Paying Tribute To The Tyrant Within Themselves

So now, don't be anxious about life (what you shall eat), nor for your body (what you shall wear). Life is more than eating; the body is more than raiment. Consider the birds; they neither farm nor store into stockpiles. God simply feeds them. So you too don't be solicitous. Tomorrow will take care of itself. You will have enough people trying to force you to be otherwise. And this is truly evil.

Matthew 6

The simple fact is that two thousand years after Jesus spoke these words, no self-proclaimed Christian I know wants to live like this. No one.

It is fashionable for Christians to excuse themselves from being so by pointing to the evil influences of secularism as an excuse to not pay attention to Christ's words on providence. But isn't it ironic that it is precisely people's rejection of his teaching that brings on war, genocide, human trafficking, environmental rape, industrial slavery, climate change, consumerism, capitalism, democracy/communism/fascism/caliphates, refugees, and poverty, and not vice versa?

The irony of modern life is that even in the church people bring themselves into ever greater slavery by the very means that perpetuate this enslavement. It is from the illusion of the advantages of one's own self-determination that people must be delivered.

For each person who is the slave of their desires by definition exploits every other person whom they contact in order to pay tribute to the tyrant within themselves.

- Thomas Merton (alt.)