David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

love

Economic Man needs no heart, because love and God are dead

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In the modern era, Economic Man has had his heart ripped out. He doesn’t need it anymore.

Economic Man is supposed to be a perfectly rational creature. The culture has declared God to be dead. It’s ridiculed sacrificial love and religion and faith. Devotion to family is frowned upon. Economic Man has nothing left to believe in other than production and efficiency and acquisition.

Economic Man isn’t supposed to have feelings. He certainly has no soul. He can deal only in the emotions his brain can process without having to feel. He can be angry. He can be jealous. He can covet what someone else has. He can hate.

But Economic Man is not supposed to feel deeply. He’s not supposed to feel the painful joy of true love. He’s not supposed to feel the prick of a heart that has been pierced by joyful feelings which can make him cry.

Did you even notice when the culture ripped out your heart and taught you not to feel? Did you notice when you were stripped of your humanity and turned into a rational robot focused on production and efficiency?

Is it any wonder that life seems more and more empty to Economic Man?

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End of life brought cancer patient to baptism six days before death

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Thomas Roberts lived almost his entire life as an atheist. But with death approaching, something inside his heart changed.

Roberts was dying of lung cancer. He had only days to live. He was wheelchair-bound and unable to breathe without being connected to an oxygen supply. He was a patient at the Palliative Care and Comfort Unit of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital.

He was in the hospital just waiting to die.

On Sept. 4, Roberts decided he wanted to be baptized as a Christian, and he wanted to be submerged in water, as he understood the Gospels to teach.

A hospital chaplain worked with Roberts’ doctor and hospital staff to see whether the dying man could survive without his oxygen tubes long enough to be baptized. When doctors gave the go-ahead, hospital staff made arrangements to use the pool at a nearby rehab center.

Surrounded by his wife, son, two sisters, a niece and a nephew, Roberts was lowered into the water with a chairlift, where he was met by the chaplain and a physical therapist.

The lifelong atheist was baptized. Just five days later, Thomas Roberts was dead.

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Cycles keep us circling through life until we get something right

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It seems like I’ve been here before
I can’t remember when
But I got this funny feeling
That I’ll be back once again
— Harry Chapin, “Circle”

My life is full of cycles. Some are obvious. Some become apparent only after I’ve circled back to somewhere I’ve been before. And some cycles suddenly feel familiar when I realize I’ve experienced it in some other part of my life.

I’ve always been drawn to these cycles. I’m endlessly fascinated by the beauty and symbolism of sunrise and sunset. Even before I took photos, I was mesmerized by this cycle that made it seem as though the sun and moon were always playfully chasing one another.

Over the last decade, I’ve become deeply connected to the seasonal cycle. The more I watch autumn come and make everything dormant in winter — only to bring everything back to life in spring — the more I compare it to other things in my life.

Today I learned about theologian Walter Brueggemann’s conception of a cycle of orientation, disorientation and reorientation — and I immediately identified with the pattern. It seems that I’ve gone through this cycle over and over again.

I have been been going through the darkest of night for most of the last decade, but Brueggemann’s concept gives me hope that the break of a new dawn is almost here.

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