As money tightens, and people look up alternative solutions to increasing debt at the hands of student loans, it’s important to ask if the university system is going the way of the dinosaur. Is the university system the best model for learning? And if so, what will it take to make it economically viable so that talent can match job production?

Last night I was reading this article about how in the music market genius has overtaken the industry’s ability to produce jobs. I mean, think about it, if you like Indie bands, like I do, you can choose from 40-50 acts off the top of your head, each more obscure, underground and wildly talented than the last. Even as research bemoans the death of the academy and scholars everywhere are feeling the crunch as tuition gets higher, drop-outs increase and jobs for people with master’s degrees in English, History or Philosophy become harder and harder to find, maybe it’s time we question the way that thee areas of work are still committed to the Industrial age, in a digital world.

Opportunities from higher education are not expanding with the rate of education and talent. For example, the market is flooded with more written material than has ever been possible  and with digital media there is nothing short of exponential growth. However, due to this mass flooding, the general rate of quality is decreased and so we see fewer and fewer works that stand a cut above. There is also the problem of how research papers and theses are largely ignored in the outside world. The Academy is no longer the central hub of learning in the public sphere.

People want ideas, and they want them now.

Of course the academic community contributes to public learning, however, with movements like TED talks there is a wider access to education and innovation, but the difficulty is that despite the proliferation of innovation and the rapidly increasing rate of technological development, the market and the university have ceased to relate almost entirely in terms of research and expansion leading to new industries except for in the fields of chemistry, engineering, electronics/technology and biology. Even in these places where the academy meets the road in a very public way, the ability of these institutions to generate innovation that leads to employment is minimal compared to the industrial revolution.

Here are 10 Things Every Parent Should Know About the Ivy League which originally appeared in Time Magazine and was later re-published by Reader’s Digest. Claudia Dreifus and Andrew Hacker provide the following advice about Ivy League schools: Don’t do it. Research Universities are often more enabled and empowered by publishing and their graduate programs than their undergraduate achievements. The rule seems to be that culture and technology are changing very quickly and that educational institutions are not, making the university system unnecessary for career advancement for those able to ride the waves of new technology and become Social media Entrepreneurs, or Android App developers, or any other of the new careers that were unthinkable even 20 years ago.

Is university the game-changer it used to be? Consensus seems to be: No. I mean, don’t get me wrong the University spawned Google, Facebook, and the ideas that would lead to the personal computer.

The important question is not really whether the University is viable as an educational institution. It’s a good distraction and removes our attention from the one that’s truly important: What we are willing to do to apply the University educational system to the needs of the world today? What are we doing to make the knowledge acquired at universities economically viable so that the middle class is not crushed under student loans or a decreasing job market?

If we want to save the university from obsolescence what should we do? Here are my 5 ideas.

1. Specialize in Skills Education:
   Skills and not general ideas will be the way of the future, and our education system should match. When people have a wide skill base they can generate more ideas based on what they know. The thing that fueled so much innovation for the industrial revolution was not simply the power of a few inventions but the widespread ethos of work and the openness of the culture to bridge gaps and embrace new skills for the future.

   The culture was shocked by the new technologies, but it made due, and adapted. Our current culture is reticent to join the innovators on the edge, we love our iPhones, but refuse to let the new media become the way of the future in our educational systems. Instead of focusing on fact collection, we should foster education that teaches things like: social intelligence, new media interaction, arts and crafts, business management, ethics, and literature. All of these systems should foster measurable, tangible goals for students to reach to demonstrate proficiency.

   An example would be: Use demonstrable critical thinking skills, be able to synthesize a coherent logical argument within 15 minutes of being presented source material of up to 10 pages to read.Skills and not simply the acquisition of information has been and will continue to be the way of the future. But all this has to begin in grade school, with a new educational criteria simple dubbed Digital Literacy. Kids need access to the tools of today if they’re supposed to dream up the ideas that save the world of tomorrow. Let’s ditch the polish, the pomp and get back to work, making education that suits the needs of a world not yet here.
   
