Spiritual Starvation

How do you starve a culture? Not by taking away its food all at one go: people would notice, and be hungry, and resist. But slowly, by stealth, replacing real food with filler, making portion sizes smaller and smaller, letting people get a little more tired, a little weaker, a little less likely to have the energy to complain… and making the changes small enough so that there never really seems to be a big deal to complain about. Until we starve to death.

That’s what’s happening here, now, in our culture, not physically, but spiritually. I’ve chosen the word “starvation” deliberately. Merely saying we are spiritually malnourished doesn’t cut it. Our culture is starving us, to our spiritual death. And one way that it is happening is through the slow and deliberate erasure of all evidence of Christian faith from the exemplary lives of those who have gone before us.

It looks like this.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn dies, and the New York Times runs a front-page obituary on him, a lengthy and glowing report of his suffering in Stalin’s gulags, his brilliant writing challenging the Soviet system, his influence on a whole generation of writers. The article does not mention that he was a Christian.

We all learned about Florence Nightingale in grade school. How many of us learned that she was a devout Christian who was committed to the spiritual as well as the physical health of her patients? I can’t speak for all the other children of the 70s and 80s, but as for myself, I did not know Florence Nightingale was a Christian until August 12, 2008, the day in the Anglican church calendar that celebrates her life and ministry; I was at morning mass and our pastor read an excerpt from her biography as part of his sermon. Our culture of deliberate spiritual starvation – a culture not even as well developed in the 80s as it is now, thirty years later! – held her up as an example of courage, tenacity, and goodness, while carefully omitting the basis of all of her good work: her Christian faith.

How many of you know that during the so-called Dark Ages, the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great began a massive, ambitious literacy campaign? Inspired by his devotion to Christ, Alfred worked to translate the Gospels into English, to increase the number of people who could read and understand what they read, to encourage the copying and distribution of books throughout his kingdom – not to improve the economy, but to enable God’s Word to be known by all. In modern times, we study social, economic, and political movements, but the role of Christian faith is systematically downplayed and edited out.

Our culture revises the biographies of our heroes to make their Christian faith a matter of private piety: something along the lines of whether or not they had a pet dog, or liked to read mystery novels. Watered down, these lives are no longer exemplary, but merely interesting. Like zero-calorie soft drinks, they give us a temporary sense of satiety but do not strengthen our souls or bodies.

It’s a very effective program. It was not until I was a Christian, looking with new eyes at the people who had made a difference in history, that I realized how many great advances in civilization — the building of hospitals, orphanages, universities; advances in public health and literacy; great works of art — were done by followers of Christ. Now, when I read about the lives and works of Christians, I am inspired by the example of how Christ worked in and through them, and I long for Him to work in and through me. I am not merely interested and entertained; I am nourished.

We aren’t allowed to talk about this, of course. We are not allowed to suggest that following Christ is in any way better than another way of life. (We are encouraged, however, to dwell on the intolerance or crimes of those who claimed to be Christians.) If we didn’t edit out all references to Christian faith in the biographies of our heroes made for public consumption, we would be in the uncomfortable position of acknowledging that an awful lot more good things are done by Christians than by atheists.

This is the culture we live in. We are starving, in the midst of a superabundance of would-be ways to satisfy our spiritual hunger: crystals, vibrations, goddess worship, sexual gratification, consumerism. We are glutted with self-worship. Our spiritual palates are jaded; our systems are dulled. The spiritual food that would nourish us has been systematically removed from our diet, replaced with fillers and artificial flavors, and wrapped in bright packaging to distract us from the fact that it does not satisfy and does not give us strength.

Jesus asked, “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?” It is a rhetorical question that sets up Jesus’ real point, about His infinitely loving and generous Father: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

The truth is that He who is the Bread of Life offers real nourishment to all who ask.

But we who are starving for bread no longer know to ask for it; and when we are offered stones instead of bread, we take them – and think we are fed.

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