This is the first installment of a four-part series, where the first piece will cover the innate human desire for the divine; the second the contemporary attempts to usurp divinity for oneself seen in Transhumanism and New Age Spirituality; the third, Christ the Way to Divine Life; and in the fourth I will attempt some solutions for cultural renewal and ways of fighting back against the encroachment of the transhumanist’s dystopia.
This past winter, at my previous job bartending, a man remarked, in passing, "there isn’t a person on this planet who is happy.” This remark was not meant to be engaged in conversation and yet I have reflected on it for months now.
The comment came from a man who quite clearly is himself not happy, whose flights from his misery he wore on his sleeve. He has tried (of his own admission) his fair share of the thrills this world can offer, but, it seems, to no avail. He turns regularly to another numbing agent: a Manhattan is this man’s drink of choice to escape, but for a short while, from his own unhappiness. Better success at that, to be sure, after he has had his usual three of them; a plenty-sufficient amount of alcohol to drown out the sorrows of the human heart. But I do not knock this man. In fact, I somewhat admire him—not for any of his escapades, nor for his drinking habits, but for the simple fact that this is a man who knows the human condition and recognizes it within himself. This is a man who knows that to be human is to inherit a void in the soul, a void out of which arises deep feelings of misery, loneliness, and alienation. Many people turn to drink to try to numb the pain issuing from this mortal wound, but few really recognize why they do it. Not so with this man. Here, at last, is a man who actually knows why he drinks. How rare is a man such as this!
When he remarked that no man is happy, I thought about pushing back. I have met plenty of genuinely happy people! Among them were many of the Missionaries of Charity, the Order of religious sisters founded by Mother Teresa; the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, an Order of disciples of St. Francis of Assisi; the Benedictines of Nursia, Italy, an Order of monks following St. Benedict; several diocesan priests faithfully following Christ; and many lay members of the Church who have earnestly sought—and found—the Lord. In these men and women there is a happiness that rises up from the depths of the soul as easily and irresistibly as water rises from the spring. And neither content nor able to contain that living water within themselves, it is as if the happiness of these people is contagious, pouring itself forth, to those around them. These are people who radiate from their souls an exceeding joy of which this world knows nothing, people with that peace in their hearts which surpasses all understanding. These are saints in the flesh—images of the living God who breathes forth His own life in the depths of their hearts.
But I did not push back. My lips stayed sealed. Why? If these people I have met truly are happy, it would seem unjust to not let this man know that happiness on this earth is possible and I have witnessed it. Indeed, my silence seems criminal. What I realized in that moment, though, is that I did not want to deny the human misery that this man had come to know. I could not deny the human condition. Even the saints that I had met would not deny the human condition of misery, as if they themselves were exempt from it.
If I objected to this man and told him of the true happiness that I had seen with my own eyes, and if he took what I said in good faith, things could go one of two ways: either he could think me naive—these people appeared happy, but were not actually so; or he could believe that these people were in fact happy but conclude as a result that these people must somehow be different by nature from the rest of humanity—they must somehow not be susceptible to the human condition. If the former, then the conversation ends there. I cannot convince the man by words alone that the saints I have met are genuinely happy. He would need to meet them for himself. If the latter—if he believed these people were happy but concluded that they must be built differently than others—the conversation would of necessity take some time and much depth, and the man was already walking away from the bar to join the rest of his group and enjoy his Manhattan. So I held my peace; it was not the time to speak.
But let us suppose that the man was not on his way out of the room with his drink, and that the circumstances were opportune for speaking. And let us further suppose that when I told the man about these living saints, he believed me, and believed that they were truly happy. What then? How does one explain to this man that these people I told him of were by nature just like him and I, that they were no different, all too susceptible to the human condition of misery, and yet that they possessed a happiness not seeming to belong in the realm of possibility for life on this earth?
Let us start by affirming that their happiness does at first glance appear almost inhuman to the eyes of the flesh. It appears that they are not like the rest of us. But the saints themselves always readily admit that they are no less human. Indeed, if they appear different from the rest of us, it is not because they are less human but because they have become more human. It is the saints who show us what it truly is to be a human being. They are not the exception to the rule—they are the rule—and it is we ourselves who fall short of the rule. This bears explanation.
