The Grandchild of God

Yes, this post is about the grandchild of God. No, this is not some Da Vinci Code conspiracy theory. It is just a little thought to help me get out of bed every morning. Now that I have finished school and joined the work force permanently, I can’t help but miss my old schedule. Working all day, every day—and probably quite a few nights and weekends—is a big change from my last year of school with classes only two days a week. I need to work to pay the bills, but it is more than just a necessary evil, it is a necessary part of personhood.

In the third round of the seventh circle of Hell, Dante meets those who were practiced violence against Art (which includes all industry). In Canto XI of the Inferno, Virgil explains why Usury is an act of violence against Art:

that Art strives after her by imitation,
     as the disciple imitates the master;
     Art, as it were, is the Grandchild of Creation.

By this, recalling the Old Testament
     Near the beginning of Genesis, you will see
     That in the will of Providence, man was meant

to labor and to prosper. But usurers,
     by seeking their increase in other ways,
     scorn Nature in herself and her followers.

Our Art is a child of nature and therefore a grandchild of God. This relationship is also found in John Paul II's Laborum Exercens:

When man, who had been created “in the image of God.... male and female”, hears the words: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”, even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world. Indeed, they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.

But even if I see that "the primary basis of the value of work is man himself" and understand that "work is 'for man' and not 'man for work'", there is still the concrete problem with my job: being away from my family all day. Sure, I get to spend time with my wife at night, but I am absent for most of my son's waking hours. A recent article in Touchstone Magazine puts to rest any dilemma I have over my place in life:

For God has created us men to be the ones who do not give birth, and who therefore are, as a brute biological fact, dispensible. . . . A man is indispensible, so to speak, only insofar as he assumes the danger of leading in faith and love. Such a man knows that the breath in his lungs is of no consequence. . . .
. . .
Women, as a brute biological fact, are indispensible. They bear children, wherein their glory lies and also, if we may trust Paul's mysterious words, their salvation. In humility the woman is called to acknowledge that indispensibility and to bind herself to it, in physical or spiritual motherhood. In humility the man is called to recognize that he matters as a man only if he knows that he does not matter at all, and to allow himself to be severed, if need be, from those he loves the most.

Leaving my family and going to work is a far cry from laying my life down for them, but it is what I can do right now to be an indispensible man.

Sustainable Development?

Here's a quote from a recent article in Crisis discussing sustainability:

While recognizing that proponents of the New Paradigm do accept some notion of a divinity, the cardinal noted that theirs is but a “poetic and aesthetic god” that each individual makes up for him- or herself. This is certainly not the God of the Bible. Rather, it is evidence of a new global ethic that seeks to replace all previously known religions with a spirituality concerned with the global wellbeing of all human persons within a world order of “sustainable development”:

By sustainable development is meant a development where the different factors involved (food, health, education, technology, population, environment, etc.) are brought into harmony so as to avoid imbalanced growth and the waste of resources.

. . . .

In the New Paradigm, Cardinal Barragán asserts, “sustainable development” becomes the supreme ecological value. He said: It is spiritually without God, at the secular level. Its
ultimate objective is the viability of the present world, and man’s well-being in it. Practically speaking, it is a new secularist religion, a religion without God, or, if one wishes a new god, that would be the earth itself, to which the name Gaia is given. This divinity would have man as a subordinate element.... The series of values upheld by the New Paradigm are values subordinated to this diversity, which is translated into the supreme ecological value that it calls
sustainable development. And within this sustainable development is the supreme ethical objective of well-being.

According to Cardinal Barragán, the grave danger of this New Paradigm is its lack of an objective standard for truth. Consensus on what to do or not to do rests on subjective opinions, which in turn gives rise to an ethic or bioethics that has no consistency.

While the article discusses the influence of this "New Paradigm" upon the UN, the object of sustainable development is common in the U.S. in reference to land-use planning techniques. The idolization of sustainable development in any context creates a conflict with human dignity, subordinating the nature and dignity of man.

Through reason we derive the principle that sustainability is objectively good, but in a limited context. No effort of mankind will ever cause this world to be sustained forever and ultimately there must be some cause greater than sustaining this earth and its resources. An objective standard of truth, or Truth itself, orders and guides our understanding of sustainability, guarantees consistency, and protects the proper preeminence of man.

How do we apply this Truth to our subjective judgments concerning sustainable development? One suggestion: Remember your death, brother.

Can Race Determine if you are Racist?

Speech codes strike again. Read here.

Values Voters

George Will's column about "values voters" provides a good example of the meaningless language constantly used in the political sphere:

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

Of course everyone votes based on the ideals they value. If someone thinks choice is more important than innocent life, it is still a personal value (a disordered one, but a value nonetheless). But catch phrases and meaningless metaphors are the norm -- politicians speak, and we listen, in soundbites (How many times have we heard politicians juxtapose "family values" and "valuing families" and not forced them to explain exactly what they mean?).

In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell addresses several bad writing habits that have led to the decline of the English language. One problem is the use of "dying metaphors":

A newly-invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically “dead” (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, an axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase.

The new problem is not using phrases that have lost their meaning, but inventing phrases that don't mean anything to begin with. But until the values voters decide to value clarity and meaning, politicians will continue to toe the line in their use of language.