To die from a broken heart.

"Deus caritas est" we are informed in Masses on Sunday. Furthermore, back in the 80s and 90s people would proudly hold signs at sporting events that, rather than coming up with clever acronyms for ESPN, would have simply John 3:16 written on them. "God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son. That whosoever should believe on Him, should not perish but have everlasting life."
What a powerful message that is. I sometimes wonder how it was that God the Son was able to endure all that He did. For our sins He was nailed to the cross. For our iniquities he was wounded. By the very hands of a man whom Jesus forgave, his side was pierced by a spear. To the two robbers, men rightfully convicted of their crimes, Jesus told them to "be of good cheer," for they would "be at [His] right hand in paradise [that] day." He asked for forgiveness for the very men who had crucified Him. Barth tells us that Jesus' death reconciled all men, that the Jews, who had been God's promised people, were now joint heirs with the Gentiles in the Kingdom of God. Von Balthasar tells us that in His death His true empathy and love is shown as He took upon himself the greatest of all human suffering, willingly.
But I wonder what God thinks when He sees one of His people fall? I wonder if God can experience a broken heart? Did the Father ache to see the Son crucified in Golgotha? Did the Fall cause the Father to weep? Was the flood just rain water, or was it God weeping for the state of humanity?
I realize in exploring this question, I am openly granting to God a very human-like demeanor. And why shouldn't I? Are we not made in God's image? Athanasius even attests that we are made in God's likeness. Therefore, when we feel sorrow and heartbreak, is that not a sample of the kind of heartbreak that God must feel? I feel that this is the case.
Victor Hugo so poetically writes "There will be more joy in heaven over the tears of one repentant sinner than the white robes of a hundred good men." The power in this sentence is overwhelming. What good is the Christian if he can only get the attention of the 99 sheep? The 99 already will do good. The 99 are fine by themselves. It is not for the righteous that we should seek blessings, but for those who are lost.
We live in a loveless little world where hatred, greed, and envy abound. Let us reach out with open hearts and loving embraces to those who are in most need of a loving word, or a kind hand. If God is love, and we worship the very same God, than love should be our motto and our main virtue. We must show the world the true Christian spirit by our good will. A favorite hymn of mine states in the refrain, "And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they'll know we are Christians by our love."

Humanum veritatem videre

Terence once said, "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto," or "I am a human: I consider nothing human to be alien to me." Generally speaking, I try to take the opposite approach.
As a Christian, or at least someone who takes Augustine's view on Original Sin very seriously, I tend to view people as scum unless they redeem themselves. I've written here plenty of tirades against what we do to ourselves as people. The human condition is not one which I am thrilled to claim, most of the time. However, I do see all around me hope for a better future. I see people who are genuinely interested in making the world a better place, rather than just making a buck. I see Nietzsche's "will to power" ideal being broken by many selfless men and women.
However, this is the exception to the rule, by and large. I do not consider most human beings to be genuinely philanthopic or amicable in general. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the human race, I just think that the human part needs to be transformed.
Enter Existentialism. I always thought it was weird that such a devout Christian as Kierkegaard would be considered the father of a movement that spawned Nietzsche, one of the most famous (or infamous) antichristians in history. But what I've come to realize is that these men who are lumped into this movement all share is a common ideal to change our lives or at least perspectives to be more than we are. For Kierkegaard it's his "knight of faith" in Fear and Trembling. For Nietzsche, it's his "ubermensch" in Thus spake Zarathustra. They both emphasize overcoming the base human to become something greater, something that sees beyond the disguises and false images we so readily put before ourselves.
I guess this is what I hate about living here in Vernal. I hate that the people here refuse to reach beyond what they've been given.
I was in Park City over the weekend. Aside from being a more affluent community than most of Utah, it also boasts being more educated and more liberal. Summit County is one of the few counties (maybe 2 or 3) that votes Democrat consitently. While I was there, I was not only associating with people who are more educated than the averge Utahn, I was with people who are more educated than the average Park City resident because I was with Notre Dame alumni and students.
When I came back to Vernal, I actually didn't talk or associate with anybody outside of my family until today at work. And it was at work that I realized just how backwards people here in Vernal can be. Many of them are barely literate high school dropouts who make their living by destroying the environment in order to sustain our energy greed. But I realized that I look at these people not as humans, but often times as animals. This is actually inaccurate. I view animals with more respect for being more responsible with their ecosystem. After work, I realized this is a real problem for me.
Why is it that I look so far down my nose at these people? While it is certainly true that we have different political ideologies and our priorities are placed in different fields, we do share a certain amount of attributes that should force me to look more highly on them. We are all human beings. We share 99% of the same DNA. We all survive on the same basic biological processes and share the same resources.
This is even more significant from a Theological perspective. We are all God's children. He doesn't favor me over any of these other humans. I am not more special to God because I attend Mass weekly or pray nightly or write a blog that reflects my theological thoughts. No, if anything, being in this position means I have a responsibility that they do not have. I need to try to make them more aware of who they are and what they do. I need to try to educate them. I need to try to open their eyes, rather than shake my head at them.
This, then, is the conclusion I have made. We so often rule people out from being human. It's how we are able to fight wars. It's how we are able to enslave entire races. It's how we can still have lingering epithets that attack us based on the person we are rather than on the crimes we have committed. It's how we have such strong ethnic boundaries. We need to be as Terence and consider all humans to be human. We need to learn to see the true human, instead of our selectively chosen favorites. There should be nothing alien to us that is human.

