In recent posts I’ve been down on technology, but before I go off and join the local Amish community, I want to discuss one of Aesop’s fables. This one is called The Dog and the Wolf. Here’s the story:

A starving wolf meets a healthy dog and compliments him on his sleek appearance. The dog describes his life of ease and invites the wolf to join him. As they go on their way, the wolf asks why the fur about the dog's neck is worn away. The dog replies that it is merely caused by the collar he has to wear at home. The wolf then leaves, declaring that a full belly is a poor price to pay for liberty. (link)

Aesop’s lesson is: “Better starve free than be a fat slave.” OR “There is nothing worth so much as liberty.”

Could there be a more real world example of this exchange than in dogs themselves that we see today? Pets today are in a strange state. Comfort and ease has proven a slippery slope for those first wolf pups, as the table scraps they consumed led to a transaction that could never be undone. The temptation to lay by the fire has resulted in pugs and chihuahuas being dressed up in costumes and carried around in handbags. Suffice it to say that future generations will look back at the American moment in history in confusion, as pet obsession must be one of the strangest episodes in human history.

I can just imagine the history textbooks in the future showing a picture of Paris Hilton and her handbag animal, or of Boo the Pomeranian (the World’s Cutest Dog, R.I.P.), as exemplars of the values of early 21st century America, as an era of surplus that allowed a massive unhitching of the mind from reality. That modern marvel is less about dogs than the people that own them, but one last distraction: I recall in my history textbooks such sidebars like Marie Antionette’s cake or the debauchery of Roman binge-and-purge parties. Surely a dog dressed up as a flower or hot dog would make a good visual instruction of what Americans valued most.

As history repeats, we see that same story of the Dog and the Wolf. The wolf struggles, but never has to wear a sweater or booties, nor does a human follow him around with a leash. The wolf doesn’t have to listen to a human talking to it, or wonder why the person is waiting to pick up his poop as soon as it reaches the grass.

This fable is about free-will and two different kinds of freedom. Moreover, this fable is about which master do you serve, and it throws one of the great questions into the mix, as who you choose to serve.

What do you serve? What do you choose to do with your time and days? To what have you surrendered? Where does your money go, or what are you saving for?

You must surrender to something, because that’s what free-will entails. You cannot be a wolf and a dog at the same time. As always, you cannot go both left and right. You cannot go both up and down. Choices must be made. This problem teleports us right to Jesus in his words: “Man cannot serve two masters.” The wolf can be fat and warm by serving the human master, or live true to its nature but be free and hungry. Likewise, if you surrender to God, you reject the world and give up its table-scraps. If you surrender to the world, you reject God but get to lay by the fire. In either case, only one option can be selected.

What the wolf sees is that if he surrenders to comfort, he is rejecting his purpose. Every choice requires a selection, and making a choice means making a rejection of the alternative. If you surrender to perceived pleasure, you are rejecting a perceived pain. But sometimes our perception of what is pain and what is pleasure is in error. That’s the never-ending game we play. How can we avoid suffering? But the more important question is this one: How do we perceive or receive suffering?

The great trick here is being pulled on the dog. What is perceived as an escape from pain and struggle does not actually remove pain and struggle. The trade off for table scraps results in being kenneled or leashed for about twenty-three hours a day while the pet owner lives out his or her life. The perceived “freedom from suffering” leads to a new kind of suffering, and it’s a spiritual suffering because the essence of the dog’s purpose gets buried inside. A dog that is a pet is never truly a dog, because every instinct the animal has is scolded or molded as the owner desires. The dog has the shape of a dog, the mind of a dog, but must live out an artificial non-doggy lifestyle. The instinct thumps in the heart of a dog when the doorbell rings or when the urge rises up to hump a pillow or when a suburban rabbit darts out from behind a garden gnome. But none of these actions of the dog are allowed. The only action allowed is the adoration of the master in exchange for a treat, as that is the transaction that has been signed and agreed to between pet and pet owner. In trading one part of dog-ness, that of the desire to eat, all other parts of dog-ness have been given up and suppressed.

