To be capable of everything

I am an alloy of two species of quiet. My parents are both quiet, but in two distinct ways. My mother was shy out of fear of being judged and ridiculed. As she has grown older and more comfortable with herself, she has become a talkative person. The other species of quiet, my father's, is totally different. I see little fear in him. He is able to voice his will when needed. With him, however, there is a permanent mental or physical barrier that can never be breached and which rules out the possibility of him ever engaging in prolonged speech.

I am reading Absalom, Absalom, as I mentioned earlier this week. In it there is a man who seems to believe he can do anything as long as he has enough willpower and knowledge. He is the modern man. This is what modern man believes about human nature. Anyone is capable of anything. Anyone who fails to do something great when given the opportunity fails because he didn't try hard enough or didn't know what he was doing. In all, this is the Gospel of Modern Man.

Sometimes I wonder if the Christians of our day have mingled this foreign gospel with the Gospel of Christ. It's pretty easy to string scripture verses out of context to "prove" that God's will is the American dream. It's the dream that we can have as much money as we want as long as we work and pray hard enough for it. We can have as much power, as much skill, as much knowledge, as much pleasure, and as much influence as we want, as long as we open our minds and allow it to happen. Is this the Gospel of Christ? Some would say yes. "Ask and you shall receive." "With God all things are possible." St. Paul says "I have become all things to all men." Isn't this a wholesale Biblical sanction of modern man's gospel? Is something wrong with a person who just doesn't seem to be able to do it all? Is that person accursed by God? Is God calling me to be billionaire, monk, intellectual, athlete, and artist all at once?

The Gospel is reduced and disfigured into this false gospel of modern man. The reason why I say this is that in my life I often run into limitations. Some days I talk so much to so many people I feel as if there is no physical capability within me to give anything else. I am more like my father than I used to think. Sometimes I reach a point and I feel like I can go no further, no matter how much I grew. I hate it when I confess this to some people and they offer up trite little answers. "With God all things are possible." "If you trust in God, He can supply what you aren't able to supply." What if that's missing the point? Maybe God doesn't want me to talk any more. Maybe he wants me to shut up and go away somewhere to be alone with Him.

In our times, we are pressured to be perfect at everything - to be the well rounded individual. On campus we scurry around dipping our fingers in a variety of activities so we can splatter our résumés with a bunch of empty words to please employers on first sight. This is not perfection. This is not what God calls us to be. He desires truth in our inner being.