The American Spectator

p> EVERYTHING IS LAWFUL BR>Re: R. Andrew Newman's Kicking the “Christianists” : p>Andrew Sullivan displays many of the traits of the latter day post-modernist (a.k.a. Nietzsche's Last Man ). They cannot see any transcendent truths beyond themselves. Sin is a construct not to get in the way of personal happiness and self-fulfillment. As a matter of fact, certain sins are not sins at all, but instead they are actually indicators of a person's holiness. Sin is not to be overcome with the salvation of God's grace; instead sin is to be redefined, or failing that, it is to be ignored entirely. Gone is the tragedy of life, where human inclinations battle against duty, obligation, and eternity. The late thinker Alan Bloom summed up Nietzsche's Last Man when he commented that it wasn't the Last Man himself, but what he valued to be so nauseating. The Last Man transforms the world in order to live a comfortable, guilt-free, worry-free life. There is no Dark Night of the Soul, no Golgotha, no Heaven and no Hell. The confessional, like the revival tent, is so 19th century. p>Of course, what Sullivan preaches is nihilism. Behind his easy language, his own take on Christian theology that promises a Christ without the Cross and salvation without sin is an abyss. This abyss is a pit of pointlessness. Five hundred years of Enlightenment thought is reduced to: Anything goes. And if the Church stands in the way of this moral free-for-all, well there is always the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. p>I think Shakespeare captures the modern despair that awaits those who choose to follow Sullivan's path when he wrote: p>”There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” BR>— JP BR>Indiana