Now, when Aesop was writing, I can only assume that people were not trying to fulfill their dog’s life as if it were a human child. I don’t think the Greeks were spending thousands of dollars on pet hotels and medical insurance, and building elaborate dog parks and doggy daycare centers so that the dog could attempt to have the best of both worlds, of both dog-ness and pet-ness. (I should note that in Chapter 8 of Plato’s Republic there is a curious paragraph about how in late-stage democracy, right before democracy devolves into tyranny, Socrates mentions that “pets begin to take on the likeness of their mistresses” and that animals in the street will not be ordered to move out of the way for people, as animals have been elevated in status to that of people and everything is “bursting with liberty.” This may be prophetic for us today, as at Halloween there are many pet-owners with matching outfits of their dog. Just recently I saw a dog in a cart at the grocery store where a child is supposed to be. Plato predicted 21st century America because he and Socrates had lived in a similarly declining society.)

The Dog and the Wolf fable is a relevant parable for our time, because as technology has satisfied our every sensory desire, we now suffer the spiritual malady of slavery to comfort.

One thing that fascinates me in this respect is the nature-lovers that I know. The rednecks and the hippies are so close to one another, but they just don’t realize it, and one tends to think of the other as a monster, or a fool. The “Bambi-killer” and the “tree-hugger” both understand something very deep in our instinct. They are both trying to remove the collar of modernity and technology. They are both trying to un-modern themselves. If you could sew them together somehow, you have the hunter-gatherer. More specifically, together they are the wolf, choosing the kind of freedom that brings suffering, but a suffering that fits our nature. Hunters will choose to go off-grid in a pilgrimage for an elk or bear. Eco-gatherers will seek out thirty day hikes on desolate trails. This is an attempt to take off the collar, as many hunters and gatherers live on cul-de-sacs and sit tethered to desks, basking in the unnatural light of screens that suck their soul. Spiritual ennui and lack of meaning is the suffering today.

To insert Jesus here, in all cases, the question of suffering is not “Why is there suffering in the world?” but rather this one: “Suffering is real. Now what am I going to do with this suffering?” I’ll refer you to Father Mike Schmitz and Bishop Robert Barron to tell you the meaning of suffering. But in summary: Jesus came to transform suffering. He did not come to end suffering. Not yet. He came to show us the redemptive part of suffering. Once you understand that this is possible, your perception of suffering is completely inverted from what modernity tells us, from psychology to marketing to internet influencers. They are clueless as to what Jesus accomplished on the cross, because they have an inverted worldview compared to Jesus.

The simple commandments to “love God, and love others” never contained any promise of zero suffering. The saying, “You deserve to be happy” is not from Christ. If you think that’s what he meant, please refer to the brutal death of Jesus himself and his immediate followers. He does not take away our suffering, he takes away our sin. This is the important distinction to understand, and if you don’t believe in sin then you can never understand the message. A pre-requisite to the Gospel is knowing that you are a sinner, and as our academic and marketing experts keep taking things known to be sinful off the shelf, this leads many people away from the joy of finding the message of the Gospel. Why? Because if you don’t think random sex or lying or cheating or hating or presumption or despair is a sin, how on earth can you understand what Jesus is doing for you spiritually? The message that “he takes away our sins” only makes sense at all if you realize that you have sin to take away. A lifetime of slogans and campaigns elevating the self and denying any wrongdoing gives cataracts to us. We are way beyond seeing the speck of dust in another’s eye while ignoring the wood plank in our own, because we think we have no sin unless “it affects someone else.” Among the things no longer considered a problem are masturbation, watching porn, getting drunk, and getting high because we have been duped into the belief that “if it doesn’t hurt anyone else, how is it bad?” This is despite the fact that all of those things most certainly hurt ourselves and every relationship we touch. Since nothing is deemed profane now, we see no need for healing, which is the root word for “savior.” Instead, the enemy of our lives becomes discomfort. Whatever upsets our feelings or blocks our desires is the modern definition of sin. It is not our own thoughts or actions at fault, it is those who differ in opinion. We can lust all day long and no longer consider it adultery, and you can claim to be Christian and at the same time completely ignore this:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Mt 5:27-28)

