Today’s gods

AT least in ancient, biblical times, the false idols were easily recognized. They were clearly man-made, graven images of gold or silver. They had mouths that did not speak, ears that did not hear, eyes that did not see. Though they managed to mesmerize people for a while, it did not take long to expose them to be false.

Today’s gods are more subtle. They are not objects that one can see and touch. They too appear to be spiritual. They seem to have mouths that speak, ears that hear and eyes that see.

But really, they are nothing other than figments of our imagination, projections of what we want. In short, today’s gods are we ourselves. They are us, lodged in our minds and hearts. Thus, they appear to be spiritual because the operations of our mind and heart are mainly spiritual.

These gods can manage to engage us in substantial dialogue, usually in terms of what is practical, what is popular, what brings wealth, power and fame. They can bring us to certain lengths of discoveries and inventions, loading us with blinding excitement and awe. They can bring us to great heights of exhilaration.

We now have such capabilities, and they are growing in exponential pace, thanks to our new technologies and the glutting data and info we are amassing these days. These harden us more in our tendency to make ourselves our own god. They effectively lead us to believe that we are omnipotent.

The effect is that instead of going beyond ourselves to look for the God who created us, we are entering more deeply into ourselves to make ourselves our own creator, a process that from the point of view of logic alone is already absurd.

These days, more and more people, especially the more intelligent ones who have lost their simplicity, find it hard to get in touch with the original, transcendent God, the real God. In fact, many would find such concern as already useless, completely irrelevant.

It’s true that, thanks to God, while there are still sectors who have managed to retain their simplicity and humility, and thus also their faith, hope and charity in God, and even express them in colorful popular piety, there is also a creeping part of our society that is heading toward atheism, or at least agnosticism.

This part is getting worldly and secularized, their morals governed mainly by pragmatism and relativism. A supernatural God, an eternal God, a God outside of ourselves has no more place in its culture and lifestyle.

We need to do something about this disturbing phenomenon. First of all, without question, what we need to do is to intensify our prayers and sacrifices. We have to use the spiritual and supernatural means to make God’s grace get a more favorable reception in the free will of the people.

But together with these spiritual and supernatural means are the human means that need to be established and developed, if possible, to maturity. We need to learn how to pray, how to discern the presence of God everywhere, and how to enter into vital dealing, a moment-to-moment relationship with God.

This is not a utopia. It may be a mystery, but that’s because we are dealing here with a reality, a truth that usually surpasses, but not violates, our natural powers. Our human mind and heart can capture this reality. They have the disposition, and if we allow ourselves to be so disposed, we can enter into the world where God and other spiritual and supernatural realities are.

We are not left to our own devices, stuck in the purely human, natural and material world. We don’t allow our spiritual faculties to cruise and drift in some empty and open space with hardly any idea of where they are supposed to go and to get engaged with properly.

This is the challenge we have these days. It is how to show God in everything, not the god of our own making, but the real God who created us and who is a loving, understanding and forgiving God to all of us.

For this, we have to realize that everything in our life, including the purely material things as well as our spiritual powers that have infinite possibilities, come from God. They contain God. God is there and is waiting for us to find him and to deal with him and to love him.

We are actually made for this. If not corrupted by our own selves and other factors, we actually have a natural longing for God that needs to be pursued and developed.