In a power-based and consumerist culture like ours, the Creator’s gifts of flourishing and fruitfulness Genesis 1:28 are, with rare exception, ceded to the strong. By violence or the threat of violence, the strongest maintain social and economic privilege.

Western culture is architecturally a pyramidal design. A privileged few at the top possess almost all the power and money. They are pandered to by middlemen who keep the riff-raff at bay. The underprivileged majority comprise the bottom 90% of the cultural pyramid.

In contrast, the architecture of the reign of the Spirit, or the “Fellowship of Empowerment” (words I like very much), as described by O’Murchu in his book Incarnation, is an inverted pyramid in which the 10% serves the 90% of the human-kind from the bottom of the social pyramid.

As the Apostle Paul observed,

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

—Ephesians 2:19-22

The Apostles and Prophets provide the foundation—the lowest place in the inverted pyramid—intended to be walked upon. It is from that lowest place that they support the entire structure of the ‘fellowship of Empowerment.’

We occasionally hear cries of protest from the riffraff that the middlemen with some modest accommodation most often mollify. Occasionally, one of the riffraff is promoted to the position of ‘pandering middleman’ themselves, which appears to assuage unrest. This cultural regularity appears unavoidable and has become the acceptable norm. If it were not, I must assume that the Riffraff would come with the pitchforks, as has happened from time to time in human history.

My friend Paul showed me a cartoon of a chubby mouse with a big smile holding up an ironic protest sign reading, “Support the fat cats!!” The irony is that the fat cats keep the chubby little mice around to consume for lunch. The point seems to be, “We will satisfy the hunger of the ‘Fat Cats’ in trade for a high-carb diet keeping us chubby, which is the very thing that makes us the desirable consumable to the cats. In actuality, the system seems to work, doesn’t it? Consumerism is the tie that binds cats and mice in a fairly symbiotic relationship of eating and wanting to eat. Both want to eat.

• • •

Consumed With Love

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an interesting reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive!”

—David Foster Wallace

There is a spiritual component to this consumption. Both the evil, which is hate, and the good, which is Love, want all humankind to be like they are. The Great Spirit seeks us out and, with great humility, offers Herself to be consumed by us to convert us to Her Love from the inside out. This is an important metaphor. The Spirit offers Ezekiel the scroll (herself) to eat, which he describes as “in my mouth as sweet as honey” Ezekiel 2:9-3:3 . Jesus claims to be the bread of life come down from heaven John 6:22-59 , and during his last meal, he offers his students, his body, and blood to eat Mark 14:22-25. He said, “My flesh is real food, and my blood, real drink.” Paul proclaimed, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:27 These unsettling metaphors offer us a view into the depths of the humility, generosity, and intentional vulnerability of the Spirit. To our great advantage, the Spirit in us works as we surrender to Love to transform us into Her own image. Love insists on permission. Without our permission, it is not Love. Love is a choice.

Evil also seeks us in order to make us in its own image by consuming our hope for goodness and forgiveness little by little, by fulfilling our gluttonous desires so that, finally, there is not even one thought left in us that is not about getting our next meal. With the Spirit in us, you would think resistance to evil should not be that hard. But all that evil needs to have authority in your life is your agreement. The ‘sin’ in the Jahwist creation narrative is choosing to come into agreement with evil and out of agreement with goodness. They changed gods. Evil is a choice.

Our Western culture professes “…freedom and Justice for all…” although clearly, that is not what the framers of the American constitution meant—freedom and justice for all white men who owned land (hear, not women, poor people, indigenous, Catholics, or people of color) was what they meant. This conviction remains today despite their all-purpose religious confession that God must, above all things, be just (hear, fair).