Priorities

Let's talk about the hierarchy of needs, shall we?

Now, this is a principle, or idea, that even if you haven't heard of, you're going to essentially agree with, at least in part.  That is, that each one of us carries with us a hierarchy of needs.  We have needs, and those have to be met in order.  The ones at the bottom have to be met first, and the ones at the top, well, less urgent, but you can only meet those once you've met those more fundamental needs.

So, here's what we mean.  It's all good to philosophize, to think and to dream, but it's impossible to do that if you're in the process of drowning.  That is, your biggest need is always going to be to breathe.  Air is the one need you have to meet in order for everything else to work, and if you're not constantly breathing, you're not going to be able to talk about higher things for too long.  Likewise, you can last for a day or two without water, but longer than that, and your theorizing about the way the world works kind of goes away, you know?  I'm not asking you to sign on to the entire pyramid of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but merely to understand that you might want to see the next Marvel movie, but you don't need to.

And that has been the story of the entire pandemic, right? the story of the pandemic has told us that we had to separate our wants from our needs.  For the first time in a long time, the entire shuddering mechanism of the modern industrialized world rose from its moribund slumber, and worked together for a common goal.  This is the sort of mobilization you normally see in wartime, and here we were, seeing it in peacetime, activating itself for the common good.  And what was that common good? The realization that people's lives were at stake, and we all needed to act accordingly.  We all needed to behave as though people's lives were at stake, which they were.  So, we dutifully closed shops and businesses, we closed stores and libraries, and it all ground to a spooky 3 month halt.  Some of those businesses that closed were never to reopen, of course, and people lost jobs, income, and all that.  But we all determined that it was worth it, for the sake of the preservation of that most basic of needs on the pyramid - life itself.

There's a lot you can do once you work out your priorities.  And for most of the time, we don't think too much about it, because we don't have to set any priorities at all.  That is, we don't have to think about where our big moral statements and positions are, because, well, it doesn't interfere with buying goods and services, and going to ball games.  But if COVID has taught us anything, it's that if push does actually come to shove, you'll find your priorities pretty quickly.  If lives are at stake, if the fate of a nation, and of your community hang in the balance, you can figure out how to skip a marvel movie or two.  Or all of them.

Now, Jesus Christ talks about priorities in the Gospel reading.  He talks about priorities in an almost savage fashion, saying that if you don't value him above family, friends, even above life itself, you're not worthy of him.  And that doesn't sound like something he'd say, does it?  Well, yes it does.  And it's time for me to bring up one of my favourite things to talk about vis a vis this reading, which is an old bit from an equally old Canadian game show, Gutterball Alley.  And that show had a bit in in where the contestants had to guess who said a quote: Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, or Charles Manson.  And one of the quotes was 'do not think that I have come to bring peace.  I have not come to bring peace but a sword.'

The contestant guessed Charles Manson.  And didn't get a bowling ball for his or her trouble.

You see, that line is so unlike the way that Jesus is presented, that people assume that it can't possibly be the words of Jesus Christ.  But they are the words of Jesus. They really truly are.  And the Bible isn't all kittens and rainbows, you know.  It's not all fluffy baby ducks and paddling pools.  Sometimes it gets serious. And this is where I quote my main man GK Chesterton, who is still right about 100% of the time on these subjects.

We have all heard people say a hundred times over, for they never seem to tire of saying it, 

that the Jesus of the New Testament is indeed a most merciful and humane 

lover of humanity, but that the church has hidden this human character

in repellent dogmas and stiffened it with ecclesiastical terrors till it has taken on an 

inhumane character.  This is very nearly the reverse of the truth.  The truth is that it is the image 

of Christ in the churches that is almost entirely mild and merciful.  It is the image of Christ in the Gospels that is a good many other things as well.  The figure in the Gospels does indeed utter 

in words of almost heart-breaking beauty his pity for our broken hearts.  But they are very far from

being the only sort of words that he utters.  Nevertheless they are almost the only kind 

of words that the Church in its popular imagery ever represents him as uttering.

There is something appalling, something that makes the blood run cold

in the idea of having a statue of Christ in wrath.  There is something insupportable even to the 

imagination in the idea of turning the corner of a street or coming out in the spaces of a marketplace, to meet the petrifying gaze of that figure as it turned upon a generation of vipers, or that face as it 

looked at the face of a hypocrite.  The Church can reasonably be justified therefore

if she turns the most merciful face or aspect towards men; but it is certainly the most merciful aspect that she does turn.

That quote is from 'The Everlasting Man.' Give it a try, it's good.  But this quote is amazing precisely for the reason that we have to grapple with the reality that it isn't that the church has promoted a vicious and angry Christ while the Christ of the Gospels is kittens and ducklings.  Rather, the Christ of the Gospels is hard as nails, wild and dangerous.  He is untamed, and frequently, frequently talks about the weight of faith and the struggles against the encroaching darkness.  This isn't a one off thing, otherwise we might be forgiven in thinking that this doesn't sound like Jesus.  But it does.  This is the second week in a row where Jesus talks about divisions in family, about creating hostility here on earth due to faith in him. This sounds like something Jesus would say because it is something he has said.    And why did he talk like this?  Because faith in Jesus Christ has massive implications for everything else.  When placed on the hierarchy of needs, it is, effectively the most crucial one because of the implications for everything else.

When Jesus talks about not bringing peace but a sword, he's talking about the possibility of division between family and friends and so on, which is true, but here on earth, that's a temporal division, which can be healed, etc.  What is crucial, though, is to run the promises of Jesus Christ through the ol' risk / reward analysis.  That is, if Jesus is right in what he says, then faith in, and support of his message is of paramount importance.  If he is wrong, then what he says is meaningless.  And what he says is that faith in him means that you don't just preserve your relationships with your family while you have them here on earth (60 years on the longer side), but you also preserve those same relationships in perpetuity.  Now what that means is that you will have to make hard choices, to say that you must make priorities, but if you insist on keeping everything here on Earth in the status quo, then you will lose it in eternity.  Or, to quote CS Lewis on the subject, 'if you reach for Heaven, you will find you get Earth thrown into the bargain.  But if you reach for Earth alone, you will lose both."

But this isn't just an esoteric thought experiment that pertains only to the hereafter. Another one of Lewis' points was that you will be more effective even in the here and now if you understand the message of Jesus Christ.  And I'll explain how.  Imagine for a moment, that the people you see around you all day are permanent, forever people.  That they are made in the image of God and will last forever.  Does that change how you perceive them, and how you relate to them?  For the non-Christian, you get to treat your accountant, your waiter, your girl you meet at the bar, whatever, as a vehicle for your own prosperity.  You get what you want out of the exchange, and can profit from it like that.  But as a Christian, how you treat those people matters eternally.  That girl you meet at the bar, and are planning to get some drinks into so you can have your way with her and then never see her again, she doesn't disappear as soon as the interaction is over.  That person is eternal, will outlast kings and countries and civilizations.  So if you understand her properly, you can't just use and discard her, because she is eternal.  And so is everyone else. 

So really, this is just like the hierarchy of needs, basically.  And the need for Christ is right at the foundation.  Get it right, and everything else is possible. Get it wrong, and you lose everything else.  And just like you can stay self-actualized for three minutes if the oxygen runs out, you can't get more than that. I bet Laika up in space felt pretty neato until the air ran out.  But replacing Christ with anything else will lead to satisfaction for a while, and losses for eternity.  Gain him, and you gain it all, lose him and you lose everything else too.