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Ten Jolly Things About Now

Ten Jolly Things About Now

Last updated on: April 25, 2015 at 12:57 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Ten Jolly Things About Now 2015-04-25T12:57:23-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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I am flying to Rivendell and that is a wonderful thing to write. As Christians decide whether to regroup and educate themeselves (the illuminated Rod Dreher) or charge into the fray (the courageous French family), we must remember how wonderful is the time in which we live.

I thank God we face libertines, intellectually bankrupt New Atheists, and pagans

I have a luminous daugher who just won a poetry prize!

makeup their religion as they go. We could be my grandparents challenged by Hitler, Stalin, the Great Depression and Mao. If I suffer, it is with a slow wireless connection on this plane and not as Papaw Earl suffered.

Papaw Earl was in a field and had a vision. He saw a mustached man and heard: “Do not trust this man.” When he later saw Hitler in the paper, he never trusted him. He knew that Naziism was no way to stop Bolshivism. Imagine a time when you had to oppose the right and the left!

I feel deeply jolly about now and my advice is this: we retreat and build Rivendell from which we will send bands of Hobbits to destroy the flacid ideas of our foes. We will do so hating nobody and appropriating everything good we can find. We shall be jolly in the face of the darkness.

After all, we have it on divine authority that we win. I have a great family (did I mention that Mary Kate just won a poetry prize?) and faithful friends. I live in New Constantinople and have a fabulous church.

Here are ten reasons to start your day with a shout of joy.

First, we have powerful technology that allows minority ideas to be defended. We can form online communities so that no traditional conservative or Christian has to be alone. As a young man I longed to meet a few living brilliant Christians and went to graduate school to do so. Now I can Google them and send them email. Often they answer.

Second, in the West we face libertines living off the exhaust of Christian culture. They do not have any new ideas, just the claim that they can do our creations better than we can. We hope so. But wouldn’t you rather live in Las Vegas than Tehran? Libertines are soft, badly read, and decadent.

Third, we can stop encouraging closets. If majority culture thinks being a traditional Christian is evil, then all of us can just be honest about our problems. If you are attracted to the same sex, join with the rest of us in our struggle against vice. If like I am, you wish for things you should not have or are self-indulgent about food, then tell us. We might as well be honest.

Nobody shoudld be in a closet. Let’s be real and holy simulanteously!

Fourth, we founded the culture (using ideas from everywhere) and if we do not have to run it, then we do not have to be blamed for things that go bad. The Christian majority built this bus and if they try to force us to the back seat for a time, we know that the very nature of the vehicle will force them to invite us to the driver seat in the end.

You cannot run John Locke’s nation without John Locke’s religion.

Fifth, few Christains are dumb enough now to believe that “art” and “culture” are extras. We know our music and movies got bad and so we are dedicated to getting better. Young filmmakers are growing up and churches are beginning to support painting, culture, and the arts.

Sixth, we get to dialogue (almost without end) with those who strongly disagree with us. Is there a greater gift? We love the dialectic and there are a million addresses with opinions that demand our attention, thought, and care. There is no danger of becoming intellecxtually lazy when the least error in our argument will be exposed by our foes.

Seventh, racism is not dead, but nobody outside of the fools in the Dark Enlightenment defends this folly. We can drive it out of the church knowing that few racists will be able to defend their racism openly. We can examine ourselves for our own racism knowing that anybody who would say this self-examination is a bad idea has just forever marginalized themselves.

Death to racism!

Eigth, I can read Langston Hughes, Tolkien, and Stenibeck on the same day without looking away from my phone. There has never been a time when good writing has been more freely available to more people. Thousands of books are free. A disciplined person could find a mentor and read chunks of Project Gutenburg for free and receive an exdellent education.

Ninth, professional arts are strruggling which means those of us who are amatuers can flourish. A local amateur wrote a play for my daughter’s class on Joan of Arc and they are performing it. The competition that weekend for other live events will be weak enough that hundreds will come to this performance.

Finally, Jesus is Lord. He is really in charge. No grifter is so strong he can sell Jesus’ church. No abuser is so ugly that he can forever deface the church. No sexist, racist, or materialist is so clever that he can stand against the truth: men and women are fully human, all people are created in the Image of God, and a Person, not a thing makes us flourish as humans.

Soon I will be in Rivendell brought from the new Constantinople (Houston) by a vehicle faster than Shadowfax. I feel positively jolly. Don’t you?

Hosanna to the One who comes in the Name of the Lord!

*Thank you Rindy of Delta Airlines for the idea to write about what makes me happy. She is not responsible for my ideas about happiness, but she did make me happy. Hurrah for Rindy!

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