Ed note: A college classmate and journalist, Bruce Henderson, recently published this piece in a magazine he edits. It addresses our sense of loss as society often doesn’t have a moral compass. Although one can say that organized religion has led to many woes and conflicts, the faith and principles of virtually all religions have some common ground in what is right and wrong.
Does this sound familiar?
A youth approached me. He was bearded; his clothes were dirty;
he wore a student’s cloak and he looked the typical New Cynic I
deplore. Where the original Cynics despised wealth, sought virtue,
questioned all things in order to find what was true, these imitators
mock all things, including the true, using the mask of philosophy
to disguise license and irresponsibility. Nowadays, any young man
who does not choose to study or to work grows a beard, insults the
gods, and calls himself a Cynic.
That may sound like any neighborhood curmudgeon disgusted with
today’s noisy protestors, but this was a rant of the Emperor Julian in the Fourth
Century AD in ancient Rome. Times change. Worrying about our young
people and our culture does not.
Another prophet who still resonates is C.S. Lewis, a self-confessed lapsed
atheist who became a champion for Christianity after experiencing the horrors
of World War II. He is best known for fanciful children’s stories like The
Chronicles of Narnia and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, as well as
such enduring commentaries as Mere Christianity, A Grief Observed and The
Screwtape Letters.
Shortly after the war – and a deep introspection about the underlying
currents of such savagery – he wrote a short Christmas Sermon for Pagans that
is as timely now as it was then. After this great clash of ideologies, it seemed
clear that good had won over evil. But Lewis fretted about ominous signs of
an emerging “post-Christian” attitude that surrendered objective truth to the
liberating appeal of moral relativism. That sounds familiar too. (continued)