Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [46]
As a first step, we part with everything that is sinful and opposed to God. Beyond that, however, we also discriminate against everything that, without being actually sinful, is out of accord with the world of Christ or apt to divert us from God. Certain things carry about them an unlovely savor of worldliness, although one may deal with them without necessarily lapsing into sin. Such are, for instance, certain illustrated magazines, fashionable beaches, music halls, shows, many cinema pictures, etc.
If we confront these things with Christ, we shall feel them to be incompatible in quality with His world. Owing to the impudent, frivolous, and trivial quality which is rarely absent from them, they (at their best) shrill into the holy world of Christ as a discordant tone; their atmosphere is destined to entice us into levity and irreverence, thus undermining the dikes which we have erected against sin.
Apart from these, there is a further class of things which, though not qualitatively incompatible with Christ and hardly deserving the epithets frivolous and worldly, are yet superficial and ephemeral, and thus calculated to distract our eyes from God, our eternal Goal. Certain shallow pleasures which are meant to gratify our craving for sensations or to bewitch our fantasy belong to this class: thrilling novels, for example, which cannot be qualified as real works of art; or again, certain social gatherings in which there is much idle talk done and much food supplied for wanton (though, perhaps, harmless) curiosity. These things draw us away towards the periphery of being; they make recollection and aliveness to God and eternity, more difficult. They dishabituate the mind from the unum necessarium and so interfere with the progress towards simplicity. The Christian who insists on confronting everything with God will keep away from these things also. He will only take an interest in things which can stand the test before the face of Christ and which do not lead him away from God even in a merely formal sense, by fettering him to peripheral concerns.
We must not even fully abandon ourselves to natural goods
However, even as regards goods or tasks which, being objectively valuable or at worst neutral, can stand the test before the face of Christ, we must never abandon ourselves unqualifiedly to their immanent logic. In spite of the natural value of such objectively good things (such as, for instance, a noble friendship, a work of art, scholarly pursuits, the nursing of the sick, etc.), we are not justified in unconditionally abandoning ourselves to the immanent logic of these goods. Our direct relationship to Christ, and, through Him, to God, should radically inform our relationship to all goods and tasks.
It is not sufficient to confront everything with Christ, and, having decided that a given thing does not contradict Christ, to abandon oneself to that thing without any further qualification. The Christian’s relation to what is naturally valuable, too, is a different one from that of the non-Christian. Our primary devotion and self-consecration to Christ should manifest itself in every phase of our service to some genuine good or in dealing with some noble task, enriching the immanent logic of the theme with a new aspect. That one great theme, Christ, must have the last word, as it were, sounding through all others as a dominant tone. We must accomplish everything on the basis of our relation to Jesus, taking our departure from Him, thus substituting Christ for our original, unbaptized nature as a basic principle of our responses and our actions.
Everything in our life will then receive a sacral character; all our feelings and doings will be hallowed at least in a vicarious sense, and, whatever be our avocations or concerns, we will remain in the world of Christ.
We must “baptize” all of our actions