Sizing up the challenges

EVERY new year poses new challenges. We’ve been through this routine for quite some time now. But I must say that this new year presents to us challenges that are more complex and complicated, more tricky and deadly.

This must be due, at least in part, to the accelerated pace of technological development, as well as a population that is growing not only in number but also in both sophistication, on the one hand, and ignorance, confusion and error, on the other.

Both contrasts and conflicts that are getting sharper, on the one hand, and the subtle process of homogeneizing and uniforming people mindlessly, on the other, are taking place.

I find this combination of factors very intriguing, indeed. Some people can know a lot yet miss the point. Others can know little yet continue to be wise. And now, at the back of our minds, we ask, and who is going to judge who is right and is who is wrong?

There now on seems to be a crisis on what norms and standards to follow these days, what values and in what order they have to be upheld and defended. Many people seem to be guided solely by purely subjective criteria.

Which reminds me of what St. Paul once said: “The spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged by no man.” (1 Cor 2,13) It’s an intriguing affirmation that for sure will be questioned, if not rejected, by sceptics, agnostics and atheists.

But I believe in it—it’s the spiritual man, the one vitally connected with God, who knows things objectively. In the end, it’s the kind of spirit one submits himself to that would guide him in his decisions. So I always bat for spiritual formation and development more than anything else, without disparaging the other requirements.

The virtues of prudence and discretion have never been so needed as during these times. The demands of charity have become more nuanced. We have to careful with our rash judgments and our reckless speech.

So many things are just happening in the micro and macro levels of our life, in the personal and social aspects, in the spiritual and moral and the material worlds. Today’s ballistic development in technology actually requires a corresponding radical maturation of our spiritual life. But we can observe hardly any correspondence between the two.

We have to learn how to distinguish and integrate things properly, putting them in their right places, order and hierarchy. This is not going to be an easy task, but neither is it impossible.

We need to learn how to hold our horses and restrain our emotions, moderate our urges, and how to think, judge and reason properly, as well as how to speak and express ourselves with tact and courtesy in spite of our differences.

We have to learn how to dialogue with the different parties on different issues. The more interaction, the better. The more linkages we have among ourselves, the better for us. We have to foster the culture of dialogue.

We need to know more the range and intricacies of the now in-thing of tolerance—in the fields of culture, law, religion, politics, etc., without falling into chaos and disorder, and without forgetting that there are certain things that remain absolute and unchangeable in spite of the constant flux in life.

We need to know more about the scope and limits of our rights—to expression, to privacy, personal and social development, etc. We have to be more sensitive to the fine lines involved in the discretionary part of our laws. This appears to be abused quite openly lately.

As we can see, challenges that pose problems to us are actually opportunities, chances and windows for us to develop the appropriate virtues, attitudes and skills. They provide us with the occasion and the spur to bring our knowledge, wisdom and maturity to the next level. We should never say enough.

Our life here is always on the go. We should never think we know enough, or that our formation has already reached its maximum level. We have to remember that with our spiritual nature, we are oriented toward the infinite. Our capacity to know and to learn, to exercise our freedom, knows no limits, though a certain law governs it.

Let’s always remember that our freedom can go in two ways—either for good or evil, for greater freedom or deeper slavery as when we sink in the world of different addictions which are also noticing these days.