A playful essay on contradictions in ‘modern man’s’ attitudes towards religion.
There is a general absurd mood that characterises modern times. It is paradoxical, for it is one of uncertainty about the certain things and certainty about the uncertain. I speak not only of modern political events that come to mind: the election of Donald Trump to Presidency of the United States; the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Rather I refer to a broader climate—a mood and a colour—that explains these phenomena. For these events are surface manifestations of something far deeper, and I seldom see Modern Man undertake appropriate and comprehensive analysis of what underpins them.
Modern Man is a curious thing. The first thing to say about him is that he is convinced he is rational. To the extent that he acknowledges it’s worthwhile looking to the past, he looks back at history in horror. He boxes away past societies and practices as if they are alien to him. If he reads history, Modern Man reads of the Soviet Gulag with complete conviction that his modernity is past the atrocities. His general conclusion about history is that it is the place of the extremists, where religions waged war on reason and good cause for power. He need not concern himself with them too much anymore, so he continues with his life as if the problems of old are problems for the old. Indeed, they are old problems. But for exactly that reason they remain largely unsolved, and Modern Man is too ignorant to try to find solutions. Reflecting on the past, Modern Man says things like “I believe only in rationality”—he sees not the faith underpinning his utterance. It is of this general attitude and contradiction that I speak, which has inspired my passionate defence of magic.
You see, there lies a great and terrible contradiction in our time—and Modern Man is caught in it. Modern Man has become trapped by his own ability for abstraction. And I learnt this just by observing him. On Monday morning Modern Man wakes up and attends his protest to complain that some men are being treated as beasts. He parades the land to let all that hear him know the truth of the matter. But I observe his movements throughout the day and I find something curious. No sooner has he finished with his protest, he cycles to his office, dons a long white coat and goggles, and claims than men are no more than beasts! This is very curious activity.
And the next day, again: Modern man begins his lecture on the laws of gravity—a profession for the most rational. But in the evening the great and terrible contradiction re-emerges. He tells his daughter to stop her interest in Hercules and adopt a more rational study, for Hercules is a creature of Mythos—and Mythos is irrational! Here are two contradictions, and I could name you one hundred.
Let’s make this contradiction clearer. If you had a conversation with the Oracle in Mythos, you would quickly learn that she understands the nature of causality in Mythos. She understands that to enter the lair of the Dwarves one must first solve the riddle of the hour. For she has seen many men solve the riddles and, only once solved, granted access to the lair of Dwarven treasure in all its glory. The Oracle understands that to find the Philosophers Stone you simply cannot search for its material manifestation—for she has seen many men fall in search of it, and true heroes find it in their pocket without looking. She understands that Dragons hoard gold because the only gold worth gaining is that won by slaying the Dragon—it’s clear to her that there is true value in conquering the Dragon, man’s embodied fears. You can ask the Oracle: why is there such a causality? Why must you blow your trumpet precicely three times at dusk to see the Troll King fall? Why are the Elves gifted with sight into the future? Why must the virgin be awaken at midnight by the Hero’s kiss? And she will answer you as plainly as Gilbert Keith Chesterton answers in Elfland—‘Magic!’ In this regard, the Oracle is brilliantly rational.
But Modern Man, the self-proclaimed ‘man of science’, is deeply deceived. For if you ask him why e=mc² or why gravitational acceleration is approximately 9.81m/s2 near the Earth’s surfaces, he will babble about rationality and science; it has never occurred to him that the answer is more brilliant and fantastical than all of his pale ramblings—‘Magic!’ He cannot tell you why beautiful flowers grow. His little fuzzy head, filled with accolades, degrees, awards and diplomas, will tell you how they grow, from sunlight and water and nutrients. But he cannot tell you why—for there is such a thing as metaphysical necessity, and he does not know it.
In Mythos you do not find beings as helplessly confused at their own abilities for abstraction as Modern Man. The Hero in Mythos might be confused as to why his kiss did not wake the Princess, until he finds out it was because he did not slay the beast guarding her room, and it was not midnight when he kissed her. But the Hero in Mythos is never confused by the logic that 1+1=2. He is never confused by the necessity of logical deductions. He knows that if Hercules is Hercules, and Hercules is not Zeus, then it is necessary at this moment that Hercules is separate from Zeus. He knows that if a cat has lost three of her nine lives, then it follows that the cat has six of her nine lives remaining. He has not confused his head about the nature of logical necessity.
Modern Man on the other hand is deeply, deeply confused. He says things like ‘I am not religious for I am a man of rationality’. Perhaps. But he claims that religion is false and attends his human rights seminar later that day, and does not see the irony. As Chesterton observed, “In the morning man deceives morality. In the evening morality deceives man!”. And the contradiction grows worse. At the break of day the thoughts of man are nothing but neurones uncontrollably and randomly firing in the skull of a primate. At sunset he complains that the newswoman didn’t ask the right questions!
So how does this relate to the present moment in twenty-first century life? Modern Man is atheist in his descriptions and remains necessarily religious in his actions. But Modern Man not only claims that he does not care for religious truth, but he mocks it! He curses the local farmers in between each mouthful of steak, and curses the brewery after he downs his fifth beer. He dreams of burning the church with a fist clutching the Declaration of Independence—he does not read in the fine print: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” And what is the consequence of this blasphemy? I’ll tell you. The once Great West no longer has the Western energy to oppose tyrants. It sees a tyrant in China and maintains that all cultures, all ideational systems, are of equal worth. It no longer believes in the concept of objective moral values—it is indifferent about inviting its enemies to live in its home. If we’re just apes that form specks of dust in an unimaginably large universe, what does it matter?
The primacy of the individual is now secondary to the primacy of the group. The meaning of life is no longer a philosopher’s problem, but an assertion by the Modern academic. Value systems are fake; morals are relative; existence is pointless; reason is subjective—and of these things he is sure. So goes the web of lies from Modern Man. Pure, unbridled rationality has run its course, and finished second. The smog that pollutes the air is destroying it; the climate activists know this, and my defence of Magic is climate activism.
And here we are: we have even doubted the instrument of the thoughts. How can there be more questions to ask, when the questioner has questioned itself? It does not occur to Modern Man that the orthodox and rigid systems in religion—as devastating and terrible their manifestations have been—were not designed to destroy reason, but to defend it. For if religion is gone, reason vanishes. The sceptic who wants only certainty tries to rid faith, but necessarily rids reason. Why? Chesterton once more:
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, ‘Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?’ The young sceptic says, ‘I have a right to think for myself.’ But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, ‘I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.’
The thought to stop all thoughts has not only been thought—it has been asserted. It is no wonder that the Devil in Christian theology represents unbridled rationality. The student of the Judeo-Christian tradition knows why in the story Satan refused to bend the knee to God’s new creation: “You said in your heart… ‘I will make myself like the Most High’” (Isaiah 14:13–14). Because unbridled rationality is in love with its own creation and, as we have seen, it’s self-refuting. It is no wonder that the material incarnation of the Christian Divine is the embodiment of the Logos, spoken truth, that which is utmost rational, faithful and heroic—utmost Truthfulness. It is my opinion that the chaos of our time is a product of Friedrich Nietzsche’s observation about the death of God. But God is not dead, for the Magic that governs our universe and renders it intelligible remains in full force. The time has come for us to stop making brute assertions. Instead we must explain our present metaphysics of theology, and look for more answers.
