Exposure

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job 1:21

The average man is a collector.

He collects possessions, opinions, sympathies, antipathies, strange idiosyncrasies, neuroses, daydreams, hardwired proclivities, identities, and countless other items - abstract or material. 

He acquires, claims, clings, labels, judges, sorts, subdivides, categorizes, compares, and contrasts at a breakneck pace - clothing himself in robes of illusion, delusion, and confusion.

He fortifies his positions.

He insists that his incessant collection proffers a degree of freedom - freedom from the boredom, loneliness, and general unease that punctuate and underscore day-to-day living.

We often think of more successful men as ones who collect finer or more numerous possessions - various laurels, or extravagancies, or gilded empires, or slews of letters behind their names… to name a few.

The Mansa Musas and Doctor Fausts of the world, so to speak.

Yet, all of this collecting - viewed objectively - seems to do very little good, in the long run.

“I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.”

Ecclesiastes 1:14

The greatest collectors of them all - the maniacal tycoons and tyrants, the self-satiated academics, the social elites - often lead miserable lives of isolation, constantly swinging between feverish ambition and fearful, jealous defensiveness, until their own inevitable demise or the demise of the collective.

Nearly 200 million people were killed by their own governments in the 20th century alone - yet we constantly appeal to authority, institutionalism, sterile, secular “common sense,” and intellectualism as the end-all, be-all solution to our ancient sorrows and ignorance.

We mask insanity, personally and collectively, under the guise of convoluted ideologies, mental abstractions, and delusions of future utopia.

Trust the experts. They’ll fix it. Trust in this “-ist” or “-ism.”

It’ll be different this time.

The inner turmoil and outer chaos that mankind perceives as a foundational condition is largely a symptom of spiritual poverty - an aberration - now amplified by the echo chamber of mass media and an increasingly engineered, homogenized “culture.”

Unsurprisingly, landing men on the moon, developing artificial “intelligence,” churning out endless, mind-numbing entertainment, and fighting endless wars has been an insufficient remedy for this issue.

Perhaps colonizing Mars will be the solution to the void in man’s soul.

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Matthew 16:26

“If only I had _________, then I would be satisfied.”

A tale as old as time - and, an endless source of vexation and ruin - from King Midas, to the average modern man…

The bad news is, he’ll never find the _________ in the world… or on another planetary body.

The good news is, he already has the _________ within himself.

I mean this very literally - not as some feel-good mantra or wispy ideal.

The search for Truth is a process of excavation, not construction.

Descending into the tomb is often unappealing, when a Tower of Babel is waiting to be built.

“A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”

Meister Eckhart

Am I willing to bare my own soul, time, and time, and time again - possibly at the expense of everything that I so feverishly cling to, and with great travail, to expose what is True?

Am I willing to question, and dig, and burn, and peel - layer after layer?

Will I die to vain imaginations and ambitions?

Will I die to false idols and wandering fires?

Will I die to selfish opinions and worthless knowledge?

Will I die to useless hopes and fears?

Will I expose myself to the elements, so that Truth might shine through - in spite of everything?