On Monday through Friday I wake up at 7:00am, make a latte or some coffee, and spend the first hour or so of my day with God. My wife wakes up at 8:00, I spend some time with her over breakfast and a little more coffee, and we’re both off to work by 8:45. The job I have isn’t great, but between our two incomes we make it just fine. Plus I very much enjoy the people I work with and building relationships with my co-workers has proven to be a very positive part of my life. At 5:00pm I punch out and head home where my wife and I make dinner and discuss the intimate details of our young lives together. On Wednesday nights we go to prayer meeting at our church. On Friday nights we spend time building relationships with people in our church over dinner and games to start the weekend during which we take care of our domestic logistics and rest from a productive week of work and study (we try to learn more about various subjects with our spare time with the resources available to us). This is the way our quiet and beautiful life together has been for some time now, and although children or unexpected changes may shape our life differently in the foreseeable future, for now things are stable and there is no reason to alter anything in any way.
For those of you who haven’t realized that I haven’t actually been describing my life, welcome back to reality. I have only been describing the life I long for in my weaker moments. While its a perfectly plausible and very happy reality for many people my age, I am unable to pursue it because of the task that God has clearly set before me.
Retain the image I have set before you and take it to its logical conclusion. A happy couple with no real ambition outside of loving God and loving others. They have a good marriage with no pressing needs or concerns; just two people living comfortable in the presence of God. Let this comfort go on long enough and eventually their passion for life will fade. Scripture will become words, the redundancy of work will not bring fulfillment, relationships will become stale. How can this be kept from happening?
This is one of the best apologies I can give for undertaking this seemingly masochistic pursuit of music composition. What better way is there to look at specific aspects of the world in a fresh way than through a form of expression that uses a completely universal and wonderfully unique method of creative communication? What a fresh and wonderful way of portraying the noise of our distracted culture John Corigleono presented in Circus Maximus. What a beautifully passionate and hopeful outlook on death Takashi Yoshimatsu presented in his “Fuzzy Bird Sonata”. How do people fight their apathetic outlook without various forms of artistic expression helping them attend to existence in ways they’ve never considered?
At this point I feel the need to discuss apathy. First of all, it’s a sinful attitude to be indifferent towards God’s creative work which is part of his glory. If it’s a sin to be indifferent to creation, how much more to be indifferent to his word, his will, or your fellow man for whom Christ died? Is God an apathetic being in regards to anything? Since he is not, we cannot be either and art keeps us from this sin. Apathy is a powerful temptation because it is a seemingly useful tool for acquiring happiness (or a cheap substitute for it). One way to eliminate pain is to stop caring about the part of you that is in pain. You get upset with politics so you stop caring; life gets a little easier at the expense of something important. Thus apathy leads to bliss which is an “emotion” enjoyed by fools.
So then, apathy is to be avoided at every level. Care deeply about God, people, the created world, and the dark powers that work against them. Do everything in your power to maintain your passion for good. But how? Well, as I was saying, perceiving the world in a variety of different ways will help you to continue caring. Keeping a fresh perceptive on the whole of life will keep you from the sin of apathy and help to bring you into a full and rich awareness of the wonderful life that God has given you.
Sorry if I sound pretentious, but the fine arts (by that I mean work that actually attempts to say something worthwhile) are more important than the football game. Spending an hour with great art will open your senses to new ways of perceiving creation, people, God, and your own life in wonderfully rich ways. Do consider it.