Letter #70: It's Tough to Be a God
But if you get the people's nod...
Padre,
You probably remember that old DreamWorks cartoon, The Road to El Dorado. I say you, in particular, probably remember, because I was 10 when it came out and I fixated on the soundtrack by Elton John in a way only a 10-year-old can fixate. It’s God’s device for trying their parents’ patience. Yours was saintly. I must have had that thing on repeat all summer.
My favorite song was “It’s Tough to Be a God.” Two explorers have been mistaken by a primitive society for deities, which sounds like fun until the impostor syndrome sets in: “I hardly think I'm qualified / To come across all sanctified / I just don't cut it with the cherubim.” You think these are uptown problems until the newcomers realize how swiftly and seamlessly worship can give way to violent sacrifice. It’s a kids’ take on an old Girardian motif exemplified in real-life figures like Captain Cook and classic adventure stories like “The Man Who Would Be King.” We all crave to be looked at with total adoration, until the terrible weight of infallibility crushes us to death.
Life without forgiving means life without being forgiven. That’s why the Lord’s prayer asks for both at once: it’s our trespasses and our enemies’, or it’s neither. But we clutch so desperately at our precious figments of virtue that we can’t admit we recognize ourselves in other people’s nakedness.
This helps explain the schizophrenic nature of our culture, which is at once obsessed with apologies, and incapable of executing them in a satisfying way. We can’t seem to stop fixating on rituals of absolution: student loan forgiveness. Reparations. Even the bizarre custom of exacting a tearful iPhone video or notes app screenshot from celebrities whose behavior fans have found wanting. All pitiful attempts to act out reconciliation, and all fruitless because neither the government, nor “white people,” nor Ariana Grande can confess on everyone’s behalf. “It will never suffice to make perfect those who offer the same sacrifices, year after year.”
There’s something so tenderly sad about this, maybe because it’s so relatable. We all know the feeling of laboring under an enormous weight of conscience that we can’t admit we’re carrying. This is probably the burden Jesus talks about—the one that keeps us weary and heavy-laden, the one we can’t let go of unless we let go of being gods. That’s a deadly job, which is why it’s good news that the position’s already been filled.
Love,
Spencer
 | A guest post by
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When the entire progressive movement is founded upon the abnegation of the divine and worship of the self, the belief that each person is infinitely perfectible and that wishes and desires are better than thought, logic and truth, that indeed there is no truth, only one’s “own” truth, what is the movement to surrender to? Their entire worldview is dependent upon this, and without it, they have nothing. Once the only “god” is one’s own desires du jour, there is no future beyond life, and no interest in any good other than the good one desires for oneself. Attempting to destroy any culture that believes differently is vital to this worldview, and expecting the progressive worldview to change on its own will not succeed.
Since conservatism has surrendered culture and education as well as entertainment and media to the left, we have precious little left in our quiver. I fully agree with the statements, but how to proceed? DW and Substack have begun to open cracks, and getting some connection with the young is vital. I don’t have the answers, but am not very optimistic about the short term. However, that is my nature. I will not give up, as that is also not in my nature, and we already know the end of the story, as Fr Scott likes to say. We need to work on subsidiarity, working with the local people, in our communities, and bearing witness wherever possible. Doing so without words works best.
The enormous weight of conscience is one of the reasons for the sacrament of Confession. The Lord wants us to lives full, happy lives. He knows, and the Church knows, that we cannot do that if our consciences are not clear.