   

2. Ditch the Bureaucracy:
   It’s funny to me that educated people across the globe paying attention to the financial crisis are calling for austerity measures in Greece, Cyprus and France, yet refuse to acknowledge the bloated universities that reflect the financial markets of the Eurozone. Monkey see, monkey do.

   Austerity shouldn’t be a buzzword for capital gains only, it needs to take hold in our education system as well.A huge part of college funding goes to administration needs, and in this day and age, the university is bloated with unnecessary departments entire projects that seem to exist for the sheer purpose of letting people with degrees hobble within the institution that should have turned them into innovators instead of grave-keepers. Instead of a complex system of administration, return the university to an institution where teachers are key, and teacher salaries equal those of “administrators” who in many cases are not doing much for students. Make teachers the majority, turn the University into a vox populi, and reduce administration to bare bones efficiency. It’s a dream job to be working at a university making six figures to do paperwork, but it’s unrealistic in this culture and financial climate, and it simply has to stop.

   Another thing that has to stop that’s related to the bureaucratic machinations of the educational system is paperwork. We need to find a way to streamline, digitize, and reduce the amount of paperwork that’s being done. Teachers should be teaching. Having close friends who are professors I see the amount of extra paperwork that the current system requires of them, and I think it’s absurd. Teachers should be providing education, moral support, skills based education and camaraderie in a mentoring relationship that fosters the next generation with role models that exemplify some of the best that culture has to offer eager minds. Teachers can’t do that if in their 40 hour work week, 20 of those hours are dedicated to paperwork, administrative emails and non-education related tasks.If we want education that matters, we need educators that do just that, educate.

   The university should be a breeding ground for innovation and universities could invest more money in labs, extracurricular activities such as open experiments, green technology innovation centers, student think-tanks, cultural integration investment (to turn students paying money into job-holding future re-investors), art studios open to all students, photography labs, student centers that not only encourage leisure but also curiosity and make available the new technologies that make it possible.Once upon a time, the University system invented the computer, made possible the need for new technologies and stood at the forefront of those projects. I think if we all took a little time to invest in group founding spaces that invite interdisciplinary discussion and innovation like TED talks, the university might be able to survive extinction.
   
   

3. End Standardized Testing:
   The GRE and other standardized college exams are huge money-makers, but the thing is, they’re too general. How is it that a philosophy student and a history student are expected to meet all the same general criteria? Standardized tests are easy to make, but hard to really get results out of, instead each discipline or inter-disciplinary study should develop tests that fit a criteria agreed upon by the academy, subject to change and refining and open to discussion by the whole of academia.Standardized testing does nothing to prove a student’s proficiency, instead, we should develop tests across all levels of education that demonstrate skills, not fact retention. The mind is a muscle made for skills, and unless we get with the program, we’re going to be left behind.
4. Decentralize:
   This is where I might be getting a little wild in my thinking, but here’s the concept: Interdisciplinary studies are the way of the future, if someone wants to take English as a major, encourage an English course that has some interdisciplinary benefit to society as a whole. Do away with English as a major and instead offer things like: English for the Third World, or Literary Theory and Psychology. In doing so, you create an educational system that ties our general studies like English with education for developing countries or with psychological practice. We should take our finely honed traditional majors and connect them with places that will generate jobs and new markets in the world to come. Imagine: Philosophy for Green Technology, a series of courses designed to teach both classical philosophy and the applicability of those studies to environmentally friendly technological development.
   
   Go Online: Build a strong online base that allows for both traditional classroom learning and online classwork that can be managed by fewer staff, for a cheaper cost and can actually increase the amount of time students get to spend with teachers via blogs, email, twitter, research journals, online magazines and other digital media. Taking textbooks to Kindle, Nook or other e-book readers can also reduce costs, and if the books can be read online by multiple students through a comprehensive online library then fewer books will be required, but the information will be the same.

   Go Public: Another method of decentralization that could save the university is to take Higher Education fully public, and make it tax-funded. This is a long term idea, but merit, prowess and innovation should be rewarded, not simply being born into the right class or family. If we took Higher Education fully public, anyone could go to college and we could raise the standard of education across the board, while creating a system that would have stricter standards.

