Today is the third day of the Feast of Christmas. . . a day the Church chooses to remember Saint John the Evangelist and Apostle. Theologian, man of passions, and apostle, John is my favorite writer in the New Testament. He is easily the match for Plato in terms of complexity of thought. . . and the beauty of his Gospel is stunning. (See John 1:14 and John 3:16 if you doubt me!)
It is in John, his Gospel and his Revelation, that we can see the Love that moves the Stars combined with the rigors of theology. John is that rare man who could write with every part of his soul engaged . . . including the passions of the intellect. He was the apostle of love and of hell . . . the great theologian and the disciple Jesus loved. Few have ever reached his artistic genius.
If humans were not fallen, then perhaps God would more often reveal truth in a poetic science or scientific fairy tales. Great geniuses, like Dante, were able to write both the best science and the best poetry of their day simultaneously, but for the rest of us this side of paradise many tools that seem to give contradictory results will have to do. Nor is this a bad thing in humanities fallen state, but the divine mercy of Babel.
At the great Tower, as the tale goes, human language was divided to prevent men from stepping over the bounds that divine mercy had built for human protection. Language, whether mathematical or otherwise, is the greatest tool that humans have to describe reality. Divided languages produced divided disciplines and prevented too much power, too clear a picture of reality, from falling into broken, and wicked, human hands.
Fairy tales told humanity this all along. A three wish ring is as dangerous as it is useful, given human nature, but all come right in the End. The Prince is coming with justice and deliverance. John the Apostle reveals that this is true, but great suffering must come first, which all great tales promise.
In contrast, present culture either promises pleasure for little pain or whispers that in the end there is only pain. Pleasure is either facile or a narcotic. It is no wonder that only Christian culture could produce the sacrifice necessary to sustain both science and the arts for centuries. The Christian tales tell are good and tell the truth beautifully, but with no sugar coating for marketing purposes. To be truly happy, to flourish as a man or woman, will require great sacrifice and short term suffering. Nothing worth having will be had for free. This could bring despair, but Christianity also teaches that God has paid the essential bill and humanity need only participate in what He has done.
Of course God allows us to reject Him something John, the Apostle of love also notes. In the end, humans who will not grow up cannot go to paradise. The entertainment in heaven is for adults and those who will cling to fragments of pleasure, who remain childish, must go where the childish go. Only those who come as children can enter the Kingdom and real children are not like Peter Pan, they grow up and have done with lesser things. In this present age, Peter Pan keeps fighting pirates when he should turn grow up and tries to hide his lack of development by labeling his childish joys “adult entertainment.”
It is Wendy who is wise, because she suffers the indignities of motherhood and old age and so begins to experience real grown up joys. In heaven she will be a child again compared to the greatness that is there, and when she has been there ten thousand years, she will so grown up that her former adult state will look like infancy . . . and yet in ten thousand more years she will have grown even more. Wendy gains pain and age what Pan attempts to gain by stagnation: eternal youth! It is no shock that there is more beauty and life in the aged face of a woman who has chosen motherhood and Christ than in the botoxed mask of a Pan who will not submit and grow old enough to be born again.
Hell is the only option for those who simply will not change and become capable of this absolute romance. It is serious, stiff, and frozen. Evil is attractive in this world, because it twists what goodness, truth, and beauty it can find in shocking ways and this novelty can be confused with real creation.
Subjective beauty seems good since it means that no God can command development in our tastes. It feels like freedom until it becomes plain that if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that it is the majority or at least the powerful people who will judge. Having rejected God’s rule, the sinner finds himself rules by the tastes of men. God can be trusted to choose wisely what is art, music, poetry, and entertainments will lead to happiness, because He made us. Men can be trusted to manipulate us for what they think is their own happiness, but is really the perverse joy of the devils who seduce them. The lustful actually have no love in them since they do not love true Beauty.
Dante had it right when he pictured the ultimate end of evil as frozen, self-pitying, and full of impotent anger. Rejection of reality seems to make humans god, but reduces creativity. It is no accident that the great sub-creator of the twentieth century was the Christian Tolkien. There are many variations possible once one learns the main theme, but those who refuse truth are only left ever more far-fetched lies. When these lies disappoint, too often the reaction is rage at the cosmos and the God who created it! Dante’s Satan is frozen in ice formed from his own tears cooled by the ceaseless beating of his wings. When humans die, they leave this time and this age when change is possible and are left to face just judgment at their lack of love.
If Hell is the great bass note in the cosmic harmony, the melody line is mercy. Humanity can be transformed, moving from death to life, and so come to live in the City of God forever. Love can drive men to a vision of a Person so Beautiful that if seen this side of death and untransformed by grace the glory would consume utterly.
If the Church can regain a driving love of God seen in the person of His Incarnate Son Jesus Christ, then beauty, goodness, and truth will follow.
There is no ugliness in God, no evil, and no falsehood. The ills of this present age are as always, because we have made idols out of subjective things, our own opinions, and ignored the real things. Like a child who fears the shadows on the wall while gorging on candy, we are making ourselves sick, but misunderstand the source of our illness.
Love is not the end, but the force that drives humanity to God. It is as if the entire culture has confused the engine with the destination, but there is still hope. God is the source of all the love in the cosmos and even twisted love reflects His image. Love has become an idol, but like all idols it is a servant of the Most High that we worship. When the Sacred Scriptures say that God is love, they testify to the “three-dimensional” nature of goodness, truth, and beauty for a Christian. This divine romance does not end in a book, but a person. This person is known by love and loves in return.
Propositions about God are important, so that humanity can be sure to direct its love correctly. If I love, then I desire to know all that can be known about the beloved. Someone who claimed to love me, but could not be bothered to learn my eye color is a liar. Love desires knowledge, but love is not knowledge. God is a person and ultimately can only be known through love. Theology is the best guide humans have found to describe that person and to keep human love, so easily turned to idolatry, on track. If we love God, then we will love theology for the sake of knowing Him. Propositional theology is another reality-describing science.
I must confess that loving love nearly destroyed me and hurt people around me. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, me, and this made me a god, but I did not realize it. When my god failed me, I learned to hate myself and this began to breed cynicism toward the world. Nobody is called to believe in love anymore than the reason for school is schooling.
My loves were too limited: failing to embrace parents, neighbor, nation, and God. My desires and real passions were turned to only one kind of love: a desire for a soul mate. Calling myself a Romantic, I was a Scrooge hording and loving what should have been spent and when finally spending doing so in one place. The true romantic, the one who loves most abundantly, is driven through duty to a profligate passionate that can love everything in God’s creation because it loves God, the source of love.
Perhaps I am not the only one to make these mistakes and what I learned through pain can help other would be romantics. The beginning of absolute romance was learning to love real Beauty, but before that I had to come to believe it existed. Arguments, experiences, and the Bible forced me to this conclusion and caused me to make Jesus Lord of my aesthetic and not just moral life.
My serious, tragic self faced the stark and uncomfortable reality that the truth was happy. Traditionally comedies end in weddings and the resolution of all problems. Tragedy ends in death. Smart people in these times bet on tragedy, wear Hamlet’s black, and roll their eyes at comedy. Comedy is either foolish or sarcastic, but wise grownups are pessimists. But the reality of Beauty, caused me to grow cynical about my cynicism. After all the best comedies (Much Ado About Nothing) contain tragic moments on their way to resolution. What if the darkness is prelude to dawn? This great tragic moment in history is in the light of the reality of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, but the trial of the lovers before the wedding. We may, after all, be in a divine comedy.
John taught us all this long ago.