Im sitting here trying to think about how to put into words what I am feeling. I just saw the Chronicles of Narnia and Ive been watching the weeks news and these two things have seemed to collide for me. You may wonder what the failure to renew the Patriot Act and Narnia have in common....Im going to try and connect the dots.
Just a few minutes into Narnia I realized something profound, well I thought it profound you might thing it obvious. I realized that both Tolkein and Lewis lived through the Nazi bombardment of Great Brittan, and quickly thereafter I realized that both of their books were about the profound battle between Good and Evil. It is of course the greatest sin of our society to believe in such a thing, that there actually are good guys (That wear the white hats) and bad guys (That wear the black hats) and yet there is something profound in our collective conscience that drives millions of dollars in movie sales when anyone dares to make a movie that revives this "old" way of thinking. I think its because, deep down, despite the attempts of the philosiphers of pluralism and the modern media's attempt to make all ideas equally acceptable, we all know the truth. There is Good, and there is Evil and we know it when we see it.
There are good ideas....Like the idea that sacrifice and love of neighbor are what hold societies together, and bad ideas....dare I say evil.... like the idea that murdering people in the name of God is ever justified (Regardless of whether it is Osama or Paul Hill). I think its time for us a Christians to re assert this grand Idea, that the Creator of the universe has given us some rules, some of them dont seem very modern....we would rather God not care about our sexual morality for example, but see thats the point of Narnia and Middle Earth....There is a "deeper magic", a guiding truth that is biger than all of us, and we are not in control.
But we moderns dont like to think that some ideas and, in fact, some people are evil (or at least controled by it). We like to say things like "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" We judge not based on some transcendent notion of the Good, but on the basis of sincerity of belief. Our primary virtue is to be tolerence, by which we mean being friendly to any way of thinking that does not posit that there is such a thing as Good and Evil. And so now your asking what does this have to do with the Patriot Act well, here goes.
This week the Senate decided not to renew the Patriot Act, this "contraversial" bill was overwhelmingly passed in the days and weeks after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. But we modern Americans have short memories, we forget that there are good forces in the world today....Democracy being one, and Evil forces in the world today...Islamic Extreemism being one, and that these two grand ideas for they are both grand, are in fundamental conflict. The failure to renew the patriot act, and our growing softness when it comes to fighting evil around the world remind me that the most dangerous idea in the world might just be the idea that there is no such thing as Good and Evil. Its what Nevil Chamberlin thought, its what the French leadership thought in the 1930's, its what the German people thought during the rise of the Third Reich, and unfortunately more and more its what we think.
What scares me most about the breakdown in our society, and its intolerance of any thinking that posits a true Good and a certain Evil, is that every society that has gone such a rout in its Intellectual life, has ultimately succumed to some great Evil.
So thats what Im thinking....Technology bringing Narnia and Middle Earth to life on the big screen....thats technology in ministry: Here is to hoping it can revive our beliefe in the Good Guys and the Deeper Magic.
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3 comments:
I agree but sometimes it's hard to determine what is good and bad. Sometimes I wish it was more clear.
Ah yes, this is the response, its hard to know, This is what I disagree with, I think we do in fact know, we have degenerated into a people who's base response is, its so hard to know, but thats because we have been indoctrinated into the philosophies of Tolerance and Sincerity.
But we moderns dont like to think that some ideas and, in fact, some people are evil (or at least controled by it). We like to say things like "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter" We judge not based on some transcendent notion of the Good, but on the basis of sincerity of belief.
I've always thought of this as a postmodern, rather than modern view. PoMo's relativistic value system could more easily support the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" argument than modernist absolute standards of good and evil.
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