Wriggling in the Crushing Grip of Reason (an aside by Bill Watterson)

I could spend an entire blog post explaining Foucault's fragmentary, decentered view of history, its insidiousness, and how it breaks down under its own weight. Or I could just let Mr. Watterson explain it in far greater fashion than I ever could:

No More Reformations (as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, it walks through dry places seeking rest; and finding none, it says, 'I will return unto my house whence I came out.' And when he comes, he finds it swept and prepared. Then he goes and takes to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first." Luke 11:24-26

Reformation is not enough. Resolutions and promises and sheer moral efforts will only take you so far. You can clean yourself up as much as you can and "exorcise the demons" that plague you, but it will never be enough. Great hopes and dreams are devised and longed for, and great plans are laid to accomplish them with great efforts made to achieve them, but it is all for naught in the end. Somehow, someway, the machine will conk, the foundations will crack, the house of cards will tumble. All of our best efforts to straighten ourselves out will be just that: our best efforts. Never any successes, just an endless series of "almost-but-not-quite" rises and subsequent falls. That is the key to human history: revolutions and reformations and reconstitutions and rehabilitations and revitalizations in an endless well-intended yet futile succession. They are not enough; they are never enough. We do not need anymore reformations. What we need is regeneration.

It is not enough to sweep yourself clean of old vices, for they shall return with friends, finding their former house clean and dolled up and still vacant. The mere banishment of evil things is insufficient; their former presence must be replaced by something stronger, something that can cut all the ties of the former tenants. The old man has many hooks in us, and though we cast him out he will rebound soon enough. We need something that will remove the hooks, someone to cut the cords that bind us. We need the Christ who came like a sword, quick and powerful and alive evermore. Would you be free from your burden of unrelenting, never-tiring, always-returning sin? Reformation for the umpteenth time will not help you; you must be born again (John 3:3).

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

A Continuous Bumbling (as a view of human history)

"The Lord brings the counsel of the heathen to nought; He makes the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the Lord Stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations." Ps. 33:10-11

It was Charles Williams (of Inkling fame) who taught us to never have a condescending view of the past and to remember that we too are merely another "period" of time, just as they were. Perhaps it is the plague of each generation that comes forth to consider themselves on the cusp of some kind of monumental greatness. This is because, as the latest people that just happen to be walking about, they stand where the mostly knowable present kisses the currently unknown future. Uncertainty breeds excitement as well as despair, and we always sit (if our view of history is biased and blind) with the constant notion that, whatever happens, this is "it". It never is "it," however. Ideas and institutions come and go; empires turn to dust. We shall (if the end is not near) be subsumed into history, and whether we are admired or scorned (or simply belittled) depends on the nature of the periods that will proceed from us.

Mankind is a creature in transit, which is why we are an unreliable foundation. Our state of transition is neither good nor bad; it is simply a fact, a fact that undercuts our reliability, a fact that we must deal with (and often fail to deal with). There is never an ultimate consensus amongst ourselves, either in past eras or this one; our few lines of convergence eventually dissolve into a myriad of separate views and opinions. As Chesterton put it once, we all can pretty much agree on what's wrong, but we have no agreement whatsoever on how to make it right. Everyone thinks that murder is wrong and peace is good; but start asking questions like how to eradicate murder and secure peace, or even how to define "murder" and "peace," and a hundred people will give you a hundred different ideas and definitions. This lack of ultimate consensus is just another example of how we cannot save ourselves. History from the human side is one long continuous bumbling about to the next batch of well-intended plans and atrocious errors. History from the Divine side, however, is the continual, consistent unfolding of the will of God, whether or not we understand the whole of it yet. That is why he is the only reliable thing: "All may change, but Jesus never." One comfort that belongs to the Christian is the knowledge that in a world of transition, God is a sure and stable consistency.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010