“They grew as stiff-necked as their ancestors, who had not believed in the Lord, their God. They rejected his statutes, the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and the warnings he had given them. They followed emptiness and became empty.” (2 Kings: 17)
The writer of the Second Book of Kings describes how the abandonment of the worship of the Lord led to the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom and the subsequent deportation of the Israelites. His words ‘they followed emptiness and became empty’ are as admonitory today as they were when they were written over two millennia ago.
One needn’t look far to see how many of us are ‘following emptiness’. We have abandoned the faith of our predecessors and even the vision of our nation’s founders. Unless it is ‘useful’ we dismiss learning as irrelevant, and, content to create and fashion our own, we recognize no universal truth.
Certainly, this nihilism that infects our culture leads to emptiness. The word itself derives from the Latin ‘nihil’ meaning ‘nothing’. Those in search of nothing find nothing and end with nothing. The belief in nothing hollows us and leaves us with ‘empty’ lives. Ironically, self-aggrandizement – where we try to build up ourselves for the sake of ourselves – has the effect of emptying us. Emptiness can be vitiating.
However, emptiness can also be nourishing. As St. Paul wrote to the Philippians about Jesus: “Though he was in the form of God he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant….” , This kind of emptying, this kenosis, is a self-renunciation for the benefit of another. It occurs when we voluntarily share our resources – material, spiritual, emotional, etc. – for the benefit of others. Even the conscious effort to make ourselves aware of the welfare of others is a form of kenosis, for it is emptying or diminishing the time we think about ourselves.
So, emptiness is a paradox. While following emptiness can lead to emptiness, allowing emptiness, as in kenosis, can lead to fullness. Kenosis is creative. This should come as no surprise to those familiar with Genesis and with the belief that ‘goodness is diffusive of itself (bonum est diffusivum sui). The cosmos was a void, a vast emptiness when the Creator, giving of himself, brought the fullness and goodness of the universe into existence. Kenosis is creative.
Our donors find philanthropy to be a form of kenosis, of emptying themselves. Whenever they voluntarily share their resources, material or otherwise, they in a sense are emptying themselves for the benefit of others. In so doing they participate in an ongoing creation and help advance the Kingdom.
Kenosis or nihilism? Is there really a choice?