A Culture of False Ideologies

I have been thinking lately about humanity and all the mess that we have gotten ourselves into. As I ponder the state of our culture, I am reminded of the four beasts from Daniel’s dream in the Old Testament book of Daniel. This prophetic book can have many layers of meaning but one could certainly argue that these four beasts represent four false ideologies that we have in our culture today that have collided all at once.   They include consumerism, sensuality, power, and knowledge. It’s interesting because all of these things are vying for our attention and so often they lead us away from God. These false ideologies are no doubt being portrayed as good and helpful, and although there may be a certain degree of goodness in them, they all cross the line when they lead us to make a god out of ourselves, our government, our social status, our popularity, our gender, or race, or anything other than God Himself. This is idolatry and a breaking of the first commandment. 

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might… The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear. Do not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who are all around you.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5, 13-14

The first beast in Daniel’s dream is described as like a lion that had eagle’s wings. This was understood by the chosen people as the era of the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar. This beast represents the kingdom of productivity and the ideology of consumerism. It is based upon what humanity can produce and what we can consume. You won’t have to look far to see that consumerism is a huge problem in our culture. This ideology tells us that we can do all things on our own, we are the gods of our own making. So we consume all we desire because there is nothing bigger than us to fear, nothing more than this life, and no reason to temper ourselves. The danger here is what Pope Francis has called “unfettered” capitalism, where we cease to be concerned for the poor because we are so focused on gaining all we can for ourselves. It is self indulgence and a lack of charity for the other. Our primary desire is for wealth and comfort for ourselves. In Daniel’s dream, this beast’s wings were plucked off, it was pulled up to stand upon two feet, and it was given a mind of a man. Unfettered capitalism will gain a mind of its own. It creates a culture of people who are overly concerned with themselves and what they have. It fosters individualism and materialism, instead of selflessness and charity. 

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Luke 12:16-21

There is a remedy to the ideology of consumerism and this virtue grows when God is first.  The virtue is poverty. When this virtue is lived it does not mean that we all must give all that we have away and live as a poor beggar on the street, but it does challenge us to detach from worldly things. Detachment is a charism that keeps us rightly ordered with material wealth. It reminds us that all things of this world will fade away and that we will only be left with what is eternal. Detachment stands against consumerism, money, and greed, and it shows the world that our happiness does not hinge on our material wealth. An economy like capitalism coupled with a people of virtue can actually flourish and bring bounty to her people.  Our detachment from the world reveals to others that God is our primary focus, He is the one we are striving to impress. Along with material poverty, there is also poverty of spirit. This type of poverty is detachment from our own desires. By surrendering our worldly desires to the Lord, He can redeem them and then we will truly be living in the kingdom of heaven. Poverty of spirit is radical trust in God, it helps us to grow in deep faith, and it fosters hope in the world. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 5:3

The second beast in the book of Daniel was like a bear and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told “Arise, devour much flesh”. This was understood as the era of the Medes. There is not much we know about the Medes, but it is said they were extravagant. In Greek mythology the Median people are said to have come from the Greek Goddess Medea who was a sorceress. The story of Medea is one of adultery, revenge and murder. This second beast represents the ideology of sensuality. Gluttony, lust, sloth, and all of the other pleasures of the flesh are what reign in this kingdom. When we feed our flesh all that it desires, we become disordered, ordering ourselves away from God and turning inward on ourselves and fulfilling our own desires. When we fall into sensual sins, it results in an overall sense of confusion about morality and a lack of clarity of the truth. There is a fogginess that ensues. By making a god out of our bodies, giving into the temptations of the flesh at every whim, our judgement deteriorates and we deny our dignity as created in God’s own image and likeness. 

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Romans 1:24-25

Again if God is first in your life then the remedy to this false ideology is the virtue of temperance.  Temperance orders our senses towards what is Godly. Our five senses were given to us so that we may experience the Divine Mystery through our physical bodies. We pervert this in so many ways and we tend to use our senses to experience so many other things rather than God. The beauty of God’s creation and all that we can see, touch, taste, smell and hear are part of how we come to know God and his Divine Character. To seek and to find our deepest fulfillment in the Divine is imperative if we are to deny our flesh. Our senses are portals to our soul. They have a huge influence on our life’s journey. The music of a traditional choir can lift our souls to heavenly heights of that which cannot be imagined on our own. In order to combat the ideology of sensuality and the desires of the flesh, we must understand that the fleshy pleasures will ultimately always leave us empty, but the heavenly ascension from which we experience the Divine through our senses can lead us to holiness. It is only through the redemption of our desires that we will be rightly ordered toward God and His Kingdom.

The third beast in the Book of Daniel is described as like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back and four heads. In the description of this beast, it says that dominion was given to this beast. This was understood to be the Persians who were always working toward centralized power. This is the ideology of communistic government with a socialist economy.  The Church is against a system that subordinates the basic rights of individuals and of groups for the collective organization of production. This is contrary to human dignity because it dictates that some people have more inherent dignity than others based upon their status. This system enslaves man and feeds atheism. This ideology ultimately affects the individual person, who loses their unique identity and autonomy, while the one central entity gains more and more power. For us, when we buy into this ideology, we are not recognizing and trusting in the inherent goodness of the other. We begin to look at all people as inherently bad (instead of inherently good) and believe that it is right to restrict all people and give them less choices, because the choices they will probably make are bad. The lie told by this ideology is that all people will choose wrong and thus they must be controlled instead of given any freedom to make their own choices. This ideology determines that every sin and disorder must be controlled, so that all will be made perfect through the centralized power over humanity. This ideology leaves out God who invites sinners to repentance and never forces anyone to follow Him. God is the only ultimate and supreme entity and all other entities should be at the service to God.

