My wife is a librarian. This means several things. First, she likes rules (she loves canon law). Rules are very important to her, they help
keep things, and especially people, neat and orderly. They keep them out of places they should not
be, like behind the library employee’s desk.
Second, she likes order.
Everything needs to be in its proper place. Heaven help the student worker who puts a
book back on a shelf where it doesn’t belong.
Heaven help her husband if he decides to be helpful, puts away the
dishes one morning, and does not put the measuring spoons exactly where they
belong.
Whether my wife became a librarian because she
liked rules and order, or else grew to like them because she became a
librarian, I do not know. I only know
that she likes both things.
The medievals liked order as well. They were terribly concerned with the
meanings of things and wanted to put everything in its proper place. I never appreciated this until I read G.K.
Chesterton’s book on Thomas Aquinas, The
Dumb Ox. Chesterton remarked that
having a proper place for things is a far bigger problem in philosophy than in
real life. When I put a thing in the
wrong place in real life, no serious consequences ensue, but when something is
not put in its proper place in philosophy, that thing ceases to exist. If God is just a physical being, a giant
physical, humanoid figure with a white beard sitting in the sky, then He did
not create the universe and there is no place for Him. He would not exist. If God is a transcendent being beyond nature,
then He has a proper place, and can exist.
The same can be seen in a smaller example. Some have remarked today that they word “hero”
is over-used. In past times, a man was a
hero who fell on a grenade to save his friends, today every soldier is a “hero.” Every fireman, a hero. In this way, the word refers no longer to
extraordinary service, but to ordinary service.
It becomes drained of all meaning.
If everyone is a hero, then no one is. Heroism, having been redefined, no longer
exists.
The same is true of three other things often not
put in their proper place and redefined today, religion, marriage, and life. If they are redefined, as our modern world
has attempted to do, they will cease to exist.
C.S. Lewis once commented on one absurd writer who
redefined religion to mean “what man does with his solitude.” Today, many would have us redefine it to mean
the same thing. Religion is to be solely
a private affair, and when it does, it will no longer exist. Hence, the United States government would
redefine religion to mean that a Catholic hospital, or school, or soup kitchen
is no longer “religious” because it serves men who are not Christian. I pass by the obvious point that others have
made that by such an absurd standard, Mother Teresa or Jesus Christ himself
would not have counted as religious.
Rather, the point here is that as the domain allowed to “religion”
becomes smaller and smaller, religion itself, being redefined and removed from
its proper place, will cease to exist, as is no doubt the goal of those who
would so redefine it
Marriage too is being redefined today. What was once a committed relationship (for
life) between a man and a woman for mutual love and help for the upbringing of
children has slowly been redefined. The
level of commitment required has been lessened by no-fault divorce laws. The upbringing of children has become
optional through birth control. By such,
marriage has been weakened. At least 40%
of children today are born to single parents.
4,000 more are aborted per day. Now
even the requirement that marriage be between a man and a woman is being
redefined away. Marriage has been
redefined to be a relationship between two individuals to be kept until one
party wishes to break it. Soon even the
requirement that it be between two people may be gone. Having been redefined, marriage will cease to
exist.
Finally, what counts as human life is being
redefined today. It has already been
redefined so that it does not include a child in the womb. Two medical “ethicists” have suggested that a
child after-birth does not count as a living human person either, and so now
advocate infanticide (1). Human life is
being redefined away. Or as one writer
put it, An ethicist’s job is like a magician’s. The main job of both is to
distract you from the obvious. The magician uses sleight of hand to pretend to
make people disappear. But when ethicists do it, people disappear for real”(2).
Life, religion, and marriage are today being
removed from their proper places, as forces attempt to redefine them. And as they are redefined, they are redefined
away. They will no longer exist. As one
atheist philosopher said of morality without God, “the words remain, but the
meaning is gone.” So it is here. The words, “religion,” “marriage,” and “life”
will remain, but the meaning will be gone.
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