Peppy Christianity: Christianity Without Responsibility

[Image from cover of the Study Guide: It's Not That Complicated" from the website
Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences.]

A reader sent me a link to this site [Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences], with this comment:

...when I googled “reclaiming beauty,” the first item was something I think you would actually find amazingly agreeable: a Christian site emphasizing beauty in feminine comportment (and in the arts) as an intentional expression of, and agreement with, the Logos.

I replied:

Yes, I actually saw the site.

I thought it was too "religious" focused.

There is a time for religion, but now we need to focus on all aspects of culture.

Also, they seem too peppy with their "reasons for optimism" sections. I think reality now is far harsher, and we probably may have to expect the worst.

I will write on this!

My mundane, instinctive, reaction to overzealous religious people is that they are hiding something, or not understanding something, or just over-controlling.

The actual world, the material world, is very important. We have to be able to enter into it without "Christianity" shadowing everything.

For example, we have to be able to make works of art without the entire focus of that art being God, or Christ.

I think that is what Islam does: make God (their Allah) the focus of everything. Idiosyncratic humanness is lost in Islam. Its followers become a mass of flowing specimens, all faced towards Allah.

I think the phenomenal success of Christianity, and specifically Western Christianity, is the individuality of God's followers. The whole history of the evolution of Western society is based on idiosyncratic individual leaders, some who were killed for their originality, who led their societies and cultures into new, and I would say better, directions. Even the more modest idiosyncrats, the teacher, the housewife, the policeman, put their stamp on the world in the way they follow their tasks. No two teachers are the some, but some are better, and quietly revolutionary, than others.

In Christianity, culture is made to matter. The world we live here, on earth, matters, as a separate, but connected, entity to the world that God plans for us after we leave this one. As C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: "Men are mirrors, or carriers of Christ to other men." Men are not God, or even gods (in the antiquity sense), although they might like to be both. They are mere human, but with a God-given license to build and expand on the world that God has given them. And some are more Christ-like than others.

I think God didn't want to be a dictator. He wanted us to participate in, and complete, the world he created. If we were to land in a ready-made universe, then all we would do is genuflect to a God, who would even tells us how to genuflect, like Allah does to Muslims.

Culture, the manifestation of man's ideas on how to build and form his society, is the tool that God has given us to paint this palette of a world. We can use it well, or use it to our determent and destruction. The choice is ours.

I think related to this is the "peppiness" of the site I've mentioned above. In a subtle way, this peppiness, or cheerfulness, is the abrogation of the author's (or authoress') responsibility in building this world: they've passed it all on to God.

They have a series of study guidelines which they title "Reclaiming Beauty."

Here is a section of their introduction:

[W]e can sometimes forget that the world did not create beauty – God did

In a generalized way, of course God created beauty. But I will go one step further and say that God created the idea of beauty, as I explain above, and let man create the specifics: the cathedrals, the paintings, the foods, the language, the literature, and so on (see the "Topics" on the side panel to see the infinite number of specifics we have at our disposal).

The peppiness these women have is like saying: "God will fix all this."

If stretched further, it can mean to say: "I can do what I want, I can then repent if I err, and then God will fix that error for me."

At its furthest from the truth, this can lead men (and these good women) to say: I can sin. There is nothing wrong with sinning. God will forgive me and send me to heaven.

Those who have lost all track, or relation with God, who are often those who say they can withoutconsequence, will finally say: I don't believe in God. But he will not send me to Hell. He will find a place for me, next to him, in Heaven, for eternal life."

Everyone wants to go to heaven.

Christianity without responsibility.