I finished reading Mary Eberstadt's, "How The West Really Lost God," and then I listened to a lecture she gave.
I'm always game to hear a good cultural critic and find out what they have to say about the state of affairs we find ourselves in. Her first book was called, "Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Behavioral Drugs and Other Parent Substitutes," which I have not read, but it gives you some idea as to where she is coming from.
Never mind all of Western civilization, that's way too big to tackle in one sitting, but running through my mind while I was reading her was the impact on individuals that the destruction of family and our modern cultural shifts have had, and how that all relates to faith.
She talks and writes a bit about animal rights which made me laugh because I have a propensity to roll my eyes and go, "listen up people, this isn't even good animal husbandry." That means if humans are actually "animals," then we need to invest ourselves in the care and feeding of them! You're not going to get a healthy litter of piglets or a good flock of chickens doing the things we are doing. When you treat an animal like that they become paranoid, fearful, self destructive, aggressive, and what we would term "mentally ill." Isolation is a huge problem. They need lots of social interaction or they become really neurotic. Ha! Ironically, anything that interacts exclusively with humans tends to also become really neurotic, but I digress...
Anyway, barriers to faith on a micro level have a lot to do with a loss or a theft of natural affection. You can't tell someone "God is a good, good Father" when their experience with "fathers" amounts to abuse, unpredictablity, and abandonment. Mother's are vitally important too, which is why her, "Home Alone America" book caught my eye.
I'm Gen X, we are often a pretty tough generation, basically left to raise ourselves. It's a bit more intense in my case coming from so much dysfunction. I didn't just have to look out for myself, I had to care for my mother and siblings, too. Darkly humorous, but "God as female" is a big theme in this local area and I when I first heard it, my heart just sunk in despair. If God is female that means we have been totally abandoned and no rescue will ever be forthcoming....
Like, the last thing I need in my life is an unstable, covert narcissist, with Divine super powers. I have quite enough problems already, thank you very much...
Now that is not true at all, but my experiences in the world at the time lead me to conclude that "God as mother" meant having an additional dependent, a burden, someone one must protect themselves from emotionally and not someone you could count on for much of anything, ever.
Conversely however, my father disappeared from my life when I was 3, so "God as father" simply meant more abandonment, some vague, faraway notion that people sometimes romanticize, but it isn't even real.
I do repent early and often for having maligned God's character in such a way so many times. At the time I didn't even realize I was doing it. It happens so fast, one just goes uh, yeah, no. Not happening. Next! One really has to pause and go, Wait a minute, we're talking about an actual person here, the One who hung the stars in the universe. God is not a deeply flawed human, so stop recreating Him in those images.
Mary Eberstadt made another good point about some of the scandals within the church, and how that all impacts the perceptions of those from fractured families. I mean, you are already pretty convinced the whole notion of "family" is just a net negative and something to escape and avoid, not something you would ever seek. Darkly humorous here, but I have been to churches that proudly declare, "we're all just one big family here," which is precisely why I sit with my back to the wall and my eye on all the exits.....
So given these conditions it not surprising that church attendance is down and that a good chunk of people choose to describe themselves as "unaffiliated" or "nones." In the extreme example you have people running about wanting to just "smash the patriarchy" and "dismantle heteronormative cisgender traditions."
Are they completely insane? Well yes, but aren't we all a bit insane sometimes?
It's really not a surprise that church attendance and religious affiliation is in decline. Much of it can be pinned on the destruction of family, the loss (or theft) of natural affection, church scandals, and the general ineptitude of sinful people that manifests itself in all sorts of appalling ways.
So this is all really good news, which is an odd thing to say, but it is good news because we have identified a problem and we can see we have some cause and effect going on. Having an actual diagnosis is half the battle when trying to heal a disease. While I'm sure there are elitists, illuminati, and the diabolical also at work, principalities and powers, it is also a simple case of animal husbandry gone awry, and human psychology responding precisely as it was designed to do.
Yes, mental illness is a real thing, but many of us are simply responding to our environment, to our cultural influences, precisely as we were designed to do.
At the same time I have been reading Mary Eberstadt, I have also been studying octopuses, primarily because they are kind of fascinating, but also because they are highly social, highly intelligent, and they don't raise their young. They throw a wrench into everything that we think we know about "nature versus nurture." Nobody teaches them how to play, how to interact with others, and although they are somewhat solitary creatures, they are more than capable of forming relationships, socializing, solving puzzles, and engaging in play.
All in good fun here, but this is really good news for the rest of us octopuses.
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