Mad At Hell and Not Going to Take It Any More

(Don't throw the baby out with the bath water...)



One strategy of evil is to reduce life to triviality. In the kingdom of darkness boredom and mediocrity flourish disguised as entertainment and adventure. Loneliness and incapacity to empathize and be-with others are nourished in the diminished minds of low-hanging heads over cell phones. (See M.I.T.'s Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation.) Life is an unreal reality show choreographed for excitement ("reality show" - the ultimate oxymoron?). The elan vital is now theelan banal.

Whatever happened to just plain old reality? It's still there, waiting to show its stuff in any heart that has had it up to here with hell and refuses to ingest its mind-diminishing pills any longer. Reality is for anyone who wakes up from the marketing drug and sees that "life [is] a contest of good against evil and the battle was for the highest stakes— the winning of good over evil, of blessing over malignity. Life is a continuous exploration of ever more reality. Life is a constant battle against everyone and anything that corrupts or diminishes its reality." (Eugene Peterson, Run With the Horses, Kindle Locations 234-236).

The truth is, it's not complicated. That's another myth. "All the great stories of the world elaborate one of two themes: that all life is an exploration like that of the Odyssey or that all life is a battle like that of the Iliad. The stories of Odysseus and Achilles are archetypal. Everyone’s childhood serves up the raw material that is shaped by grace into the life of mature faith..." (Ib.)

No wonder Bono said Run with the Horses is his favorite book of all time, next to The Message. (See here as well.)