Rejecting rationality and moral responsibility
comes with a high price-tag. The evidence of this is all around us. Mindfulness
training requires us to close our minds and only observe without making moral
judgments. However, this is mindlessness because it rejects a vital part of our
nature—our moral self.
Why then do we do reduce ourselves? Our feelings of guilt
and shame tyrannize us! To address this tyranny we seek “self-acceptance.”
However, if the price for self-acceptance is closing our minds and denying our
moral nature, this is not self-acceptance but self-denial. While it might feel
comforting for a while, it comes at the expense of growth and our
relationships. How? When we refuse to honestly engage ourselves, we cannot
meaningfully engage others. Instead, we hide behind our mask—the person we feel
comfortable with, but it’s hard to enjoy a friendship with a mask.
Mindlessness, the rejection of our full humanity, is the
practice of choice of postmodernism. I just read an appealing advertisement for
a new "meetup" group:
·
From the time we’re just out of diapers we’re
charged by our parents, our peers, our lovers, ourselves, with the task of
maintaining certainty, and if we don’t feel certainty, of manufacturing it.
Tonight’s going to be different—tonight we’ll ask all who come to drop the
certainty and gather around a comfortable white sofa with a glass of wine and a
sense of curiosity. What brings you joy? What keeps you up at night? How’s your
heart? What do you love, and what would you like to be different?"
Understandably, wisdom and certainty are demanding, even painful,
while experience and feelings are just what they are, and without making
judgments about them, they are all acceptable, and we want to feel that we are
acceptable.
This might be comforting. However, this trend reflects a
narrowing and a dangerous cultural trend. We feel uncomfortable about judgment,
more specifically, about being criticized. It attacks the very basis who we are
as people—our value and personhood.
Besides, it is logically incoherent. To reject certainty
requires some degree of certainty. We feel so threatened by certainty and criticism
that many have gone as far as to deny freewill. After all, if we lack freewill,
we couldn't have done otherwise, and therefore, we bear no guilt.
Ironically, to defend ourselves against criticism and guilt,
we demean who we are as humans. Consequently, we become little more than wet
machines, and we cannot blame machines for malfunctioning.
Well, if we are merely machines, which cannot do otherwise, why
then try to oppose our desires to steal and cheat? The only rationale that
remains is the fear of getting caught, but fear alone is not enough.
Consequently, lying, stealing, and cheating have become so prevalent that few
trust our institutions. Can we survive such cynicism?
What is the answer? How are we to bear our moral failures
and accept criticism? Simply through confidence that when we confess our sins
and failures to our Savior, He forgives and cleanses us completely! And when we
come to live according to His opinions, we gradually lose our fear of the
opinions and criticisms of others. Instead of people-pleasers, we are liberated
to become God-pleasers. It's better than being a wet machine.
“Go, and proclaim
these words toward the north, and say, ‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the
Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the Lord; I
will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled
against the Lord your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under
every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, declares the Lord.’”
(Jeremiah 3:12-13)
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