destructive ways, one that does not require us to flee the mission field to which Jesus sent us, and one that does not require us to abandon our ordinary lives to achieve spiritual growth. To walk the path of holiness and to find our true selves, we need to rediscover a biblical holiness grounded in the value of creation.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.78-101
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