Saturday, December 5, 2009

"There's Something Wrong In Paradise"


 Saturday of the First Week of Advent





Back in the 80's, a band called Kid Creole and the Coconuts had a hit--er, well, sort of a hit--called "There's Something Wrong In Paradise." I remember seeing them on Saturday Night Live doing a little number called "Mr. Softee" [nooooo comment] where the girls had some pretty interesting moves. I was largely an  idiot  in those days and of course there's absolutely no accounting for taste. We were all thirty-something once. So the only defense I have 25 years later is to repeat Clint Eastwood's well worn line from The Unforgiven: "I ain't like that no more." As far as mea culpas go, it's a hopeful start. Hopeful in a hopeless sort of way. Because we all know where these kind of protestations end up: we are like that. Exactly like that.

I've been reading Pascal again, which among theological couch potatoes counts as an extreme sport.  But what occurs to me is that if Kid Creole--decidedly not a pneumatic kind of guy--can figure out that elevators go down as well as up, there may still be hope for the rest of us. Of course, the problem with the elevator of human depravity is that there is no bottom floor. So whatever you may hear about  "touching bottom",  fuhgeddaboudit. However low you think you can go, there's always a button on the elevator marked "L" for lower.  I wish I could tell you I was speaking objectively, but sadly these are empirical observations gleaned from years of one man behaving badly.

I still find it astonishing that folks don't get this. The fact that I am still astonished they don't get it only goes to show how badly my depravometer needs recalibrating. Dr. Samuel Johnson once observed that "Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world." Perhaps that is true. But it is also possible that the old men of this world are right. 



 Acme Depravometer
badly in need of recalibration

Somewhere lost in the distant fog of time there was an event that makes sense of all this. It's called The Fall. "Now I know what you're thinking". [Another great Eastwood line.] There's a Jansenist somewhere in the woodpile [or if you're really Protestant, a Calvinist]. And, by golly,  you'd be right. The worst sin these days appears to be having latent Augustinian "tendencies".  Well this old man is coming out of the closet. I believe in the fall of man. And three cheers to St. Augustine for really sticking it to us.



Parachutes?
We don't need no stinking parachutes.

Leaving aside the account in Genesis 3, you know, the verse that begins "Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made..." And leaving aside Kid Creole, Albert Camus, Arthur Schopenhauer, Voltaire and other assorted secular skydivers. Leaving aside Psalm 51 ["Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me." Ps 51:5] and all of St. Paul in his first chapter of the epistle to the Romans [I love St. Paul. Not only are we sinners, we're stupid, blind, dumb-ass sinners.], there is still--by the grace of God--the very real possibility we can "get it":  "it" being a general outline of just how wickedly nutters we really are. There are, after all, only 2 directions an elevator can go.

Since I am waxing cinematic today, I am reminded of the scene in A Clockwork Orange where the protagonist Alex,  about to undergo moral "re-conditioning" under the Ludivico technique, is found by the prison padre--a smarmy Anglican if there ever was one---reading a Bible in the prison library. The padre compliments him on his choice of reading material. The genially unregenerate Alex nods seraphically to the padre as he continues to fantasize about flaying Christ as one of the Centurions at the crucifixion. So much for prison ministry. 

The problem with the fall of man is that no one sees it. We practice what Pascal calls "diversion". "Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things." Or as Voltaire put it: "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

I think I have blathered long enough for today.

So think about these things next time you push "L" on an elevator or--God forbid--read The Song of Solomon with anything less than a chaste heart.

Pax Christi

 

"I ain't like that no more."



"Me either."










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