   However, I’m not saying let the government run higher education. Keep it private, let the institutions run the way they’re running, but with higher standards. The Government could create a list of criteria for full federal funding of all tuition, and let the institutions worry about fundraising. Put the money in the hands of students, and raise the standard so that anything below a B average has to receive private funding instead. Putting tuition directly into the hands of students, with a $60,000 grant to attend college provided the student has maintained a B average could make for war with the banks and other institutions that don’t want to lose student loans as a source of income, but in the long run, do we want a better society, or simply a cheaper school system?

   Making a grant system that bases your tuition grants on merit rather than income would reduce the drop-out rate, retain the best and the brightest, and facilitate making sure the most innovative students have the financial capability to meet the needs of a changing world. This wouldn’t altogether eliminate the need for student loans but could drastically reduce the necessity for upwards of $50,000 average debt for college graduates.

5. Innovate According to Logic: The best and brightest schools of today, who wish to take practical steps to retain viability and existence as the world changes will do the following:

• Build a strong online curriculum able to be managed more efficiently, by a smaller staff.
• Retain a traditional university presence where classes can combine the best of online and traditional classroom education.
• Focus on Undergraduate Studies as a prime factor and avoid tuition hikes.
• Enforce Austerity measures on non-essentials and begin to specialize the scholarship types they would like to perform.
• Develop larger of more elite students who can be recognized for more significant achievements in more specialized fields of study.
• Ditch Graduate programs that have smaller class sizes and focus on a broad low-cost undergraduate base.
• Focus on class availability and make sure all degrees can be accomplished in four years or less.
• Reduce departments, administration and focus on specificity and expertise, more like the guild system of the Middle Ages.

As a former University student, I admit I loved my education. It taught me to collect ideas, both new and old, to look to the future and imagine possibilities, but also to retain the best of the past. I also learned to foster relationships with a generation of people learning and creating and discussing ideas. Those things will never need to go away, and they are essential functions of the university as institution. Some of the best moments I had in college were with teachers who invested not only in what I knew, but how I went about knowing, and thinking and feeling and seeing the world around me. Those things cannot be done away with, and they’re essential to who I have become. I love the University, but I hope it changes so that it rises above instead of floundering into extinction. Besides, the only way you can save the universe is if you have the know-how that comes from a great education.

Stanley Hauerwas, my love-hate fling with theological liberalism and radical Orthodoxy all at once says:

“When Christianity is assumed to be an ‘answer’ that makes the world intelligible, it reflects an accommodated church committed to assuring Christians that the way things are is the way things have to be.”

I think there’s a lot of wisdom in this little saying. When we say that if a society were Christian or that Christianity is the answer to the world’s major malfunction, we’re saying that the world is the judge of the Church, rather than the other way around.

I think we should instead try to really reframe what we’re thinking about both the question and the answer.

The ultimate question, I think is:

What is our responsibility given Jesus Christ, his life, his ministry and his endowment to the Church?

The answer is, I think:

Our responsibility is to be as Jesus Christ, who transforms all things. We must reframe the world we live in, knowing that we’re provisional intermediaries at best, yet this should not reduce our fervent devotion to live a life against the cultures of death and violence so common in the world of every age.

Christianity is not a system by which we make sense of the world or ourselves. It’s at best a challenge to be transformed, a summons to responsibility, a summons to a new and radically different culture, a culture which has at its heart, Trinity, cross, resurrection, Jesus Christ, Father, and Holy Spirit, Kenosis, Perichoresis. And all these things.

Christianity is not God’s answer to man’s problem, it is God’s way of telling us who He is because Christianity is in fact all a response to the life and words of Jesus of Nazareth.

I don’t know if this makes any sense to anyone but me right now, but the answer is: Christianity belongs to God, not to me. That little fact, changes everything.

