Letter from Lux

Lux wrote me a letter today, and he asked the very question I've been meaning to write about: Why, when in his Global Studies class, the class learns about Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism, etc. everyone accepts the teaching with piety and respect, but whenever Christianity is brought up it is treated with disdain. Why is agnosticism popular? And why do his Christian friends insist upon "hating church but loving God?"

According to GKC, their problem is not that they are too far from Christian truth, but rather too close to it. They are the sons and grandsons of faith, and being thus familiar they know nothing about it. GKC compares them to men which grew up under the feet of some stone colossus, and were always too near it to see it for what it is. Instead of a shape, they see rude wear and rough edges. All other perspectives, upon introduction are treated with proper respect. But having never seen the colossus for the first time they haven't the slightest idea what it is. It would be better, perhaps, if they were distant islanders, for they are already too near to being Christians to complete the journey.

Now this brings up another sort of curiously blind person, and that is the pessimistic Christian. He is the type of man taken aback with the sin and dissolution of the world, the man who sees things deteriorating all the time. He is apt to use, without really understanding the term, broad statements condemning the "world." He may even speak of an eagerness to leave this life and get to some foreign shore. He also is too near the colossus to understand what it is. When he condemns the wayward secularism of the university he forgets that the university is only possible in Christendom. When he denounces the libertine sinners he forgets that it was only through the Christian creed that any liberty was advanced in the West. He fails to see two thousand years of the Kingdom of Heaven, because he is so upset at his local taxes. It is a hard thing to see with fresh eyes how far we've come since the Christian church first began building among the sinking pollution of Rome, but most everything in the "world" that's worth complaining about is worth rejoicing about as well. Though this creation may be diseased, we should never be so dark-minded as to forget that it was created, and we must practice no slander upon its Creator.

This is a much deeper debate than the glass half full, but event that dilemma has a simple solution, which I shall explain later, because Baby H is nearly ready to fall asleep upstairs.

Reading Today: Aeneid 6, Iliad 2, Is 41, Rev. 11, Udolpho, Everlasting Man, Cicero