Empty and Selfish in Babylon

Andre Malraux of France said famously to General DeGaulle during the riots in Paris in 1968: “We once were developing from within Christianity. Now we’re developing from nothing.” Two other great religions, Judaism and the religion of Islam, along with Christianity, are now also adding nothing to our postmodern development. We are all of us on our own relying only on ourselves with nothing within us. We are like the ancient Jews, captives in Babylon, but we no longer sit beside waters dreaming of a lost Zion. We watch on television empty, and alone because of our emptiness, Aleppo destroyed and its streets empty of its murdered children. No old men will ever again pray at mosques in Aleppo and really believe they will soon pass, because of the emptiness they feel in their soul, to God’s world. Jerusalem is prosperous and safe because of high tech American weapons but it is solidly on the ground and no one there can honestly dream of a heavenly Jerusalem knowing in the heart the emptiness caused by dominating suffering neighbors. Americans are prosperous and optimistic because they long ago abandoned the roots of Christianity and decided that living on the surface of being rooted only in selfishness was the American way. Ralph Waldo Emerson taught them that selfishness was the true path to genuine superiority. He gave up his life as a consecrated minister and taught everyone to be self-reliant.. Saint Augustine believed the opposite. For him, self-reliance was not Christian. He put the whole meaning of Christianity in one sentence: Et hoc erat totum: nolle quod volebam et velle quod volebas. “And this was all: to not will what I wanted and to will what you (meaning God) wanted.” Emerson would have put the nolle where the velle was and put the velle where the nolle had been so it read: Et hoc erat totum: velle quod volebam et nolle quod volebas. “And this was all: to will what I wanted and not to will what you (God) wanted.” Emerson believed that there was no fall of man and no sin and that holiness could be reached by natural experience if it was genuinely individualistic. Self-reliance. We Americans are now totally self-reliant and totally empty. We sold our emptiness to the rest of the world repackaged as a happy fullness and the world bought it. Now the world is living with the emptiness behind the American sales pitch.

Daniel McNeill

Read Daniel McNeill’s new novel, “Whacks, Women and Wanderings in the Soul” at: www.usoftheworld.com/fiction

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