Comfort

When the Son of Man goes to prepare the way he promises to send back the Holy Spirit and the comforter. From the beginning, the spirit of truth and being comforted are interlinked with each other.

The comforter dominates the modern church, but it has even more of a presence in modern, secular society. Aspects of your identity which make you feel uncomfortable in society have become political, demanding protection from the state. In this way, how society currently views justice has expanded from (a) protection more from physical harm to (b) protection from unfair struggle, with struggle positioned as the opposite of comfort.

I would argue the reason why the secular space has thrived so much more in a Christian context compared to an Islamic context is due to this association between truth and comfort. In Islam, if you are made to feel uncomfortable by Islamic teachings, then too bad. You are expected to comply regardless.

In Christianity, there is an implicit belief that comfort is an entitlement in the same way truth is an entitlement. When Christian teachings violate this entitlement, then the Christian is entitled to either reform Christianity or walk away entirely. If you listen to the reasons former Christians give for leaving, usually they can be framed as feeling uncomfortable with certain teachings which led to questioning the overall truth value of Christianity as a whole. Again, comfort associated with truth.

Still, retreating to the secular is not a final solution. Why? Because the soul desires lasting comfort and secularism can only offer forms of diminishing comfort. Further, the very thing which entitles the human to lasting comfort, the soul, has no place in the secular at present.

The result is secular people desiring comfort but having no entitlement to it, taking whatever they can get. This is the dynamic for a potential abusive relationship, which is what we see in the chronically addicted and homeless. The more hopeless and uncomfortable your life becomes, the stronger the desire is for immediate comfort at the expense of the pursuit for lasting comfort. There is a part of the average, middle class, secular person that doesn’t want to see the situation of the chronically homeless in this light because it’s revealing of something that they too try to deny.

In the secular / political domain, comfort is zero sum and the (secular) satiation of the desire for comfort follows the pattern of addiction, requiring increasingly higher levels of input. The wealthy become comfort addicts and the comfort deprived become resentful. Scapegoats become necessary and violence escalates. If this violent energy isn’t focused on an external enemy, then it gets exercised internally.

Of course, this is not just a secular issue. Christendom has been unable to deliver lasting comfort as well, leaving it vulnerable to the same zero sum comfort spiral.

The question: Is lasting comfort actually attainable for humanity in this world?

We need to face this question consciously. If the answer is no, then we are stuck with the destructive pattern mentioned above, so we should desperately want the answer to be yes. Do we act like we desperately want the answer to be yes? Do you act this way in your life?