June 30, 2016 at 8:16 am, by Carl

Ohio stage web

 

In honor of the recently completed national gathering of SkillsUSA, I wanted to post this picture as a reminder of my connections with this wonderful organization.  This is of my speaking to the state convention in Ohio, and I would love to come speak to your organization.  Click the link below to read today’s blog post, but while you are on the blog, come check out my “Speaker” information.  I’d love to work with you for your next event.

 

Failure of Wealth

 

The failure of our modern wealth is that it creates the lie of “I am independent and self-sufficient.”

 

We are dying as a culture….because even though we all have access to all things, we embrace or sense the nihilism in our perception because we feel the alone.  One can sense this feel of “the alone” when you see the race for “likes” or “followers” in social media.  “The Alone” may also be partially responsible for the rise in mass killings in the country over the past 20 years.  Rather than learning to speak to one another even in disagreement, to have a conversation with someone who holds the opposite view than you, and in that moment be able to appreciate that they are simply another human.  A person of worth….that is critical.  To see the spark of God in each person and realize that each life has value would, I believe, change the mindset of many who end up doing harm to others.

 

The alone is killing us.

 

You are not self-sufficient.

 

We need each other.

 

God shows us this in the Trinity.  Communion, Community in the Creator of All things.

 

Dependence is not weakness.

 

We don’t like to feel dependence; we like to believe the lie that we are not contingent, not needing other things or other people.

 

But we are contingent.  There is no necessity in our existence.  We were brought into being.  In a future moment, we will cease.

 

In between, it is not good that we are alone.

 

Today, our American society, even the “poorest” among us, has more wealth, more access, more opportunity to what in previous times would have been the wealth of kings, of the nobility.  Information, education, technology, transportation, entertainments, creature comforts (air conditioning, indoor plumbing, running clean water, electric heating, refrigeration, and so forth)…these and many more, make us the richest people in world history.

 

Yet we die inside.  Worse, we are killing ourselves inside.  We continue to crawl into the machine.  We have seen the world of The Matrix and choose, like Cipher, the betrayer in the movie, to ask to be plugged back in, away from real human touch.

 

You are contingent.  You, like Adam long ago, need another human.  We are made for community.

 

True health to our culture will only return when we realize the failure of our wealth.  Today, decide to turn away from things (and the pursuit of things) and instead turn to the human relationships around you.