The Sunshine School of Piety
The Sunshine School of Piety
Thursday after the Resurrection – April 16, 2020
The popular prophets of contemporary culture are not those who tell the truth – which is the hallmark of a true prophet – but those who say what their followers want to hear.
Religious leaders, political leaders, leaders of commerce . . . most anyone can fall into this kind of cheerleading . . . another version of dressing up a pig in lipstick.
We notice this all around us, even in the midst of a global pandemic . . . some who say things are not really that bad (try selling that to 28,593 families in the United States and 138,487 families around the world who have lost loved ones to COVID-19) or who advocate sacrificing people’s health and lives for the good of economic factors (Capitalism as the greatest good!).
In the excerpt below, Evelyn Underhill uses the ominous phrase, “the sunshine school of piety,” calling it a “charmingly optimistic outlook.” How apropos is that to our current times?
God’s sole purpose is not to make our lives easy or to lay out a pleasant path before us. God’s project for the world is to help human beings grow up . . . to help us become the people God has created us to be.
God does NOT cause global pandemics, but there is the fundamental recognition that when times get extremely difficult, we have an opportunity to find resources – within God’s own heart, within ourselves, within others, and in the world – that we did not have previously . . . resources that can help move us toward what it means to be fully human.
If, however, we approach the difficulties of life through the eyes of the “sunshine school of piety,” we will surely miss the opportunity to come out on the other side as changed people.
The sunshine school of piety will not help us here. The time will come when its charmingly optimistic outlook will not work, when God is seen to make the utmost demands of the soul, and the soul is driven to make the utmost of demands of Him. It finds itself in a great loneliness but the obligation of service still goes on, or it is beset by old faults it thought it had conquered, a humbling experience which no one escapes. It is then that it is being treated to the food of the full grown.
When the effort and struggle reaches its height, when we are faced with a violent uprush of premature impulse or temptation in ourselves or our neighbors, when the effort to master sin almost chokes us and kills our prayer and our peace, no easy-going religion will do. And when we consider that all other souls are at some stage of this growth and this struggle, then self-giving, even to apparent spiritual loss, does not seem too hard a price for helping them. This alone is seen to be the act of the fellow-worker with God, making life worthwhile.
[Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit, edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame, (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2001).]
For Reflection:
o I think about what the phrase, “sunshine school of piety,” means to me. How do I hear it?
o Christian mystic John of the Cross described the “dark night of the soul,” a very different experience from the “sunshine school of piety.” In the dark night we must trust God’s presence and love, even though we can’t feel it. We know God by pure faith.
o For a moment, I consider the resources for live and faith I am discovering during this global pandemic . . . resources within God’s heart, within myself, with others, and in the natural world.
Thursday after the Resurrection – April 16, 2020
The popular prophets of contemporary culture are not those who tell the truth – which is the hallmark of a true prophet – but those who say what their followers want to hear.
Religious leaders, political leaders, leaders of commerce . . . most anyone can fall into this kind of cheerleading . . . another version of dressing up a pig in lipstick.
We notice this all around us, even in the midst of a global pandemic . . . some who say things are not really that bad (try selling that to 28,593 families in the United States and 138,487 families around the world who have lost loved ones to COVID-19) or who advocate sacrificing people’s health and lives for the good of economic factors (Capitalism as the greatest good!).
In the excerpt below, Evelyn Underhill uses the ominous phrase, “the sunshine school of piety,” calling it a “charmingly optimistic outlook.” How apropos is that to our current times?
God’s sole purpose is not to make our lives easy or to lay out a pleasant path before us. God’s project for the world is to help human beings grow up . . . to help us become the people God has created us to be.
God does NOT cause global pandemics, but there is the fundamental recognition that when times get extremely difficult, we have an opportunity to find resources – within God’s own heart, within ourselves, within others, and in the world – that we did not have previously . . . resources that can help move us toward what it means to be fully human.
If, however, we approach the difficulties of life through the eyes of the “sunshine school of piety,” we will surely miss the opportunity to come out on the other side as changed people.
The sunshine school of piety will not help us here. The time will come when its charmingly optimistic outlook will not work, when God is seen to make the utmost demands of the soul, and the soul is driven to make the utmost of demands of Him. It finds itself in a great loneliness but the obligation of service still goes on, or it is beset by old faults it thought it had conquered, a humbling experience which no one escapes. It is then that it is being treated to the food of the full grown.
When the effort and struggle reaches its height, when we are faced with a violent uprush of premature impulse or temptation in ourselves or our neighbors, when the effort to master sin almost chokes us and kills our prayer and our peace, no easy-going religion will do. And when we consider that all other souls are at some stage of this growth and this struggle, then self-giving, even to apparent spiritual loss, does not seem too hard a price for helping them. This alone is seen to be the act of the fellow-worker with God, making life worthwhile.
[Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit, edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame, (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2001).]
For Reflection:
o I think about what the phrase, “sunshine school of piety,” means to me. How do I hear it?
o Christian mystic John of the Cross described the “dark night of the soul,” a very different experience from the “sunshine school of piety.” In the dark night we must trust God’s presence and love, even though we can’t feel it. We know God by pure faith.
o For a moment, I consider the resources for live and faith I am discovering during this global pandemic . . . resources within God’s heart, within myself, with others, and in the natural world.
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