I’ve heard often that our thought has evolved imperceptibly over the centuries to where we are today and will continue to evolve with time. I have become convinced that we humans are completely and utterly predictable throughout every time and place and no evolution of thought has occured. It doesn’t matter how advanced or un-advanced we are. When it comes down to it, we do and think essentially the same way in 2012 as people in 200bc.
Politically: Empires rise and fall following the same course of events: rise at an opportune moment, spread rapidly, reach a stopping point, enjoy the riches they’ve won, get lazier and start losing the outer reaches, end with complete laziness and total collapse from without and within. Then the process starts over with the next one. The only thing that’s different today is that it tends to happen at a quicker rate than in ancient times. What took the Persian empire 200 years took Nazi Germany 12 years. Essentially nothing changed though, it’s completely and utterly predictable.
In our personal lives and thought we’re really no different either. We want to see justice done to people who are in the wrong. We love judging! In ancient Greece it was in the Acropolis, today it’s on the stage of American Idol (or maybe it’s X-Factor now) as we joyously watch some stuck up, scantily dressed bimbo make a fool of herself trying to sing and Simon Cowell subsequently tearing her idiotic dreams to shreds. We also have it with the shows like Judge Judy, Jerry Springer, Maury, etc. The difference may be that in Greece they had concerns of philosophical thought and the city-state law, today we love to judge stupidity, but either way, we are totally predictable.
Politically: Empires rise and fall following the same course of events: rise at an opportune moment, spread rapidly, reach a stopping point, enjoy the riches they’ve won, get lazier and start losing the outer reaches, end with complete laziness and total collapse from without and within. Then the process starts over with the next one. The only thing that’s different today is that it tends to happen at a quicker rate than in ancient times. What took the Persian empire 200 years took Nazi Germany 12 years. Essentially nothing changed though, it’s completely and utterly predictable.
In our personal lives and thought we’re really no different either. We want to see justice done to people who are in the wrong. We love judging! In ancient Greece it was in the Acropolis, today it’s on the stage of American Idol (or maybe it’s X-Factor now) as we joyously watch some stuck up, scantily dressed bimbo make a fool of herself trying to sing and Simon Cowell subsequently tearing her idiotic dreams to shreds. We also have it with the shows like Judge Judy, Jerry Springer, Maury, etc. The difference may be that in Greece they had concerns of philosophical thought and the city-state law, today we love to judge stupidity, but either way, we are totally predictable.
Think gladiators are thing of the past? How many fans pack football stadiums everyweekend in the fall/winter to watch athletic guys knock the living daylights out of each other in order to get a ball to the endzone? The only difference is that ball and the endzone to determine who wins, but otherwise the entertainment is of the same nature.
One final one. Regardless of the Ghandi saying that gets thrown around “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind” we still want to repay violence with violence, wrongdoing with wrongdoing. You hit me and I’m gonna hit you back. We see it all over in the movies; sometimes the main character charges immediately back at the bully and knocks him down; other times it takes the whole movie to plan his revenge and trap the villain, relishing that moment when the bad guy looks up at him realizing his demise started when he hurt the good guy years ago. If you think it’s just in the movies, why do we still have the death penalty? People want to see an equivalent evil happen to someone who has committed evil. It’s plain, simple, and utterly predictable.
One final one. Regardless of the Ghandi saying that gets thrown around “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind” we still want to repay violence with violence, wrongdoing with wrongdoing. You hit me and I’m gonna hit you back. We see it all over in the movies; sometimes the main character charges immediately back at the bully and knocks him down; other times it takes the whole movie to plan his revenge and trap the villain, relishing that moment when the bad guy looks up at him realizing his demise started when he hurt the good guy years ago. If you think it’s just in the movies, why do we still have the death penalty? People want to see an equivalent evil happen to someone who has committed evil. It’s plain, simple, and utterly predictable.
For those who have the time, there are two scenes in this clip from The Count of Monte Cristo of the sweet revenge we love to see starting at 2:00.
