By DONALD DeMARCO
One of my better students, who was enjoying a course I was teaching, asked me if I would like to speak to the members of his Bible study group. I felt honored and happily accepted his cordial invitation.
The study group, made up exclusively of young adults, met in the home of one of the students, an atmosphere most conducive to friendly discussions. I began my informal presentation by commending everyone present for taking the time and making the effort to study Sacred Scripture. The Bible, of course, I reminded them, has the great merit of being sacred.
My eyes then fell upon a copy of a Sears catalogue prominently displayed in a nearby bookcase, which, so I thought, would serve well in contrasting the sacred with the profane.
My distinction, however, was immediately rebuffed. “That catalogue is sacred to my dad,” piped one of the students. The group seemed to agree with my dissenter.
How do I proceed, I thought to myself, if my audience was composed of relativists who have adopted the subjective view that things have value solely in relation to the individual and not in terms of the object itself? If nothing is sacred in itself, what is the point of studying Sacred Scripture?
I did not disrespect the father’s affection for his catalogue, but tried to explain that something is sacred not because we like it, but because it is sacred in itself. That distinction did not work any better. It was small consolation to me that the refreshments and the light banter after my talk were mildly enjoyable.
I was familiar enough with how rampant relativism was among my students in general. It was trendy and appealed to their complacency. If everything is relative, then nothing is demanding. Relativism is a philosophy that makes for an easy life. Or so it seems.
But I had hoped that things would be different with the study group. I should have known better
Professor Allan Bloom was right when he opened his best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind, by saying, “There is one thing that a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”
And if truth is relative, then so is the sacred. Genesis and the current issue of the Sears catalogue stride together arm-in- arm. Equality reigns while moral perspicuity disappears.
The Bible is the Word of God. It is sacred because God is sacred. God is the Absolute and should not be relativized by the individual. If we are left with nothing more than the profane, how do we learn about the essential things of life: what we should believe, how we should live, and what is the reason for our coming into this world?
John Updike spoke of his generation as existing “between the death and rebirth of the gods, when there is nothing to steer by but sex and stoicism and the stars.” But this is steering without a compass, navigating without the North Star. The profane of itself can never attain the sacred. The lower cannot reach the higher. And that is why the Word of God was given to us from above.
It was once the policy of the United States Army that every military plane flying over water must carry a collapsible boat containing food rations and a copy of the Bible in a waterproof package. The justification for including the Good Book was that “spiritual equipment can be as important as food and drink is to save lives.”
There was no thought of omitting the Bible and providing a consumer catalogue or a copy of The New York Times. Perhaps an army pilot could have made a more convincing presentation than I to my Bible students.
The noted psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung has informed us that among the many hundreds of patients he has treated, “Among those over 35, there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook in life.” Perhaps I should have made a date with my Bible students for a time in the future when the youngest member of the group was over 35.
“The deepest definition of Youth is,” as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has remarked, “Life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
Catalogues and newspapers offer us very little assistance when it comes to life’s important questions. Queen Victoria, upon losing her beloved husband, confided that the Bible was her greatest source of comfort. And so it has been, for millions of people throughout history and throughout the world.
The Bible is surely no ordinary book. Not only is it the most important and most widely read book ever written, but it is God’s loving instruction to His wayward creatures. When we pray, we speak to God, when we read Scripture, God speaks to us.
There is a movement afoot to remove Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms. While this is occurring, salacious material is made increasingly available through pay TV in those very same rooms.
When the sacred is desacralized, it does not take its place alongside the profane; it becomes disreputable. The need is only too apparent in our secular world to re-sacralize the sacred.
Perhaps it is better to state that we need to recognize the sacred character of that which is essentially sacred.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His recent works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; How to Flourish in a Fallen World, and In Praise of Life are available through Amazon.com.
(His most recent book is Footprints on the Sands of Time: Personal Reflections on Life and Death.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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