Assurance for the modern age
Part 5: We all need to adopt a world-view in which we can hold the myriad things that may happen to us
In this respect, one answer to my question about assurance is for some people to argue that it just doesn’t bother them. If I want to navel-gaze and agonise about existential, spiritual questions, then more fool me: they are quite happy to just have a good time. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way – enjoying time with your family, in your job and on holiday are wonderful things. Yet I write from the perspective of someone who has discovered that it is the inner life which brings the greatest source of satisfaction of all. It is a life of faith that makes all life more precious. I am going to argue that adopting a set of values, principles and ways of life is the ultimate way to bring meaning, purpose, value and joy to life. If I am right, then even the fortunate person whose life, on balance, tips strongly towards good things, needs to adopt their own set of values, principles and ways of life that gives them their foundation in life. Some way is needed to tie this list of good things into some coherent whole, to integrate all their experience into an understanding of what it is they are doing with their lives. Their good fortune needs, somehow, to sink into the roots of their lives, and it must be from their depths that their choices and decisions and judgements in life arise, so that the “list of good things in their lives” is not what defines them, as though all of life is just a surface flow of experience, but, rather, the good things that they produce in their lives arise from a person who is living with intent, to achieve purposes that they – and others – can affirm as good.
Otherwise, one obvious danger for modern secular people – and I think this is much in evidence – is that life becomes overtaken by consumerism. That is, in the absence of sound values on which your life is founded, life becomes about maximising consumption. If good things are good – and clearly they are, then it must be better to have more of them – more of everything. I feel an expression of this is found in the concept of “bucket lists” – 50 or 100 things that “we ought to do” before we die. Of course, there is no harm, and much to commend, in the idea of setting yourself goals and fulfilling dreams, and maximising pleasure – why settle for less when you can have more? My complaint is in the spiritual effect of an attitude that puts the focus of life on consuming pleasure. Surely life is more profound than that? Pleasure is good, and a good life will bring us many pleasures, but pleasure is not the same as goodness, nor the same as fulfilment.
Spiritual Devotion 