Most of us today have no issue acknowledging that some people can be, in a sense, less than human. Think of serial killers and psychopaths. Their manipulation and brutalizing of others is decried as inhumane, and of course it is just that. When one acts in an inhumane manner, one becomes less human, more inhuman. These people remain human at their core; let us not go too far with this thought—a human being cannot become other than a human being, the wishes of the transhumanists notwithstanding. To admit this is to admit that human nature is a real thing. But human nature, though possessing an internal coherence and stability, is not an entirely static reality. Human nature is also dynamic, entailing an internal living force which produces changes in one’s being. This dynamism is manifested in the effects that one’s actions have on the soul. A person can become warped through evil actions—they can become more inhuman through inhumane acts—but so too can a person become more truly human by good acts.
If we accept this—that a person, while always remaining essentially human, can become more or less human—then what we are in fact saying is that human nature possesses a telos, an end or goal, a good and a flourishing toward which it is oriented. When a person acts in opposition to his own nature through evil actions, we say that he is lacking something of what it means to be human—think again of serial killers or psychopaths, whom we know and acknowledge to be lacking something essentially human, whether that be conscience, remorse, or something more. Likewise, when a person habitually acts in accord with the good toward which his own nature is oriented, he flourishes and becomes more human. Let us flesh this out a bit.
Human nature, as we have said, has a telos, an end or a goal. That goal is happiness—not as a mere emotional state, but true, abiding, deep fulfillment—true happiness which will always be accompanied by a deep sense of joy and peace. On a psychological level, happiness is the natural result of the possession or attainment of goodness; joy is the delight, the sweet taste, of possessing the good; and peace is the security of being rooted and at home in the good.
There is no human being who does not want to be happy. Indeed, because human nature has happiness as its telos, we cannot but desire to be happy, because it is in our very nature to desire it. Every action of ours is done in an attempt to gain happiness by doing what we perceive as our good. Everything we do, we do because we think it will in some way make us happy. Even when we seek mere fleeting pleasures—think of a drug addict willing to sacrifice all he has on the altar of the rush of one more hit of euphoria—we seek them because we think that, at least in the short term, they will lead to happiness.
But the example of the drug addict shows us that what someone perceives as a good which will make him happy does not in fact have to be a good thing, and does not actually have to make him happy. All too often we perceive only apparent goods, and we achieve only fleeting emotions which simulate something of real happiness. As Saint Paul says, "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Rom 7:19). Not all that glitters is gold.
We always desire something to satisfy us: food, drink, sex, fellowship, warmth, and a myriad of other pleasures and goods. We want something, we aim at it, we get it, and it partially satisfies for a short time. But then we begin the whole process again, we aim at something anew, and try to achieve more satisfaction. We are never completely satisfied by any one particular thing. And this, for a very important reason--because our desire is infinite. Were our desire finite or limited, we could be completely satisfied by achieving what we sought. But we are never satisfied; our desire always rebounds for another thing, and this process never ends, because the desire itself is infinite. The human will, then, has an infinite capacity for desiring, because the will itself is a desire for the infinite. No finite thing will quench the thirst of the will; only an infinite object, an infinite and unlimited good, is capable of fully and completely satisfying the will.
The will is a desire for the infinite good, and as such it cannot but seek it. Even when we aim at some particular, limited thing--a meal of food to satisfy our hunger, conversation with a friend to satisfy our need for fellowship, or whatever it may be--the will is always seeking the infinite in these things, because it is seeking complete fulfillment. But it will never get it in these things, and we know it. Yet even though we know that, we cannot but help to try to achieve it. We always aim anew and long for complete satisfaction, though we know no particular, finite thing will give it to us. The drug addict is not so different from the rest of us, for we all hope--we cannot help hoping this!--that maybe this time, at last, I will be satisfied and at rest with this hit of pleasure or goodness that I now want. This is the secret aching of the human heart in each desire it aims to fulfill--it always seeks after the infinite, the source of goodness itself, in each particular good that it wants.1
Thus far our investigation has proceeded along the lines of psychology and philosophy, but these have taken us about as far as they can. We must now go up higher, we must hear what theology has to say, no matter how foreign and distasteful theology has come to be to our modern sensibilities.