So what am I getting at here? I’m saying that essentially we humans are a little like the ant vortex of death. A little explanation: Ants use a scent trail to figure out where they are going. They follow the scent of the ant in front of them and this ensures they get back to the nest. There’s a strange phenomenon that sometimes occurs, though, where their scent trail gets screwed up and they end up going in circles, constantly following the ant in front, not realizing they aren’t making it back to the nest. Before long the entire colony is doing this and they literally run themselves to their death. Take a look, this one is important to watch.
As humans, that strange phenomenon that occurred that made us like those ants was original sin. It messed up our path toward God and doomed us to run in endless circles until we die. What’s different about us is that we choose our sin willingly; it’s not something that comes out of the blue and imposes itself on us. The search for happiness and fulfillment remains, like the scent that the ants follow, but it no longer leads us home, to heaven. For the ants, there’s nothing that can be done. They just run in circles, and no intervention from the outside will change their course. It’s science so don’t argue that point. Here’s how humans are also different; we had something unpredictable, unexpected, unlikely, and completely unjustified by us come in from the outside into our vortex of death and break the power of original sin and point us back towards life, towards happiness, towards fulfillment, towards home, towards God. That something was Jesus Christ, the only Son of God.
Nothing is more unlikely than Jesus. He was born to the most unlikely of women, a virgin, in a most unlikely town, Bethlehem, for a most unlikely purpose, to save an undeserving people. He washed the most unlikely part of the body, our feet, taught a most unlikely law of love, self-sacrifice for others, and gave us a most unlikely meal to gain nourishment from, Himself in the Eucharist. He destroyed sin and death and brought us to new life in the most unlikely way, by dying on the cross and being resurrected on the third day.
God’s grace is a most unlikely and unpredictable thing. For some strange reason He bothers to come into the very center of our vortex, the very focal point of our imminent doom, and breaks it from there. One would think, why not just call to us from the outside and get us to stream that way? But God does not work how our predictable minds do. What would that really mean to us if that’s what He decided to do? How would that really do anything to rid us of our predictability and our desire to run around in that circle, expecting that we’ll find happiness? God is not a distant God. He does not call from afar for us to hear faintly. He reaches us at our inmost being, our deepest desire, to be reunited with Him, to go home.
That grace is what Christianity is based on. That grace is what the Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Himself, has preserved and perpetuated for nearly 2,000 years. That grace is the outright revolt against sin and death, breaking out of the vortex of human predictability and charging toward our salvation. It is only by Jesus, only His grace, that we are able to accomplish our revolution, not our evolution, to return home.
Nothing is more unlikely than Jesus. He was born to the most unlikely of women, a virgin, in a most unlikely town, Bethlehem, for a most unlikely purpose, to save an undeserving people. He washed the most unlikely part of the body, our feet, taught a most unlikely law of love, self-sacrifice for others, and gave us a most unlikely meal to gain nourishment from, Himself in the Eucharist. He destroyed sin and death and brought us to new life in the most unlikely way, by dying on the cross and being resurrected on the third day.
God’s grace is a most unlikely and unpredictable thing. For some strange reason He bothers to come into the very center of our vortex, the very focal point of our imminent doom, and breaks it from there. One would think, why not just call to us from the outside and get us to stream that way? But God does not work how our predictable minds do. What would that really mean to us if that’s what He decided to do? How would that really do anything to rid us of our predictability and our desire to run around in that circle, expecting that we’ll find happiness? God is not a distant God. He does not call from afar for us to hear faintly. He reaches us at our inmost being, our deepest desire, to be reunited with Him, to go home.
That grace is what Christianity is based on. That grace is what the Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Himself, has preserved and perpetuated for nearly 2,000 years. That grace is the outright revolt against sin and death, breaking out of the vortex of human predictability and charging toward our salvation. It is only by Jesus, only His grace, that we are able to accomplish our revolution, not our evolution, to return home.
