On Misused Gifts from God

More on T.S. Eliot's "Choruses from The Rock"

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

Continuing in my series on Eliot’s “Choruses from The Rock” (see parts one, two, and three), today I want to look at a stanza in the third section which deals with the theme of the misuse of God’s good gifts:

The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
O miserable cities of designing men,
O wretched generation of enlightened men,
Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,
Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:
I have given you hands which you turn from worship,
I have given you speech, for endless palaver,
I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,
I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,
I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.
I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.
Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,
Many desire to see their names in print,
Many read nothing but the race reports.
Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,
Much is your building, but not the House of GOD.
Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,
To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

This stanza begins by addressing a specific group known as the “miserable cities of designing men” or the “wretched generation of enlightened men.” Here Eliot is pulling from his larger poetic theme, which reaches back at least to The Waste Land, on the failure of the Enlightenment project to achieve its lauded goals of bringing humanity into a more rational, free, and human world. Instead, the modern world is experienced as “miserable,” “wretched,” and “betrayed.” Notably it is the very mark of Enlightenment thinking, (designing, ingenuity, inventions), that leads to this suffering.

And of course, this is our contemporary experience as well. The internet, one of the most amazing achievements in human history, has also made us “miserable” and “wretched,” as Jonathan Haidt as so carefully illustrated in his latest book. There’s something about the way we are using the generative gifts God has given us that perverts things so that they end up destroying us. Which is precisely what the narrator goes on to say.

The next section of the stanza lists several good gifts from God which have been perverted from their proper use. God gave us hands, but we turn them from worship, which is their proper use. Even at work our hands can be worshiping God through our labor. All we set our hands to do ought to glorify God. A worshipful way of working is to work knowing that the fruits of your labor belong to God, that He is the ultimate sustainer of your life. That you are radically dependent upon Him. And yet the modern world so often turns our hands away from working for the Lord and instead invites us to work unto ourselves, for our own glory, success, and self-reliance.

He gave us speech, but we use it for endless, meaningless chatter. The power of speech is miraculous. And yet we use it for such nonsense. Consider the kind of drivel you find on social media. There is no power or vitality in our speech, just endless filling of space and time so that there is no dead air. Always more content. In his later poem, “Little Gidding,” the final movement in his masterpiece, The Four Quartets, Eliot strongly associates the use of speech with the power of prayer. So I think it fitting that we interpret this chastisement as a criticism that we have the power to pray and speak to God (another miracle! We can speak directly to God Himself!), but instead we use our words for empty talk.

He gave us His Law, and we “set up commissions,” technocratic efforts to master injustice through human laws. There are a couple of ways of interpreting the problem here. One way of interpreting these commissions is as examples of proceduralism, the idea that if we just follow the correct procedures exactly and precisely justice will prevail. But God’s law has space for grace and individuals. Another possibility is that commissions represent humanities’ evolving effort to create the perfect law through reason. One year a commission will announce its findings and a law will be established. The next year a new commission will come up with a different law. But God’s just Law remains eternally.

He gave us lips, and we use them for empty sentiments. Not love, but friendly sentiments. A polite greeting. A head nod. But no intimate relationships.

He gave us hearts, which we use for “reciprocal distrust.” This may be the most damning line. The idea here is that our hearts were designed for love and commitment, but the modern world has made us distrustful of everyone. Our neighbors are potential threats. Our children must be watched at all times. Abusers are around every corner. All we can do is guard our hearts and protect ourselves. But that’s no way to live in community, which is one of Eliot’s major themes, as we saw last time.

And finally, He gave us the “power of choice” and we “only alternative / Between futile speculation and unconsidered action” In other words, we alternate between choice paralysis and imprudent judgements. Since the 1930s, the problem of choice has only dramatically increased, with more and more options available to us. The problem with having so many different choices in life (whether it be food, clothing, sex, gender, religion, education, music, whatever) is that you can freeze up and experience choice paralysis, unable to choose anything for fear of choosing the wrong thing. What makes this worse is that there are innumerable opinions about how to choose. So you have to choose who to listen to about what to choose. YouTubers. WireCutter. Instagrammers. Amazon reviews. Which just adds to the confusion. As a result, we tend to give up on expert opinions and fall back on intuition, which is what I take Eliot to mean by “unconsidered action.” “Well, this feels right, so I guess I’ll do that.” The power of choice was given to us to chose to turn from sin and toward Christ with the aid of the Holy Spirit, but we use it to be frozen.

The final lines of the stanza are focused on reading, writing, and building. Eliot notes that there is much effort put into writing, printing, and reading, but not the “Word of GOD,” the Bible has been neglected in the modern city for things like the race reports (sports gambling!); in other words, we’ve distracted ourselves away from the miracle that God has spoken directly to us. We frantically build, but not churches.

My favorite lines are the final two: “Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing, / To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?” In other words, will you build God the cheapest, most unattractive, most utilitarian church possible? Here Eliot is showing his high church Anglicanism, but he has a point. How many protestant churches capture a sense of awe of the presence of God? We have no problem building buildings designed for very specific purposes in mind. We know how to design malls, hospitals, and restaurants to capture a specific atmosphere and set a mood and promote certain kinds of behaviors, but it feels like (in some cases) all design goes out the window with church buildings. Or at least, we’re designing for the wrong kinds of things.

The point of this stanza is that God has gifted humanity with numerous miraculous gifts and the modern world has perverted them for inhuman and ungodly ends, dishonoring God and destroying themselves. Eliot is both reminding us of our duty of gratitude towards God for the gifts He has given us and calling us towards a proper use of those gifts against the grains of modern culture. It should be noted that as strong of a critic as Eliot was of the modern world, this is a poem of building, not surrender or retreat. He’s calling for Christians to shore up the ruins, as it were. So there’s a hope in Eliot of building better communities, even if the pressures of the modern world are tremendous. Those pressures haven’t lessened, but we still shouldn’t lose that hope.