Logos (parvae animae III ex III)

Now we come to my favorite part of the soul. The Logos. Logos is the word from which English words like logic, and every single ology comes. Literally, Logos means word, but it also incorporates in its definition all cognitive movement. So, apparently in ancient Greece, speaking and verbal communication was tied to thinking. How ironic that in today we often associate too many people as speaking without thinking.
The word Theology was originally translated not as the study of God, but as speaking with God. Thus, the logy part was not originally seen as studying. Similarly, we might view other sciences and areas of academic inquiry as dialogues rather than as "studies." Of course, this is not a fail-proof system. We can't call Biology and Zoology speaking with life and speaking with animals, respectively. In these instances, it is much more appropriate to define them as the study of life, or the study of animals. So, once again, we see again that even though Logos is speaking, it is tied with studying.
Logos is the highest function of the soul. Intellectual movement, to Socrates, is the greatest ability our souls possess. Logos is what gets us out of sticky situations, it's what prevents us from making rash decisions, and it's what advances us as humans and as a society. The Logos should reign in the soul over the Ethos and the Pathos, much as Plato's philosopher rules the Republic, over the protectors and the workers.
This is not to say that we should completely block out Ethos and Pathos, but we should make efforts to regulate them. Logos by itself in the soul is similar to a computer; soulless, emotionless and cold. We should have emotions. We should feel joy, sorrow, love, euphoria, dysphoria, emnity and all other emotions that we feel. However, we cannot let fleeting feelings regulate us as people. We must be able to differentiate between the good and the bad emotions and let our intellect regulate them. We should also embrace our loyalties. We can be religious, or patriotic, or devoted lovers. However, we should also not let the appeal to these attributes be unchecked by our own reasoning.
Unlike the Pathos and the Ethos, our Logos is not as appealed to by rhetoricians. If we want to be logically appealed to, we have to go to a library. We have to read academic journals, encyclopediae, and textbooks. We hear logical appeals from teachers, professors and tutors. We rarely see movies that appeal to us intellectually. If we do, it is not for entertainment value, generally it is for intellectual development. The documentary is the Logos' response to the drama of the Pathos. However, as movie sales show, documentaries never do as well as the action movie or romance playing at the same time.
The reason why we are not appealed to logically by rhetoricians is simple: it is not in their realm to appeal to us logically. A professor I had once told my class that in the ancient world there were three ways to tell somebody something they didn't know. There was rhetoric, which was what was convincing, philosophy, which was demonstrating, and theology, which was revealing. As shown by this example, the Logos' realm is that of philosophy. Rhetoricians, as such, do not try to convince people with concrete facts. Otherwise they would likely be scientists, and not rhetoricians.
Theologically speaking, Logos is the most highly valued part of the soul. Theologians of times past and present seek to talk about God in an academic fashion. St Thomas Aquinas, patron saint of philosophers, theologians, students and universities, spent his entire life devoted to demonstrating how being a Christian makes sense. Professors of theology in universities world wide teach students how to be a believer in the most academic ways possible. They teach us how to confront a world that increasingly relies on science and Logos to refute faith. Priests, as well, are trained not only theologically, but also philosophically.
But the most well-known use for the term Logos in the theological world is for Jesus. The opening verse of the Gospel of John read thusly: "In the beginning was the Word (Logos). And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Much theology has arisen from those few verses. In Mass, we call Jesus the Word made flesh. St Augustine told us that Jesus' relationship to the Father is that of the Logos. In this way, since God is pure action, and His action is brought about by His thought, then the Logos has been around since the beginning, and the Son has been with the Father from the beginning.
If we view this as the order of God, then we can see for ourselves that we should also make efforts to embrace our Logos over our Ethos and our Pathos. Furthermore, as God's Logos provides a way for all mankind to be saved, then perhaps it is our own Logos that will allow us to save humanity.

