The Placement of Reverence

Have you ever wondered what might help you lead a more joyous and meaningful life?

Plato once wrote that parents should not teach their children how to become rich—but how to become reverent. Try as I might, however, my nine-year-old son has not yet developed an appropriate sense of reverence. Ant hills are for kicking. Lizards are targets for a BB gun.                 

Adults, however, are not much better at being appropriately reverent than nine-year-old boys. Just yesterday I heard an adult speak pejoratively of a cobweb in her kitchen but reverently of the TV show, “Hell’s Kitchen.” Why is it that we often revere the fantastically farcical but shun the incredibly sublime? Maybe I’m crazy, but the sublimity and grace of a cobweb deserves more reverence than a caustic TV personality.

I have a friend who does not watch pro sports or other popular entertainment. My friend tells me that he can’t stand the lavish attention that is given to entertainers and athletes. When I asked him about his “stick-in the-mud” attitude, he, in turn, asked me if I thought pop culture icons deserved their hero-like status and huge salaries. I confessed that whether or not pop icons deserved their salaries is beyond my ability to determine. But the reverence that we heap upon cultural icons is not beyond my ability to critique. Our reverence for entertainers and athletes is misplaced and out of proportion to their value to society (consider the comparable amount of reverence that is given to teachers, nurses, and those who serve us in restaurants).

The word reverence comes from the Latin word, reverentia, which means “to respect greatly.” As I survey American pop culture, I find that we have a lot of reverence. But we often have reverence for the wrong things and wrong people. Perhaps that is one reason why meaning and joy are, according to polls I’ve read, in short supply. Misplaced reverence can create an existential void.   

According to the late theologian and physician, Albert Schweitzer, “By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.” Maybe that’s why so many people I know do not seem deep and alive. Maybe that’s why our popular culture, with its vicarious living through sports heroes and reality TV, is largely shallow and depressive.

On the other hand, appropriately placed reverence puts us in touch with the holy of this world. And when we are in touch with the holy of this world, we are, I believe, in touch with The Being that creates the holy of this world. And to be in touch with The Being is, according to statistics, to offer some measure of meaning and joy.

So go ahead and stare at a cobweb in your kitchen. Stop staring at your TV. You might just find meaning and joy are not in such short supply.