1: Every action committed by Christians happens in the context of God’s work to reconcile and redeem the world through the work of Christ operating in and through the Church.

a. See 2 Corinthians 5:18-21 [God] reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the dikaiosyne [justice] of God. (NRSV, Modified, emphases added)

b. The word diakosyne can mean righteousness, and is almost always rendered this way when  translated into English. However this rendition misses the way that Paul is envisioning the active power of the ministry of reconciliation and its relation to what we call justice. It is through God’s reconciling work, and our work of reconciliation on God’s behalf, that we become a community of justice. It is

c. This means that when we think of violence or war, or self defense, we have to think of them within the framework of this story and either contributing to or detracting from the final outcome. Because God has asked us through Christ to be the manifestation of His very own justice.

2: Christians can contribute intelligently by insisting that when Christianity is conceiving of justice it is done within and for this context. For Christians, reconciliation is the meaning of Justice.

a. Christians must insist that acts of justice are patient and seek permanent solutions to the problems that we face, instead of reactionary, justice must be reconciliatory.

b. Christian justice is not synonymous with secular justice, and we do not hold secular states to Church ideals, but we do ask the Church to be the leaven in the world, making justice happen in various places.

3: Within the story of Christianity, Justice is not isolated. Justice belongs with the other virtues, namely Faith, Hope and Love.

a. When we talk about pacifism and justice and violence, we must conceive of a “faithful justice” from within the Church that has application to all others.

b. The wrongs of the universe cannot be righted through coercion, but we can’t sit idly by either.

c. We must be patient, because real justice is all about reconciliation. This action requires a holistic view that consolidates not only justice but virtues as well. If we believe that God is the Just-Judge, we must accept taht judgment is an outworking of the virtues and attributes of God.

d. The ministry of reconciliation and the justice of God an only be embodied by a people already shaped by the communal practices of faith, hope and love. If God is supposed to be making an appeal to the world through the Church, the only way this can happen is through people committed to embodying justice through the virtues that already shape their common religious life.

Here are practical pictures of what I’m talking about:

In Ibillin, Palestine, 1966. Fr. Elias Chacour pastors a congregation of Christians divided by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the Palm Sunday Eucharist Fr. Chacour locks the doors to the church and challenges the congregation to kill each other or reconcile. After an awkward moment, an Israeli police officer stands up and asks for forgiveness, there was reconciliation and justice was made present to those people. (This event is cited in the book Embodying Forgiveness)

Now, this is not ideal, nor is it a full manifestation of the kingdom, but we have to begin to make room for reconciliation as a form of justice between parties as Christians. This can only be done with patience and the sometimes ugly practice of harming the gospel’s cause because we are only given two evils. So long as we recognize violence as shortcoming rather than necessity or logical choice we have room to allow for what Catholicism allows. Just war, a regrettable but sometimes tenable position, and pacifism, a more ideal but sometimes untenable position which is at various times compromised by ideologies before protecting neighbors.

The other is St. Francis of Assisi who appealed to the Sultan Malik Al-Kamil, begging for peace, and asking for an end to the war. He did not protest, or picket or debase graves and funerals, he sought to be the justice he sought. Too often we talk about justice, or social justice but we wish to put the onus of responsibility on others. For Christians Justice is always a manifestation of the Church’s vocation and it must happen through me.

In short, we must be persons of justice. Justice only happens if we are willing to love our neighbor and defend them against harm, and to love our enemies such that if we must use violence it causes us great sorrow for the gospel and for their sake.

I know this isn’t a complete list, or a comprehensive “why” but these are just some more thoughts on the matter. Hope they have helped a bit.

A friend of mine posted something about how laypeople should not bother themselves with the study of theology because of their “simplicity.” Which saddened me greatly, because the Church has always sought a Universal Discipleship. It’s in the very word Catholic, which has roots in the word Kata-hole meaning, according to the whole. But nevertheless, let’s not labor on this too much, suffice it to say, sometimes I wonder what the hell has gotten into my friends where they assume that a little bit of learning gives them a right to be the kings and queens of arrogance.

