Back to School

The more I think about things, the more I realise that I should not be a Romantic. Before I get myself into too much trouble, I ought to explain.

The more I look at social media and listen to the news, the more I hear noise of different groups of society shouting past each other.

Take the slogan, "black lives matter".

Of course they matter and any Christian with half a brain can see that. The logic is simple:

A) All black people are human.

B) All human beings matter to God.

C) All black people matter to God.

Oh! Hello Barbara!

(A) is easily verified empirically.

(B) is easily deduced from Holy Scripture.

(C) follows because Barbara says so.

Corollary:

(D) If black lives matter to God then they matter to everyone.

Thus by Modus Ponendo Ponens, black lives matter to everyone. Denial of that is a denial of logic, science or of God.

It seems so dry but look at what this does not say.

"Black lives matter" does not say "only black lives matter." What it does suggest is that immediate attention needs to be brought into the state in which black lives are regarded. That this is being focussed on indicates quite clearly that there is an impression that black lives don't matter. 

Let us be clear. If a house is on fire, we don't first treat the house next door for dry rot because "all houses are equal". The immediate need must be addressed. If black people are being led to believe that their lives don't matter, then there is a contravention of the most simple argument that I have reproduced above.

The trouble is that "dry logic" and critical thinking is being passed over for indoctrination rather than education. I am all for Evolution being taught in schools as a dominant scientific theory but I would also like to see Creationism taught as well if only to force students to think about what is needed to convince them of a fact and to cut out the rubbish.

I am not a literary person though I do appreciate the deep truths of the human condition that great literature reveals. The danger is that, without the dry scholasticism, and with an uncritical acceptance of a "woke" agenda unrecognised by the German Romantics, a popularist and unchallenged idealism can take over and read into statements things that aren't there. 

How easily the fact that we are justified by faith becomes being 'justified by faith alone", or "black lives matter" becomes "only black lives matter". 

My own life has been affected by seeing monasticism in a romantic ideal or by pining for chapels rigged up with appropriate decor. My Sehnsucht  might be an emotional reality but it does me no good unless it is examined rationally, dispassionately and precisely. How the popular caricatures of Shelley, Schubert and Schelling would frown at my pressing the human spirit for definition and precision!

If the protests in America and the UK show us anything is that things have been allowed to fester without rational dialogue being allowed to reveal the situation more clearly. Outpourings of emotion and wilful ignorance of people's plight simply will not do: both will fray civilization. Those who clamour for a romantic ideal revolution will be appalled at the reality of that revolution. We see the effects of what happens when emotional reactions control reasoned discussion in both the French Revolution and First World War where an impassioned nationalism, false Romanticism takes over, colours language and stifles Reason.

I will take dry scholasticism over this popular, unreasoned romanticism any day.