February 09, 2010
 
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| We Regret to Inform You that Christ Is Risen |
| by John Zmirak |
| 9/23/08 |
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But Derbyshire's latest blast at folks with faith was just plain insulting, so bullying and intemperate that I felt justified in giving him the Full Frontal Zmirak. That's the intellectual equivalent of the scene in Animal House when a toga-clad John Belushi grabs a folk-singer's guitar and smashes it to bits. Then he shrugs and mutters, "Sorry."
What drove me to it? Just this: Derbyshire had the gall to suggest that belief in Christ is a dodge for the timid, a happy little tale we tell ourselves. You know, wishful thinking.
It's clear that Derbyshire was never an orthodox Catholic teenager. You guys out there who have been through that know what I mean: Spend enough time tightrope walking on a scapular string over the flames of hell, and you learn to agree with Waugh's Sebastian Flyte -- who answers Charles Ryder's question in Brideshead Revisited:
"I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?"
"Is it nonsense? I wish it were."
Amen, brother. In fact, I'm writing a book on just this subject, laying out with my usual tactlessness the downside of our Faith -- the ways in which the abiding (or is it stalking?) presence of God ruins all our fun. Not our happiness. And not our "joy," that deep, soul satisfaction that saints are said to find in hunger and thirst, abuse, and execution -- indeed, in just about whatever happens to them. I wouldn't know.
I'm talking about the low-grade, ordinary satisfactions we fallen men have every right to expect from life -- especially middle-class life in a high-tech, wealthy country that has stockpiled enough "city-buster" nuclear weapons to keep most of the world smiling at us nervously. The kind of middling, easy pleasures that make you wish you could live 500 mediocre years in which to try them.
To hell with quality time; I'm looking for Quantity Time™. There is too much Lite beer that needs drinking; there are too many raunchy Web sites I haven't found, too many back episodes of Malcolm in the Middle I haven't seen. To paraphrase the section of The Iliad where Achilles is offered by the gods a choice of destinies, I seek a long life, with absolutely no glory. No pain and no gain -- sounds like a plan.
The one thing that bothers me, that's always gnawed at the back of my mind, is the thought that scientists will come up with a cure for death . . . five minutes after I croak. Or at least some treatment that stops the aging process and lets us all stick around for centuries.
Of course, that would mean most of us will have to stop having children. (The American Catholics who are faithful to Humanae Vitae -- all 72 of them -- will turn down this deal, and if they're not all interned behind chicken wire somewhere in Idaho, they'll go right on filling up minivans with kids christened Patrick and Lucia, and sticking out on the road like Amish buggies: "Warning -- Procreating Vehicle.")
The rest of us will take those red-brick public schools -- to which we Catholic kids in New York were always warned we might be sent if we misbehaved, so we could get stabbed -- and turn them into Adult Recreational Facilities. Since we won't really be aging so much as slowly growing stale, these won't need to be like nursing homes, with low impact calisthenics, Wednesday afternoon bingo games, and chipper dance instructors named Amy and Pablo to teach us all the Electric Slide.
No, with perfect health, generic Viagra, and organs replicated at need by handy stem cells, we can go right on living like Baby Boomers -- refusing at once to grow old or grow up. In fact, I predict a certain amount of regression as we wade through our second or third century of Quantity Time™. For my 200th birthday, I bet I'll be drinking Jello tequila shots and playing Twister with some perky young blonde who's half my age. We can put the "Adult" back into Adult Recreational Facility.
Of course, this isn't really a substitute for the resurrection of the body -- but at least it doesn't require that pesky cross.
Next week, I'll delve more deeply into this theme, and offer a preview of the next book I'm working on, whose full title is We Regret to Inform You that Christ Is Risen: Seven Key Aspects of Life Where Jesus Spoils Our Fun. Those seven areas, as I'll explain next Tuesday, are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.
Christ: What a buzzkill.
