NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
SUNDAY SPECTATOR
March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday
For a lark, before writing this Easter Sunday column, I typed the single word “Easter” into an Internet search box, and looked for “news results.” Here, in order, were the top five stories, as of midway through Holy Week, MMVIII:Item, plastic Easter eggs, spinning tops, bunny hair clips, and “chick-style sipper cups,” linked to lead paint by a Cleveland-area chemistry professor. (And guess what? They were made in China.) Item, motorists queue to beat Easter fuel price rises. (Various locations.) Item, Easter kangaroo cull by Australian defence department postponed in deference to animal rights activists. (Until next week!) Item, flat retail spending for Easter expected. (Various locations.) Item, police to be out in force on roads for Easter drunk-driving blitz. (Various locations.) And now, the first “upbeat” story. It is item six: extra-thick Easter eggs a hit in London, England. (Price of leading brand at Harrod’s, 18 pounds each.) Christian that I am, to say nothing of Catholic, my eye was caught by another feature from the British High Street: an “advertorial” I would guess, that had tricked the Google search engine into treating it as “news.” The headline read, “Easter: We do the hard work for you!” This would be quite an offer, if the copywriters had any idea what they were saying. For as I recall, the hard work of Easter consisted of being arrested, mistried, scourged and otherwise humiliated and tortured, carrying a crucifix across the city of Jerusalem, and then being nailed to it. The Resurrection from the Dead might also present difficulties. We tend to think of glibness as a neutral thing, and the characteristic distractions of our age as light, meaningless, trivial, and therefore inconsequential. “Religious freedom” has been so long taken for granted in our culture, that we hardly notice now that it begins to be taken away (see various rightwing bloggers). The assumption is that people who only concern themselves with chocolate eggs, and suchlike candy for the body and mind, and whose political interests are restricted to the safety of children’s toys, or a kangaroo’s right-to-life, are of no danger to themselves or others. There is a lady I adore (I adore many) who reads a lot of trash. She admits it is trash, “light reading,” frankly escapist, and that she does it as a release from tension she associates with “work.” Her argument is unanswerable, as far as it goes: “You just have to relax sometimes, you can’t be serious all the time.” Her job is a stupid and unnecessary (nay, counter-productive) one in a bureaucracy. She pushes paper all day long, according to her instructions. I can easily understand the temptation to withdraw from it, into a mildly romantic fantasia. But my question for her would be: “Do you ever read anything serious?” And the answer to that would have to be, “No.” Consider for a moment: exhaustion from repetitive, mindless, soul-destroying labour. And then, relaxation into repetitive, mindless, soul-destroying leisure. Eventually pensioned off. For an increasing proportion of the population, childlessness and thus, none of the traditional consolations of family. Personal relationships, by fifty, all in ruins. Death, typically, in a nursing home; though maybe not if the Welfare State collapses. What’s wrong with this scene? While I was describing one person, who varies light reading with an addiction to Facebook and other Internet treats, I might be describing a cross-section of what I call “postmodern man.” He lives as a cipher in a complex “mixed” economy, a tiny little interchangeable cog in a vast dysfunctional machine, designed by competing simpletons to produce “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” And if you look at all deeply into his psyche, you will find that he is sad. The question for the Church and Christians today, is how do we explain the Crucifixion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ to that very person? How do we even begin? The case is not hopeless; though in saying that, I am committing what any intelligent unbeliever would immediately decry as a tautology. The Resurrection itself, celebrated by Christians for more than 19 centuries as the central feast of their liturgical year, is the answer to despair, including the postmodern despair. In the Northern Hemisphere, it returns with spring, as if all nature were witnessing redemption; but it transcends nature. Faith, hope, and love, the three “theological virtues,” can all be dismissed as self-referential. If man is indeed the random product of unthinking forces, none of them can have any meaning at all. Alternatively, we are the children of God, and these virtues make sense. The Google search with which I opened was into the empty shell of a world that is, even as I write, passing away into nothing. It will soon be extinct, and having produced nothing worth remembering, it will not be remembered. The life of the spirit goes on, outside the comprehension of this world. To anyone who wants to know where the path begins, that leads out of nowhere, and towards somewhere, towards Hope -- let me refer him to the instruction that begins: “In the beginning.” N.B. I am off on my annual leave, as is my wont, the five weeks after Easter. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top