Shallow and Crazy at Once

     If his writings and self-made videos are any evidence, the gunman in Arizona the other day was out of his mind.  Try to read aloud his ramblings about the dating of years -- he seems not to have understood what "BCE" refers to -- or about teaching a child to substitute one letter for another in every word he writes wherein the letter appears, or about controlling your own dreams, or about the government's controlling your dreams.  You can't do it.  The very syntax of intelligible thought breaks down.  If we found out today that he was following orders from a dog whose father's name was Sam, no one would be surprised.

     That's madness, all right.  But the madness that has impressed me recently isn't of that sort.  I tried last night to check on the progress of the negotiations between my Saint Louis Cardinals and the great Albert Pujols, only to find that even on the baseball site, people were talking about the shootings in Arizona, and were saying things that were, in a sense, madder than anything coming from the gunman.  Many years ago I spent a summer at a Catholic Worker house in Washington, and met several people whose hold on reality was intermittent and vague.  One woman believed that the Russians and Arabs had conspired to kidnap her Siberian husky, to do experiments on it in a basement in the city.  Another man believed that space aliens had attempted to contact him by inscribing messages, via lightning, upon a rock on a mountain in West Virginia.  Now if such a person should say, "I believe that Glenn Beck paid this gunman off," we would but shake our heads and try to change the subject, maybe asking him to go find the canned peaches in the basement, or something.

     Yes, I would find that to be crazy enough, but it is a craziness that is in a way identifiable.  What's harder to deal with are the comments made by people who do not think they are Napoleon.  Here what's broken down is not intelligibility, but intelligence; and we end up with shallowness and craziness at once.  Let me give an example from a day or two before the shootings.  A certain professor, who considers himself a conservative, but who is actually something of a proponent of technocracy and Randian rapacity, wrote in what he thought was defense of religious faith.  Some people, he said, are strong and morally upright by themselves, and do not need a belief in a Creator and Judge to keep them in line.  But others, most others, need that; and therefore we should not discourage religious faith, because the more we can rely upon people to govern themselves, the less we need to turn to law and bureaucracy and so forth.

     Now that whole argument is upside down, subjecting religious faith to the needs of the state, just as Hobbes had done; but that's not my point.  I am thinking about this great army of faithless and virtuous people.  Where are they?  Yes, I know that there are faithless and nice people, who might not burn down my house or rape my children, and who might make very fine dinner companions, and who might, to stretch a point, retain something of a Christian moral vision, the tatters of such a vision, after they had turned away from Christ.  But can someone write as this writer had done, with the slightest notion of the difficulty of moral virtue?  Even the pagan Romans, who had no clear notion of the fallenness of man, called it virtus because it denoted a hard-won manhood.  If we made an examination of conscience, beginning with lust, the least of the seven deadly sins, we'd have to give up right there, if we're the typical American, and never get round to gluttony. 

     But we, who have no clear notion of virtue at all -- we who are so shallow that we scramble to figure out some way to condemn the professor recently charged with incestuous acts with his grown daughter -- we, of all people, hurl condemnations this way and that, with gleeful abandon.  And there's a madness to that, a madness absurd in its claims to sanity.  The standard madman charge against religious faith is that it breeds dissension (and note, by the way, that it is "religious faith" that comes under fire, conveniently vaporous, and not Jesus).  Well, I imagine Vikings trampling booty-laden back to their ships, with the smoke of a burnt town in the distance, complaining about the table manners of the men of Kent.  It breeds dissension?  As opposed to what wonderful unity we enjoy? 

     We are rapidly becoming a people whom, in the main, no respectable peasant of past years would have allowed his children to associate with.  The principal virtue that we boast of is that we impose no virtues on ourselves; and the result is that we fail to see the evil where it is.  We live in a sty laden with dung, and complain about the bad breath of our political opponents.  We divorce almost half the time we bother to marry in the first place, and look with scorn upon people of past ages, who took marriage seriously enough to suppose that it was the foundation of a decent community.  We have made a fetish of sex, of youth, of prestigious work, of money, of autonomy, and of politics, and yet we hate the manhood of men and the womanhood of women, we dispense with our children, and we are bound to the silliest and costliest fads of the day. 

     I am reading about the beloved Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who observed a ten year period of silence, and who retreated to the forest to live a life of prayer and fasting.  Out of his mind, the knowing secularist would say.  Yet when Saint Seraphim, in his old age, returned to "the world," he became the spiritual director of a convent of nuns he established, gave counsel to hundreds of people who came to him every week, dictated to one of his friends a work of deep and humane instruction in the ascetic life, healed the sick, and radiated a profound joy.  Saint Seraphim was sane in the old sense of the word: he was whole and sound.  If the political wranglings of our time -- and the amoralism that goes along with them -- are sane, then give me the madness of Seraphim.  I'd be nearer the Lord, I'd be wiser and happier, I'd be of more use to my family and friends, and I'd get more done.

