Thought For The Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“In spite of everything I believe that people are basically good at heart.”
Jeremiah 17:9 – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Bad cherry pick from Scripture LQC. Many passages in Scripture are much more optimistic and from my experience I think most people, most of the time, in most things listen to the better angels of our nature.
Cherry picking also ignores the historical context of the passage. Jeremiah lived at a time when the Judaean monarchy was coming to an end and the Jews were being taken into captivity. One should not expect an optimistic assessment of human nature from someone going through such a time. That Ann Frank did retain such optimism during a time of the mass murder of her people is a brilliant example of the resilience of the human spirit in the absolute worst of times, and a tribute to her memory.
[seen at Instapundit]
January 2019:
Gasoline was $2.
Eggs were $1.
The 30-year mortgage rate was 3%
Inflation was 1%.
We had economic growth, full employment and World peace.
What happened?
“If he exalts himself, I humble him.
If he humbles himself, I exalt him.
And I go on contradicting him
Until he understands
That he is a monster that passes all understanding.
What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe!
Who will unravel such a tangle? This is certainly beyond dogmatism and skepticism, beyond all human philosophy. Man transcends man.
Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you.
Listen to God.
Is it not as clear as day that man’s condition is dual? The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything – but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss.
Let us then conceive that man’s condition is dual. Let us conceive that man infinitely transcends man, and that without the aid of faith he would remain inconceivable to himself, for who cannot see that unless we realize the duality of human nature we remain invincibly ignorant of the truth about ourselves?
These fundamental facts, solidly established on the inviolable authority of religion, teach us that there are in faith two equally constant truths. One is that man in the state of his creation, or in the state of grace, is exalted above the whole of nature, made like unto God and sharing in his divinity. The other is that in the state of corruption and sin he has fallen from that first state and has become like the beasts. These two propositions are equally firm and certain.
Scripture openly declares this when it says in certain places:
My delights were with the sons of men(Prov. VIII. 31) – I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh(Joel II. 28) – Ye are gods(Ps. LXXXII. 6),
while saying in others:
All flesh is grass(Is. XL. 6) – Man is like the beasts that perish(Ps. XLIX. 12) – I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men.(Eccl. III. 18)
Whence it is clearly evident that man through grace is made like unto God and shares his divinity, and without grace he is treated like the beasts of the field.”
— Blaise Pascal, Pensees
Donald, I thought all day about what you wrote. You’re 100% right about the historical context of Jeremiah. And yes, I cherry picked without explaining context –> my error. But man is only good because of God’s grace. Anne Frank, though Jewish and not Christian, was still uniquely touched by that grace. Without that grace we are children of wrath as St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:3. The tens if not hundreds of millions murdered by Nazism and communism in the 20th century, and the tens of millions of murdered pre-born babies today show how right St. Paul was. Demon goddess statues in NYC, LGBTQ indoctrination in the classroom, international fratricide in Russia & Ukraine –> I wish I could be an optimist like you, Donald. Maybe you’re right. But things look grim.