CHRISTIAN
LIVING: Character in Leadership: Does it Really Matter Anymore? (Mohler,
031008)
APOLOGETICS:
The Re-paganization of the West: A Glimpse of the Future (Mohler, 041105)
SOCIETY:
The Faith vs. the Force: The Mythology of ‘Star Wars’ (Mohler, 041119)
WORLD:
All That Terror Teaches: Have We Learned Anything? (Mohler, 041129)
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“Character,” said President Calvin Coolidge, “is the only secure foundation of the state.” The controversies swirling around the California recall election may demonstrate that Americans are not certain they agree with President Coolidge’s assessment. Americans seem to be ambivalent about character and uncertain of what citizens can rightly expect of those in political leadership.
The issue of character has been part and parcel of American politics from the very beginning. President George Washington is famously known as a model of character, and in his younger years Washington had even written a small book of moral maxims that would guide his life and professional career. He was self-consciously determined to be a man of character and integrity. Nevertheless, accusations of power mongering and a lust for personal aggrandizement were leveled against Washington in the course of the nation’s first presidential election.
In more recent years, the character of the founding fathers has been called into question over the issue of slavery. The blight of slavery had sorely tested the consciousness of men such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but both men owned slaves throughout their lifetimes. Jefferson, of course, has also been posthumously charged with having a sexual relationship with a slave in his household. While the historical truth behind this allegation may never fully be known, enough is known about Jefferson’s personal life that such a charge is conceivable.
Some Americans would quickly point to President Abraham Lincoln as a prime example of character. Lincoln demonstrated unquestioned virtues of courage and moral responsibility. His second inaugural address includes some of the most morally insightful language ever uttered by an American president. At the same time, Lincoln’s character has been called into question over his suspension of civil rights and the rule of law during the wrenching experience of the Civil War.
More recently, presidents including Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton have been caught in sexually compromising situations. In the case of President Roosevelt, his adulterous relationship with a long time friend was unknown to the public until long after his death. The press covered for Roosevelt, and also for President John F. Kennedy.
We now know that Kennedy had sexual relationships with women ranging from Hollywood starlets to a known Nazi spy. Had the American public known that Kennedy had engaged in a sexual liaison with a spy serving the Axis powers, his political career would have surely been ended even before it began.
Americans seem to be certain that sex is somehow related to moral character, and that this is important in considering the fitness of individuals for leadership. Nevertheless, America’s moral confusion in this postmodern age has never been more glaringly obvious than in the aftermath of the Clinton sex scandals. Americans seem to be saying that character is important, and that Clinton’s sexual liaison with a White House intern was completely unacceptable, but that he should nevertheless not be removed from office. Confused?
Money and power have often emerged as equally controversial matters of character in leadership. Among modern American Presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon left thousands of hours of White House recordings demonstrating the lengths to which they were willing to go in order to secure and preserve power—regardless of moral considerations.
Accusations of immoral behavior are especially confusing in the days immediately preceding an election. The mixed motives of the media in dealing with these issues leads a good many Americans to be uncertain about both the veracity and the importance of late hour accusations. This was clear in the 2000 presidential election when President George W. Bush was revealed to have been arrested for drunk driving as a young man. The accusation of sexual harassment leveled against Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California recall election evidently had little impact on voters. Was it because they do not care about sexual harassment, or because they did not trust the politicized reports? We may never really know.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is an example of a candidate whose primary qualification for office is more rooted in charisma than in character. It is hard to imagine that California voters were shocked when accusations of lecherous behavior were leveled at Schwarzenegger. He has presented himself throughout his adult life as one of whom this behavior is conceivable. Governor Gray Davis, on the other hand, was quick to go to the airwaves to condemn Schwarzenegger’s “unacceptable” behavior while standing alongside former President Bill Clinton and activist Jesse Jackson. Evidently, Gray Davis missed the irony of his association with Clinton and Jackson, both caught in notorious sex scandals, even as he condemned Schwartzenagger.
Some observers are convinced that the issue of character is simply overblown. Richard Reeves, biographer of John F. Kennedy, complains that “the current political debate as it revolves around character issues is literally destroying American politics.” Peggy Noonan, speechwriter and biographer of President Ronald Reagan, argues the opposite: “In a president, character is everything. A president doesn’t have to be brilliant .... he doesn’t have to be clever; you can hire clever .... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cannot buy courage and decency; you can’t rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him.”
