Fathers can teach children how to work and live and relate in a community which demonstrates interest, compassion and helpfulness for others. This is something that our young need to learn if we are going to have a community in which people can relate to one another and get along with each other.
She stood at the check-out counter with the glass plates that she wanted to purchase. The young man who was working that day appeared to be distracted, disinterested, and distanced from what he was supposed to be doing.
He finally took her money, but he did not wrap her purchases. She was irritated and disappointed with his demeanor. She asked him to please wrap the dishes so she could be on her way. He wrapped a few of them in a rather sloppy manner and left the rest. She waited some more and finally wrapped the rest herself and left the store.
She exclaimed that she ought to have talked to the management, and its true, she should have. She wondered what this young man was doing working there. I wonder as well, but there is another question that arises in my mind.
It is true that he was working. He wanted this job. It might be, and I am doing a little second-guessing here, that he did not know how to relate to the people he was being asked to serve. This is not an uncommon problem today. It is the conclusion of Ellen T. Charry in an article that she wrote in Theology Today.
Dr. Charry suggests that we are in the midst of a “spiritual crises,” created by modern emphasis on the “autonomous self.” We have argued for the freedom of the natural self from social convention. Freedom from family is necessary for adult hood. Freedom from the church is necessary for the development of maturity. So we have been liberated from society, family and God. This increased trust in the self along with doubt about God suggests that each of us is alone in the universe. We live in a world that is shorn of grace, majesty, compassion and hope.
She writes, “Free market capitalism exploits modern themes of emancipation, autonomy, uniqueness, self-creation, and self-fulfillment for its own ends. Now, however, a romanticized ideal of emancipation, coupled with the crass side of the free market are bring despair and anomie (Anomie is a word which describes the state of collapse and the alienation experienced by the individual or class.) To America’s young regardless of race, education, or class. Loneliness, despair, and isolation from sources of nurture and guidance—both theological and familial—feed and are fed by the entertainment industry. Desire is stimulated, but the purveyors of pop culture have little investment in youngster’s spiritual well-being. This is a world of material plenty—whether by aspiration for that plenty or fear of its loss—that lacks spiritual anchors.”
Could it be that the young man behind the counter is experiencing what Dr. Charry is describing. If that is the case than the solution rests with fathers to nurture their children and to teach them the ability to relate in a community of friends and strangers. Your church is one of the best places in which may be done.
Ellen T. Charry, Margaret W. Harmon Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, “Spiritual Formation by the doctrine of the trinity,” Theology Today, Vol 54, No. 3, (October, 1997), 368-369.