I recently returned from a business and pleasure trip to New York. My wife and I brought our two youngest boys — as we have done in the past with our other children — and took in the Big Apple.
A Broadway play, Radio City Music Hall, Central Park, museums, the Empire State Building, F.A.O. Schwartz ... you name it, we experienced it. We were even hoping to visit the Statue of Liberty and see the city from her crown, but Hurricane Sandy did away with that plan as the docks around Liberty Island were all destroyed.
My youngest, Sean, was a bit disappointed that the closest we could get to the American icon was the Staten Island Ferry, but somewhere between ice skating, international cuisine and climbing on the statue of Balto in Central Park, I think he got over it.
I haven’t commented on the presidential election and will probably reserve any specific comments to another post. Still, looking out of my hotel window at a billboard in busy Times Square last week did make me think of the impact of the liberal mindset that seems to slowly but surely be taking hold of this country.
Let me back up a bit. One night as my family walked along the western edge of Central Park with some college friends of mine who had moved to Manhattan many years earlier, we stopped at an intersection along the way and my friend pointed out that we were just a few yards away from the spot where John Lennon was killed some 32 years earlier.
Lennon, and the Beatles he helped make famous, is one of Rock and Roll’s icons. One of his most famous songs is “Imagine.” It’s a beautiful tune that somewhat sums up the liberal mantra of the 1960s & 1970s: “Imagine there’s no heaven ... no hell below us, above us only sky.”
It was during this period that America started moving away from a country of faith toward a more secular state. The idea, as memorialized in Lennon’s song, was that without a god to distract them, one that compelled people to fight and kill, there would be a “brotherhood of man” because people would be “living for today.”
But that’s the problem. As I looked out my hotel window I was staring at a huge billboard for a popular soft drink filled with pictures of scantily clad women and heavy duty partying. There were only three words in the ad: Live for now.
Surprised? I’m not. As anyone knows, nature abhors a vacuum. So, if God is removed from the picture, something else must fill the void. John Lennon “imagined” that it would be love and brotherhood. That’s not likely.
You see, what compels most Christians and theists in general to serve their fellow man — like the masses who gave a hand to Hurricane Sandy victims — is precisely the gratitude they feel for the blessings they have received. Their faith compels them, not to fight but to give back.
Bottom line: it’s a healthy fear of hell in addition to a hope for heaven that motivates many people to live their lives in a selfless way. This was the message of Jesus and it’s the message of all major religions.
G. K. Chesterton said that the only truly provable theological teaching is the fact of Original Sin. When left to his own ways, man lives not for others but for himself. If it’s peace and brotherhood liberals are looking for, they would be better off hoping for an increase, rather than a decrease in faith. Imagine that.
Michael Artigues, a McComb pediatrician, writes regularly on family and social issues, or whatever strikes his fancy. “meus axilla” is Latin for “my armpit,” which he chose as the title of his blog in honor of his dad, who says that opinions are like armpits: everybody has them and everybody else’s stinks.