It makes me sad when good theologians are corrupted by bad virtues and thus prove to be bad theologians. You cannot separate theology from virtue. It is impossible to rightly describe the righteous, pious or sanctified mysteries of God without a soul that corresponds analogically. Meaning, you can only reflect what’s in you, and even if your words are eloquent, and your thoughts systematic beyond reproof, if you cannot love the ignorant, the enemies, the weak and the poor, you are not engaging the world Christianly.

I have been harping recently, on the incarnate nature of Truth as a person. Truth is not merely facts which are proven, Truth is shaped by a certain imagination, possessed of certain virtues and disciplined in many facets, because Truth is Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Christ.

I posted as a status: ” Truth Himself is humble and meek, seeking not to be served nor looked up to, but bears his cross and serves even the most uneducated through His mission. If your theology does not care for even the ignorant, it is not Christ-shaped.“

I had a few “likes,” but there was one particular friend of mind who posted the following response:

“Truth can cut like a double-edged sword too. There is a time for each, right?“

I mean, the statement seems harmless enough right? But look at the underlying conviction, that peace and meekness are a disposition that have an alloted time-frame, and that violent Truth has a time to be free as well. Both of these are his disposition, obviously favoring the sword metaphor. I understand this young man’s attempt to be faithful, and stand up for his beliefs, but either we are disciples or we are soldiers for the empires of the world. We cannot do both faithfully.

I answered his question with the following:

he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.

For him whose sword IS humilty, is meekness is service, this is the one that topples empires and lays waste to the principalities and powers.

To him that assumes that Truth is just another sword in an arsenal to wage war against whatever, this one is already compromised. Jesus is not a weapon, he’s a servant.

I have to admit I might be lacking in imagination here, but I do not understand what is so offensive to people about having to understand the “blessed are the peacemakers” part of the gospel. Clearly Jesus did not approve of revolution against the Romans, and that’s part of why He was crucified, the people wanted another messiah, one who would kill. They chose Barabbas.

My interlocutor decided to expound his position as follows: I have edited only grammar and punctuation:

I…believe there are those called to live by the sword and even die by it when necessary-which is an honor- in the fight against modern evils.

(My reply to this here is, firstly…what? Jesus was pretty explicit. This guy isn’t even espousing a just-war position, but a flat out “violence isn’t all that bad” position.)

i personally have never seen an evil empire fall by humbling oneself to it and serving it with gentle kindness.

(It’s called, the Roman Empire. Just sayin’…pagan empire, Christianized and established as the center of Western History after this Christianization. Jesus overcame not just the idea of sin, not just the effects of sin, but the roots of sin and every manifestation including arbitrary power and arbitrary violence.)

The hearts of individuals will be changed by Christian witness, collective evils not so much. there has to be room for men in the church who resist evil with force in society.

Well, the gospels and the epistles urge us not just to transform individuals, but societies, and not through violence, or power, but through being the Church. Through being weak people able to be transformed by grace, and Truth.

I closed with the Following:

I disagree, but I am not going to start a big fuss about it. Look, either you believe in the power of the resurrection, or you don’t. If you do, you look at history and see that meekness did indeed topple an empire. jesus overthrew the roman empire, and it was through his crucifixion.

The gospel is not about individuals alone, but the redemption of all creation. Collective evils is precisely what Ephesians tells us we can overcome, and Colossians as well. Principalities and powers are overcome not by engaging the world on their terms, but undoing their power through Christ Himself.

But again, the purpose of this status was not to talk about just-war or pacifism, it was to call us all back to remembering that Truth Himself is humble, and we should be likewise. Therefore, let’s all do that, and spend less time arguing about intricacies that are ultimately irrelevant if we’d all live the gospel in the poverty Christ invites us to.

I think we could all use remembering that the gospel is not an invitation to power, but to poverty. The power of the gospel is not the empires of the world, or the churning of machines and power structures, but the cross of the crucified Jesus and what that means for us. It means a liberation from any form of liberation that condones unnecessary violence and frowns on even what is deemed necessary as a less than perfect solution.

