I ask a sensual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I am I,” and he thinks of his body.
I ask a thinking man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I see two sides in myself and I make my way between them, associating first with one and then the other,” and he is thinking of his instinctive and conscious soul.
I ask a spiritual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “There is someone in the depths of my soul. I stretch out my hand to grasp him but see that to do that I would need arms longer than the universe. Ask him who I am.”
St. Nicholai of Zicha (Velimirovich)
One of the great tragedies of the modern world is that, as it seeks to define itself apart from God, it is defined as so much less than God would have it be. It is at this point that atheism or secularism are the least humanistic of philosophies. The gross inequalities that follow us all from birth – despite every government proclamation to the contrary – cannot erase the fact that some are born wealthy, some smart, some beautiful (all by the standards of the world) and that every survey conducted has to honestly admit that those people who may be so described get better jobs, are elected easier and are simply liked more than others. For the vast majority of people, life will not reward them with more than an opportunity to watch “the lives of the rich and famous.”
Only in the proclamation that God has become man is the value of being a man underwritten – indeed the value of being any human being. The God Who made us all has become one of us and in such a union has also united us to Himself in His exaltation. Compared to that exaltation, every human excellence is as dung. Whether beauty, intelligence or wealth – all will perish in the grave and become nothing more than the bread of worms. This is the gift of a world without God – worms.
But to the very least of my brethren, I can say, “God has not only created you in His image, but has predestined you to be conformed to that image.” Your destiny in Christ is to become as He is. I can say this to the ugly, the poor, the disenfranchised, the foolish, the stupidest sinner (people like me). For all are welcome.
What attraction, other than the weakness of a mere decades’ latest bout of “rationality,” could a philosophy of worms hold? For time has already proven that the “supermen” who seek to reign as gods (believing there is no true God) will treat the rest of us as worms – mere farms for the harvesting of our stem-cells – or whatever their godless schemes may next desire.
Better to see a child – the poorest of the poor – and say, “It would take arms longer than the universe to reach the depths of who this child is.”
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