Ethos (parvae animae II ex III)

The appeal to the Ethos is partly one of the most shameful tactics that is widely used today, but also one of the most popular. I, myself, have appealed to the Ethos in some of my blog pieces.
The Ethos is the part of us that is who we are. It is our character, our morals, ethics, what we identify ourselves with and as. The word ethics is derived from Ethos. And our Ethos is called upon every day when we make decisions that demonstrate our loyalties and the groups with whom we associate.
Radio talk show hosts are some of the most Ethos oriented rhetoricians around. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage all call on their listeners to adopt certain beliefs and attitudes based on their political standing. Their particular brand of conservatism is recommended to all conservatives based on their identification as conservatives.
Patriotism too, is definitely an area of great Ethical appeal. We watch movies and read books about how great being America is. We justify our belacose actions by stating that those who don't like war are un-American. We have bumper stickers that tell us to support our wars and our corrupt politicians. Country artists tell us that putting "a boot up [terrorists' (or possibly just Middle Easterners')] ass is the American way."
Rhetoricians of ancient days did the same thing. King Leonidas appealed to the Spartans as Spartans to stand against the Persians. The Crusades appealed to Christians' sense of Christianity to wage war against the Muslims. Cicero himself often started his speeches with the phrase "Friends, Romans, country men" appealing to their national identity to attract their attention and sway their opinions.
Preachers and ministers today use Ethos as well. We rally upon people's sense of Christianity (which I myself have done), and ask them to do things unquestioningly because of this (which I try to avoid). When the phrase "as Christians" is used in a sermon or homily, we automatically feel duty-bound towards it.
But, this, of course, can have many negative implications. Last night, as I was speaking with Alexa on the phone, we discussed Evangelism and the many implications that have arisen with it. Many are the Christians who view themselves as Evangelicals and who unquestioningly follow the commands of their pastors. Jerry Falwell will say something like "as Christians we must prepare for the final days by preparing Jerusalem," and his congregation will send money to extremist militant Zionist factions for this exact purpose. Other congregations will protest anything that aids in the homosexual rights campaign because they're leaders tell them to "as Christians."
Truly, the worst part of Ethos is that it is mindless devotion. Pathos is served by our instincts and feelings, but Ethos is only defined by who we think that we are. As an American I might think that it is most important to support our battles. Even though it may not make sense to say that our soldiers who are in a completely foreign, far off country are fighting for our freedom, as an American I am appealed to in order to garner my support. My sense of Americanism is greater than my sense of logic.
Similarly, the question of ethics arose during the Englightenment. When Christianity lost its control of some peoples (the French most specifically), then on what authority should we follow the morals and ethics we have been taught to follow? Our sense of Christianity no longer applies, so why should we love our neighbor or do good to them who abuse us?
I think, as many philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Hume and Kant, that our sense of morals is not rooted in our belief, but in something greater.
Similarly, I think that we should not let ourselves be told to follow certain idealogies because of with whom we associate, but rather that we should apply more logic to our decisions and actions. If we truly identify ourselves as Christians, we should, in fact, follow the teachings of Jesus, but not without logical discussion and inquiry. Otherwise, we are liable to be swayed by any man or woman who claims to be an authority on Christian duty.

