[Pearls Ep 167: Answering atheism Tuesday.]
Go to any best-seller list – New York Times, Amazon, Barnes & Noble – and at any given moment in time half of the list might be self-help books.
Purpose Driven Life, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, Your Best Life Now, and new ones each day.
There’s obviously plenty of demand.
Have you ever tried reading any of these?
The better ones certainly have insights and wisdom to offer.
And then there are a bunch that would be better placed in the “blind leading the blind” category.
Why is there seemingly endless demand?
Here’s the biggest reason – because all of the self-help books, even the best of them, have this fatal flaw: they try to evade the cross. Oh, the better ones might give lip-service of the “no pain no gain” variety – but they quickly move on to the grand pay-off of wealth, influence, success, happiness, etc.
And so – the readers never get to the most basic realities of life and desire and meaning.
This is why the greatest self-help book, and only one we need, is the Bible. The power of the resurrection is that it reveals the wisdom of the Cross – and our cross is path to meaning and fulfillment. That is what St. Paul tells us – that the cross is folly and weakness to deniers, but it is perfect wisdom for those who believe.
The Cross is the fullness of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.
Truth is the reflection of reality. The Cross is perfect truth. That humanity is so fallen, that left to our own devices we slaughter God himself when He comes to us. And yet, God is so good and merciful that He still choses to sacrifice Himself for our redemption.
Something is Good to the extent that it fulfills its purpose. Christ’s purpose of becoming man was to redeem us, and that was completed on the cross.
What of Beauty? It’s a little trickier to define, but Thomas Aquinas gives us some principles. For example, that beauty contains symmetry, order, balance and meaning. As has been pointed out time and again, we see those in the vertical and horizontal of the Cross. The vertical – Christ raising His voice to heaven on our behalf. The horizontal – Christ’s arms outstretched to draw all humanity to Himself.
There’s one other characteristic of beauty – shimmer, or radiance. The Old Masters, for example, were masters of light, perhaps none greater than Caravaggio. The thing about radiance is that it requires contrast. There is no radiance if it’s not opposed to darkness.
What is the Cross if not the perfect darkness to offset the perfect radiance of the resurrection?
There again we have the model for our own life, our own darkness, and the radiance Christ desires for us. It’s not self-help, it’s God’s redemption. We have only to turn to the light – which is to say, to recall Christ’s resurrection and what it means to our life.
Easter blessings –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: Doubting Thomas (Jn 20:19-31)
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see My hands, and bring your hand and put it into My side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”
Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.