The true enemies of our civilization as we know it...

I am reading GK Chesterton's "The Man Who was Thursday" (fantastic book--definately a must read, whether you're familiar with Chesterton or not...read it!) and I found thoughts that I have been mulling over abstractly for nearly 3 or 4 years articulated simply and beautifully in the fourth chapter. I was, needless to say, not only overjoyed, but happily refocused in my consideration of the problems that I have been thinking about. I have the articulate answer to the question of who is our true enemy (speaking in fleshly terms of course). The "West", the entire civilization, culture, idea that I love is under attack...and though I am sure I have learned it before, I can now articulate it thanks to G.K.C.

Especially in today's world, where we know for a demonstrable fact that there are people in this world that seek our unconditional destruction, it is vital that we accept the situation that is before us. Civilization has been under attack before, and will always come under the knife by these types of enemies. They will use anything and everything in their means to accomplish their ends: the destruction of our way of life, and the end of life in general. In Chesterton's book, such men are correctly identified as true Anarchists...today, they claim the title of Islamist extremists...the result, I believe, is the same. These are the true threats to our existence.

Now, I imagine, you're thinking that this is painfully obvious and are asking why this has caused me to become so excited that I would even go so far as to publish my thoughts on a blog that the world can (though perhaps might not) read? I'll tell you: it is because the threat that exists is not the one that we generally imagine. Last night, at the RNC California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made a very true claim: he said that the terror threat we face today is more insidious then the Communist threat of the Cold War days. This, I believe, is terribly true.

The Communist threat was indeed dangerous. They wanted to rule the world. But that is nothing compared to the threat we face today. The Islamic Extremists, or loathsome, evil terrorists as I like to think of them, are not out to rule the world. Oh, certainly some of them imgaine a day when the entire world would have mosques erected in every city, and the world would bow to Allah, and surely the average foot-soldier of the cause is truly deceived into believing he is accomplishing something constructive through his destructive actions...but the actions of the terrorists on 9/11, the actions of the terrorists fighting in Israel, the actions of the terrorists fighting in Iraq...at the very least the masterminds behind the bombs have no desire to see America or the "West" convert. They desire one thing, and one thing only. Our complete and total destruction.

The men that would conceive of a plan to use commercial airliners to create as much havoc and death as possible--not even caring whether or not anyone particularly important actually died, so long as death in mass was accomplished..these are the diabolical men that we face today, and they are the diabolical men that Gabriel Syme, the main character of Chesterton's book, faced in a fantasy long ago. These men are not akin to the typical criminal that we regularly see being arrested and imprisoned--robbers, murderers, rapists, etc. Those men--as Chesteron says, could at least generally be called conditionally good men--if they had what they are committing a crime to get, they would not be committing a crime. They recognize that there is something good about life...wealth...etc. They pursue it wrongly, but they are at least correctly seeing it as worth pursuing.

However, those conditionally good men, our standard criminals, are nothing in comparison to our true enemies. Those that desire death, who seek to undo all order, all peace, all that knits our society together...those men are the true enemies of our lives today, and of the heritage and civilization that I love. They are the heretics of life. They are the ones that I actually fear and so they are the ones that we must stand against to the utmost and possibly bitter end...for, as Gabriel Syme once said:

"Yes,' he said in a voice indescribable, 'you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down."

"How?' asked the Professor. "Why?"

"Because I am afraid of him,' said Syme; 'and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid."

Into the West...

I watch the constant buzz around silly things like the DNC and the election. Foolishness mostly. If John Kerry really had as much support as idiots like Moore claim he does, then this would not be the close battle that it is. But as always, they are very good at double talk--avoiding logic because most people don't think hard when they hear things. They will kill my country some day.

My age is dying. Its happened before--and surely it will happen again. Will we turn back the tide, like Hobbits in Mordor, or will we cling to the shore knowing that our enemy has utterly laid us low and the only hope we have can only come from beyond the shores of this world?

Do you stand and fight or do you retreat? Better yet...what about neither--do you simply live because day will come again and whether you live or not is not a matter to concern ourselves with--truly the only matter of weight is whether or not the light dies? Thankfully...the light is not my burden alone. Goodness, truth and beauty belong to that same realm from whence comes our only true hope.