Pathos (parvae animae I ex III)

Humans have always seen themselves as more than simply bodies. We often talk about our social, psychological, emotional, and physical needs. We separate our souls from our bodies. In the Classical period, depending on whom you asked, you would hear a different set-up for who we are. The Romans saw us as corpus (body), spiritus (life-essence), and anima (soul). The Greeks devided who we are as people even further: pathos (emotion, and base feelings), ethos (character and morality), and logos (intellect).
The Greek divisions are still obvious in our common dialectic. We speak of logic, a purely intellectual faculty. We speak of ethics, those things that tell us who we are as people. And we use words such as sympathy (feeling the same), pathetic (something emotional), and telepathy (distant feeling).
Today, I should like to investigate the idea of pathos more fully.
As previously mentioned, pathos would be what we would label today as emotion. Ancient rhetoricians, and even rhetoricians of today, often appealed to pathos in their speeches. Orators appealed to the people's emotions, striking into them fear of their opponents, pity for themselves and pride for what the speaker is referring to.
The great Cicero often appealed to the Pathos of his listeners, conjuring up such stirring anecdotes that his audience, often the senate or other politicians, would feel compelled out of emotional duty, to side with him. After reading countless speeches about how evil and menacing Cataline was, it was obvious why the Cataline conspiracy was such a big deal in Roman history.
Similarly today, we are appealed to pathetically by our entertainment we enjoy. We watch a movie where a character faces insurmountable odds and comes out on top and we feel elation. No person back in 1976 who saw Rocky could have watched the dramatic ending without feeling inspired. Movies like Rudy, Remember the Titans, and Radio all make us feel a certain sense of euphoria and determination to fulfill our own possibilities. Stories such as Romeo and Juliet, Antigone, or Oedipus Rex, on the other hand, make us feel miserable and give us a sense of dysphoria.
Elementary, Middle and High Schools, corporations and other social groups hire "motivational speakers" who speak strictly to our pathos, inspiring us by giving us feelings of our own possibilities.
Similarly, in Ministerial circles, the pathos is commonly evoked (as are the ethos and logos, but more on those later). A priest, pastor or minister often times preaches sob stories, or inspiring tales to get us to make a change in our behavior. Does this work? Of course it does. Who, when reading about the faithful servant who worked all his life and felt unaccomplished was revered by large masses post mortem, or the disadvantaged child whose faith was rewarded, can help but want to be a better person?
Is this wrong? Should our sermons and homilies draw us to change based on our easily swayed emotions? Personally, I should think that we ourselves can make ourselves more immune to this kind of rhetoric. However, I do acknowledge that if the world is already driven by pathetically inclining people to adhere to one's specific ideologies, then those who are in the congregation are just as viable subjects for pathetic rhetoric as any other people.
So, yes, we are often swayed to be better servants because of our emotions and feelings. However, this is not wrong. In fact, I would argue that the tool of pathetic rhetoric is aptly fitted to reach out to those who are highly inclined to pathological suggestion.

Artificial Selection

I wonder if it crosses any body else's mind how far from nature humanity has strayed. I don't mean to say that we violate our basic instincts, but it is peculiar to note how certain characteristics found in the animal kingdom have been abandoned in our own species.
For example, clothing. It is peculiar enough that we adorn ourselves with artificial skin (but this can be attributed to the relative little amount of hair that we have and our ability to manipulate our surroundings to suit ourselves), but it is even more so that the style of our garb has changed so much. We always portray ancient man as wearing animal skins in unflattering fashions, a style which would ideally simply function as utility, and not as ornamentation. However, today, so many of our fashions serve so little purpose usefully, (such as high heels), but they work as natural attractive features.
Similarly, we've gone from emphasizing being well-fed to being nearly emaciated. We have gone from having normal-looking skin to considering excessively burned skin to be beautiful. I highly doubt that we would ever see a dog or a lizard voluntarily take on a diet to lose weight, or bask in the sun only in order to darken its color.
Of course there are a million other different examples of our deviation: procreation, recreation, relaxation, shelter, tool manipulation, commercial advancement, lack of survivability skills, and the increase of the importance of healthcare in order to prevent otherwise naturally occurring deaths.
It seems that there is good reason why we often differentiate between what is "natural" and what is "man-made" or "artificial." Man is, as the zoologists and biologists reassure us, an animal, but we are one that is so unique that we often don't consider ourselves as such. Over against the animal kingdom, we have a highly developed sense of morality, intelligence, and discipline, while we have very little stress on instinct, and base impulses.
Perhaps this is why the first chapter of Genesis states that we are made in the image of God. For if there is a God, what other shape could He be other than that of the one animal that is able to even comprehend the idea of a god?
Additionally, I think the reason why we have such strong faith is obvious at this point: every animal fulfills basic instincts for the sole purpose of furthering the species and balancing the ecological niche. Mankind has far surpassed the ability to "simply survive" and must therefore seek out a new purpose. So we find faith in God as a viable focus.
According to Aristotle and MacIntyre, mankind moves towards a specific purpose or goal. This is said in reference to our human ethics and morals. I think that in combination with the above stated conclusion, it is safe to assume as well that mankind's focus and goals are not truly in furthering the species, but rather in fulfilling our duty to a superior being.
Whether or not this seems accurate, it is also important to keep in mind that the human, though defined in Aquinas' time as the rational animal, in his normal life does not interact with the ecosystem as an animal normally would. We act as removed entities, independent of our specific ecological niche and place in the food chain.
In this, the 150th aniversary of Darwin's famous expedition, it seems quite applicable to note that despite our animal natures, we also have transcended the limitations and laws that bind every other creature in nature. Our destiny is not among the swine, but perhaps among the stars.