If we wish to be Christian in our imaginations, we should work to put war behind us. Or as the Holy Father Pope John Paul II says ” War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity’s agenda for the future.” I like my interlocutor and friend very much, he’s well intentioned about his faith, but his mistake is assuming that you can hold a sword while carrying a cross. That we have and live in a world where our imaginations are ready to make imaginary wars and imaginary enemies appear means we have not yet learned the peace or the poverty which Christ intends to teach us. That’s all for today, thanks for reading.

In today’s Christianity, there is an identity crisis plaguing all forms of Christian spirituality so that many of the churches have essentially forgotten the deposit of faith in their consideration of what makes Christianity specifically Christian.

What I mean is, Christians are turning everywhere but the deposit of faith for revelation and insist of revolution instead of renewal, often unknowingly insist on rebellion instead of remembering the Fathers of our faith. Some turn to reaction instead of refining, some are caught in the endless present through culture wars and forget the deeper and more enduring aspects of the faith that are a constant source of guidance and renewal.

Especially among Protestants, private revelations run wild. They change the faith, they alter the form and content of Christianity from generation to generation. Word-faith, full-gospel, and other movements which bear the name Charismatic are often shaped by private revelations. What can truly help unite the Churches and set them on a single path, united despite differences is a common realm of experience. In fact, Tradition is simply the records of a commonly regarded and Authoritative Experience.

Pope Benedict XVI offers this meditation from Verbum Domini under the paragraph called “The Eschatological Dimension of the Word of God”:

[Private Revelation] can have a certain prophetic character (cf. 1 Th 5:19-21) and can be a valuable aid for better understanding and living the Gospel at a certain time; consequently it should not be treated lightly. It is a help which is proffered but its use is not obligatory.

Discernment is something that we all need when encountering the Word of God through the people of God. It is incumbent upon us to learn how to take upon ourselves the voice and mind of the Church. Hope, Faith and Love are to be essential criteria of how we are to understand and hold to private revelations. The virtues they inculcate and the general charity which they inspire are essential elements of how we relate to revelations that are non-essential to faith. Pope Benedict XVI offers us a criterion:

In any event, [the validity of private revelations] must be a matter of nourishing faith, hope and love, which are for everyone the permanent path of salvation.

There we have it. Discernment is a matter of virtue, of charity and Christ-likeness in all things.

Creating undoubtedly does mean making something out of nothing, but in the more specific sense of giving existence–not constructing objects or beings, but transmitting existence, causing a being to begin existing outside myself. That is what the Creator does. -Pope John Paul II The Way to Christ, (Harper; 1984. 10).

I think that often when we think of God as Creator we tend to think of a flourish of power, the way we see performance artists cast something into being. Perhaps we are wrong in terms when we call this ‘creation’ and should recognize that the transmission of existence is not something properly bound to objects at all.

Creation firstly belongs to God as his freedom to create space for existence outside Himself. Father, Son and Holy Spirit make room for our contingency upon their loving union. (So too human sexuality is guided by this and sees that allowing room and space for contingent need to develop out of absolute and free gift is not alien to the body, but at the heart of its meaning.)

Creation belongs to our nuptiality and our communion as beings to be able to transmit being so that there may be an existence outside myself. Not only does this mean that when I am called to marriage I am called to a spouse, it means that this spouse and I, when participating in the Divine Love made possible in the conjugal act have every right and responsibility to allow freedom for life and contingency based on our union to develop.

I know that contextually the Pope is elucidating some points on discovering our true self in terms of its correspondence to its Creator, but I think that to do so rightly will mean a reshaping of the erotic imagination with which we approach our bodies and the doctrine of creation.

What I mean is, if we are to understand ourselves in terms of our absolute and sober minded importance, we will not do so apart from a proper Theology of the Body, or a reconceived sexuality.

Yet, the sexuality I think is offered to us is precisely and most necessarily guided by the quote above. It is because Creation is this and not some other thing that our existence in the image of God reshapes even sexuality.

