In Praise of a Truly "Small World"
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Do you meme?
Maybe that's not a verb. (I should check that, no?) But you know what I'm getting at. Taking any of a multitude of instantly-recognizable images and adding your own words to them to convey some message has been with us for some time.
Some of them are funny. Some of them are offensive. That's to be expected: the online world is electronic graffiti, with all the accompanying lack of verisimilitude, restraint, decency, common sense, or even grade-school grammar.
However, some of them—many of which come from Catholics, some on Catholic sites—are troubling in other ways. Not because they espouse false doctrine, heresy, modernism, or the like. But because, in their attempt to satirize those things, they go way overboard. And that’s especially common, it seems, when it comes to penitential seasons...like we’re about to start.
You've seen them. They're the ones that say things like, "Give up Facebook for Lent? Oh, yeah, that's just like being nailed to a cross."
Funny? Yeah, on one level.
But has anyone noticed how vicious that sentiment is? Or how snotty it comes across?
If we said something like that out loud, in the old days, our mother (or our priest) would have given us a "whop upside the head" for it. And they'd have been right to do so. Because, plain and simple...talking to each other like that isn't spiritual. It's nasty.
So what’s the real purpose of it?
Is it to wake up the faithful? I'm sure that's the claim. I'd like to think that that motive inspired the first few. And, yeah, a little "dig" now and then does jolt us out of our complacency and get us to think bigger. But repeated "digs" don't do that job well at all. They're more like the image of poor St. Sebastian, tied to the tree with all those arrows sticking out of him. Repeated snipes like that may not kill us, but they're certainly not going to help us grow. They can take what little mustard seed some of us have and trample it until it hasn't a chance.
And I think it's time we stopped doing that to each other.
We're told in Scripture to concentrate on the good. Whatever is good, wholesome, worthy of praise...to think on it. And focus on it. And find it. Philippians. Look it up.
Instead, a little self-appointed group of monitors are out there who, under the pretense of "making us think," are actually tearing apart every positive effort some of us make—clearly, from the point of view of a person much more enlightened and much further along the spiritual path.
There's a Scriptural story about that, too. It's the one where the Pharisee is praying in the temple and starts out, "Lord, I thank you that I'm not like other men."
Yeah. That one.
I hate to tell you this. But if you're putting up one of those sarcastic religious memes...that's how you're coming across. Not as humbly admonishing a sinner. Certainly not as encouraging fellow believers. Not when you're so gleefully throwing water on small flames of effort.
For some of us, Lent is still about "giving up stuff." In other words...self-denial.
And that's not wrong.
Nor is any other practice that may smack of less-than-mountaintop spirituality...to you.
None of us is going to be at any spiritual pinnacle until we reach heaven. We're all on the way. Sometimes, our efforts are feeble. But Scripture also says that the Messiah will not quench a small flame or extinguish a smoldering wick.
So those of you out there who do these smart-ass memes...
...denigrating others’ efforts...
...making fun of them...
...taunting them...
...because you know better...?
Might want to rethink that.
Starting a spiritual conversation by slapping me across the face, kicking my cat, and telling me that my sacrificial efforts are pathetic isn't going to get me interested in anything else you have to say. And neither is it going to even remotely tempt a nonbeliever to want to join us.
I can't wait to see these things go away.
I hope it happens soon.
Janet W. Butler is a writer, editor, and editorial consultant by day and a “small soprano” by night. She is the author of “the best two little books almost no one ever heard of”—sweet romances, both published with small presses, and both orphaned—as well as several more manuscripts presently being shopped. In response to requests from “mentees,” she’s also produced an e-book version of the popular workshop series 12 Weeks to Your First (or Next) Novel, available through Kindle Direct.
A cradle Catholic who briefly “jumped the Tiber,” she spent time on the evangelical side of the fence before “reverting” to the Church again—because she was “dying of malnutrition” without the Eucharist. She’s a member of St. Peter Church in Volo, Illinois, where she serves as a member of the St. Anne Sodality board, and even was a guest on a podcast episode in October of 2020.
She is a Chicago area native, now back home once more after a stint in northeast Indiana (where she was an editor for Our Sunday Visitor Books), and lives near one of the Chain o’ Lakes with Maisie, Fur Diva and Office Cat Extraordinaire. When she’s not writing, she’s baking the annual Christmas Cookie Extravaganza, sampling new wines, or spending quality time at the piano trying to unravel the mysteries of Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Elgar, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff, and Schubert. She’s also a member of various choral organizations in the Chicago area, in which occasionally she hits notes only dogs can hear.