Sanctes immortales

I love epic. I know that's probably not surprising if you know me very well, but it's true. I loved The Oddysee, The Aeneid and Beowulf. I loved reading The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Teban Saga. The myths and legends of days of yore fascinate me. The heroes and demigods of lore have captured my attention. I suppose it's the grandeur and honor attributed to them. The human condition is very clearly manifested in the ways that Homer, Vergil and Sophocles shape their characters and story lines.
What seems more incredible to me is how they've lasted throughout the ages. Achilles, the fiercest warrior of the Trojan War, has given his name to a tendon in the body that was made infamous in his death. Ajax, another warrior, was given a constellation and a household cleaning product. Odysseus' name has become synonymous with voyages. Hector is a name still given to our children today. Paris is the most famous city in France and one of the most famous in the world. And we don't even know that all of these people actually lived, or if Homer was just fabricating an elaborate fairytale.
In the Christian World we have similar legends and great figureheads. These, though, are the Saints, and with the exception of Ss George, Joan of Arc and Michael, and others, were not generally warriors. In fact, the most notorious and blessed of our honored were those who gave their lives for their beliefs, not killed others for them.
But the idea of Saints has never been an easy one for me. In the old Greek polytheistic system, it was believed that mortals could become gods, like Hercules and Ganymede. Then once could pray to them, just as he would pray to Zeus, Hera or Athena. But as Christians, I have been uneasy about praying to Saints the same way that I pray to God.
Perhaps this is why, even after I was baptized, I have yet to lift a prayer to any Saint besides Mary, even my own patron. One of my mentors, and I would argue a chief catalyst for my conversion, Father Tom Gaughan, once told me that in praying to a Saint, we are not actually praying to the Saint as if he or she was God, but rather petitioning the Saint to send our prayers to God. This idea still didn't satisfy me. God is said to be no respecter of persons (Rom. 2:11), meaning that all men and women of all races, creeds, ethnicities and sexual orientations are all His children and He loves them all equally. Why, then, would a Saint's prayer be more valuable than the own prayer uttered from my very lips?
Then I realized something. At Mass, we all stand together after we recite the Creed and we lift our petitions to God. All people in the congregation repeat after the specific request "Lord hear our prayer." So, in our prayers, we ask for more people to pray for us, not because we think God will hear certain people's prayers more than others, but we believe in the power of prayer, and the power prayer has to bring people together. So we pray to the Saints in communion with them, to have the favor of all of God's people.
It is true that sometimes Saints become almost idolized, but when we understand first and foremost that, as the Muslims state "لا اللاه ال الله" (No gods but God), then we know that even if we pray to our Saints, we are not asking them to do what God will not, but only praying so that they can lift up their voices with us. Perhaps also, we should use the Saints as examples to us, just as Greek warriors of the Classic period looked to warriors like Achilles and Hector, we can look to the Saints for courage, for wisdom, for example and for a model how to live our own lives. If we need to know how to help the poor, we can look to St Francis. If we need to know how to grow in wisdom and knowledge, we can look to St Thomas Aquinas. If we need to know how to stand up for our faith in the midst of tyranny and intimidation, we can look to Ss Perpetua and Felicity.
In our faith, we have our own Epic heroes and heroines. In our faith we should look to them as great examples of living the truly Christian life.

