Radio God

Last night I went to a private screening of a new documentary, "Mission to Matrimony," put together by a friend and co-worker of mine. It's excellent; look for it as it starts to make the rounds at film festivals.

During the long walk back to the subway through a cold, dark, drizzly lower Manhattan, the thought occurred to me that the spiritual mind is like a radio antenna. This antenna picks up all kinds of signals, and not everyone gets the same range or detects the same frequencies. Surely you know people who can tell exactly what you're thinking at a given moment; sometimes this occurs even with total strangers. Other times, some people just don't pick up on what you're trying to avoid having to say literally. We all know people who are just permanently disconnected from society. We say they "don't get it."

Some of us have the ability to connect with animals or nature at large. All of us, however, are hooked up to the two spiritual extremes. You might think of it like basic cable: not everyone has HBO, but we've all got CNN and Fox News. (Sorry, I'm getting cable on Saturday, it's on my brain.) We all get regular broadcasts from Light and Dark.

There are challenges, however. For example, you wouldn't tune into Darkness and hear heavy metal music followed by a DJ saying, "You're listening to Radio Satan! Coming up next, sounds of women screaming and a live broadcast of a cat being cut in half by a chainsaw, so don't touch that dial!" That would be too obvious.

Likewise, what we might call "Radio God" is not harp music alternating with Bible pleasantries and the latest from Kenny G. In fact, a lot of Radio God is telling us things we probably don't want to hear. God is not "easy listening."

If anything, Darkness would be the "easy listening" station. (Apologies to Burt Bacharach.) Goodness requires focus and dedication; Darkness is suited best to apathy.

It takes concentration and practice to keep tuned in to Radio God; different medium (but appropriate simile!), but Darkness is more like internet pop-ups, always distracting you and trying to get you to focus on something else.

The two "stations" are more alike than you might think. Just as propaganda is often disguised to look like real news, it's often difficult to distinguish between the two messages in your brain; in fact, one of Satan's most effective tools is to deceive you, by taking advantage of your arrogance, into thinking you are being moral when you are really being cruel.

The only way to tell the two apart is to submit your conscience to humility. If it's quick and easy, if you hear your mind telling you things like, "no one will notice" or "everybody does it," you need to adjust the frequency. When you hear yourself think, "This is hard, this might be unpleasant, but it's the right thing," stay tuned.