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4 October 2024

 

What Are We To Believe ?

Decades ago, when I was ever-so-much younger, our world echoed with the moral certainties of a sturdy, faith-centered society. People unashamedly shared mutual values and public Virtues. The mention of God was commonplace even by Presidents and military leaders. Church-going was the norm.

How our nation has changed.

Now, skeptics often outnumber believers. Distrust of tradition immobilizes objective morality. Courtesy and civility are often absent. Mention of religion is rare, as many people abandon faith for the allure of self-defined deities and freedom from moral traditions. Flurries of angry dogmas fuel self-righteous disregard for the hard lessons of history … and common sense.

Today, rootless individualism and the relentless erosion of historic priorities are feted as civic Virtues, replacing respect for our nation’s best traditions and canceling rationality. Bitter, accusatory rhetoric ignores human dignity, stifles personal accountability and celebrates killing of infants as a “right” enshrined in law.

The Errors We Face

We are experiencing a profound disconnect from our moral institutions and community standards which unified people for the Common Good. Even effective business standards now fade as corporate managers bow to groundless threats of law suits. Fear replaces ethical principles which heretofore established stable environments in many corporations.

Even the fundamental unit of every society – the traditional family – is now rejected as too limiting, too demanding, too outdated for today’s unrestrained individualism. Biologic limits of male and female are too restrictive and narrow, and government officials refer to common sense restrictions of childhood trans-gender treatments as “intolerance. “

Call it “woke” ideology or identity politics, critical theory or neo-atheism, updated Marxism or moral relativism, chic naivete or mob psychology. No matter what title we append, society has been greatly weakened by deifying the morally-unrestrained Self, by our dismissal of the abiding lessons of history, by our disregard for self-restraint and by our disdain for the Common Good.

The Cost

These destructive ideologies have also infiltrated the minds of our children and school leaders, endangering parental authority. The God-given rights and responsibilities of parenthood establish parents as their child’s primary educators. The role of schools and teachers is to assist – not replace or undermine – parental authority. Yet many schools today deliberately exclude parents from crucial, life-changing decisions facing their children.

Let us be clear: Healthy parenting and healthy personality development go together and reinforce one another.

Mental health means we’re healthy morally and psychologically, in soul and psyche, in thought and choice. Moral and intellectual development overlap and are not distinct. They are two sides of the same person, summed up in the word “character.”

A psychologically healthy person is a morally mature person whose character is based on principle, not on feelings; a person of empathy untainted by foppish sentiment; a person of virtuous self-discipline, not hollow excuses for self-indulgence.

A mentally healthy person seeks objective truths and is capable of courageous introspection and confrontation, even when it hurts. Mentally healthy people possess Prudence and Patience, honed by other Virtues which promote self-restraint in attitude and behavior, while avoiding the excesses of the wayward ego.

A growing body of research strongly indicates that denial of objective truths accounts for much mental illness in young Americans. Studies also reveal that many young adults trust their “feelings” more than facts, see no inherent value to life and reject the existence of our Creator. In one study, seven out of ten individuals under 40 said their lives lack clear purpose, while four out of five who reject God report frequent fear and anxiety.

The evidence reports that many Americans are intent on:

• dissolving our relationship with our Creator;
• stifling the voices of conscience and common sense;
• canceling the laws and limits of Nature;
• disregarding the call to responsible Virtue;
• replacing history with “feelings”;
• denying objective truth in favor of opinion;
• denying accountability which defines the Common Good.

The Big Questions

Given the evidence, we must surely ask: To what sources do we turn for clarity and guidance about what is true and what is false in this life? What are we to believe?

Clarity begins when we look beyond ourselves into the infinite Universe and realize that Creation overwhelmingly demonstrates the need for a Creator. Creation does allow seemingly random chaos … but a constant Creative Force unites the Universe in inexplicable ways. Call it what you will - Gravity, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Quantum Physics - this Force sustains order and unity in the Created Universe and testifies to the infinite symmetry and power in Creation … and in our Creator.

Nevertheless, some people remain skeptical and argue that the Universe just kinda happened … sort of. But when they need examples of the Mystery and the extraordinary order in our Universe, these people have only to study websites such as Earthsky.org or esawebb.org or LiveScience to see the extraordinary array of Mystery in Creation.

Mystery (Reason and Logic, too) attests to the necessity of our Creator. Reason and Logic also cry out for (1) belief in objective truths, and (2) the necessity of Virtue in human affairs.

The fact is that Mystery exists all around us in the created Universe - in birds and flowers and leaves and clouds and seasons, in light and in darkness, in the created body we inhabit and in the soul which gives us life. Mystery is everywhere.

We study Creation’s wondrous realities through science and philosophy and theology and in countless daily observations to which we are privileged - but we do not create the realities of Creation which we observe.