On being jaded

Alexa and I tend to have hour and a half to two hour long conversations at night since she is currently two thousand miles away. Recently a lot of our discussions have been about what she deems as my extreme opinions. Admittedly, I harbor several opinions that are not only shocking, but far from main stream. However, it seems to me that in the course of my life, there have been many instances that have left me feeling far from comfortable with the world I live in.
I remember once hearing from my dad that some study showed that Conservatives, on average, were a lot more satisfied with their lives than were Liberals. I remember trying to come up with some kind of reason as to why the evidence there might be a little biased, but since then I've realized that it seems quite reasonable to me that it is the case that Liberals are less happy.
The cliche goes something like this, "Ignorance is bliss." This seems to me to be the case. Those who are happy with what they have and where they are tend to not have as many problems that they worry about and think about.
I remember discussing the issue of death with some people at a bar one night. I mentioned that it is morally impossible to kill another man without severely deranging one's mind in such a manner that he no longer believes that what he is doing is wrong. A quite drunken Penguin's fan who was celebrating their recent Stanley Cup victory replied that he knew a Vietnam War veteran who had told him that while fighting in the Jungles of Vietnam, it was impossible for them to kill the VC soldiers if they had looked them in the eyes. As long as they didn't look at the person and let themselves realize it was a person they were shooting at, they were able to do it.
My point with this little anecdote is this: When we are aware of what we are doing, it is impossible for us to do it a lot of times in good conscience. When Rachel Carson warned the country about DDT, we stopped using it. When Upton Sinclair wrote about the conditions at meat packing plants, Teddy Roosevelt established the FDA. When the plight of the Jews in concentration camps was made known, the world made up for it by establishing a homeland for them.
It is true that we can live our lives ignorant of what the world is really like and be ok with it. But once we know what's really going on, we cannot afford ethically to go back. Once we are aware that children in China, Bangladesh, and Malaysia work 13 hours a day for our benefit, in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are forced into prostitution, in Ethiopia and Kenya are struggling to survive, in South Africa are the orphans of AIDS, in other countries around Africa are forced to become soldiers and in Mexico, India the Philippines and countless other countries have to beg for their food, we can no longer look at our own children in the same light.
And even aside from all the suffering that people endure in this world, there are also the little dreams that we sometimes see die as we learn the sad truth. When we know that there are people who cross the border every day for the chance to experience what we have, it is a grim testimony to what we take for granted. When we learn that people are people, no matter how they were born, we have to learn anew what it is to be kind and live the Golden Rule. When we realize the carnage and destruction that we have caused so much of, we must learn in our hearts to atone for these things.
The fairytale life that we wish we could live is really only a dream, and the truth does not set you free, it only makes you obligated. However, I believe that when we die, we will not be judged by God based on what Sacraments we have had, or whether we had enough faith, but whether we executed the commandment to love our neighbor properly. And our love is demonstrated by what we do and how we help.

A sacrifice to be made

I hope to not offend too many people with the nature of this post. I've been thinking back on a lot of Christian apologists/theologians and their reasoning why Christianity makes sense.
In all reality, there does need to be some kind of explanation, because Christians have to answer to the question why we worship some guy who the Romans crucified two thousand years ago.
So the explanation usually goes that Jesus had to die in order to sanctify humanity once again. St Augustine said that humanity was stained with the sin of Adam, or original sin, and thus every one needed saving, no matter how good they are. This leads to the Christian emphasis on baptism and more especially the Catholic defense for infant baptism. Karl Barth re-emphasized Augustine's words and said that Christ was almost like a second Adam, but that His sacrifice by far overshadows Adam's sin. Athanasius said that Jesus had to die in order to reconcile us with God, and St Anselm said that a God-man needed to pay the price for our sins. Hans Urs von Balthasar said that Christ had to endure all things that humans endured in order to have lived a truly human life, including death.
All these men, I think, were right. It is true that humanity needs saving. However, I will respectuflly disagree with Barth and Augustine and state that there is a lot more than the fall of Adam that needs reconciling.
I think of where man is now, and where man has been before. We consider animals to be sinless, but this is because animals are innocent and stupid. We humans have gained great stores of knowledge, but what have we done with it? We possess the ability to destroy all life on the planet several times over. We have long histories of bloody wars, some lasting many, many years (the forty years' war and the hundred years' war, for example). We take away people's freedom and put them to work as slaves, or in internment camps, or traffick them, or put them to work in sweatshops. We take revenge for our perceived wrongs. We take more than we need, limiting how much others can have. We elevate ourselves above other people or debase ourselves below them. We steal, cheat, lie and take no heed for the damage we do.
And that's only what we do to each other. We also have many sins against nature. As the most intelligent of all species on the planet, we alone have the ability to help maintain the natural balance of the earth. But instead we build polluting factories. We kill off native species and introduce foreign ones. We spray pesticides and herbicides into fields, killing off naturally occuring life and poisoning the ground water. We deplete forests, ore reserves, oil fields. We drain wet lands to build mini malls. We clear out rain forests for cattle grazing. We take and take from the earth and never think to give back. Man is the only animal that can prevent ecological disaster, yet it seems that all we do right now is cause it.
So, while the weight of Adam's sin might be a heavy burden for Christ to bear, I think it is nothing compared to the many thousand times since then that we have damned ourselves as a species.
This, then, is why I am a Christian. I think with the damage we have done and the sins we have committed, it would take nothing short of a miracle, and no one else but God alone to pardon them all. If there's any hope for the human race, I think it came about two thousand years ago in the backwater regions of the Roman Empire.
And as a Christian, I think the command to help build the Kingdom is a very real command. And this command does not simply mean proselyting to the non-Christians, but living in a way that shows that we are willing to live without the sins that we have for so long embraced.

