Humankind, time and again, needs a fresh reference point. Big changes and a new epoch occur when it is able to have a distance from its present. This is a time for understanding the past, admitting wrongdoings, and setting up new aims. In these moments of re-orientation, culture is capable of setting up its ‘new agenda’ because of the ‘screen’, the reference point, upon which it can projects and re-shape its desires. These ‘screens’ are hallmarks within history, bearing the names we gave to periods, like feudalism, medieval culture, renaissance, modernity, the age of psychoanalysis, etc. After periods of crisis, culture needs a fresh distance by ‘naming’ the previous period. This is the way of purification and cultural rebirth.

It seems that Christianity has brought something radically new. Christians have the distance of reflection in the person of Jesus. What is revolutionary is the fact that they can scrutinise themselves and their culture on a daily basis. We can call it prayer life, spirituality, Lectio Divina, sacramental life, Holy Communion. The point is the intensity and the closeness of this horizon of grace.

To have or not to have this ‘screen’ of daily rebirth is the question. Christian culture offers the option of daily healing and genuine self-knowledge. If we take up this offer (a toiling work, though!) our culture should wait to the next cataclysm before finding out where we are.

The intriguing thing is that recognising this option is just as real as losing it. ‘They said, “Where did the man [Jesus] get all this? What is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us?” And they would not accept him.’ (Mk 6:2-3)
 
05.02.2020     

‘…All night and all day, among the tombs and in the mountains, he would howl and gash himself with stones.’ ‘“What is your name”, Jesus asked. “My name is legion”, he answered “for there are many of us.” And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the district.’ (Mk 5:5.9-12)

 I just wonder if our culture, as a collective entity, can be modelled on this individual demoniac. As a culture, we also carry the weight of a permanent self-harming, via our sins, mindless consumption, wars, etc. This negativity is so real − ‘legion’ − that it can become an independent actor, a real ‘influencer’. The presence of this negativity has an effect on the quality of life which our culture leads. This negative force can blindfold communities and can they end up in making wrong decisions. The wrong decision.

How can this negativity − the demons of a culture  − be detected? Is not this scrutiny coming from its absolute opposite, love itself? Saint Francis de Sales can be helpful here. His careful analysis shows how complex this realm of love is. The interaction of human and divine love is perhaps the richest and most organic system, and our ‘high tech’ resource. It excels the importance of artificial intelligence, and all the advances in information technology.

Our real eye to ‘send negativity out of our district’ is Francis’ distinction between loves. ‘The love of concupiscence is that by which we love a thing for the advantage that we except from it. Love of benevolence is that by which we love a thing for its own good.’ It is this later love, which gives us access to the experience of divine love, our friendship with God. It is this which has the power to undo or diminish the ‘power of demons’ residual in our culture.
‘If our esteem for our friend is great and unequalled but still remains comparable and proportionate to the others, such friendship will be termed dilection. If its eminence is beyond all proportion and comparison with others, it will be termed incomparable, sovereign, supereminent dilection. In a word, it will be charity and this is owed to the one sole God.’ (Treatise on the Love of God, Ch 13 ‘On the Difference between Loves’) Without encountering this Love, our culture remains self-harming, like the demoniac in our story.