Comments

[Beth from TN]

Amen to all that, Tony. We no longer understand that the world is, simply, broken -- and that the brokenness affects us all, and we do well to be slow to condemn in others what is generally so evident in ourselves.

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

My wife's birthday, Jan. 2, is the same as St. Seraphim's feast day. We have a special icon of him and pray regularly for his intervention. Sane, indeed.

[Bull]

If the demon-possessed man of Gadarenes had a Glock, would he have turned it on others, or on himself?

An atheist, writing about Jesus' ancient exorcism...

http://atheism.about.com/od/biblegospelofmark/a/mark05a.htm

...asks readers: "But what happens to the spirits?"

His question is rhetorical: There aren't any.

My point is that satan is alive and well on planet earth, devouring everyone he can. And such evil has his way because the Church won't call him out the way Jesus did (cf Mark 5:8).

Much easier/safer/politically correct to say we're "broken" than to deal with the one doing the breaking.

[David Fahrenthold]

Thank you again for your thoughts. We have certainly become a culture of increased banalities, further increased by the explosion (rather than the revulsion!) of our ridiculous and insipid popular culture. I also appreciate you going into grammar and etymology of virtus and sanus, words which, in their English derivatives anyway, I am not sure if they have merely become vacuous, or if we are just not attuned to their tonal qualities in our various and sundry practices; I opt for the latter, of course.

Also, I must admit that I greatly dislike the Cardinals, being a Houston Astros fan, but my very favorite player will be joining the 'Birds this year, Lance Berkman, and like when he went to the Yankees, I must root for him (I am not so sure if he can play the outfield anymore, as he has had some knee problems; Having he and Holiday at the corners might make for an interesting outfield defense, to be sure). Albert Pujols is the best player in baseball right now, and it isn't even close. He ruined Brad "Lights Out" Lidge, for the Astros anyway, with one of the most sonorous and grandiose home runs I am afraid I have ever seen (Ah! To relive the "glory" days of 02-06 (and '80 and '86, though I was too young to remember) when the Astros were actually relevant!).

[Beth from TN]

Excuse me? Are you saying my comment is "politically correct" because I spoke of a broken world instead of demon-possessed individuals? Is all evil we do because we need to be exorcised? "The devil made me do it"? Of course Satan wishes to destroy. But how did he get a foothold? -- through man's fleshly choice to be like God. I may give way to Satan's temptations at times, but I give way to my own flesh constantly. And the fact that I am a broken person in need of God to heal me, not just to give me eternal life but for every moment of my life right here and now, is hardly "politically correct." I would actually find it rather comforting to think that if I would just cast out Satan I'd be a righteous person every moment of the rest of my life. It's a lot harder to say that my worldly and fleshly desires cause me to do evil, and humble myself to let God be the One to direct my desires and my actions.

[Hunter Baker]

These posts are small treasures, Dr. Esolen. Wonderfully insightful as always.

[Christopher Hathaway]

Saying we are broken is not politically correct. It is theologically and biblically accurate. The Epistles speak little of Satan or demons, but much more of the power of sin. If we truly focussed on the mortifiction of our flesh we could effectively ignore the Devil, as he would have little power over us.

Not that we shouldn't recognize his influence among those who makes themselves vulnerable to him, but it will be easier to see his marks when we see the sin within ourselves, and it is easier to see THAT when we see how far we fall short from the righteousness of Christ.

[James Kabala]

"A certain professor, who considers himself a conservative, but who is actually something of a proponent of technocracy and Randian rapacity"

Was it Newt? If not, that's a good description of him anyway (assuming he has the right to the title professor after all these years).

[Tony Esolen]

Hi, James! No, it wasn't Newt. It was the fellow named Mead -- I believe Walter Russell Mead, but I could be mixing up his first two names. There's a Catholic writer in New Brunswick who has a triple name that could admit of all six combinations, and for the life of me I can't remember which it is -- David Adams Richards, Richard David Adams, Adam Richard David, etc...

[Longtripper]

As a secularist who does not idolize sex, money, youth or politics, and who is actually rather happy being a man who enjoys the company of womanly women, I'd ask that you strive for a little more accuracy with your first-person plural pronouns. There is no "we."

Members of your faith are no more renowned for their exemplary low divorce rates than they are for their restraint in political conversation. Take a look at the 1999 Barna poll, in fact, and you'll find that non-denominational Christianity had the highest rates of divorce in the U.S. (34%), while atheists and agnostics had the lowest (21%, about even with Catholics and Lutherans). The data consistently works against any idea that religious folks are somehow more moral. Compare crime rates between nations like Sweden and Norway against those in the United States or Iran. Look at the religious distribution of prisons. This idea that a) religion is necessary for morality or b) that non-religion causes mass immorality is simply without foundation.

