Are We Kneeling at the Wrong Altar?
The spiritual wisdom of John Henry Newman
This morning I picked up the Catechism and was reading out of the Life in Christ section (Part Three-§1691). By the way, the Catechism is such a great resource for the spiritual life. Pick it up and open it. Read what is before you. You might be surprised what you will find.
Here is what I read today:
All bow down before wealth. Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage. They measure happiness by wealth; and by wealth they measure respectability. ... It is a homage resulting from a profound faith ... that with wealth he may do all things. Wealth is one idol of the day and notoriety is a second. ... Notoriety, or the making of a noise in the world — it may be called "newspaper fame" — has come to be considered a great good in itself, and a ground of veneration. -John Henry Cardinal Newman
Newman was screaming into the void. Newman wrote this in the early 1900s. The message holds true today. The message that the culture screams and demands of us is to worship MONEY and its neurotic little sibling—FAME. These are aren’t just habits but liturgies. Rituals. Daily devotions to the altar of “hey, look at me” and “give me more…I want more.”
St. Paul nailed it with less flair but more clarity: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (I Tim 6:10) Not SOME evil. All of them. Like envy dressed as ambition. Like burnout disguised as hustle. Newman calls it what it is faith. The sick kind of faith. The kind that believes the dollar can resurrect your worth and that an audience or followers equals holiness.
And fame? Fame is now virtue’s understudy. A follower count (think social media) is some moral authority or flex. It reminds me of the words of Jesus: “Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1)
Maybe we all need a spiritual detox and a punch in the gut reminder that we are not our LinkedIn title, our Zillow estimate, our follower count, or the things we own or what others say about us. We are hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3). Think about that for a second. Hidden. As in unseen. Let that truth offend our ego and then heal our soul.
Here’s the kicker. We all worship something. The question is: what’s got our knees bruised? We kneel to what we think will save us. Is it our investment portfolio? Our bank account? Our job? The spotlight? The respect or obsequious flattery we demand of others? Newman is not whispering. He is sounding the fire alarm that we can’t serve two altars. Only one of them leads to life. Maybe its time we check our heart and ask “where is my heart?” (Matthew 6:21)
May Jesus teach us that it is in poverty and obscurity that true life is found. May all of us figure out how to unplug from the algorithm of self. True life is a life in Christ that is invisible and hidden.
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