The new Fab Four |
Nonetheless, I don't know anything about her, and can't speak to her credibility on any particular front. I can say, however, that this piece she wrote caught my attention. Rod Dreher linked to it. She - who apparently is Jewish - writes about the return of the Near Eastern gods of sacrifice, slaughter, slavery and seduction. Spirits of evil that had been pushed to the sidelines of history by the ascension of the Jewish and Christian Faiths. I encourage you to read it through.
This isn't far from where I have been for some time. You all know I've written about our nation's descent into a secular paganism. That is, secular by default, but enough man made god to make sure we see our loved ones and puppies and favorite rock stars again when we die. As I've said, paganism is the at-rest position of the world when divorced from divine revelation. Even if it is mainly an atheistic world with the thin veneer of an affirming deity for fuzzy feelings. After all, remove the One God and mankind will happily invent his own.
As we're seeing, such alternate religions are typically nasty things too, not the peace loving hippies of Stonehenge Woodstock. Think on it. As we shuffle off the old time religion, we celebrate the abortion of sixty five million pregnancies in barely three generations as one of the biggest triumphs for feminism in America. Kids are killing each other and themselves at record breaking levels. The deaths from AIDS, drugs and suicide take out more than 100k a year in our country alone. Every year almost 2 million people continue to die of drugs and AIDS around the world. All this while more and more people are wanting to sex up our kids and euthanize our undesirables in ways that would make Himmler drool. Yet we go on, hearing that the people concerned about these developments are the haters, the villains, the ones who need 'cancelled.'
Ms. Wolf speaking to these developments is not advocating some illusionary spiritual observation in my opinion. Rather it sounds a lot like the very thing that would make those old Near Eastern gods happy. Also the thing that the Old Testament prophets would have railed against. And, to be honest, most practicing Christians until recently would have called out for what they are.
There will come a time when we have to admit we either believe in the Christian story or we don't. We believe in a God ordered Creation or we don't. We can only dilute and water down the historical faith so much before it ceases to be anything but hot air. If there was truth to it at all, then we shouldn't have to wonder what is happening today and what is behind it all.
I'm not saying I think Ms. Wolf is spot on about everything. Clearly I see some things differently. But coming out and admitting to the real spiritual implications of a God centered Creation that includes the Invisible, and seeing what is happening in our world in light of this, isn't a bad step in the obvious direction.
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears;
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain
In Argob and in Basan to the stream
of utmost Arnon."
John Milton, Paradise Lost
(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteBelloc warned that when paganism returned it would not be worshipping the gods of Greece, but the gods of Carthage. Chesterton said the demons draw worshippers because they make very practical promises: power, wealth and good sex, which is right up the alley of Hollywood and contemporary Washington. Fulton Sheen, commenting on Africa and Asia (1950), relayed missionaries' comments that the people feared their gods rather than loved them. I think Wolfe is on to something.
That perverse idol some bold Austrian tossed in the Tiber (and which a bolder American would have destroyed with a shotgun) was no innocent symbol.
It's "Wolf," not "Wolfe."
ReplyDeleteThank ye.
DeleteBy the way, Greydanus responded to your latest CWR comment with a new series of word games and exercises in pretzel-shaped logic.
ReplyDeleteI saw. I was never a Greydanus as movie critic fan, but always thought he debated in good form and was a decent person. I can't believe the gibberish he's putting out, however, in defense of this. But then as my son says, the more our society unravels, the easier it is to sympathize with the Germans of the 1930s who didn't do more to stop the madness.
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