The only way a professed Christian man can allow his hand and eye to scroll porn on his phone, after knowing those words from the Gospel, and if he is not making an effort to stop scrolling by seeking confession and doing frequent examination of consciences - the only way this is possible, is if his profession of Jesus as God is said without belief. In other words, he can only be scrolling porn if he is merely professing faith for expediency and social acceptance. Because if you know and truly believe that Jesus is God, then those sentences from Matthew should convict you where you sit. A man can only be professing faith in Christ as the second person of the Trinity and simultaneously scrolling porn without remorse if he is lying about the profession of faith. This goes for various sins, but the most prevalent among men today is this addiction to porn. And many, many men with this problem will bemoan the state of the world in regards to other sins, while the plank of Matthew 5:27 juts out of their eyes, as their “harmless act of scrolling” causes the slow death of their marriage, as it withers and dies while they scroll in the night.

I failed to understand why regular Confession (and doing a proper examination of conscience before stepping into the Confessional) was important until I began to understand that what sins you must keep admitting in confession becomes a burden and saying them out loud every month or week is a great incentive to stop doing the thing you wish you wouldn’t do. I’m reminded of Jim Carrey who plays a lawyer in Liar, Liar. When he has to take a phone call from a criminal client who is once again in jail, he screams his legal advice into the phone: “Stop breaking the law, a*****e!” When you hear yourself going to confession time and again to admit a fault that you just can’t quit, eventually it begins to register, that I need to clean up my side of the street. I tire of cleaning the same street of the same garbage that I myself put on the street. Speaking the words out loud to someone else, even if the sin can be absolved, is an enormously powerful incentive to stop breaking the law. God’s law, that is. Part of the miracle of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is that the grace of God grows, and even if it takes years, or decades, if you keep trying, you will stop doing the thing that is so difficult for you. Prayer, Confession, Eucharist. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

“In this world you’ll have trouble, but take courage, take heart.” This allows us to give our selves up as an offering to God - just like he did - without making sense of all suffering. I feel like most miss this point. In taking away our sin, we are then free to be our true selves. We can drop all the fig leaves we wear, which are all elaborate ruses to hide our fear and our pride, to cover our wounds.

In the fable, the wolf is naked. No collar means no fig leaves. The wolf chooses his true nature. Thereby, the wolf lives a kind of redemptive suffering, while the dog chases a mirage: a life without suffering. There is no life without suffering. Obviously, wolves in real life don’t know they are choosing a redemptive suffering, but the wolf in the fable is not about a wolf; he is a stand-in for us, for humans with free-will who face the choice of comfortable slavery versus purposeful living. This should set off Old Testament alarm bells because the entire book of Exodus is here. The exact struggle being faced in the desert is the desire to return to the comfortable slavery of Egypt. And lastly, might I add, that non-believers never get bent out shape when animals start talking in Aesop, but they sure get irritated when the serpent talks in the Garden of Eden. I have many thoughts on why that is, but I’m already off the beaten path.

I’ll just leave a link here for the Catechism paragraphs 385-409. It says a lot, and fills in the gaps of this problem that I’ve left out regarding the decision over who with our lives we choose to serve.

Speaking of what we choose to serve, the wolf and the dog both have it wrong. Why? Because neither of them gets to the heart of the matter, as far as humans go. In the dog’s life a bargain is struck to become a servant of a being in the world, a human being. In the wolf’s life, the wolf must be entirely self-reliant, or perhaps reliant on a pack of wolves. Fortunately, we are neither dog nor wolf. We have intellect and free-will. We have a third option. But it must be chosen, it cannot be taken by force or shoved upon us by fear. This third option can only be granted with your consent, and not by bargaining and not by self-will, skill, or merit. You make a choice.

What you choose to follow and believe is not just a head game or wordplay. It manifests in you. Even if you think you are only a dabbler or taking a casual interest, that which you consume will merge into you in ways subtle and unforeseen. You start to act like who you admire. You become what you worship. You are what you eat. You are what you drink. Choose wisely. Enough of me talking about it, let’s just look at what Jesus himself says about this topic:

“Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:4-5)

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst…” (Jn 6:35)

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (Jn 6:53-38)

What does all this tell you? It’s a simple set of instructions. Drink from the true vine. Turn and believe. Receive the Eucharist as often as possible.

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