NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
April 8, 2012
Easter day
Miracles never happen. This is a fixed principle of contemporary scientism, instilled in every child from kindergarten in our state learning factories. It has been a fixed principle, among our illuminati, since about the generation of Darwin. Anyone who contradicts it is a heretic, an "enemy of science," and potentially a danger to the secular community. Under the universal doctrine of "the separation of church and state," one may be ostracized from public life, and shunned in fashionable society. One has only oneself to blame, for committing a thought crime.Perhaps I am exaggerating. Perhaps, not as much as the reader might think. Judging from mail I've received, comments I've read on unrelated websites all over the Internet, and public statements by the media-elected high priests of science, the old Soviet position on state atheism survives, and is aggressive. More subtly it can be read as a default position, underlying many things said in controversy that sound, superficially, more reasonable. Take for instance that "separation of church and state." It is hardly an article of the Canadian constitution, yet it is often invoked as if it were. It is taken for granted that no church has the right to intervene in state affairs, not only by the agnostic types, but by almost every Christian I know (and I have met a fair number). But what of the contrary? It is now also taken for granted that the state has the right to intervene in church affairs, in comprehensive detail. The paperwork alone hamstrings all religious charitable activities, and increasingly the state, out of its bottomless arrogance, acts to legislate which religious doctrines may be taught, which must be ignored, and which must be openly contradicted in, for instance, religious schools. Such things were unthinkable, even in the recent past; for this was exactly what, during the Cold War, we condemned in the former Soviet Union. Yet as they impose and extend their will, the appointive agencies of the state become ever more confident, ever more unctuous, ever more intrusive. Only a miracle will reverse this trend, which is one of many leading towards absolute state power. A dissident against the nanny state, and a heretic against the orthodoxy of scientism, I believe in miracles. This is among the reasons I continue to argue that, "all trends are reversible," and subscribe to counsels against despair. Within the physical universe around us, inertia is not the only governing law; and the dead hand of inertia is often defeated by the living force. Inertia only seems to have determining power, just as, in the Christian and all other religious teachings, death only seems to triumph. For there is something within the universe that is alive, that keeps reviving, that is unkillable. That can be silenced, yet will speak out of order; that can be crucified, and will come back to life; that can be buried, and will rise. And in moments of stillness, within our own souls, we perceive that immortal force, as Love, both immanent and transcendent. I have watched a nymph metamorphose into a dragonfly. The nymph inching out of the pond, and up a stem, finding its place in the sun; the moult commencing, the exuvia being shed; the creature acquiring pattern and colour; its wings unfolding; the wrinkles smoothing - before my very eyes. And then the glorious dragonfly, taking flight. I have watched a host of sparrows pass through a hedge, as if it weren't there; their flight neither broken nor slowed; each sparrow through a different hole in the fabric of leaves, retaining formation on the other side. It wasn't imagination, for from the position I was standing I could not possibly have mistaken what I had seen. It was a miracle of synchronization, and a gratuitous act of joy. Nature is full of such miracles, such transformations, that cannot be explained. The dull lie of "natural selection," as it is conventionally taught - that creatures came to be through blind, random processes of inertia - is contradicted in every moment of actual experience. And in the miracle of consciousness itself, we can know the immanence and transcendence of our God. In every life, there are such memories, such moments - of the dragonfly; of the sparrows; and many less accountable than those, for the miracle one witnessed was not of the kind that would surprise anybody. In my own life I remember, at the age of six, my experience of the purple of a plum, as something standing at the edge of time, offering a glimpse beyond it. All my life I have been haunted by that memory, and my child's knowledge of that plum as "a gift," as if given before all worlds. But to what can I refer except, a particular colour, which later I discerned in a twilight sky, and later still from an illuminator's brush, in a medieval codex. This is a knowledge that can be banned, suppressed, punished, persecuted, hauled before Pilate by the functionaries of the state, or some self-appointed prosecuting authority. Scourged, mocked, and humiliated, by men "who know not what they do." Through 20 centuries, Christ has been crucified again and again. And He is with us still. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top