A product of our times?

Being as faithfully religious as I am, the question of the legitimacy of other faiths has occurred to me quite frequently. In fact, Alexa and I often discuss the ecumenical nature of faith, and the exact reason why I find Catholicism to be validated against this principle (Vatican II).
However, I would be remiss if I pondered these questions without asking the question: Are my beliefs truly as valid as I think that they are, or am I merely a product of Christianity's two thousand years of history and theology?
As it stands, that question is a very legitimate question, seeing as Christianity does only have two thousand years behind it and religion in general has been traced back at least five thousand years (and by the Old Testament standards, six thousand). If my beliefs about God become man only go back to the early Christians and theologians such as Athanasius, Origen, Jerome, Augustine and others, then what am I to say about those who lived before?
Not only that, but some of the most popular religions in the world predate Christianity by quite a long time. Buddhism has five hundred years on Christianity, while Hinduism has at least six hundred. Judaism can be traced at least another thousand years before Christ. Where does that leave those people? If we might state that the proof of Christianity's validity is in its longevity than what do we say about these faiths? Or what about Islam which is only six hundred years younger than Christianity?
Questions such as these give some people a reason to doubt their faith. Others claim that God did simply not reveal himself to these people. Some see other faiths as stumbling blocks and scandals in the way of Christianity (specifically those who read the Apocalypse of John literally).
However, I find my faith validated in various other places. As a bit of a Classics scholar, the Romans and Greeks fascinate me. Of course both of these nations worshiped a plethora of gods, and neither one of their religions have survived the test of time. But what seems peculiar to me is not their faith, but those who were not of their faiths.
One of my favorite philosophers of all time, Socrates, was accused of being an atheist. However, peculiarly, in nearly every dialogue I've ever read of his, he mentions deity, or Providence or some kind of reference to a God. Furthermore, in his Apology, Socrates talks at length about the spirit that always spoke to him. From a Christian perspective, a lot of Socrates' philosophy seems to mirror Christian thought (which is not surprising considering many of the Christian theologians and philosophers were trained in the Greek style). So I find some encouragement in Socrates' Christian-like thinking.
Furthermore, it seems to me that faiths such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam started more or less as national faiths. Hinduism, Islam and Judaism all filled in religious vacuums in the cultures where they started. Buddhism came around in a Hindu setting, but it migrated East to more accepting climes. Christianity blossomed in the Jewish region of the Roman Empire. Christianity had to fight against two strong religions, and yet still grew, even when it became outlawed in the empire, and Christians were killed for sport.
So it is that I have faith in the Christian faith. By this I mean not only that I have faith in the guiding principles of Christianity and in the Divinity of Christ Jesus, but also in the faith itself. I believe that Christians can relearn to love. I believe that Christians can relearn to accept others who are different and reach out to those marginalized by society. I believe that Christians can help the poor, protest war, and stand as real witnesses of the love that God gave us. We preach Christ crucified. A doctrine whereby we profess that God's mercy and love were so great that he forgave us all our follies. As Christians and followers of this God, it is our duty to show that Christianity's strength lies not in the power of its followers, but in their love.