Our difficulty in dealing with the question of character is directly related to the fact that we have no common concept of what character really is. University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter explains that the American people demand character but the concept of character lacks any public content. He argues that American culture is so deeply influenced by psychological approaches that moral character has been highly subjectivized. Lacking a clear concept of character, most Americans just hope for the best.
As Hunter explains, “character matters, we believe, because without it, trust, justice, freedom, community, and stability are probably impossible. “ Of course, if character is reduced to a postmodern icon without content, it is not likely to be actualized in those who lead—or in those who follow.
Three principles may offer us guidance in considering the issue of character in leadership, whether that leadership is exercised in the political sphere, in the church, or in any other consequential endeavor. These principles, rooted in the Christian worldview, may help us to think as we ponder the issue of character.
First, character really is important. We are right to demand moral character of our leaders and to believe that character is inseparable from credibility in leadership. This is especially true in a representative democracy. The history of the world is filled with various despites, warriors, and hate mongers who have held onto power by autocratic force. But in a democracy, we are eventually responsible for our own leaders. Because of this, our leaders represent the nation’s moral expectations writ large.
Many of us came face to face with this reality during the Clinton crisis. While most Americans were certain that the President’s sexual infidelities were morally wrong, there was no popular momentum to remove him from office. The American people had their first postmodern president, and he was well tuned to the spirit of his age.
Nevertheless, Clinton’s leadership credibility was greatly diminished and nearly destroyed by his demonstration of blatant disregard for the moral expectations of the people he led. This should serve to remind all citizens that character does matter in the end, and true character will be revealed in the crucible of leadership.
Second, we must understand that character is inevitably rooted in conviction. President Harry S. Truman once remarked, “A man cannot have character unless he lives within a fundamental system of morals that creates character.” Character does not emerge from a vacuum; it is tied to convictions that shape not only a leader’s life, but also the politics he represents. Character consists of beliefs as well as actions.
Third, as Christians we also understand that sin is a fundamental reality we must take into account when considering character. We cannot expect moral perfection of those who would lead us. Believing that character is important, and that character is inseparable from conviction, we also understand that all human beings are sinners and that moral failure will happen.
This perspective requires that Christians be careful and mature in our thinking about issues of character in leadership. Clearly, leadership is destroyed at some level of immoral involvement. At the same time, true character in leadership is also demonstrated when a leader responds to his own moral failure in a way that shows true repentance and moral courage.
Americans have retained enough moral sense to know that personal character still matters in the choice of a babysitter. If this is true, we can hardly claim with a straight face that character is irrelevant to those who hold high positions of political leadership. In the end, our concept of character must be filled with specific content if it is to be meaningful. We must press on to think as Christians, refuse to be daunted by the complications, and show that we care about character—even between elections.
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“In the beginning there was the Church,” explains Carol Midgley. “And people liked to dress up in their best clothes and go there on Sundays and they praised the Lord and it was good. But it came to pass that people grew tired of the Church and they stopped going, and began to be uplifted by new things such as yoga and t’ai chi instead. And, lo, a spiritual revolution was born.”
Reporting in the November 4, 2004 edition of The Times of London, Midgley announced the results of a major research project conducted in Great Britain. According to the data assembled in this report, England is returning to its pagan roots.
If that seems unlikely, just
consider the fact that only 7.9% of the British population attends church with
any regularity. On the European continent, those percentages are generally much
lower, with rates of churchgoing in Scandinavian nations running less than 3%.
The research was conducted by a team of British sociologists who looked at the small village of Kendal in Cumbria as a laboratory. As it happens, the statistics on religious participation in Kendal mirror almost precisely the national statistics in Great Britain. Led by sociologist Linda Woodhead and Paul Heelas, the researchers found that organized Christianity will be eclipsed by New Age spirituality within the next generation, if current trends continue. Their new book, The Spiritual Revolution, documents this incredible transformation of Great Britain—a reversion of a largely Christianized culture to its pagan roots.
As Midgley explains, “Study after study appears to prove that people are increasingly losing faith in the church and the Bible and turning instead to mysticism in guises ranging from astrology to reiki and holistic healing. The Government, significantly, said this week that older people should be offered t’ai chi classes on the NHS [National Health Service] to promote their physical and mental well-being.”
