Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Narcissism and Faith
David Brooks writes the following in his Op-Ed column today:
I come face to face with this sort of belief every day here at the ivory tower (a tower of Babel, perhaps). There are many at college here that are agnostic, drifting in between the nihilism of atheism and the faith of religion. They express a belief in something greater than themselves, but nothing more than that. It always strikes me as a ludicrous position to take. If there is a higher power, shouldn't more respect than a quiet semi-acknowledgment be shown to it? It never seems to cross the mind of the agnostic that perhaps God expects something from man. To be fair, though, this fact doesn't seem to cross many Christian minds, either; many want to turn their religion into a feeling of goodness despite deeds, when in fact it is an obligation and commitment. It's a contract, a covenant, a pact, a friendship with God. And a friendship is a two-way street, requiring duty from both parties.
Life has responsibility. Religion too has responsibility. Perhaps more people will realize that life is more than narcissistic self-gratification and understand that true fulfillment (which may not even occur in life, as poor Job could have suffered if God had saved his explanation for when Job reached Heaven instead of giving it earlier) is going to cost time, commitment, heartbreak, and faith. Even a reason-bound atheist who takes the time to turns away from their blind narcissism that is justified by an unsolved proof of reason in their minds can notice this if they try. And by noticing this, perhaps they'll also notice the grand, unhuman sublimity in the world that is the mark of more than man. One that turns away from the hollow support of the self needs something else to carry them; faith is that support.
It seems to me that those that deny faith in favor of reason are denying their humanity and one of the greatest parts of life, as well as the acknowledgement that there is more than life.
"The flap over Gibson's movie reminds us that religion can be a dangerous thing. It can be coarsened into gore and bloodshed and used to foment hatred. But we're not living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Our general problem is not that we're too dogmatic. Our more common problems come from the other end of the continuum. Americans in the 21st century are more likely to be divorced from any sense of a creedal order, ignorant of the moral traditions that have come down to us through the ages and detached from the sense that we all owe obligations to a higher authority.
Sure, let's get angry at Mel Gibson if he deserves it. But let's not forget that the really corrosive cultural forces come in the form of the easygoing narcissism that surrounds us every day."
I come face to face with this sort of belief every day here at the ivory tower (a tower of Babel, perhaps). There are many at college here that are agnostic, drifting in between the nihilism of atheism and the faith of religion. They express a belief in something greater than themselves, but nothing more than that. It always strikes me as a ludicrous position to take. If there is a higher power, shouldn't more respect than a quiet semi-acknowledgment be shown to it? It never seems to cross the mind of the agnostic that perhaps God expects something from man. To be fair, though, this fact doesn't seem to cross many Christian minds, either; many want to turn their religion into a feeling of goodness despite deeds, when in fact it is an obligation and commitment. It's a contract, a covenant, a pact, a friendship with God. And a friendship is a two-way street, requiring duty from both parties.
Life has responsibility. Religion too has responsibility. Perhaps more people will realize that life is more than narcissistic self-gratification and understand that true fulfillment (which may not even occur in life, as poor Job could have suffered if God had saved his explanation for when Job reached Heaven instead of giving it earlier) is going to cost time, commitment, heartbreak, and faith. Even a reason-bound atheist who takes the time to turns away from their blind narcissism that is justified by an unsolved proof of reason in their minds can notice this if they try. And by noticing this, perhaps they'll also notice the grand, unhuman sublimity in the world that is the mark of more than man. One that turns away from the hollow support of the self needs something else to carry them; faith is that support.
It seems to me that those that deny faith in favor of reason are denying their humanity and one of the greatest parts of life, as well as the acknowledgement that there is more than life.
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