The Curse of Superficiality

Superficiality is the curse of our age.  The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.  The desperate need today is not for a great number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.  (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline)

I have glossed over this introductory statement in Foster's book many times.  I am afraid that I have usually thought of it in superficial ways.  I have thought of it mostly individualistically, as a way to my own deeper growth.  I have looked at it with hurry, scanning over the ideas so I can get deeper quickly.  Ironic, isn't it?  I can be superficial about getting deeper.

The last couple of times I have found that first phrase rather poignant.  When I think of the blessings and curses pronounced in Deuteronomy 28, I see that this "curse of our age" seems to explain a lot of things.  Curses are the opposite of blessings.  When something is blessed, a lot of good comes from relatively little effort.  That's grace.  With a curse, very little good comes from inordinate amounts of effort.   That's the flesh at work.  Superficiality is a whole lot of work generating very little good.

The particular face of of our curse, according to Foster, is superficiality.  It is a resistance to the depths of life.  As another modern writer puts it,

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

 The curse is that we find our desire too weak to carry us beyond the shallows of human existence.  We long for more than what we are given in life, but cannot obtain it, because the superficiality takes us to the wrong places in the wrong ways.

The Primary Doctrine

The primary teaching that supports the curse is one of "instant gratification."  The teaching is that instant gratification is the ideal circumstance, the best outcome, the only real goal. We want answers now.  We want things fixed yesterday.  The bigger, faster, more intense it can be, the better it must be.  Unfortunately the first part of the doctrine, "instant," flies in the face of one of the most basic rules in a deeper life: "Love is patient."  Love and the deeper life may be patient and only comes through patience, but we see impatience is the current road to "happiness and fulfillment."

Another problem with the current prevalent doctrine is that of gratification.  Life is gratification and nothing else in our current culture.  "What do you really feel like?  What do you really want?"  These questions are often the deepest ones asked when dealing with marriage, vocation, and even morality.  Unfortunately they happen to be the same questions asked at the front of a fast food line as well.  When life comes to a halt, we often find ourselves wondering, "What do I want now?" Questions from our depths are shunned because they require self-denial and perseverance.

Although some of us are willing to forgo the "instant" part of "instant gratification," we find gratification hard to ignore.  One of the primary reasons is not so much our hedonism, but our desperation.  It is pain that drives us more than pleasure.  It is emptiness that scares us more than just missing out on something fun.  Unfortunately gratification only puts off pain and emptiness and then intensifies them, only to make us go back to gratification once again.

The Real Need

Instant gratification reveals our fear of the depths.  We may flock to intelligent people and gifted people, hoping to find some way out of superficiality.  We want answers.  We want wonders.  These do not pull us out of our tailspin, however.  Intelligence without depth only justifies our empty superficiality.  Wonders without depth dazzle the eyes and ears, but do not touch the soul.  This is not a new problem:

Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  (1 Corinthians 1:22-24, ESV)

The depravity we face today is one of superficiality.  It is the sign of our inward decay, our corruption.  This is one mode of perishing.  "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  (John 3:16)  The life we are meant to live is a deep life, a life like God's.  The apostle Paul describes such life: "We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day."  (2 Corinthians 4:16)  Instead of inward decay and corruption, we can find continual inward renewal.

The Celebration of Discipline, then, is the celebration of a deeper life, one of continual renewal.  The disciplines described are the ways in which Jesus and his followers live a deeper life.  We may approach them wrongly and superficially, as I have, and find them wanting.  But we will not be able to approach a deeper life without them.  Disciplines go beyond deep thinking and deep feeling and "meaningful" action into deep living.  Deep people are people who live from the depths of themselves and of God.  Disciplines are the practice and enjoyment of that deeper life.