Professor Heelas, a well-known specialist on the New Age movement, describes the trend toward new forms of paganism as a response to larger cultural shifts. “It’s a shift away from (the idea of) a hierarchical all-knowing institution and a move towards (having) the freedom to grow and develop as a unique person rather than going to church and being led.”
Beyond this, Heelas argues that the idea of life after death is receding in the minds of most modern persons. With Heaven gone from the horizon, individuals must find full satisfaction in this life. “A lot of the comfort of religion is in postponement—a better life after death,” Heelas explains. “But belief in Heaven is collapsing, so people believe it is more important to know themselves and make themselves better people now.”
The self stands at the very center of the New Age worldview, and an unembarrassed focus on the self is the driving force behind much of the new paganism. In an earlier work, The New Age Movement, Heelas described New Age philosophies as “the celebration of the self.” Most famously, this unapologetic worship of the self was illustrated by the New Age ramblings of actress Shirley MacLaine, who simply declared: “I am God. I am God. I am God.”
This is the inevitable result of the increasingly therapeutic worldview that marks the postmodern age. In a very real sense, humanistic psychology has become for the culture the direct route to repaganization. A focus on the centrality of the self has always been essential to the framework of humanistic psychology. As expressed by Carl Rogers, among the most influential of modern psychologists, “Experience for me is the highest authority.” Of course, that experience was mediated through nothing more authoritative than himself.
Accordingly, many modern persons are, as Roy Wallis explains, “epistemological individualists,” trusting only their own individualistic concept of “truth.” As Heelas summarizes, “The New Age shows what ‘religion’ looks like when it is organized in terms of what is taken to be the authority of the Self.”
This individualistic redefinition of religion is evident in the Kendal study. Residents of Kendal revealed a weakening of commitment to traditional Christianity—especially the Church of England—and a general willingness to reconceptualize religion in terms of self-esteem. As one woman explained her discovery of the New Age movement: “A one-hour service on a Sunday? It’s not really enough time to address your self-esteem issues, is it? I didn’t find any help in the churches. I found it in a 12-step program. That was the start of my personal journey.”
Julie Wise, a 44-year-old mother of two, explained that she left the Church of England because she no longer found her childhood faith meaningful. She explained that she discovered t’ai chi while visiting the city of Manchester. “It was like divine intervention,” she related. “It was one of the most beautiful, meaningful things I had ever seen.” As the researchers now report, Julie has become “an Infinite T’ai Chi practitioner” who performs “soul readings” as a way of seeing new patterns of life and releasing new energies. As if Anglicanism was not sufficiently mired in trouble already, the researchers report that Victor de Waal, a former Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, is a regular visitor to a New Age center located in the town of Dent. “I don’t see it as an alternative; I see it as deepening one’s faith,” the former dean explained. He went on to argue that his dabbling in the New Age was in no way inconsistent with his Christian commitments, because the “spirituality” he now practiced is “not committed to a particular tradition,” but open to all.
One of the fascinating aspects of this new study is the extent to which the researchers indicate that a desire to avoid particularistic truth claims lies at the heart of New Age appeal. Elizabeth Forder, who leads the spirituality center at Dent, describes this aspect of the movement: “We are not affiliated to any religion and there is no belief system imposed on anybody here. I was brought up a Christian, but it held no real meaning for me. I would class myself as a universalist, believing that all religions offer the same end. At its simplest, meditation is giving the body and mind a very deep level of rest, freeing us to be ourselves.”
As sociologist Steve Bruce explains, the New Age worldview “solves the problem of cultural pluralism.” This new model of “spirituality” offers meaning without doctrine, transcendence without dogma, and religious experience without any particular religious commitment. In other words, it is perfectly suited for those who have been drinking deeply from the wells of postmodernism and have accepted the basic worldview of humanistic psychology.
Writing just a few years ago, William Bloom, one of the major figures behind the rise of the new spirituality in Britain, spoke of the widening popularity of New Age consciousness. “Twenty-five years ago, when I first became involved in New Age thinking, it was distinctly embarrassing to talk locally about it. It was like being a vegetarian at a rugby club dinner . . . . Twenty-five years later, the movement is growing in strength and is in many ways an established part of contemporary culture . . . . Cherie Blair wears a pendant to ward off bad vibes in her final days of pregnancy. Prince Charles talks to plants. Oprah Winfrey leads a television revolution in which anyone and everyone can talk about their innermost secrets and seek instant healing.”
