Ever envy someone...? Of course. It's natural, especially when that someone appears to have what we deserve. Shakespeare (one of my favorite persons to envy) said it best: "Oh, what a bitter thing it is to look into happiness through another person's eyes."
Don't know about you, but I feel this most strongly whenever I see someone of deep serene faith. People who have endured the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, yet hold comfortably fast to their faith in a loving God ready to welcome them home like a loving parent.
With the advent of modernity, questions on which philosophers and religious thinkers had been reflecting for centuries underwent an unprecedented change. With the rise of the Scientific Revolution in the 16th C came a new willingness to confront religious authority and beliefs. Sigmund Freud was among those moderns who rejected the existence of a God, and all the "man-made comforts that came with him."
Freud's uber-rival, Carl Jung, saw the landscape differently. He once said: "I do not simply believe in God. I know there is God." Which is very much the feeling I envy when I watch young Bible-believers singing their hearts out in a revival meeting or little old ladies tranquilly fingering their rosary beads in the back of a church.
However, there exists a very wide ideological expanse between Freud's position and Jung's. For lack of a more precise description, this is the modern philosophy of indulgent indifference. Part agnosticism, part existentialism, this is that expanse in which the modern West's educated classes tend to reside. "If religion is your thing, fine with me. Only don't try selling it!"
These educated classes are the ones each holiday season who put on their three-pointed Jeffersonian hat, and remind us of the "wall" between state and religion. They certainly have a point. And yet, walls usually have doors. It's those doors through whom the serene seem to pass. And -- by God! -- there's something there to envy.
In another 90 days we all get our annual opportunity to see which side of the Christmas Creche Conflict seem the most serene...
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I expect our happy ACLUers to come out fighting any week now!!!
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