But watching men like Ted Kennedy make a mockery of such things...makes my blood boil.

In C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy we get to see what life would be like in a sinless world.

What is the point of such imaginations? Comparing our life, which in almost every aspect in tainted with unnatural desires, to lives that don't even comprehend what it would be to grasp any good thing solely for the pleasure that it brings...the only conclusion we can come to is that we are indeed "bent." Out of alignment, we feel want where we should feel content. We consider always what we have left behind, missed, or has taken from us...instead of seeing the actual joy that is in the present moment. For creatures in time...we cannot abide the "now" and are ever looking only to before or after.

There are many proposed formulas today on how to attain the satisfied life. Deny yourself in order to save so that you will never want...work enough so you can finally stop working--these are some of the most common anecdotes for attaining happiness. Lewis proposes something else entirely I think. Stop wanting that which you feel you deserve or need, and instead find contentment in the thought that all goods flow from the same source. The spring which brings one also brings the other. Wherever the currents of life direct you, all the ocean rests in His hands. If you receive gladly what the Giver gives, how can life ever hold disappointment?

I know this sounds simplistic--and today things seem much more complicated. Even if I tried very hard there is no escaping the fact that I live in a sinful world and thus all my positive thinking comes to naught in the end because people are just bad and all this will end. Ransom, the hero of Lewis' story, is himself confronted with hopelessness. Even he, who had seen things that I only imagine, found that the cynical truth was that there was in the end nothing worth hoping for...or so it seemed. Yet he fought and walked on as he was led, and when he had failed himself, he found that God had not failed him. I think that was the real truth that Lewis was getting at. Ransom's road was difficult and more then he was able to handle. He was only a man...and fighting the battle of good versus evil was too much for him. What hope can there be for a man against the "unman." We are temporary...our lives go like leaves in the wind. Yet perhaps it is because all this is temporary that I must cling to the hope and trust in His hands all the more. To resist and cling to my life will not lengthen my days a single hour...but if I choose to move my will with His, I can for the first time know what true freedom is like and have the contentment of actual hope.

Seeing the end of my personal ambitions and hopes is not a bad thing then...to come to peace and hope that cannot truly die, I must have all traces of my own false hopes washed away entirely. If I am to ever look out on the shapeless horizon with joy, believing that the unknown holds only more goodness from the hands that I rest upon...I must give up ever attempting to determine with my own desires the way that I will go to meet that horizon.

Ah-HA! Having successfully found my blog once again...I begin to write.

The Space Trilogy at first glance...

Having gotten through the first two of the brilliant Proffessor Lewis' Space Trilogy for the first time in my life, I am first shocked that I never read it before. It awakens in me the desire to look at the beginnings of worlds more then perhaps I have ever felt it. I have always been interested in what the first ones must have been like...Adam and Eve are, of course, something that sparks curiosity, because if I am ever to know what should be examining the originals seems like a good place to start. But we have very little actual knowledge of them before the fall, so the fictional birth of a world, complete with a new Adam and Eve on Perelandra, is a delight in and of itself, even if it is simply speculation.

But perhaps the greatest lesson that stands out from this story is the idea of contentment...of will and of body...in what we have, and in the goods that are given to us. From the very first fruit that Ransom eats, to the terrible battles with the Unman, and then in the resolution...Lewis hammers on the idea that in this new world, untainted by sin, it is possible to want only that which is actually the good that has been put before you. Maybe that's not it...let me try again...while it is possible that the will could want its own desired good (or the good that it has chosen above all others) the idea of that sort of choosing seems perverse. To take more when you are satisfied...to intend one thing, and then to do it even when a new good (and therefore, perhaps, a better good) has replaced the option of doing what you originally intended...this sort of foolishness is inconceivable to the Green Lady of Venus. Ransom has to be quite honest about those desires that he experiences in himself when trying to explain it, and that is of course part of the genius of Lewis, because while his hero learns the truth...I am feeling my own lies fall apart and have to deal with the truth--that I would prefer my choice even when I DO know it is no longer good.