“We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.”

Pius XI -Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, May 15, 1931, n. 117

The remedy for the ideology of power is the virtue of obedience to God. Obedience keeps us humble. It rightly orders us to God, our Divine Creator. It reminds us to rely on God’s providence first and foremost, instead of on any man made power or authority. We must also be obedient to the authorities in this world, but never at the expense of being disobedient to God. All things that come to be have been permitted in God’s Will, so all things can be redeemed. To try to control situations by stepping outside of our authority is an attempt to gain power. You don’t have to look far to see how much this is happening in our world today. Where there is obedience there is humility. St Catherine of Siena writes a Treatise of Obedience, which is included in the book, The Dialogue of Saint Catherine of Siena. She says that disobedience destroys peace, destroys life and gives death, it gives continual bitterness, disproves the soul of every sweetness and good, causing him to dwell with every evil. St Catherine goes on to say that it makes the soul drown in the sea, “making him swim in the strength of his own arms”. These are some strong words from a Doctor of the Universal Church. We would do well to consider the virtue of obedience to be more than just simply obeying, but when seen and understood as a virtue, we can know that through our loving obedience to God, there will be graces that flow down upon us.

The fourth and last beast in the Book of Daniel is described as terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had iron teeth that broke in pieces and destroyed all things in its way. This beast was different from the others and had ten horns. One horn rose up above the others and it had eyes like a man and mouth speaking great things. This beast was understood to be the Greeks. This ideology is one where intelligence and knowledge are supreme. The danger here is that we made a god out of our own understanding, not giving due credit to God who is the source of all knowledge and the inspirer of our intellect. If we are looking at our world today, the larger horn that rose up from this beast could be understood as science.  The truth is that we were created with an intellect and the purpose of it is to know God more fully. Intelligence, knowledge and science, these are all good things, but not when we elevate them above God.  When we do this we become not only gods in our own eyes, but we become judge and jury of what others should be doing.  

….guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge; by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith.

1 Timothy 6:20

We should instead use what we know to be true to glorify God and to give to others in Christian charity. The past year of our lives with the pandemic, has brought about an influx of medical information that has been so widely circulated and we seem to be relying on knowledge and science first and foremost. Although, again, there is a place for science, it should never be devoid of God, or the commands He gave us.  I don’t think we can blame it all on the pandemic, we were headed this way already. We have been conditioned to think that we should be pain free, with no scars, no deformities, perfect bodies, and a perfect bill of health. We have lost the virtue of offering up our pain and suffering in union with Christ’s sacrifice. We are more scared of bodily death than we are of the destruction of our souls. We are a culture obsessed with being cured of every ailment, instead of grateful for what we have and developing a willingness to suffer well. 

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Matthew 16:26

The remedy for the ideology of love of knowledge and science is humility. There is a very high danger with knowledge, that we use it to lord over others. It is easy to look down upon others because we know more than them or because we have some sort of inside information that is not available to everyone. We are a people of exclusivity who have accepted and flaunted a very “in-your-face” prideful attitude. Humility is so far from anything we see on television and it is so very rare to see on social media. We must be careful not to be dulled by this prideful attitude of the world that has been accepted by our culture. We must be willing to take a leap of faith and be humiliated for the sake of Truth. When we stop running away from humiliation and we begin accepting how much it is good for us, only then can we begin to make a change in the world through our own humble approach to life. To place our trust in God alone and to stop looking to the world for answers, but to seek our knowledge and understanding from the Lord, then and only then will we be able to know with full confidence what is True and Holy and Good. Humility is more than just being nice to people and serving our neighbor. True humility is a willingness to completely empty ourselves of self-love, not needing the attention or approval of the world, so that we can be elevated in grace through the love of God.

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

The advent of technology seems to have catapulted us to a place where there has been a collision of all of these ideologies. A giant beast. We have come to the precipice of lawlessness, a place of pride, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth and wrath. It is a place where we may find ourselves trying to sit on a fence, trying to stay hidden, to not have to choose between God and the world, but we can no longer remain lukewarm about what we put first.  

So, because you are lukewarm–neither hot nor cold–I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

Revelation 3:16

With these beasts that represent the very real false ideologies of consumerism, sensuality, power and knowledge that have been widely accepted by our culture, there is not one of these that reigns supreme, but all four are in play in our world today. With this, we must be vigilant in the virtues of detachment, temperance, obedience and humility. Where we find ourselves weak in any of these, we can pray for an increase in that particular virtue. Where we struggle with one of these false ideologies, we can bring those sins to the Lord in Confession and receive the Sanctifying Grace to be able to battle those particular sins in the future. The Church has given us all the tools we need to be able to battle the enemy, even when his attacks are so numerous and so seemingly powerful, the Church is there for us as a means of our sanctification. The reality is that we are children of God, and in that, we were given dominion over the enemy, including any false ideology that he promotes. By knowing our enemy and strengthening ourselves in virtue, we can defeat the attacks of the enemy beginning with ourself. It is these days that you and I were born into, and in these days we were made for. Choose God first. Do not be deceived. Trust God first and all will be well when the storm is swirling around you.  

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

Matthew 25:31-32