John Zmirak is author, most recently, of the graphic novel The Grand Inquisitor and is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. He writes weekly for InsideCatholic.com. Readers have left 13 comments. Yet another reference you can effectivly work into you answer is Francis thompson's "The Hound of Heaven" I'm sure you know it. It's very effective writing. Written by Styeve Newark This column officially marks the first time I have actually laughed out loud (ok, it was more of a wheezing chuckle) at something I've seen on Inside Catholic. I want an RSS feed from your brain, Mr. Zmirak. Can that be arranged?  Written by Steve Skojec Wishful thinking means you allow any old argument, even a rotten one, to prop up your idea. So consider: the Catholic church tends to reject most of the claims that are submitted to her. Miracles are presumed untrue. Saints are presumed to be ordinary people. Private revelation is looked on with suspicion. Anselm's proof was met with a mixture of suspicion and awe, as were the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas. Etc. etc. Yet I've never heard an atheist say to another atheist, "dude, that's actually a pretty lame argument against religion." Every argument is a work of genius, as long as it expresses the proper contempt. Hmmm, who are the wishful thinkers? Written by Jeff Amazing column!! Very Lewisian (perhaps Chestertonian, too, but I'm better versed in Lewis). One of my favorite statements from C. S. Lewis comes from a selection in _God in the Dock_. It's a transcript of a Q&A session after one of his lectures. A person asked him which religion was most likely to make one "happy." Lewis replied: While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best. I have an elderly acquaintance of about eighty, who has lived a life of unbroken selfishness and self-admiration from the earliest years, and is, more or less, I regret to say, one of the happiest men I know. From the moral point of view it is very difficult! I am not approaching the question from that angle. As you perhaps know, I haven't always been a Christian. I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better, but I can't give any advice on it. — Someone Written by JC JC, That quote is solid gold. Confirms my own experiences in relation to others who are perfectly exuberant without religion. I've always thought it was either extremely trite to say that the Christian Faith made you happier on earth, or that it was a willful delusion. Written by Steve Skojec We Regret to Inform You that Christ Is Risen: Seven Key Aspects of Life Where Jesus Spoils Our Fun. Those seven areas, as I'll explain next Tuesday, are lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Christ: What a buzzkill. IMHO Biden, Pelosi, Kennedy, etc. were not getting the full Catholic guilt trip that i received in catechism. i mean how could you sleep at night? ![[smiley=think]](http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/components/com_jreactions/custom/templates/blog/smileys/smiley_think.gif) Great work as always, John!! Written by nerddad As a high school religion teacher, one with let's just say a lot of life experience and travel in my past, this is a subject I honestly think a lot about- How do you bring the Good News and the Cross to the youth- without robbing them of that precious youth and all that seems to come with it- the need to test limits, to experiment, to get some life experience?? It's bad enough being their teacher, in a few years I will daughters and then a son entering the teenage desert. Overcoming evil with good is my strategy- don't encourage teens to lock themselves up in their rooms until their frontal lobes fully develop, find them something they do that is good and can inspire some enthusiasm- a healthy fitness habit for the body to help stave off the constant lust lures- and getting into 'save the world' political activism- find your cause- find many just causes and socialize around a higher purpose rather than just binge drinking and hanging around meat market bars hoping for or strategically searching for a hook up. Who can deny that there is a lot of sense pleasure in the dangerously seductive world of casual sex- especially if you weren't raised with guilt but papa's Playboys barely hidden. I am also thinking that a good Charismatic spirituality may be the ticket for families and teens in particular- it is so child-like and emotive- as long as one doesn't get caught up in cult-like little groups or obssess over real or imagined gifts of Tongues speaking. I know good, clean fun and I know all about the other kinds of fun- and I've learned enough to be a successful middle-aged family man- but how to inspire and lead the still young to do right and avoid evil- this is never going to be easy, and our cynical, wise-cracking, sex-obssessed mass media culture is such a force- like so many poison snakes- how are these baby Christ-followers going to make it if they can't or won't avoid the popular cultural? Can pop Christian music and a few pro-Christian values films compete? Any more ideas out there? Written by Tim Shipe John Z. says, "There is too much Lite beer that needs drinking." There is no Lite beer that needs drinking. Beer-Lite leads to Christianity-Lite, and justifies Derbyshire's complaint that Christianity is for the timid. The man asks for the red wine of the eucharist, and you give him Lite beer of the capitalists. How else do you expect him to respond? The issue is not trivial, for as A. E. Housman observes: Malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Malt-Lite means justification-Lite. Written by John Médaille Hey, now! Time spent watching <i>Malcolm in the Middle</i> re-runs is time well spent. Did you see the episode where they all went to Hal's family reunion and the boys drove the entire buffet into the pool because the in-laws were dissing their mother? Awesome. Written by victor I think that John C. Wright made the point perfectly in this post: http://johncwright.livejournal.com/133512.html. I include an excerpt to give you the flavah: Have you ever had one of those days, where you are exasperated by the opinions and bad personal habits of well-respected artisans in your particular craft, and you find that you are an opinionated blow-hard who enjoys complaining and bellyaching about other people's shortcomings, and you also have a live-journal where you can express your most private thoughts of contempt and disdain for the yammerheads whose idiocy so richly merits insult ---- but then you remember you are a Christian, and so you are under orders not merely not to complain (for even the Gentiles are well-bred) but to love and pray for such people? Worse yet, you cannot pray for them in an ungenerous spirit, because Our Boss who art in Heaven does not accept sacrifices offered unwillingly. — SomeoneWhat a difficult, annoying religion! Written by Julie D. Well I don't know John... How much fun are these people really having? I watch wads of Judge Judy (the rabbit ears don't pick up Malcolm in the Middle) and it seems to me that people who make a habit of lust, envy, greed, sloth, anger, gluttony and pride end up pretty pathetic. Judge Judy hollers at them in front of 10 million people and then awards their victims five grand and they STILL don't get it. How fun is that? On the other hand, having 7 kids named after the Communion of the Saints and a propagating van - now THAT's a trip! Written by Susie Lloyd What a fabulous post. Chesterton does come to mind. Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. Thanks for the laugh. I needed it after this last few months. Written by Pamela |
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