I found this photo from Pope’s Benedict’s US tour to be very ironic: the juxtaposition of religion, business and leisure in a single telling shot. The blur of the cell-phone attached “businessman” personifying the urgency of the quest for bucks while seemingly ignoring the solitary – and ostensibly insignificant – professional representative of God, all set against the backdrop of the “fast-food” joint. The profundity of this trinity, I think, is it’s singular representation of the three temptations of Eve – indeed the fall of humanity; Money, Sex & Power, or as James writes: “The lust of the eyes, the pride of life and the lust of the flesh”.

What is equally profound is it’s not so subtle illustration of the futility of the three to satisfy the human soul:

• Organized religion (the church regardless of demoninational leanings) – or conceptually: Power (“the pride of life”) - seems to lose it’s significance in people daily lives in direct proportion to it’s size and instead becomes “the show” when the big guns are in town…it becomes a destination activity rather than a daily life pulsing thru ones veins. As an aside, I find it ironical that demonination begins with demon.


• Business - conceptually: Money (“the lust of the eyes”), the eternal quest for more – devalues the human energy that is crucial for it’s very survival. It’s a symbiant that consumes it’s host while promising to provide fulfillment. Not to be misunderstood, business is a crucial and God-given activity, essential for the existence of humanity; Yet, it’s promise for fulfillment is fraudulent: ask any CEO, Billionaire or poverty-line single working mom the same question – How much is enough - and the answer varies only by relative degree. I’ve read that this is the question Bill Gate’s mom asked him that lead to he & Melinda founding their charity foundation. Their answer was a billion for each of their 3 kids and 2 billion for Melinda. I find a certain jealous tinge in my heart as I write the preceding, which of course betrays my own lust while affirming my pontification


• Instant gratification – Sex (“the lust of the flesh”) – not just seem in the proliferation of the “fast-food joints”, but also in the “sub-prime mortgage” debacle and the myriad of “buy more, pay later” schemes. It carries into a “dump the one wife for a newer model” lived out publicly in the lives of French & Russian presidents, but privately in homes across our land. It’s also seem in the more mundane: my frustration that a website takes 5 seconds to load, or the endless “press x” of the automated phone systems. The closed door of “Bens Chili Bowl” in the photo is rather telling of the emptiness of our “instant gratification”.