What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God!
– Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2

Can you have too many angels?

Man is a spiritual being, blessed with reason, born with a mind that knows right and wrong, gifted by the grace of God with a heart that’s capable of almost infinite love, and a soul that can know God himself. Whenever and however it was we came to this state, we are the beneficiaries of a special miracle as great as the very miracle of life itself.

We inhabit a Universe of majesty and cataclysm. Through an infinitesimal crack between death by fire and the infinite wilderness of frozen sterile worlds we have infiltrated ourselves into this awesome, harsh and beautiful place.

We understand we inhabit a universe containing within it forces of immense creation and destruction, magnificent and beautiful, but insensible and indifferent. We see the imperfection in our own natures and dimly comprehend what they are meant to be.

With acute sensitivity, we perceive the suffering of ourselves and all living things, caused by our own flaws, or by unfeeling natural forces. Against these we hold up the revelation we hold in our hearts of a state of perfect being.

The gap between the two can seem so cruel.

Man longs for perfection and love. But rather than grieve over the absence of these spiritual blessings, shouldn’t we see our very awareness of this gap of this need to be the greatest spiritual gift of all?

A baby is baby is born with a heart tuned to love. A child brought up in an environment with abundant love will want for no moral teaching.

Can you have too much love?

We stare upon the works of ancient Man — great constructions like pyramids and megaliths — and call these things ‘Wonders’. But what is there to wonder about them. They were made by Man. Blessed by infinite imagination, he imagines a particular project, studies how it ought to be done, then does it. Why does that surprise us?

It would be pretty surprising if they were constructed by monkeys.

Why do we look upon mere constructions and contraptions with wonder, but so often regard our fellow Man as if he is a beast. ‘There are too many humans in that country’ some say, like a farmer discussing grazing livestock.

This is one of the pernicious lies that follow from Darwinism, that men and women are somehow just very smart animals. I don’t dispute the general outlines of the evolutionary process as, but there is very little philosophical truth to be derived from this mundane theory.

In some respects, it is a easy mistake to make for a higher animal, because of the effect we have on the animals. Man is so full with the gifts of heart and mind, that they seem to overflow his being and fill the creatures around us. Our pets learn love and loyalty from us. Some curious monkeys even learn language from us.

Even the inanimate objects we use start to seem alive.

This is as it should be. This is part of our mission here, to rule fondly over nature.

And we do it well. We have a natural desire to care for beast and plant. The kept tigress trusts her keeper but not the males of her own kind. We make homes for the untamed beasts by protecting the wild and beautiful places. We landscape our cities and suburbs into beautiful gardens, rarer and richer even than the rainforest.

An old lady tends the roses and puts out a bowl of milk for the cat.

There can never be too many men and women in the world.

Man is a spiritual being.

Just like an angel.

Can you have too many angels?

(cross-posted in littletinsoldier.net)

Christianity is built upon Faith and Reason. How can an atheist talk of Reason? Atheism is built on solipsism (the refusal to admit anything beyond one’s own perceptions) and dogmatic materialism.

Only true religion confronts the realities — Soul, Thought, Spirit, our spiritual reaction to the world, the exceptionality of Life, the miracle of Man and his transcendent spiritual nature, Love, Art.

Athesim just says: it’s all mechanical, it’s an illusion, it’s just an evolutionary adaption, it must be something to do with sex, it’s all rocks and dust, the rest is just imagined… …those things don’t really exist.

Don’t exist? The atheist can’t comprehend it, so it doesn’t exist? Is that Reason?

It’s as far from Reason as a stubborn child is from advanced mathematics.

We Christians may not be able to explain everything, at least not adequately — and particularly for those who dislike Mystery — but at least we have Reason with our Faith, and we see the things that are, and seek to understand them as they are.

We don’t just brush it under the rug because we can’t hold it in our fingers or grind it under our boot-heels.