Not all are going along with this, of course. Pastor Brian Maiden of Parr Street Evangelical Church in Kendal told Carol Midgley, “The people of Britain have been inoculated with a dead, mild form of Christianity, which has given them resistance to the real thing. It has been diluted with human philosophy. People want to be told what to do and how to do it. Often they don’t realize that’s what they want until they hear it.”
Responding to the self-centered worldview of New Age spirituality, Maiden corrected the misrepresentations of Christianity made by so many in the movement. “Christianity isn’t about us trying to make ourselves better people,” the pastor explained. “It is about God trying to do something for us 2,000 years ago which redeemed people.”
As for his church: “The message here is traditional Protestantism,” he retorted. “We teach the message of the Gospels and that there will be a Judgment.”
Well, hats off to Pastor Maiden, whose bold and courageous ministry offers the only ray of light found in this picture. He knows the difference between biblical Christianity and the narcissistic worldview of New Age spirituality.
Clearly, Pastor Maiden is bucking the trend even as he holds fast to the historic Christian faith. In so doing, he and his church now serve as a missionary outpost in the midst of a land quickly becoming repaganized in the early years of the twenty-first century.
The wide scale rejection of Christianity and the eager embrace of humanistic psychology and the new religion of the self marks a turning point in Western culture and serves as a wake up call to the Christian church.
We must now realize that, in this increasingly paganized age, our Christian task is to talk about God and tell persons of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, knowing that many of these people now believe that they are gods.
Visitors to Britain love to visit Stonehenge and other ancient monuments to the nation’s pagan past. Tragically enough, the old paganisms are now resurgent, as a tepid and compromising Christianity is in retreat. Don’t think it can’t happen here.
[KH: The present liberal Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the world-wide Anglican Church was appointed in July 2002. One month later, he was reported to have participated in a pagan Celtic ritual. When inquired, his spokesman defended that it was a celebration of Welsh culture.]
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When Bill Moyers asked his youngest son why he had seen Star Wars at least a dozen times, he responded: “For the same reason you have been reading the Old Testament all your life.” As Moyers explained, “He was in a new world of myth.”
That new world of myth has been a topic of debate and interest ever since 1977, when Star Wars first warped itself into our national consciousness. The release of the blockbuster Star Wars trilogy on DVD will introduce a new generation to this myth cycle that once dominated the big screen—but will these new viewers understand the worldview issues at stake?
Producer George Lucas has offered different and contradictory messages about his own agenda in the making of the Star Wars series. Explaining the blockbusting success of the first movie, Lucas insisted that his only purpose was to make a “fun” escapist movie, “whose only purpose was to give pleasure.”
Nevertheless, the mythological elements in these movies are hard to deny, and Lucas has more recently claimed a higher purpose than entertainment in his movie making. “I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct-that there is a greater mystery out there,” he told a fascinated Bill Moyers, who interviewed Lucas for TIME.
The Moyers interview reveals a great deal about himself as well as his subject, for both Moyers and Lucas seem absolutely agog over the power of myth and convinced that modern secular Americans need new myths to replace the tired old “myths” of religion, including Christianity. “Religion is basically a container for faith. And faith in our culture . . . what one might describe as a supernatural, or the things we can’t explain-is a very important part of what allows us to remain stable, remain balanced.”
Lucas reveals that he believes that “all religions are true,” though we cannot know who or what God is. In writing Star Wars, Lucas “had to come up with a whole cosmology,” and chose to imitate an existing belief system rather than to invent a new religion. In the process he borrowed freely from ancient Gnosticism, Buddhism, and certain elements of Christianity. “I wanted to express it all,” he explained.
The mythological structure of Star Wars is primarily indebted to the Eastern religions, though Americans are more likely to recognize that now than they were in 1977. Zen Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies are now staples of America’s polytheistic popular culture. Bookstore sections on “Spirituality” feature hundreds of books in the “Buddhism for the Masses” genre, and the even less serious “New Age” materials.
In the years since 1977 Americans have become primary consumers of Eastern philosophies and ancient mythologies-dumbed down for popular consumption and dressed up for a media age. Interest in pagan mythologies may have peaked in the 1980s with the late Joseph Campbell’s television series (hosted by—guess who—Bill Moyers). Through books and television series, Campbell introduced a generation of secularized and confused Americans to the world of ancient and modern myths.
