A common personal and social/emotional disease is malaise. What is malaise? The dictionary offers what appears to be a paradox as a definition. The Oxford Dictionary states: a condition of lassitude, without the development of a specific disease. It is assumed to lead to some bodily discomfort for the individual. The word grows out of the prefix/word mal. Those acquainted with the etymology of mal know that is stands for bad. So it is that we have formed words like malice, malevolent, malign and malefactor. These have sinister meanings in them. Lassitude is defined as: the condition of being weary; a flagging of the body or mental powers; indifferent to mental exertion; weariness. Ruskin captured the human condition when he wrote about – periods of renewed enthusiasm after intervals of lassitude.
The experience of malaise is very common for both individuals and society in general. It serves mankind when it does not permit further deterioration and social upheaval, or ill-considered problem solving, or some other distraction that further worsens the atmosphere in which life is supposed to be managed and lived well. That is faint praise when the massive muting of meaning, direction, affirmation, progress, confidence, and the like occur. One of the common feelings of depressed persons is malaise. Life and matters do not seem right. The feeling sometimes moves laterally and will rise to a better situation or an even more serious negative context if it prevails for too lengthy periods. At the time of this writing the nation is moving through malaise. Recovery from economic recession is slow; the international scene includes terrorism and warfare in hot spots around the globe; the financial markets swing wildly up and down; the social situation including employment, traditional family life shifting, education, political tension, public health and a half dozen other nagging issues press in on all citizens. There is a malaise that darkens it all, shadowing the wisdom, energy and determination to find solutions. Leaders seem not to know what to do, but, if they try, the differences of the troubled persons and groups in society prevent or confuse problem solving. Contradictions stall solutions. Partisanship makes the nation look foolish.
The recurring situation begs for the address of Christian thought and the model of faith to toleration and hope. I have seen the practical application of the Christian hope – that no matter what the problems may be in the course of each pilgrim’s journey the attitude is formed from the strong faith that God assures to his people. Matters will work out for those who trust him. What would your attitude be, or mine, if treated as the Apostle Paul was treated in society – or other Apostles whose experiences are less known to us, but known about in the history of the church and world? Visiting mission fields as speaker at conferences, I saw the magnificent affirmations of the missionaries for themselves and their people. They would do what they could to help in healing when there were no doctors or hospitals, to teach the unlettered native to read, to offer food for the hungry to the point of denying themselves, to live in primitive conditions, and so the story goes – to the point of joy, and a sense of victory in an unseen war that fights the energy, courage, meaning and joy of being. Complaints from missionaries I felt deeply, were that too few people of the world addressing lesser human situations and were not doing what they could to improve lives feeling lost, not only in spiritual matters, but also in physical. Even then most of the native people functioned with better attitudes toward life than those holding much of the bounty of earth and life. Those poor people with no promise for large improvement found time to enjoy the fellowship of others, to seek some bit of improvement without resources to gain it, to wonder what they might do for their children with what they had for nurture. Cut off from the labor saving devices, they made do. On a day when I was the guest of a Christian camp in the foothills of the Andes, and spoke to some of these poor people through an interpreter, I was the special guest at dinner given a drumstick and thigh of a chicken, and one other item on a plate. Each of my hosts had one piece. Missionaries told me that for me to protest the inequity would reduce the joys of my presence at their rustic camp. (Humbling) The event was marked by an attitude that offered joy and victory for life. (The chicken was delicious made sturdy by a hot pepper sauce.) May God bless them! *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020