“transcendent truths that are always true in spite of relativism, political correctness, or a misplaced sense of politeness.”
Saint Augustine of Hippo once said, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.”
The truth is no longer valued as it once was.
In 1987 American philosopher Allan Bloom, warned against the dangers of relativism which he saw as responsible for a decline in American Universities and how they were failing their students. This is how he describes the idea.
“Openness – and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings — is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.”
There are indeed absolute truths and no amount of logic, argument, or reason can make them otherwise. Despite what our age of relativism would have us believe, there are transcendent truths. In a world of grays there are still things that are black and white.
Much of our faith is like that, transcendent truths that are always true in spite of relativism, political correctness, or a misplaced sense of politeness.
Jeremiah
During the Babylonian exile, the prophet Jeremiah was one of those left behind in Jerusalem to tend the land. But even this remnant fell away from following the laws of God, the divine truths imparted by God to his people.
Jeremiah was sent to warn the Judeans that the city of Jerusalem would again be destroyed and the remaining people sent into exile. Their only hope to avoid this fate was to change the way they lived, to reject their immoral lifestyle and once again embrace God. As you can imagine this was not a popular message. Jeremiah was arrested and imprisoned. Even when he was released from prison, Jeremiah persisted because God made him “a wall of brass,” undaunted by those who sought to tear him down. God had preordained the prophet for this purpose. Even before his birth, God had consecrated Jeremiah as a prophet to the nations.
The truth can be unpopular. Jeremiah learned that “truth draws hatred upon itself.” But we should not shy away from proclaiming it. That is precisely why we are here. God has willed the existence of every person. To each individual has been given an explicit call to holiness and salvation. At the same time God has a plan for every individual. Each of us has been given a unique set of tools to further the renewal of the world.
A Transcendent Truth
Christianity is sometimes attacked because its tenets often seem to be based on earlier non-Christian myths and beliefs. But from the Christian point of view, the birth of Christ, the incarnation of God, was such a significant event in human history that, like a large rock thrown into a slow moving stream, its repercussions rippled in all directions, forward and backwards through our perception of time.
G.K. Chesterton put it this way.
“If the Christian God really made the human race, would not the human race tend to rumors and perversions of the Christian God? If the center of our life is a certain fact, would not people far from the center have a muddled version of that fact?… When learned skeptics come to me and say, ‘Are you aware that the Kaffirs have a story of Incarnation?’ I should reply: ‘Speaking as an unlearned person, I don’t know. But speaking as a Christian, I should be very much astonished if they hadn’t.” (Christianity and Rationalism, G.K. Chesterton)
The birth of Christ and the advent of Christianity is a “fixed point in time,” if you will. The truth of it transcends every attempt to minimize its importance.
This is why artists in their role as “creative servants,” can draw upon pagan myths and legends in order to reveal these absolute, transcendent truths.
The “Lord of the Rings,” by J.R. R. Tolkien has become immensely popular, more so in the wake of the trilogy of films headed by Peter Jackson. But even before the films, it enjoyed somewhat of a cult following among the “spiritual but not religious” crowd. Perhaps this was due to the fact that there is almost no reference in the books to any form of organized religion. But this was intentional as Tolkien himself explained in a letter to a friend of his, a Jesuit priest by the name of Robert Murray.
“The Lord of the Rings’ is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out practically all references to anything like ‘religion,’ to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and symbolism.”
There are times when we must disguise the truth in order to reach people, to “sneak up on them” as author Flannery O’Connor would say. For the Truth will always shine forth even under the guise of of an epic journey involving men, hobbits, dwarves and elves.
But that approach only goes so far. We may come to a time when we must proclaim the Word of God openly, even at the risk of provoking the anger of our listeners. To hesitate from this mission, because we fear what people may think of us, is simply vanity.
Pax Vobiscum
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
2022-01-26