Thus, Mystery abounds … and we possess conscious awareness of the Mystery we behold. In fact, our particular role in God’s Mystery includes our responsibility (1) to think and (2) to choose Goodness and Virtue over denial and indifference, over sin and selfishness, over arrogance and conceit.

To think and then to choose the path of Virtue -- this is our intended point and purpose as human beings.

The Next Step: Understanding

Our search for clarity and guidance receives direction from our innate sense of Wonder, our inborn need to know. Wonder is a gift from our Creator, a gift given through no merit of our own. This gift of Wonder (different from curiosity) is intended to prompt us to Humility and Gratitude, not to arrogant self-esteem nor cynical rejection of the Mysteries of Creation and our Creator.

Our gift of Wonder reveals to us that we are needy, fallen people. But some people also find this fact too difficult to accept. They dislike admitting mistakes, so they huffily dismiss any "religious" talk about Creation and God. For them, God is a grudge-laden nag, arbitrary and vengeful. They are offended by talk of right and wrong, guilt and sin, vice and Virtue.

With such pessimistic, distorted views, it’s easy to blame God and religion for life’s sufferings and woes. To these people, guilt is neurotic and Virtues are pietistic nonsense. Morality intrudes upon their “freedom” to do as they please, when they please.

People who thus dismiss God and snort at the Virtues miss a fundamental point about being human. Why? Because the Virtues are effective guidelines for individual behavior and for the Common Good. The Virtues contradict the selfish individualism, arrogance and smug satisfaction which inspire exploitation and manipulative chicanery, and lead to the abuse of other persons.

Think About It

Our lives are (if we choose) made unaccountably better by our willing embrace of the moral Virtues revealed especially in the Christian tradition: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance, enlivened by Wisdom in the practical order, adjusted to the particulars of each situation.

• Wisdom helps us organize our best response to the circumstances of our lives.


• Wisdom tells us that our good deeds should be performed with humility, rather than to impress others.


• Wisdom warns us not to harbor envy and selfish ambition in our hearts, not to seek revenge nor boast (especially with feigned modesty) about our good deeds.


• Wisdom does not fudge the truth, nor erect facades to escape responsibility, nor play the games which cynics play.


• Wisdom is pure in its motives, peace-loving and considerate of others, merciful to error, true to its word, and ever kind.


• Wisdom is aware of our tendency to selfishness, so it seeks altruism and empathy for the needs of others.


• Wisdom honors the dignity of giving and the privilege of abnegation.


• Wisdom guides us as we look inward and realize that our soul’s capacity for Goodness is an arena of Hope and Virtue, known to God, whose wise insights we gradually share.


• Wisdom awakens us to the fact that no matter how we stray or err in our lives, the path of Goodness and Virtue are still there, still before us, still open to our heart’s deepest needs.


• Wisdom reminds us that even when we are not appreciated for what we do, our obligation to Virtue is not thereby removed, because if we are to be human, then we are born to seek and, hopefully, to find Goodness.

The Challenge

Another hurdle for many people is that the Virtues are not only counter-cultural, they’re also demanding and costly to the individual’s ego. That’s because the Virtues ask us to rise above instinctive urges and conceited righteousness.

Living virtuously demands attention to details, and this is often tiresome, without fanfare or acknowledgement of any kind; it’s done for its own sake alone … and that’s no fun.

True, the Virtues seek to overcome selfish whims and greedy compulsions to which we are drawn. But some people use the excuse that “… Everyone else is out for himself, so why shouldn’t I get what I want? After all, competition is normal… and nobody likes losers…”

Like any habit, living virtuously takes repetition and attention as we try to gradually banish vanity and rise above haughty egotism. But some people see it as nit-picking. They object and say, “…Ye gads, who has that kind of attention span? You’d go crazy, cuz too much thinking makes anyone paranoid …”

There are many ways to circumvent our call to Virtue, to ignore the Goodness in our lives. Nonetheless, we are called to pursue this path … to patiently and tenaciously listen and accept the divine whisper which God addresses to each of us.

Siempre Adelante

In addition, we are given the charism (i.e., the gift) of free choice. The freedom to choose is a gift freely given to us, so that we may willingly embrace the life of Virtue. Our freedom to choose is enlightened by our unique ability to think and to reason and to learn from the past (including from our mistakes and sins).

We are freely given these gifts of (1) reasoning and (2) choosing so that we may accept hard truths in our present life and, with a willing heart and a trusting soul, embrace Virtue as our way to believe in and accept God’s own Goodness.

For these reasons we were given the gift of life. It follows, then, that when we ask, “What are we to believe,” we are wise to believe that these gifts - freely given by our Creator - are proof of the Love and Mercy of God, Whose children we truly are … and shall always be.