Campbell and Lucas had a mutual admiration society for several years. At a tribute for Campbell, Lucas described him as “my Yoda,” recalling a spiritual guide from Star Wars. Campbell offered that he was “proud that something I did helped him define his own truth.”
The mythological elements in the Star Wars series became, in fact, the justifying purpose behind a mammoth exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, beginning in 1997. “Star Wars: The Magic of Myth” celebrated the movie and its story of intergalactic conflict. The museum also sponsored a major book project with the same title, written by the project’s curator, Mary Henderson.
Identifying Star Wars as “one of the great myths of our time,” Henderson explained the power of the movies: “When the first film in the Star Wars trilogy appeared in 1977, the ancient myths no longer seemed relevant for many people in this culture; pressing problems absorbed our attention, and hope itself was in short supply.” Evidently, the movie came just in time. The title of the first film—”A New Hope.” It sounds like more than a little escapism.
The book and the exhibit detailed the mythological elements in the Star Wars movies, from the influence of Zoroastrian dualism of good and evil to the Zen elements of “The Force.” Lucas borrowed from several different mythological traditions to create his “whole cosmology” and pseudo-religion.
Conspicuously absent from Lucas’s cosmology is anything connected to biblical Christianity. Though oblique references to faith abound in the film, the central religious motif is “the Force,” explained by the Smithsonian guide as a combination of “the basic principles of several different major religions.” Further, “it most embodies what all of them have in common: an unerring faith in a spiritual power.” Lucas explained “the Force” as “a nothingness that can accomplish miracles.” This is, the Smithsonian’s Henderson asserts, “reminiscent of Zen Buddhism.”
“The Force” is not analogous to Christian faith, but is a form of personal enlightenment and empowerment. Faith in “the Force” is simply faith in mystery and some higher power-mostly within. As Lucas instructs: “Ultimately the Force is the larger mystery of the universe. And to trust your feelings is your way into that.” The last thing Americans need to be told is to trust their own feelings.
The mythology of Star Wars is
perfectly adapted to the spiritual confusion of postmodern America. “Go with
the Force” is about all many citizens can muster as spirituality. When
Christianity ceases to be the dominant worldview of a culture, paganism is
quick to fill the void.
Some theologians have welcomed the mythological message of Star Wars as a relief from arid secularism. Theologian Robert Jewett of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary went so far as to claim “a compelling gospel in this film, one that deserves to be compared with Paul’s words in Romans.” Lutheran Robert E. A. Lee claimed that “the Force” combines “the mysticism of ESP and the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit.” These folks have been sitting in the cinema too long.
Luke Skywalker and company are a form of simple escapism for many moviegoers, and a source of spiritual “insight” for others. Christians will be amazed at the special effects, but should be wary of any spiritual effect. As Carl F. H. Henry reminded us all, “Judeo-Christian revelation has nothing in common with the category of myth.” We must not confuse Christian faith with “the Force.”
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We are living in dangerous times, but far too many Americans seem to have forgotten this unforgiving fact. How can so many forget the unforgettable?
Terror is a tragic teacher, and the memories of September 11, 2001 haunt us even now. The images of planes crashing, towers collapsing, and bodies falling will be forever seared into our memories. Just to say “9/11” is to invoke a flood of remembrance and the bitter taste of tragedy.
More than three years after 9/11, what have we learned? The immediate aftermath of the terror attacks in New York and Washington was widespread confusion. What had happened? Who was responsible? How awful is the damage? How many have died? Is more to come? The confusion gave way to the even more terrifying clarity. The carnage was just too much to imagine—but too real to deny.
We know so much more now than we knew then. But have we really learned anything? We must hope so, but lessons learned in a moment of urgency have a way of fading into memory. What lessons must remain?
First, the terror has taught us to accept reality. This is a dangerous world. Towers we thought to be sound were attacked in a nation we thought to be safe, hit by airplanes we thought were no threat. Reality has a way of interrupting our dreams, and Americans have dreamed ourselves safe from the dangers that threaten the rest of the world. Those dreams came to an end on September 11. Americans now routinely accept levels of scrutiny and screening that would have baffled previous generations. We line up for airport security checks, taking off shoes and coats, while we send our earthly goods through x-ray machines and walk through metal detectors—all the while talking with friends and family as if this were normal, for now it is. How can people who board airplanes fail to remember that we live in a dangerous world?
