Fr. A: ‘Why is civilization so metaphysically foolish?’

  • fra-journal.jpgMore from Fr. Alexan­der Schmemann’s“Jour­nals.” Writ­ing in 1977, he mused con­cern­ing the trend he saw of a rest­less spirit tak­ing hold of peo­ple, mak­ing them insist that every­one had to change their lives … “but how and where is never explained.” Father A. answers the ques­tion they’re not ask­ing (bold­face empha­sis mine):

    That expla­na­tion will remain impos­si­ble as long as mankind, while keep­ing escha­tol­ogy, denies God. Here, in this para­dox, is the whole absur­dity of con­tem­po­rary civ­i­liza­tion, its inter­nal dead end. Con­tem­po­rary civ­i­liza­tion speaks a reli­gious lan­guage, and, at the same time, hates reli­gion.To a totally mean­ing­less — with­out God — world, it announces ‘meaning.’

    Where would that mean­ing come from? The real demonic mys­tery of our civ­i­liza­tion is not in the search for a mean­ing, but in why it so pas­sion­ately searches for a mean­ing with­out God. Why is civ­i­liza­tion so meta­phys­i­cally fool­ish? The name of that fool­ish­ness is pride: “Be like gods.” The Fall of Adam and Eve is hap­pen­ing, con­tin­u­ing, act­ing always, and the place of that con­tin­u­ing Fall is not an abstract nature which we inher­ited from Adam; the place is civ­i­liza­tion — the tempt­ing serpent!

    Civ­i­liza­tion opens to men end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties and hides from them their onto­log­i­cal lim­its. It tells them: be like gods.

    The more things change, the more they stay the same. The world cul­ture loves to cel­e­brate its own inge­nu­ity, mar­vel at its own inno­va­tion and clev­er­ness, and brindles at any dis­cour­age­ment com­ing from those fright­ful Chris­t­ian prigs. But watch­ing them is like watch­ing some­one try to find the stair­way to heaven while plung­ing head­long into the same brick wall at the end of the same dead end, over and over and over.

    The only sus­pense is won­der­ing whether they’ll gain real intel­li­gence before knock­ing them­selves uncon­scious. What a world.


    Related posts:

    1. Fool­ish moderation
    2. God doesn’t desire sorrow
    3. “The Russ­ian Priest”: On our rela­tion­ship to the state
    4. About med­i­ta­tion
    5. If the LDS took a red pen to the Creed

    September 30th, 2008 | Grace | No Comments |

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