Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future, and will always be in the future
[gallery] 50watts:
Miguel Covarrubias illus. for Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935 via Harry Ransom Center
Historians usually note the upsurge of religious enthusiasm that greeted the outbreak of war. German preachers, for instance, debated whether they should see the national mood in terms of Transfiguration or of a New Pentecost. All the main combatants deployed Holy War language, particularly the monarchies with long traditions of state establishment — the Russians, Germans, British, Austro-Hungarians, and Ottoman Turks — but also those notionally secular republics: France, Italy, and (later) the United States. What we may miss, though, is just how persistent and overwhelmingly widespread such language was, and how it was reflected in the enormous outpouring of visual imagery.More specifically, with the obvious exception of the Turks, it was a Christian war. With startling literalism, visual representations in all the main participant nations placed Christ himself on the battle lines, whether in films, posters, or postcards. Jesus blessed German soldiers going into battle; Jesus comforted the dying victims of German atrocities; Jesus personally led a reluctant Kaiser to confront the consequences of his evil policies. Apart from the obvious spiritual figures — Christ and the Virgin — most combatant nations used an iconography in which their cause was portrayed by that old Crusader icon Saint George, and their enemies as the Dragon. Death in such a righteous cosmic war was a form of sacrifice or martyrdom, elevating the dead soldier to saintly status.
In every country, mainstream media stories offered a constant diet of vision and miracle, angels and apocalypse. Angels supposedly intervened to save beleaguered British troops, the Virgin herself appeared to Russians, while Germany claimed to follow the Archangel Michael. Those stories circulated in the first days of the war, and they persisted through the whole struggle, long after we might expect the armies to be wholly focused on the grim realities of front-line life. When the Germans launched their last great offensive in 1918, of course it was called Operation Michael. For the Allies, religious and apocalyptic hopes crested in 1917 and 1918, with the great symbolic victories in the Middle East. Most evocative were the capture of Jerusalem from the Turks, and the decisive British victory at — honestly — Megiddo, the site of Armageddon.
In 1979, she sought haven at her aunt Dorothy’s flat in Bournemouth, where again she looked for help from spiritualists – this time Charismatics and Pentecostalists – before finally finding her own spiritual truth in the Bible itself, especially the New Testament, the first book she was able to read as her sight began slowly to return, albeit imperfectly.Moving into the Bournemouth house in 1980, she completed the obliteration of the person she had been, consigning an unpublished novel to the garden incinerator, along with a priceless collection of Oriental treasures, once her inspiration – all these were false gods to be destroyed. That October, she travelled to Jerusalem and was baptised near the river Jordan.
She continued to live in the same house until last summer, when she moved to a flat overlooking the sea after selling, giving away or destroying most of her possessions.
But now, in order finally to conclude, let the others decide what they wish to assume for themselves. I for my part do not arrogate to myself doctrine, nor sanctity, nor do I depend on my intellect. I simply want to offer with earnestness what moves my soul. If someone undertakes to teach me, I would not consciously oppose truth. If my opponents, however, prefer to slander me, although I dispute truthfully and without slander, rather than quarrel, then everyone will miss the Spirit of the Gospels among those who continuously speak of it. Paul exhorts, “But him who is weak in faith, receive” (Romans 14:1). Christ will not extinguish a smoking wick! The Apostle Peter says, “Be ready always with an answer to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet, do so with gladness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15-16). If my opponents respond, “Erasmus is like an old wine-skin unable to hold the new wine which they offer to the world,” and if their self-confidence is so great, they at least ought to consider us as Christ did Nicodemus, and as the Apostles did Gamaliel. The Lord did not repel the former, who, though ignorant, was desirous of learning. Nor did the Apostles spurn Gamaliel who desired to suspend his judgment until the nature of the matter would show by what spirit it was being led.
Here’s what Marx got right—profoundly, overwhelmingly, admirably right: capitalism is unforgiving to “conservatives,” those who care about neighborhood, Church, family, loyalty, tradition.
The frequent and sloppy use of the qualifier “absolute” leads to a common confusion of “relativism” with sheer arbitrariness. So when someone encounters the claim that truth “is relative,” this is what they hear: truth is arbitrary—anything goes. In response, Christians then invoke “absolute” truth as an insulator and buffer against such arbitrariness—without ever really explaining what the adjective “absolute” does when appended to “truth.”What exactly does the qualifier “absolute” add to the word “truth”? And if something’s being absolute means that it is absolved of relation (the technical sense of the word), then what could that mean for contingent, social creatures like us?
This Christian reaction to relativism, with its therapeutic deployment of “absolute” truth, is a symptom of a deeper theological problem: an inability to honor the contingency and dependence of our creaturehood. There might even be something rather gnostic (and heretical) in this failure to own up to contingency; indeed, one could argue that the claim to such “absoluteness” is at the heart of the first sin in the garden.
[gallery] Photographs of North Brother Island, New York City, by Christopher Payne
Psychologist Mohsen Joshanloo and philosopher Dan Weijers of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, note that in Western culture, “happiness is universally considered to be one of the highest human goods, if not the highest.” Furthermore, Weijers told me in an email, “if many Americans think they live in the land of opportunity and freedom, and that their happiness is largely a result of their own efforts,” then squandering the chance of happiness may be seen as a moral failing, because the unhappy person may be “too lazy or selfish to pursue happiness diligently and honestly.”In their surveys, however, Joshanloo and Weijers discovered that some people—in Western and Eastern cultures—are wary of happiness because they believe that “Bad things, such as unhappiness, suffering, and death, tend to happen to happy people.” In Russia, notes Stanford psychologist and happiness expert Sonja Lyubomirsky, the expression of happiness “is often perceived as inviting the ire of the devil.” And in many East Asian cultures influenced by Buddhism, the quest for personal happiness may be seen as misguided, because pleasure is focused on the self, leading to such vices as “cruelty, violence, pride, and greed.” These groups tend to prize social harmony above an individual’s happiness and therefore place greater emphasis on good interpersonal relationships.