The Long Twilight

"The hand on the heart for the national anthem... and you and the Romans are the only ones to ever do that, so be very careful."

--Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill

A theological/philosophical/social post, so skip if you are just looking for the cute babies. :) Haven't had a second for a camera today.

This is a detail from a bigger picture called "Triumph of Death," painted during the most recent Dark Ages-- the ones that included the Black Death, among other niceties. I include it to show that even the people who lived during the Dark Ages thought that they were, well, Dark Ages.

The Dark Ages, referred to a bit more euphemistically as the Middle Ages, have been on my mind lately both because I've been reading a biography of Eleanor of Aquataine and because I've been viewing our recent progress here in the West with a troubling image of the last two centuries of Rome twiddling in the back of my mind. (How can something twiddle and be troubling at the same time? Not sure, but this does.)

Rome wasn't built in a day, and it didn't fall in a day either; it sort of slowly declined, whatever Gibbons wants to say. In Gibbons's famous opinion, Rome declined because the namby-pamby Christians took over and made it stop being such an effective military dictatorship. This may be true, in which case it was not the Goths but actually the namby-pamby Christians who took down the greatest military power the world had known since Alexander. In any case, Roman society was rotting, because Roman society was based on values that do not keep well--namely, civic pride ("Rome is awesome!"), monetary gain ("you make a little, I'll make a little, everybody wins"), and a sharp demarcation between the real people ("citizens") and the conveniently non-people ("slaves"). It had its other downsides too, of course, like the whole feeding religious dissenters to lions as public entertainment thing, but for the sake of discussion, let's just take the three attitudes I've listed.

Now I'm going to hit a sacred cow with a hammer and point out that Americans love to bash themselves. In a perverse sort of way, this is our version of civic pride ("America is horrible"). It's been an American tradition since at least the War Between the States to point out our deficiencies. Back then we usually compared ourselves to Europe, and now we generally compare ourselves to places like India or Tibet, but we still like to compare and come up short. (Christians are not immune to this, but by the grace of God we might compare ourselves to Scripture instead of other countries.)

So there's one Roman attitude we have, and it's a dangerous one; it makes people stay self-focused while feeling very self-righteous at the same time.

We are, of course, seeing the outcomes of our attitude toward monetary gain at the moment. "You make a little, I make a little, everybody wins" only works when everybody is also honest. The Bible has plenty to say about debt, swindlers, and rulers who make life rough on the poor, so 'nough said--go look it up in Proverbs yourself.

"Well," you are thinking, "at least we don't have slaves any more, so the third thing isn't happening." I would argue, however, that we have all sorts of categories for "real people" and "convenient non-people". The most obvious and heinous convenient non-people are, as I've written before, the unborn. However, there are other categories of people who fit the bill too.

We don't really believe that old people have anything to say about today's society; still less that a white, blue-collar guy who watches football and eats red meat might have anything to contribute to the discussion. We already know what he thinks, right? And anyway he probably didn't even vote for PBO. We don't think stay-at-home moms, especially if they chose to stay home, have much to contribute, being as how they're not self-actualized and all. And don't lets even get started on those fundamentalist Christians-- they can be counted on to be wrong.

So what's my argument, then? Do I expect the darkness to descend here within the next five years? Since only the Wicked Witch of the West has a crystal ball that actually works, I don't know. It's possible that America, the modern Rome, could fall quicker than her counterpart. After all, Rome lasted 800 years and spent about 200 years falling. We've had about 200 years, so proportionally our fall should take 50 years.

But I think we are in what you might call the long twilight. While this makes me sad for a country that has been at times truly great and that has always striven to do the right and noble thing (even if it failed), that's not really the biggest concern for Christians. For us, the biggest concern is whether we will let God light the coming Dark Ages the same way He lit the last ones-- with people copying and studying and reciting Scripture in the darkness like the beacons of Minas Tirith.

My simple suggestion, in case our fall is accelerated and the barbarians come a-knockin'? Memorize your Scripture now. You should be doing it anyway.

Miss Boo has just wakened early from her nap, so even tough there is more to this topic, I must go. I'll write more later about the actual Dark Ages.

Cheers,

Breanna