As for the "knowing secularist" and his mockery of silence, I'd encourage you to look up the story of John Francis (look up the book "Planetwalker").

All of this is somewhat irrelevant, however. In what little I have seen of the world (N. America, southern and eastern Europe, and the middle east), I have never found religion to play a major role in any morality beyond cultural norms. The same Muslim man who would be shocked at the consumption of pork wouldn't blink at the murder of a bus full of Israelis; the same American man who was outraged at Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction wouldn't blink at the murder of a bus full of Aghanis.

What is needed, as you hinted, is virtue. Responsibility, maturity, wisdom, understanding: these are the bases of morality. To acquire them, listen to Christ, not Rick Warren. Read Seneca, not Glenn Beck. Read Stephen Hawking, not Hal Lindsey. And above all, trust no one, not even these, unquestioningly.

[Bob Srigley]

Longtripper,
Pagan virtue comes in two modes. In one mode virtue comes out of humility, the humility that is cognizant of the brokenness of the world outside and of the heart within. It shuns hubris and gropes after God, truth and beauty. In another mode pagan virtue is the fruit of pride and is itself eventually overcome by pride.

The Christian church is also affected by this same duality; some who call themselves Christians live as though they could incorporate virtue by the power of their will. Often their temporary attainments are only a precursor to a disastrous fall. Others realize that they can do nothing unless they are abiding in Christ and only those abide, who realize their deep and constant need for God’s mercy. For such as these, virtue is the response born of gratitude, not of debt. It includes the classic virtues of courage, prudence, justice, etc. , but it also transcends them, adding faith, hope and love and these last three are cultivated by worshiping God in spirit and in truth. When you encounter a believer who has been schooled in grace you meet with evidence of God’s transforming power. This isn’t always obvious, it’s a sight the natural eye is averse to seeing. It was the same when Christ walked the earth – only the humble could discern Him truly.

I hope your long trip home may be shortened; your critique of Christian morality has often been spoken by others and it has been heard and taken to heart by many. When the day of judgement comes you may think to offer it in defense; however it will not defeat the memory of the gleams of God’s light, whether few or many, that have from time to time been given to you.

[Tony Esolen]

Longtripper,

You must not compare apples and oranges. Have you corrected for poverty, for race, for level of education? Very few African Americans call themselves atheists, and a great many of them are in prison, because of the destruction of the African American family. The same thing goes for Latinos.

You are hedging and dodging. Where on earth do you think these "cultural norms" come from? You are also folding together Islam and Christianity -- why? You seem to equate American military action in Afghanistan with the wanton, calculated, deliberate murder of children on a school bus. I am not a great supporter of our democratic nation-building, but surely this equation is absurd.

You are asking me to read Seneca. I am a translator of Lucretius (Johns Hopkins), and I regularly teach Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, -- and on and on. I have never read anything by Beck, Warren, or Lindsey. I HAVE read a great deal of Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Newman, Maritain, Gilson, Marcel, Pieper, Lewis, Chesterton ... And I find "modern" and secular discussions of virtue, by comparison with these, to be unbearably naive and shallow. So did Alasdair MacIntyre, and Christopher Lasch, and Philip Rieff ... Read Jesus? I write about the words of Jesus many times a year. Sweden? I've been there. It is a dead country. There is no more culture.

I do not think you have any clear idea of what we have been destroying. It's all well and good for the upper crust, for the well-educated, to scorn such things as chastity, because THEIR children will largely keep themselves "protected," and will marry reasonably well. The results downstream are devastating. Who do you think brought divorce among them to begin with? Their preachers? Or the cognoscenti and the "beautiful people"? A 21% divorce rate is horrible; I am not surprised that it is worse among the lower classes. I should like to know, however, what the divorce rate is among my fellow Roman Catholics who uphold the sexual teachings of their Church, and who worship together. My bet is that it is in the single digits. Even that is too high.

I'm sorry, but I find Seneca to be problematic -- a proud, self-promoting man who spent a good deal of time averting his eyes from the degradation around him. I prefer the other two Stoics I've mentioned.

Have you really never met a person whose life was transformed by Christ?

I am sorry to have to chide you. I meet people all the time -- every single day -- whose lives have been so transformed. No, there is no "there" in secularism. No grounded view of the good, and nothing to obligate man in conscience to seek it; no forgiveness of sin. All paganism ends in despair. I mean, really now -- look at the two pagans you ask me to read!

A last note. You are accusing me of overblown political rhetoric, when I am pointing my finger at the shallowness of that rhetoric -- and then you engage in some of your own, with that nasty little name-calling. Read MacIntyre's After Virtue. The inculcation of virtue requires a community; but secularism is the universal solvent of community. Its premises lead to the twin errors of individualism and collectivism.