Over at The Symbolic World, Christian Roy has written a fine meditation on the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor and the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima (both occurring, by Divine Providence, on August 6th.) In it, he offers a look at the profound contrast between the two events: one showing the Light of Divine Humility that can bring all things into unity, the other displaying the height of hellish human pride that (literally and figuratively) disintegrates everything.
What he says about the creation of the Atom Bomb engendering colossal human pride is certainly true. However, there is one other detriment, less visible but no less real, that has come with it: Despair.
Everything that has happened since those fateful days in 1945 makes sense when seen through the lens of a world terrified out of its mind and doing everything it can to hide from itself from that fact. It is not hard to see why: how do you go on living as you always have if you and everything you know and love can be annihilated in an instant at the push of a button halfway across the world?
Why would you feel loyal to the institutions and traditions of your nation if that nation’s government can no longer keep you safe? Why follow the rules of a religion you are not sure is true if your life could end tomorrow? Why not just live in the moment and do what makes you feel good (whether sex, drugs, social activism, raging against your parents, ect). And if you are a religious leader, why not jettison all your old traditions in a vain attempt to hold on to what little influence you still have, and spend your remaining days in ministry as the cool grandpa rather than the stern father?
For myself, I reject this despair. Because I know that things that can be easily lost are all the more precious. Because I know that death could come at any time, in the atomic age as in any age since Eden. Because I know, through Jesus Christ and His Church, that the world will end in fire (atomic or otherwise) and that the only way out of despairing at the state of the world is to look forward to the next one. There, “when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
Reject Despair. Embrace Faith.
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