Letter #109: You Win or You Die
Some Things Never Change
Spuds.
There used to be a slogan in the Evangelical world: “God said it. I believe it. That’s all there is to it.” This, or some version of it, was worked into book titles, song lyrics, bumper stickers, keychains and various other sorts of merch.
Me, I never liked it. I don’t see why small-minded smugness should be any more attractive in the name of Christianity than anything else. Wise men lived before Christ walked the earth, and wise men have lived since who did not believe in him. If Christ was the living Word, then he is the source of reality, which — in some part at least — is there for anyone to see.
I ended last week by asking the question: what pagan wisdom did Christianity incorporate or illuminate? I was thinking of the Platonic and Stoic philosophy that influenced Augustine and the Aristotelian reasoning that set the mind of Aquinas, and therefore all of Christendom, ablaze.
But I was also trying to get at something else: what I guess you could call the continuing human condition, the tragic problem of life that Christianity attempts to address. Because why flock to a preacher, or a philosopher, or an artist or even a politician, if not to ease the pain of life, the fear of death, the grief of loss, the burden of unknowing and all “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”? Do we think no one ever noticed these before Christ came? Do we think they were ended by his coming? Can we dust the tragedy off our hands and say, “Well! That’s that!”
In your essay, you describe how a “post-Christian” paganism is sterile and emptied of its original engagement with life. But that would be true of a self-satisfied, tearless Christianity as well.
I remember when I was utterly absorbed in the first wonderful seasons of the fantasy HBO series Game of Thrones. There were days, so help me, when I was more interested in who would win the Iron Throne than who would win the White House. Some Christian viewers objected to the show's exploitative, not to say pornographic, use of sex to keep viewers engaged. They had a point. It was cynical garbage. But others objected to the cruel realism of a game of thrones in which, as Cersei Lannister says, “you win or you die.” As one article summarized these objections: “The show's only possible virtue is depicting how the world would look if Christ had never been born.”
These objections struck me as foolish. Christ was born. Do people no longer kill for power? Are the weak no longer oppressed by the strong? The tortures of medievalism, the slaveries of imperialism, the abortions of today — is there an ounce less evil in the world than there ever was?
My question remains: if the human condition is the puzzle, which of the oldest solutions endure and what has Christianity added to them?
Dad
“Because why flock to a preacher, or a philosopher, or an artist or even a politician, if not to ease the pain of life, the fear of death, the grief of loss, the burden of unknowing and all “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”? Do we think no one ever noticed these before Christ came? Do we think they were ended by his coming? Can we dust the tragedy off our hands and say, “Well! That’s that!””
The reason “why” I flock to Christ is not so much for solace although there is that, but because He so obviously exists, having given me all that I need to live, a Comforter to be my solace and guide, the Eucharist to strengthen my way, and a community of believers within which to be a part of the Body of Christ. The question for me is not what God (or Church) has done for me, but rather what God would have me do for Him? What do I owe to the Person who has given me everything I have, including life itself, at the cost of His own? He says it is to love Him with my own Heart and to love my neighbor as myself. Those commandments give rise to a lifetime of seeking His will for me and trying to carry it out. It is more than enough to be going on with as the Irish say, and gives rise less to satisfaction with self and more to reliance on tears, at least in my case.
Phillipians 4: 8-9...the pursuit of beauty. A sterile Christianity is an abomination because Christ personified truth, love, goodness, beauty. Anyone before or after Christ who pursued these things is aiming toward God in spite of what they *think* their target is. Anyone before or after Christ who does not seek after these things is missing the target in spite of what they *think* their target is.