The Christian Call to Reflection

"The glaring contradiction between the actions of the clergy and teachings of Christianity must make everyone reflect." -Rosa Luxemburg

Reflection is not something we're good at--Westerners especially. It requires quiet and calm, yet our lives frequently demand constant motion. Our self-help books and prospective employers ask us to sketch out our lives in 5-year increments, and our media bombards us with advertisements--possibilities of what we could own if we remain in constant motion, putting in those few extra hours and working up to that next big promotion.

Our increasing awareness of personal health and well-being is also tainted by the motion of the day. Exercise, diet, and even education and mental health are geared towards becoming the “best you can be” and reaching your “fullest potential.”

All of this emphasis on motion is contrary to an idea of reflection. Reflection is quiet, contemplative time to take in our surroundings. It allows us to examine both ourselves and the world around us, and to see where perhaps we or or our society is not oriented to truth and goodness. This kind of reflection is necessarily devoid of direct "utility," and so it finds no home in the culture of consumption, political quips, smear campaigns, constructed outrage, and mass marketing that we have created. Yet it is vital, and as the dictatorial pressure to mobilize, to buy, to vote, to consume, to work, and to move without thinking becomes more and more prominent in society, the need for reflection increases at a similar rate.

If we do not stop and analyze our surroundings, we do not understand our surroundings.

Christ calls us to continually strive not to mediocrity, but to perfection--the perfection He showed in the Gospels and on the cross at Calvary. We cannot blindly follow the current. As followers of Christ, we do not have that luxury. We must continually detach from the hustle and bustle of the world and reflect on our own place in it, orienting our appetites and our whole-selves always to what is good, true, and beautiful.

As Catholics and Christians, our place is not in the status quo or the mindless, unguided march of time. Christ’s coming was something entirely new, and an enormous departure from the ancient world He occupied.

With this in mind, tradition qua tradition is not an adequate basis for morality. Our current political and societal structures do not get a pass simply because they are what we have, just as slavery was always wrong and against the teachings of Christ despite the numerous institutions that claimed otherwise. In many ways, Christ’s words and His teachings blatantly contradict the world and society we live in, imparting upon the Christian a moral duty to reject those facets.

Living an authentically Christian life means being incredibly inconvenienced by our adherence to a Savior who rejects worldly wealth, status, and power. If there is not a marked difference between us and the average Joe in the way we live our lives, we're doing something wrong. Christians of all stripes must use their faculty of reflection to review themselves, society, and the world they have found themselves in; guided as we are by the light of Christ and the Gospels.

This means, in many ways, getting out of our comfort zones and thinking critically about our place in the world. It means reading more, thinking more, and praying more. That's what I hope for this blog, and why I chose the name I did. We are called to be perfectionists--always striving towards the perfect example of Christ--and we can't figure out what that is without adequate time for reflection.