Second, the terror has taught us to distinguish between good and evil. Our age has grown ever more reluctant to make moral judgments. Moral cowardice has denied the inherent evil of immoral acts. Moral relativism has denied any objective judgment of right and wrong. A naive non-judgmentalism often masquerades as moral humility. A refusal to make moral judgments is not humility—it is insanity.
The American university culture has embraced this false humility as a basic worldview. Speaking of morally disarmed college students, journalist David Brooks explained: “On campus they found themselves wrapped in a haze of relativism. There were words and jargon and ideas everywhere, but nothing solid that would allow a person to climb from one idea to the next. These students were trying to form judgments, yet were blocked by the accumulated habits of nonjudgmentalism.”
These “accumulated habits of nonjudgmentalism” are very much in evidence on America’s campuses today—and in the academic world of publishing and public lectures. Why would we expect moral sanity from a campus culture that celebrates Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Noam Chomsky as wise men?
These accumulated habits were of no use on September 11. The attacks on New York and Washington, carefully planned to maximize civilian casualties and terror, were unadulterated evil. These were not acts of cultural rebellion or national liberation—they were acts of murderous terror at the hands of men rightly named as murderous terrorists. We came face to face with the undeniable reality of evil. Moral relativism was stripped of its disguise on September 11. It is evil to speak of those attacks as anything less than evil.
Third, we learned once again that God is ultimately in control, or else we are lost in a cosmos of chaos. Tragedy breeds theological tremors. Is God really in control? Could a good God allow such pain and loss? Can we really know anything about God at all?
Christians were called upon to answer with the calm confidence of biblical truth and genuine faith. God has revealed Himself in the Bible, and He has shown Himself to be both omnipotent and loving. Both truths are non-negotiable, and each complements the other. We have no choice but to affirm both truths as two sides of one great truth, and to affirm that God’s sovereignty and His moral perfection are established in His own revelation and in His own terms.
Fourth, we learned that the Gospel has enemies. We should have known this all along, for the Apostle Paul described the Gospel of Christ’s cross as a stumbling block and scandal. The cross has its enemies. The attacks of 9/11 were made in the name of Islam—not in the name of secularism. Moslem and non-Moslem alike argued whether Islam is at war with America, or if the terrorists were acting in violation of the Koran. Whatever the merits of those arguments, the more important truth is that Islam is at war with the cross of Christ.
Those who love the gospel learned again that Islam rejects Christ as the incarnate Son of God and the cross as the atonement for our salvation. There can be no reconciliation between the claims of Christianity and the claims of Islam. The enemies of the cross know this full well.
Secularism raised its head in the aftermath of 9/11 to warn that anyone who takes truth claims seriously is a potential terrorist—the Christian as well as the Muslim. Claims that Jesus is the only Savior and that salvation is found in His name alone were dismissed as “theological terrorism” and religious extremism. For this the early Christian martyrs gave their lives.
Fifth, we learned that spirituality is no substitute for Christian faith. Churches were filled to capacity in the weeks following September 11. Some observers predicted a period of national revival and openness to the Gospel. That did not happen. Within just a few months church attendance had fallen to pre-9/11 levels. The national trauma produced flutterings of “spirituality” but little evidence of renewed Christian conviction.
Spirituality is what is left when authentic Christianity is evacuated from the public square. It is the refuge of the faithless seeking the trappings of faith without the demands of revealed truth. Spirituality affirms us in our self-centeredness and soothingly tells us that all is well. Authentic faith in Christ calls us out of ourselves, points us to the cross, and summons us to follow Christ.
The lessons terror taught us are still fresh for those with the will to remember. The gaping hole in Manhattan’s skyline and the scarred landscape of Washington point to the unspeakably greater loss measured in human life and human misery. The distance of years has not healed the wounds, but it has sharpened the memory. There are lessons we have learned. In the midst of a very different war, the indomitable G. K. Chesterton understood the same lessons.
From all that terror
teaches,
From lies of tongue
and pen,
From all the easy
speeches
That comfort cruel
men,
From sale and
profanation
Of honour and the
sword,
From sleep and from
damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!
G. K. Chesterton
“A Hymn”
[KH: Chesterton was a famous novelist, a great writer, and a devout Catholic in the 19th century.]
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