The Lost Idea

By Clinton Bean

This week I did a thing rather rare for me — I picked up a newspaper. Newspapers have always been rather depressing things in my opinion, and more so in the last few years. But I have always felt that anything one reads, be it fiction, non-fiction, media, or anything else, should change one’s opinion of the world. And this newspaper succeeded in doing this. The article I read was by a prominent journalist, a man of no poor talent and, I think, no small audacity, to propose the question which he did. The question thus propounded was this; ‘What happens when the government replaces God?’ Though, as I have admitted, I rarely touch newspapers, I have seen enough of them to know that I have never personally encountered the word ‘God’ in any of them — which fact is what made me read this article in the first place. The piece itself was, admittedly, lacking in literary merit, but there is little to expect in the modern journalistic age, and overall, it was fairly written. But it was the theme and content, more than the style, that changed the way I view the world. It made me more of an optimist. It supported a theory that I have had for a long time but have not had supported by very many of the great thinkers around me. The world is not as bad as all that. I can and, more increasingly of late, have believed this world and the people in it capable of many things. Among the philosophers, the theologians, the thinkers and the average good-hearted people with whom I have the privilege to associate myself, one thought have I encountered repeatedly and with crescent incidence; the pessimistic idea that the world grows daily worse and, outside of our own circles, there is ‘None that doeth good, no not one.’ This last is an unstated theory rather than a declared truth — or even a declared hypothesis. But one can see a grave thing growing in conservative and especially Christian conservative circles. It is not so much pessimism, for pessimism is not as grave as a pessimist should like to believe. This thing is not so much an idea as a lack of ideas, not so much a feeling as a lack of feeling, not so much a realisation as the total absence of it. It is a missing hope, a missing faith, a missing meaning and a missing ideal. The good people of this age have forgotten that there are good people. And sometimes I’m inclined to think they have forgotten there is a good God. I have never believed in the inherent goodness of man. It is a crazy thing to think when one looks at the real world. The idea of inherent goodness began with a flawed idea of goodness. When man ceased to believe that goodness was determined by God, then and only then did man commence to believe that man is good. But if man decides what goodness is, there is no possible way for him not to be good. That is just the point — man is bad before God, but immensely good before himself. A snake may make a very good snake, but it makes a very poor human. But I also eschew the inherent badness of man; and by this I mean, not that man has not sinned and fallen, nor that all men have sinned and fallen, but that man cannot be completely bad for one simple reason. He was made in the image of God. He has parts of God’s nature in him, as small as they may be. One knows it when he revels in the glory of a sunset. One feels it when he gloats in the smells of autumn. The fact that a man knows what is beautiful and what is good displays that man possesses a part of something it is not too unthinkable to call the soul of God. But in these modern days, men have forgotten this. My inspiration the journalist who proposed this great intellectual question has a good point near the end of his article, when he says; ‘Americans need to get right with God.’ The world needs to get right with God. But there is something in its way. The problem is not so much that we have lost the knowledge or even the respect of God, though I certainly believe we have. More than this, we have lost the idea of God. What is this idea? The idea of a justice and a truth that transcends all others, the idea that there is One who can determine goodness and is not held by any law of the world. In earlier human history, men who did not have the true God made up their own. But today this has fallen from the world. Children grow up without the idea in their heads. They can’t get their minds around it. It has become too big for all of us, and with this, or perhaps in consequence of this, our minds have grown smaller. In a way, people of this day have made their own gods. They are polytheists, worshipping the fashions and the ideas and the persons of the people we call ‘celebrities’ but might as well call ‘deities.’ The ancient Romans and Greeks had gods and goddesses who were exalted men and women with great powers. Our modern celebrities lack the powers but have the looks, the wealth — and the worshippers. But in one way these people cannot take the place of gods for us, for they are only people. The gods invented by the druids or the Romans had powers of some sort. All our gods today have is money. And they do nothing for the people that worship them except, once in a while, dole out money to charities that, most of the time, are not worth supporting. We have lost the idea of God because we have lost the idea that we need one. We are basically capable. I don’t even think that men believe they are basically good anymore. They have realised, as the rational conclusion of a sinful worldview would have inevitably made them realise, that they don’t have to be good. They see that there is no need to be good. All they have to be is basically capable. Like H.G. Wells’ aliens, the only point of life from here forward is continual growth towards greater efficiency. So that is the mind of man. As G. K. Chesterton said, we have ‘thought back to thought itself’ and we have been led into ‘thinking there is nothing but thought.’ But there is more than thought, and it is called the soul of man. A man can live in his mind, but such a life is a pointless existence with no real destination except for great intelligence. But intelligence is useless with nowhere to go. If, however, the soul of man is to go up, it must only go to God. And I believe that there is a soul in most people. All they must do is find it. I can only thank the audacious journalist for revealing at least one thing that I truly benefited from learning. There is a real person in the world. And I know, as a result, that there are more somewhere.