When I was 9 years old, I was allowed to stay up into the wee hours of the morning to watch Neil Armstrong take “one small step for man” onto the dusty landscape and empty atmosphere of the moon. It enchanted me to see him there, with the black void behind him, breathing life giving oxygen through a tank on his back. I thought one day I’d be an astronaut…as did millions of 9-year-olds around the world.
Unlike most of those other nine-year old’s staying up way too late, I was scheduled for an early morning tonsillectomy (they did those minor surgeries routinely then). My parents wisely determined that seeing a man standing on another world for the first time in history was more important than a decent night’s sleep.
In those days, patients were anesthetized using ether, a general anesthetic producing a deep enough sleep that a healthy child wouldn’t feel, hear or see a thing as a surgeon took a sharp blade to those peninsulas in their throat.
Ether has another meaning in Greek mythology – it’s the “hypothetical medium believed to fill all space, breathed out by the gods, and breathed in by all mortals.” Another way to describe it would be “the air we breathe”. Another word derived from the same root is ethos, meaning “the fundamental character or spirit of a culture.”
The very air we breathe is saturated with the anesthetics of what the bible calls “this present darkness.” Every age has its particular brand of ether. But there really is nothing new under the sun.
The diabolical chemistry at work in our time to blind the eyes of mankind, to lull us to sleep, to makes us drowsy to the reality of the true nature of things is manifold. But perhaps the most lethal analgesic in the ether of postmodern western culture is distraction. And the glowing rectangles in our pockets are the IV lines delivering the diversion that can destroy our souls.
To think deeply about things is to allow the discomfort of the discordant desires - and dare I say, sins of our nature - to surface. It’s to be made awake by the sound of the smoke detector, or the cold splash of water coming over the boat as the storm brews over our heads. It’s the surgeon’s knife, taking off the cataracts and letting in the painful rays of light that hurt at first, until we finally recover and see.
My personal struggle to stay awake feels like a war of late. Some agonizing circumstances have sorely tempted me again and again and again to escape reality by way of a screen, which ultimately turns up the volume on the ether of this world, creating a strange blend of anxiety and zombieism. The more I suck in the devil’s potion, the worse it gets.
Mercifully, Jesus never lets his people go. But oh, how much time and vision can be wasted, drugged by the lies and foolishness of the modern world transmitted by devises designed to purchase our attention.
The bible says in Ephesians 6:12:
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
These cosmic dark powers are no match for Almighty God. It seems to me their play right now is to tempt people to stop reading real books, to stop taking long walks in nature without headphones, and to fear missing something, even if that something is a lot of nothing.
As the French philosopher Blaise Pascal said:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
To think deeply is to put on the oxygen mask and stop choking on the filth and mindless rubbish of the age that lurks about like a pestilence to destroy our humanity. To sit and examine oneself instead of taking a hit on the crackpipe of distraction is a worthy fight. To look to the triune God, who commands us to seek Him, (and if we do we will find Him) is to be a true countercultural rebel, determined to resist walking happily into our own gas chambers, where life is disposable, where lies diabolically pose as truth, and where self is the great I am.
To live wide awake is to look like an astronaut, a strange person breathing real air, instead of the vapid, poisonous ether diabolically designed to distract us to death.
God help us put down the damnable phones, look into the eyes of real people, touch the edges of real paper containing the wisdom of the ages, pet the dog, have a cookout with the neighbors, and sit quietly in our rooms. That would be one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Your friend on the pilgrim road,
LS
Well said,my frienf
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