Permanent Versus Perennial

One of the key features of modernity is a desire for permanent and total solutions. We want to deal with a problem once and be done, to completely resolve an issue and place it out of the concern of our old age or the time of our children. We do not simply try to reduce drug use. We have a war on drugs. We don't attempt to mitigate poverty. We go to war against poverty. We don't just talk about proper gun use in the wake of tragedies. We debate whether to ban guns or to have no restrictions on guns at all.

We are impatient this way, thinking in really broad strokes, making vast generalizations, aiming for the stars with all the subtlety and nuance of--well, of all totalitarians and dictators.  We want to triumph, you see.  We want to have our vision of the world win out once and for all, want to demand total surrender from the Nazis we face today, whoever those Nazis may be--conservatives or liberals; sexual revolutionaries or religious folks; them foreigners or the frightening "enemy" next door.  We want a total triumph for all that we believe to be right and true, even if what we believe to be right and true is that there is no such thing as an absolute truth and we are universally called to tolerance by that truth.

We want to win.  Kill those weeds!  All of them!  Let them never return in my garden again!  Those mosquitoes!  End them!  Exterminator!  Exterminator!  Each presidential election is framed in apocalyptic/messianic terms.  Their candidates are the anti-Christ, and our guys are chosen, anointed, destined.  If we win, it is the victory of all that is right and true.  If they win, it will be unspeakable.  But somehow we all survive each victory of the dreaded other side.  Somehow, we live on, watching the nation go further and further into debt under fiscally conservative Republicans and tax-and-spend Democrats alike.

We live in an age whose spirit is that of the via moderna, the modern way.  That way has led to a culture of death, to a culture which pursues the triumph of the will over reason, over truth, over any objective standard.  We have seen the long war of man versus nature, of neighbor versus neighbor, of flesh versus spirit, of man versus God taken to a hyper-efficient end.  To be free, it's every man for himself.  Either I have power or they have power--there is no middle way.

This has been destroying us for a very, very long time--working in these absolutes.  Why?  Because they are the wrong absolutes.

“[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about."--C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 

Put mind over master for a time. Put first principles over power, the intellect over the will, truth over action.  Submit yourself to the mastery of the natural law, of the Creator of all things, of the truth, the good, the beautiful, of life and love, of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It's a road that is as hard as the road to Calvary, as hard as iron nails and the wood of the Cross--but it leads to life through death, to One Threesome who love you eternally.  Love yourself because you are beloved by omniscient omnibenevolent omnipotency, by God, and love those whom your Beloved loves.  Accept the rhythms of the seasons, of human life, of the liturgy, of love, rather than grasping for power and perfect control.  Accept community, and charity, and the love of your "lesser" fellow man--the annoying, the weak, the foolish, the sinful, the sorrowful, the stupid.  Many of these are your betters.   As Pope Benedict once said, part of the reason for the commandment to love our neighbor is that they have to put up with us.  Love, and forgive, and forbear, and find yourself borne up on a great tide of loving, forgiving forbearance in your turn.

Follow the way of the Cross, sowing yourself in love, bearing up underneath the weight of your burden by the abiding power and presence of the Trinity in your heart, by the force and fire of the Holy Spirit.  Life will explode from you like the sun.