An Old Fashioned Credo

I was called “old fashioned” the other day.

No, that is not entirely accurate. It was not said to my face, and it was not in any way directed toward me. It was said in a nearby conversation with which I was not involved, but it was said about a belief that I very much continue to hold. Had these individuals known that their accusations were applicable to someone who happened to be inadvertently (or advertently, as it may very well have been) eavesdropping, would they have still used the phrase? I wouldn’t think so, as our world has become far too (woefully) peaceable for that. They would have politely waited until I was out of earshot.

Old Fashioned.

I didn’t laugh when I heard it, as it took a few moments for me to absorb the term, by which time I was in control of my responses. But as soon as I understood it, I knew that it really was hilarious, though not entirely unexpected. It might have been intended as an insult, and as a result it really was funny, because I realize now that the insult is really on the accuser.

I am not, for the record, speaking about being called old fashioned in terms of clothing or tastes in movies or music or any other sort of passing fad, in which case the term might, indeed, be accurate (and does, in many ways, describe me). What I’m referring to is the much more foolish notion that one somehow may be accused of believing in something that has the audacity to also have been believed at some time in the past. “Oh, you believe in X? Well, don’t you know that people believed in X during the 19th century? Don’t you know that X was believed back when men practically still lived in caves and beat their women over the heads?”

In the same vein (but in somewhat different words), a response to one of my previous articles, on the Christian faith, made (with what I assume was a straight face, though I have no direct knowledge) the accusation, which he deemed a grave insult, that I was guilty of believing in “Bronze-age fables,” as if somehow being believed by men in the bronze age immediately renders something untrue today.

The accusation is really the epitome of audacity. What sort of fool would accuse another of believing something simply because it had the longevity to survive the generations? Is this really something to be pitied? Or is it more pitiful to immediately believe in something that has only just occurred to men? Is it more foolish to believe in something that has been discussed and debated among philosophers and theologians for thousands of years, or to throw the entire weight of belief behind something devised by some social scientist in the 1960’s? Would I rather have the weight of history behind my beliefs, or the opinions of progressive politicians and modern psychology?

Of course, it should be noted that the term itself is really inaccurate in the first place, for, in order for something to be “old fashioned”, it really has to have gone out of style at some point, but this is really hardly ever true about beliefs that are called old-fashioned.  I am, for example, quite “old fashioned” in my idea of marriage, but only because I believe in the same things that have been believed and continue to be believed and have not been persuaded by the strange new ideas of a very vocal minority. I am “old fashioned” in my idea of human life, but only because I agree with the consensus of history that there is something truly valuable about it, and I have not obtained the sort of faith required to believe in the modern notion that humanity is a bad thing, and that we really ought to be able to end life just as it is beginning.  

The truth is that many things deemed old fashioned are not really old fashioned at all. It may be true that some have ceased believing in it (and they are often very loud about it), though the belief itself has survived, for as often as not it has the benefit of being true. When someone says that something is old fashioned (when they really ought to say “traditional”), it only means that they have somehow come to live in a world that refuses to recognize that certain things have never died. They only wish that they had. Just because one wishes that some new and novel belief would overrun the world does not make the current beliefs old fashioned. In fact, it means (and it really must mean) that what is new faces an uphill battle to overtake the traditional. But this is a good thing. It should be difficult for the world to come around to something new. We often chastise ancients for not coming around quickly enough to some belief or another that turned out to be true, but why? Isn’t there something admirable about being steadfast, about holding to things and not letting them go without certainty?

One should never be quick to abandon the traditional in favor of the novel. If some new belief comes along and happens to bring along with it the virtue of truth, that is, if it really is better than the traditional belief, then it very well may be inevitable, and it is certainly worth fighting for, but it should not be accepted without a fight. That being said, these things are rare. We might use the abolition of slavery as an example of this, but this is only partially true, for in effect, slavery itself was a bit of a novelty, at least among the Christian world. The abolition of slavery was really in itself a return to something “old fashioned”, for the tradition of Christianity has always differed from the world in its idea of freedom and human dignity. The evil of slavery was a novelty that tragically wormed its way into the world in the same way infanticide continues to gain popularity today; and it is only the “old fashioned” among us who endeavor to protect the world from being swept away by every novelty.   

“Old fashioned” is, in short, a badge of honor, and ought to be worn with pride. The accusation ought to be accepted gladly. Those who accuse others of being old fashioned are really the ones who ought to be pitied for their absolute willingness to believe in the absurdest things.

