Joy

I think that the thing that irks me the most about the world today is the reduction of all things to their utility. No doubt if anyone has taken an economics class they will be told that the value of a thing is found in its utility, or, to be more precise (as in the case of the water/diamond paradox), in a thing's personal utility. What this does, I think, is create a world of mediocrity; a world of power, fitness, and survival. Everything is good in so far as it achieves our ends. Indeed, the modern world hates excellence for the sake of excellence. The reason is that excellence is difficult to attain and it has absolutely nothing to do with gaining power, making money, or being biologically fit. Therefore, moderns try to reduce excellence to fitness and power. They think a scene beautiful because our ancestors found food or shelter there. They think love is good because it helped make society better. But can we really accept this? Why is it when all of the supposedly transcendent and excellent things in the world have been reduced, allegedly, to biochemistry do we feel so utterly disconcerted? Why must something be good simply for the sake of being good? I think because in the end we know that these things are not really what the moderns have reduced them to being. Its not merely that we like art or nature or good morals or that we think they are useful. They have an ought quality to them. They have a feeling of transcendence about them and we know by their very nature that they are intrinsically good. We know that ultimately they point to a reality that is above our own and no dose of doublethink can convince us otherwise.

What these things are, are pure joy. I think nothing can prove my case more than to point out that excellence has very little survival advantage. How can someone honestly think that love really has survival advantage? Maternal and paternal love and camaraderie may indeed be beneficial. But the belief that we should honestly "Do unto others that you would have them do unto you," or yet "Love one another as I have loved you" because it is beneficial for ourselves or even society is foolish. Take one glance modern politics, modern business, and every single civilization that has ever existed and you will see that the opposite of these values are the ones that truly have fitness. Every civilization has been assembled by violence and cruelness. Justice is a particularly annoying thing when it comes to constructing a nation or business; for everywhere we must sacrifice what really needs to be done for the sake of what is "right." The same with beauty. Can one really think expending time and resources to make art has survival advantage? It might be said that all art is a reflection of nature and artistry is tied to our desire for nature, but this just begs the question; why nature should be beautiful. Why should be find it beautiful, good, and desirable. True some aspects of nature should have been attractive (say a fertile river valley) because men would have settled there and survived there. But the irony is that it is not the tame things of nature that we find beautiful. Rather it is the most exotic things that fill us with a sense of beauty and joy. Seas and the rain forests are hardly suitable to survival. Neither are storms or dangerous animals. Yet all of these things exude beauty.

Ultimately, we pursue excellence and transcendent things for one simple reason; joy. And what is joy? Joy is God and enjoying him forever. This is because all of the joyous things were made by God and reflect his nature. Joy in the Christian faith is not an easy thing. It does not have fitness. As Christ said, "whosoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Neither does Christian joy produce material blessing and power. As James, the brother of our Lord, said, "Count it as all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds." The joy of a Christian is not in survival. Rather it is God, who gives meaning to our survival. We must seek God even if it means the end of survival for us, such as the martyrs do. Joy is ultimately to be complete in God and to find in His grace our adoption as sons. This is because, as St. Augustine said, our justification is in God since we are created beings and our being is derive from God. He who forsakes the things of God forsake a part of his very being. Is this not what the existentialists found? The nihilism of the modern age had severed people like Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus from all sense of being and thus they tried to regain that being through existentialism. But why, if we are all just part of nature and our being (i.e. the universe) just is and is not derived from anything else, should we need to anchor our being in something transcendent? The reason is we are made by God and our hearts can only find rest in him.

Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga gives his defeater of naturalism. I have to say, it is one of the most clever arguments I have ever heard. I takes evolution, which, to me, seems indespensable to naturalism (how did all of this fauna and flora come about?, as Plantinga would say) and makes it an argument against naturalism. The sound isn't fantastic but its the best example available online. It comes in five parts (so roughly a fifty minute lecture). A tab should appear on the screen to take you to the new part.

Part I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWVoi_IjTKs&feature=related

Proper Patriotism

"Love becomes a demon when it becomes a god."

-M. de Rougemont

Patriotism, when perverted into nationalism, becomes poisonous. When we become deceived by the myth of our own superiority we become capable of unspeakable acts; we who become gods become demons. For Christians, nationalism is especially dangerous because all too often it replaces that love that belongs to the Church or even to God. True religion is due only to God and not to our nation. Our joy must be in our God and not our country. Nationalism is what causes good Christian men to forget the commands "love thy neighbor as thy self" or "love one another as I have loved you." There is no more tragic cause of this than the multitude of German Christians who mistook Nazi national renewal for Christian renewal, for their nationalism and Christian faith become intertwined, and could thus reconcile the extermination of millions of Jews with Christian ethics. Nationalism can cause Christians to become prideful. St. Augustine’s fundamental message in his monumental City of God is that the patria of Christians is not on earth but in heaven. Christians must always remember that true love country must be according to the apostle's command: "Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant."

C. S. Lewis on nationalism: "If there were no broken treaties with the Redskins, no extermination of the Tasmanians, no gas chambers and no Belsen, no Amrisar, Black and Tans or Apartheid, the pomposity…would be a roaring farce."

Qualities of Proper Patriotism

*Love of home - This is our love of the familiar; of national particularities. It is our love of the land. It is our corporate sharing of a familiar culture; our love of baseball, apple pie, the English language, and the Fourth of July. Our love for our nation should mirror our love of our home. America is our country and the land is our land. It is what enables a Californian to feel closer to a Pennsylvanian than he would a European. This is quality in patriotism that enables us to fight for our patria and protect it from the foreigner.

*Sense of duty - We are not born into this world autonomous. We depend on others to nurture us and bring is to maturity. We rely on our country for protection, for a job, for survival, for socialization. We owe certain duties to the government, the military, and the local police who protect us; to the land that provides us with food and shelter; to the communities and institutions that bring us to maturity. For all that our country has done for us we owe it love.

*Tradition - In the same way we owe much to those who presently occupy our country so we also owe much to those who occupied it formerly. For everything we inherit at our birth is the creation of our ancestors. The nation of the past, in addition to the nation of the present, contributes to our well-being. This is seen in the stories of the pioneers who settled new American lands and of the immigrants who, with their distinct skills, melted into the American way of life.

*National virtues - Few nations are devoid of virtues and it should be a nation's privilege and joy to have pride those virtues. This should not be a snobby or arrogant pride that smacks of pretensions to national superiority. It should be like a father who has pride in his son. It is wholly good to cherish the hard-work, the strength, and the honesty of the American people; as long as we remember that America has no monopoly on virtue and it is far from sainthood.