The idea that ‘preaching the Gospel’ has nothing to do with sex and that ‘preaching about sex’ has nothing to do with the Gospel betrays layers and layers of seriously misguided thinking. When we divorce God’s love from sexual love, as Pope Benedict says, ‘the essence of Christianity’ becomes ‘decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.’ (Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) 7). The ‘gospel’ then becomes cold, aloof, inhuman. In other words, we’re no longer preaching the real Gospel. -Christopher West

I think Christopher West is exactly right. The gospel has everything to do with sex, sexuality, nuptial union, marriage, bodies, and sexual organs. As a professor of mine said, ‘any religion that doesn’t tell you what to do with your genitals or your cookware is not worth your time.’

I wanna talk a bit about the Erotic love of and for God. When we talk of love, we tend to think that God has a gift love and we have a need love. We love because we need to be loved, or any other such schema. And God loves us as pure gift. I agree, but I think that these loves are not mutually exclusive, i think they interpenetrate each other more than we think. I think God desires our erotic love for him.

Now, what I mean by erotic is not pornographic, for those of you concerned with my term. Originally and theologically eros is a type of love based in desire. corrupted eros is called porneia where we get the word pornography. Pornography is a corruptoon of desire, but that does not mean desire itself is evil. God desires our desire be for Him, and Him alone, so that through Him, we shall rightly love all other things. Above all, erotic love is delineated as follows: In erotic love, the lover loves because the beloved is lovely. We need to understand that God finds us lovely.

The City of God book XIX ch. 23:

Justice is found where the one supreme God rules an obedient City according to His grace, so that it sacrifices to none but Him…where this justice does not exist there is certainly no association of men united by a “common sense of right and by a community of interest”

Augustine says that Justice can only happen in the place where no one worships any but The Lord. Why? Because as the Lord Who is Love, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have a special and new revelation of what love truly is, and what it must mean for us after all. Through the Father, we see what is desired of creatures, God erotically desires that we should be His people, that we should be His lovers. The Son reveals the shape and nature of what a true and healthy eroticism for God looks like, and the Spirit is the purifying and activating agent moving through our desires and opening the ‘eyes of our hearts’ for proper desire for God and neighbor.

He has spoken to us, and found favor with us, and having redeemed us from the throes of sin and drawing us unto Him as proper lovers, we are now lovely. And despite the sin that continues to raise itself against us, God truly and fully desires us. When we divorce the thought that the Love that God shows us is proper sexual love from our sexual love, we no longer understand the Love of the gospel not because God has lust, because sexuality is not inherently lustful, but because the love of the Gospels is inherently desirous. God desires a people to call his lover, a bride, a people whom He shall be erotically united to in the end, filling them with Himself.

God’s love of Creation is not mere benevolence, it is the love of a lover, a “jealous” love, that places all our attentions and deviations from this God into terms of adultery not for mere poeticism, but as a crucial understanding of the type of God we serve and the type of lover He is.

Sex and sexuality and sexual love have everything to do with the love preached in the gospel, and to neglect this is to no longer be preaching  the gospel. To ignore the gospel’s claim on the body is to divorce yourself from the gospel through gnostic suppositions that all that matters is material fulfillment, or the opposite, liberal modern supposition that the gospel has no place anywhere outside our private practice of “religion” whatever we mean by that.

“…I would ask you to look at yourselves carefully, especially in moments of personal prayer. Every time we enter into contact with God we rediscover our self in its absolute importance.”

-John Paul II in The Way to Christ

The important thing about self-examination is that we must attend to it in moments of prayer. Every act of communion with God is self-revelatory. ’It is as creatures that we discover our self in its absolute importance,’ because we shall have discovered in discerning the Lord how he makes space for our creatureliness. Contact with the Lord makes room for our ability to be creatures where previously we have been fallen and in bondage to sin. Prayer is the only thing that liberates us from ourselves and establishes the importance of ourselves in relation to the Other Himself.

Young people of every continent, do not be afraid to be the saints of the new millennium! Be contemplative, love prayer, be coherent with your faith and generous in your service of brothers and sisters, be active members of the Church and builders of peace. To succeed in this demanding project of life, continue to listen to his word, draw strength from the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and penance. The Lord waits you to be intrepid apostles if his Gospel and builders of a new humanity.

-Pope John Paul II