A Purgative Desert for the Soul!

The following is a December 2012 email exchange between Will and Art.

Will:

It's important to me that Arthur, devoid of Will's interference, would become a saint...that the American Dream is an obstacle to sainthood.  It is God's antecedent will for Arthur to be a saint, and his consequent will that he becomes one after Will's misguided attempts to help him.  Will has a more consequent path, although I struggle with the distinction.

Art:

Again, I more or less agree.  I would just throw in a slight seed of doubt about the American Dream as "an obstacle to sainthood."  Although I pretty much agree with that statement, I can't help remembering this passage from Romans 8:35, 37: 

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?...

No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.

The amazing thing is that not even the American Dream can separate us from the love of Christ.  I realize this is different than those first-century persecutions because, in our case, we are complicit in it.  But this is the genius of works like "The Wasteland" and Household Saints: the idea that modernity, in all its spiritual impoverishment and distraction, is a kind of purgative desert for the soul!