My father grew up in dairy country in southern Minnesota. He was raised on butter churned by a neighbor and mayonnaise blended by his mother until she died when he was twelve and thereafter by a kind neighbor lady. Dad’s people were poverty stricken well before the Great Depression so they never felt it. Mom’s family felt it deeply and therefore my mother pinched every penny, tightly. When man-made, mass produced, and therefore less expensive, substitutes for staples like butter (margarine) and mayonnaise (Miracle Whip) arrived on the market, mother snatched then up as if a life line to financial security. Dad hated these substitutes deeply, having been raised on the real thing – fresh from the kitchen, but endured them silently for the sake of my mother’s emotional well-being.
When I grew older and our financial platform grew more secure, Dad began to teach me the difference between the substitutes and the real thing – and he was right – butter was far superior to margarine and mayonnaise left Miracle Whip wanting. But then we learned that margarine was “bad for us” and so a thousand and one new substitutes came on the market with cute names like “Country Crock” and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” – each more repugnant than even than margarine. Mom filled the fridge with them and Dad did not endure them so silently. One night at dinner, well after I had moved out, I asked Mom to pass “the substitute for the butter substitute.” Dad guffawed, loudly. To completely understand why I remember this to this day, you need to know that my father never laughed out loud, but he did this time, out of pride that he had taught me well and at scoring a point on my mother.
There really is nothing like the real thing.
In Salena Zito’s masterwork Butler, we learn that reporting what social media says is now considered actual journalism rather than being the poor substitute that it is. I was in Junior High (Middle School for the younger crowd) before I learned that butter and margarine were different things and butter was far, far better. It seems we have raised a generation or two that have been taught, wrongly, that there is no difference between journalism and substitute journalism. But there ain’t nothing like the real thing.
We are rapidly learning, in the wake of the pandemic, that virtual classrooms are a very poor substitute for any actual classrooms. Way too many people think that a relationship on social media is just as good as a genuine personal relationship. People need people without the intervention of some electronic device. Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
We live in a world that keeps thinking it can do better, and it can. But there is a difference between improving something and substituting for it. The invention of tools has made making things so much better and easier, but the processes I use to build furniture today are little different than those used by furniture makers centuries ago – I just use more precise tools, powered by electric motors rather than hand tools. A calculator makes arithmetic much easier, but you still have to understand the process demanding that you do the math to begin with. The telephone, and later the smartphone, have vastly improved our ability to communicate, but genuine thorough communication demands proximity and presence. Tools make a process easier, but they do not replace the process. They are no substitute – they do not change a thing fundamentally.
Which brings me, inevitably, to religion. We keep thinking we can do better, but in the end we cannot. There is a lot of talk in the Bible about “false gods.” Back in the day the God of Abraham competed with Baal, or some other local deity – later with the pantheon of Rome, and today Jesus and Mohammed find themselves at odds. But I think the warnings about false gods in the Bible are deeper than just religious competition. They are warnings against thinking we can somehow do better. Take I John 4:1 for example, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” This is a warning against someone that thinks they have found a “new and improved,” substitute kind of Christianity.
This may not be, strictly speaking, a Christian nation. But Christianity is fundamental to the mix. Taking it out leaves us with a poor substitute. Let’s not.
