The reading of this in the film My Boy Jack always brings home Veterans Day and the risks and costs behind it:
It's been said that the problem with 'Nothing to kill for' is that it is inevitably followed by 'Nothing to die for', which is a backhanded way of saying 'Nothing in this universe more important than me'. As foundational as this is for our post-war secularized liberal society, it's antithetical to not just core Christian values, but the values shared by most of humanity throughout most of time.
Yet when we see things like Veterans Day or Memorial Day or even the daily sacrifice or risk people take to help or save others, I notice that our kneejerk reaction is seldom 'what an idiot.' No, we usually, almost instinctively, cheer them on or remember those who have served or sacrificed with reverence. From the top of our pop culture down.
So it's almost as if, despite the uber-narrative that I must love me first, think of me first, prioritize me first, and heaven forbid think there is anything out there worth dying for - we really don't believe it. Just what it says about a society whose formal instructions aren't even believed by those instructing us, I don't know. I just know when days like this come along, it never seems to mesh with the usual tripe we hear from our best and brightest about how the greatest love of all is the love I should have for myself, everything else being a distant second.
I think it's instinctive to our higher natures that there is something worth dying for, and even if we don't "believe it" culturally...we recognize it in others as an extraordinary sacrifice worthy of admiration.
ReplyDeleteI've often thought that is a problem in our modern society. Give me good or bad morals, but not convenient ones. Of course in our guts we don't accept such narcissism as virtue. But it's what we're told, and too often I fear we go a long with it as long as it's convenient to do so. Being formally taught what nobody really believes can never have good consequences.
Delete"This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.”
ReplyDelete-the Screwtape letters, by CS Lewis
Courage does seem in short supply these days. And not just outside the Church. I've said before that sometimes our postering about the Faith in ways that never seems to confront the real problems of our day is nothing other than cowardice with a Jesus mask. A use of doctrine to keep it under a bushel and avoid ticking off the real people with the real ability to make things nasty.
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