The Church and the Pursuit of Happiness

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” – United States Declaration of Independence

These words, penned by Thomas Jefferson, are hardly a matter of controversy. Rarely, outside of those few who still subscribe to some form of tyranny or another, will anyone be heard arguing against the very basic notion that a nation ought to be founded on the principle of freedom; fewer still would, or should, argue that a nation ought to do anything at all to stifle its citizens pursuit of happiness.

As a political doctrine I take no offense to the Declaration of Independence. As an assertion of basic freedoms it is practically unmatched; it is used to affirm very basic principles of government—that a citizen and a government are separate; that a government does not exist to control the people, but to protect and to enable individual success. I even understand when this principle is abused in an effort to support certain viewpoints that I happen to oppose. Of course there are reasonable limitations that have to be placed upon any such unrestrictive doctrine; if it makes a person happy to kill his neighbor that is, of course, not a pursuit we are likely to oblige. If it makes a person happy to steal another’s property, it is only the rare, freewheeling judge and jury who might grant leniency when the defendant decides to quote Jefferson on the stand.

I certainly understand the value the world places on the pursuit of happiness, and I understand that it really is a good thing. What I object to—what I really cannot fathom—is when the church comes to the very strange belief that it might go well with them if they hold to the same thing.

This is one of many ways that the doctrines of a church ought to have no overlap with the doctrines of a nation. Just as I can assert that the communism practiced in the early church ought never be considered a valid principle for governing secular society, so also it should be stated emphatically that the church ought never be tempted to teach its members to pursue their own happiness.

To a Christian, after all, the pursuit of happiness should be seen as a great contradiction. It should, at the very least, be recognized as an enigma—for the Christian ought to know that happiness is not a thing that can possibly be pursued. If anything, we could say that happiness has already pursued and overtaken us, and that we are foolish to think that anything could work the other way around.

Christianity is really not the solemn, quiet religion that the secularists make it out to be; the content Christian is not really the opposite of the giddy drunkard or the self-fulfilled womanizer. The Christian simply knows a great secret: That he needn’t go searching about the world, wandering back and forth in it, in the pursuit of happiness, contentment or fulfillment. He needn’t any politician to tell him that he is free to pursue his happiness. For the Christian, happiness is intrinsic. “Man is more himself,” wrote Chesterton, “when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labor by which all things live... Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”

The church that dares encourage its members to pursue happiness, each in their own way, is a church that has quite clearly never understood the nature of happiness, for it has somehow mistaken the temporal, in which happiness is futile and fading, for the eternal, in which happiness is inward and indistinguishable from joy. Such a church has really sought to undo the drama of the temptations of Christ! For what was the temptation to turn stones into bread but the temptation to place the temporal above the eternal, to feast now and ignore the later...? The Devil offered Christ nothing more than a moment of earthly happiness—a temptation just as direct as an offer to a philanderer of his choice of lovers.

Many churches in recent years have failed in this very particular and very important regard (just as, in many other regards, churches have been failing throughout history). We are all sinners, of course, but the fact that a man had to die for our sins mean that we ought never be proud of them, and we certainly never ought to convince the church to accept them! Needless to say, not only are certain sins being tolerated within the body of Christ, but they are being celebrated!—for certain sins offer the impression to the weak minded that they are nothing more than men and women pursuing their own happiness, non-traditional places though their happiness might lead them. Sinners are no longer driven to repentance; they are driven to the altar in holy matrimony.

How can one obtain the status of Pastor or Priest—titles that one expects to go hand-in-hand with theological training and, one hopes, devoutness—and yet utterly miss such a fundamentally scriptural doctrine? Faith is not a means of obtaining happiness—not in this world, at least.

When the author of Hebrews offers his beautiful account of the great men and women of faith in the Old Testament, how does he conclude his account? “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth,” and, again, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us...”

What about the Bible could possibly lead us to believe that earthly happiness is our ultimate reward? Time and again men and women are reminded to have eternity in mind and to reject their impulses toward earthly security and happiness. But true happiness is not the fulfilling of our every desire, just as true pleasure is not the momentary giddiness of a strong drink or the brief impulses of eroticism.

G.K. Chesterton says that this “religion” of happiness and pleasure seeking, “is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose that Dante saw. Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendor of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in.”

Likewise, Malcolm Muggeridge, writing near the end of his life, offered an intriguing observation on the source of true happiness: “I increasingly see us in our human condition as manacled and in a dark cell. The chains are our mortal hopes and desires; the dark cell is our ego, in whose obscurity and tiny dimensions we are confined. Christ tells us how to escape, striking off the chains of desire, and putting a window in the dark cell through which we may joyously survey the wide vistas of eternity and the bright radiance of God’s universal love.”