The problem with illegitimate admiration

Also: "Sayfish" - You weren't supposed to catch it with words...

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Odelia here with Percolations #102, writing in a café on Tuesday afternoon. My fingers are shaking as I type this — guess I maxxed out a bit too hard at the cave just now…still, I will try to catch all the typos before sending this out, unlike last week. Accept my humanity, forgive my failings. I am first a writer, then an editor — a prioritization that doesn’t always give me the best public-facing image, but oh well.

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It’s an insidious practice, isn’t it, that of admiring something or someone without proper right or reason to do so.

By admiring them you proclaim you subscribe to the same set of values as their works and character speak of. By holding certain people in high esteem you raise your self-worth and sense of dignity, at least in your own eyes. Riding on the coattails of those who have struggled and conquered, you point out their greatness to others, you feel your heart surge with praise and adoration towards them and what you both stand for, you feel as if THIS, this is what makes life worth living.

While you admire, however, it’s easy to kid yourself that the passionate “a thousand times yes!” you feel in the presence of admirable acts substitutes for your own effort and work. It’s as if by siding with the saint you yourself become a saint (at the very least, in your own eyes). A silly case of uncritical attribution and proximally-determined identification, but a tricky one despite its silliness.

And — if you would be so kind as to allow me a moment to vent forth a most frustrating thought — this problem of illegitimate admiration is one of my greatest outcries against much of what passes as “Christianity” these days, in particular the formal and fashionable aspects of being “a Christian.”

People gather on Sundays to admire, respect, and worship Christ. They preach His words, dramatize His story, tell the world of how great a Savior He is and why we all ought to know him and love him and trust Him. They fall on their knees before Him, talk in hushed tones about his Passion, his miracles, his suffering and his death. They dance and sing and do everything they can to create a sense of togetherness in their admiration of this God-man, to feel as if they are accomplishing something meaningful by way of encouraging each other in their continued infatuation with Christ.

And yet — does their admiration matter at all? Is it anything of worth?

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

You may think I am harsh to ask this, heartless to imply that that is all nothing but vanity and worse than vanity. Well, I was one of them myself until I realized there never was any logic behind a “faith” based on what one felt towards someone, or a life supposedly forever changed because one decided to think that Christ was the best and most perfect man to have ever lived, or that one would get to heaven if they knelt and repented and thought to themself: “Oh, isn’t it glorious and amazing that God came to earth as man himself and died for us?”

He never asked for admiration, for fans, for people to go around preaching His greatness and goodness. He asked for followers. Disciples.

There is a vast abyss between those who walk as He walked and those who only talk of His walk.

Why?

Because it’s far easier to clap and whistle at a daring feat than to complete it; because it pains one far less to say, ‘Wow, nice save!” than to struggle and fail; because it costs less to admire or judge the graduate than to train under the master.

Borrowed greatness — borrowed values — a borrowed sense of worth and greatness.

That is illegitimate admiration.

But it gets worse.

The real problem with being the critic on the sidelines instead of the man in the arena isn’t that you bring noise without substance, or that you’re wasting your own potential, or that you’re a spineless and whiny wretch.

It’s the damning reality that you don’t even understand what you are looking at because you’ve never been there or done that.

You may look and stare and commentate and criticize to your heart’s content, but what you say is gibberish — you have no basis for reference, no way of understanding what the acts of the people in the arena mean, what the decisions cost them, why they say and do the things they do.

You see, but understand not; you hear, but comprehend not; you sense, but there is no anchor to reality in all of your thoughts.

And then you point to the hours and days you’ve spent “doing something” — proclaiming beliefs you have yet to make your own, promoting heroes you’ve never tried to emulate, protesting against evil you’ve never dared to fight against, and thus deceiving yourself with the self-comforting belief that you have done your part to improve humankind, that you have upheld a high standard of being in a depraved society, that instead of entering the chaos you have remained set apart and holy.

And so you have indeed, my well-bred, well-read, well-dressed friend. You have stayed in your pretty, perfect little bubble, have kept your clean lips and hands and feet untouched by worldly dust, have debated hotly over the meanings and turns of phrases in Scripture until your elders have lauded you for your scholarship and intelligence. You are a strong believer, I dare say — one who lives by the book and swears to die by the book.

…And yet the Son of God touched the leper, talked to the adultress, brushed shoulders with killers, broke laws and angered authorities, paused in his busyness to play with children, sat down with ladies of the night, conversed with those who sought his death.

Do you dare to say you are following him?

To my believing readers: Even if you refuse to die for those who hate you, even if you “cannot” give all you have to the poor, even if you hesitate to take up your cross daily and follow Him — answer me. Did you make time in your day to talk to the lonely man on the sidewalk you always brush past? Are you content playing worship songs in your warm church basement and talking about God’s great news while someone drowns their despair in a bottle they grip with frozen fingers a block away?

Do you think Christ cares whether you admire Him if you don’t love your neighbor?

And if you have never followed in His footsteps in the reality of your daily life — where it actually means something — what DO you know of Him, and what exactly are you admiring Him about?

Someone told me weeks ago he decided never to touch the violin because it’d break the “spell” not knowing how to play an instrument has on you when you listen to it being played. He’s a multi-instrumentalist already; and because he knows his way around the keyboard, drums, and guitars, he couldn’t listen to their music without a sort of criticism driven by an internalized knowledge and experience.

And I get that. There’s a particular sort of appreciation that comes with enjoying something without having to understand it inside-out — to be moved by a Mendelssohn concerto without noticing every time a note is just the slightest bit out of tune or what you would have done differently to end this or that specific phrase.

That’s usually only appreciation however — there is a difference between that an true admiration. And if admiration, then it is of a hollow sort, the kind that recognizes dimly the contours of mastery and the effects of good training but is devoid of a full-bodied understanding of what made the performance possible to begin with.

There are, then, three aspects to admiration both legitimate and substantial:

• Whether the object of admiration is worthy

• Whether the admirer truly understands what he admires and why he does

• Whether the admiration changes the admirer

Undeserved admiration is deceptive; admiration born of a lack of understanding is hollow; stagnant admiration is dead. All are meaningless.

Be careful what you admire.

Odelia

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Quote for the week

Out of the Past (1947) is on my to-watch list, for the simple reason that this bit of dialogue is in it:

Jeff: That’s not the way to win.
Kathie: Is there a way to win?
Jeff: There’s a way to lose more slowly.

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This week’s word: “Sayfish”

From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.

Sayfish

n. a sincere emotion that seems to wither into mush as soon as you try to put it into words—like reeling in a shimmering beast from the deep only to watch it wriggle limply on the line, which makes you want to leave it down there, languishing unexpressed, where it’ll grow dark and slender and weird, with ghostly blue eyes and long translucent teeth.

(The sailfish is a species of fish noted for its violent power, its eponymous signaling fin, and its ability to change colors like a chameleon. It’s also known as the boohoo.)

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I walked past where 
You were strumming your guitar
Turning a rough ballad into a serenade
And I wondered how to thank you
For the way it made me feel
Just a little less lonely in the world
Just a little more loved and heard
Just a little more human and real
But all I could do was nod and smile
And hope you understood. 

*** 

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Snapshot of life

Went for a lovely hike and picnic after work on Monday:

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Give this a listen

My sister sent me this song earlier this week, wanting to do this together at an open mic. We did end up doing it — ‘twas a lot of fun. (And for someone who doesn’t sing often nor ever practiced with her guitar accompanist, she did quite well!)

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