Christian theology says that there is indeed a source of goodness, and this source resides in God Himself as the wellspring of goodness, for God is purely and infinitely good. Only in God does goodness find an ultimate home and center. Every individual thing that is good partakes of His own goodness, participates in it, as each drop of water emanates from the spring. He is the fountain and wellspring, and in desiring any particular good our will is always secretly desiring a living contact, a communion, with Him, its source. Our will desires the infinite, and only in God can it find that.
What this means is that the will itself is a desire for God--an implanted longing, an innate and immutable attraction, a deep-seated draw to the One who alone can satisfy it. As Saint Augustine said, "You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it rests in You." God has made us for Himself, not in the sense that we are His playthings, but for in the sense that our nature itself, our very being, is drawn toward and longing for Him as its ultimate resting place. Our telos, our end or goal, is God Himself. The human being is a being made for, directed toward and longing for, substantial contact and union with the living God.
One may disagree that God is involved in any of this, of course, if one does not think that God exists. But what one may not rationally disagree with is that the human being has an ineradicable desire for the infinite. Were that not the case, as we said, the human being could be satisfied by finding some particular, finite good. The fact that we are not satisfied by any one finite thing but must always rebound to seek the next thing testifies to an infinite capacity for desire which can only be satisfied by the Infinite itself. Jean Paul Sartre, a famous and very influential atheist of the last century, agreed with this much.2 But he used it for a different conclusion.
Sartre saw that we have a desire for the infinite and he thought that since God does not exist, no such Infinite exists either. What he concluded from that was that human beings were absurd. And he meant it deeply. If God does not exist as the Infinite for Whom our very beings long, then human nature is irrational and absurd to the core, because we are pointed at something which ultimately does not exist, which means we are pointed at nothing at all. Our very nature is delusional.
Existence itself is absurd then as well—the world and everything in it has no inherent meaning or purpose if there is no Creator. It is all, at bottom, void and empty--we are standing over nothingness, over a meaningless abyss, because there is no ultimate reason for the existence of anything, and no reason for existence itself. Sartre felt the deep misery, loneliness and alienation that issues from the void for the Infinite in the depths of the heart--he understood the human condition--but since he believed that God did not exist, he concluded that we must make our own meaning in life; we must strive upward from the pull of the abyss to invent ourselves according to our own desires. In other words, we must construct our own world of meaning, we must decide for ourselves what it means to be a human being, we must build a world made in our own image. Do we not hear in this the dominant philosophy underlying much of the Western world today?
We are faced with a choice, then. Is our very nature and being absurd? Is our existence itself absolutely meaningless? The world today emphatically says yes. That yes is behind the desire to see ourselves as a tiny speck of earth in a vast cosmos which cares nothing for us and has no awareness that we even exist.
That yes is behind transgender ideology, which says that we can be whatever and whoever we want to be merely by declaring our own will to be it. It is behind the belief that absolutely random forces of an evolutionary process brought about human beings without ever having them in mind or aiming toward the goal of their creation. And it is behind a vast array of other phenomena and beliefs we encounter today.
The testimony of humans throughout all of history, up until our very recent age, answers differently. So too does common sense. And so too does the Christian story.
Christianity tells us that God has made us for Himself, and that is why we cannot but desire the Infinite. And it also tells us why we feel such a deep void within the heart, giving rise to misery, loneliness, and alienation. The void is the result of the Fall, a rupture of a heart-to-heart communion with God. This rupture of communion leads to loneliness, it makes us lose a sense of belonging and so we feel alienated, and it leads to a misery which is the result of a lack of the very life of God flowing through our hearts.
Prior to the Fall, there was no misery, loneliness, or alienation, for the heart was filled with the grace and presence of God. And Christianity tells us that we can have that back, beginning in this life, if we only turn back to the Lord. For the Fall is not merely a story or an event once in time, it is a reality still present at each moment. The Fall is not some static event; we have fallen indeed, but we are still falling in each moment--it is a dynamic, downward spiral rather than a once-and-done thing back in time. And that is why we need conversion, literally a "turning around," again facing the one we are falling away from, that His radiant glory may dispel the darkness that has clouded our souls. Prior to the Fall the heart was a home for God, a space filled with His presence. But the Fall, since it wounded and emptied the heart, opening up a deep chasm, has itself become the occasion for an even greater inflow of God's Spirit and Life into the heart than existed prior to the Fall. This is why Saint Augustine, meditating on Adam's sin, exclaimed, "O happy fault!"
For the saints, the human condition of misery is what propels them toward God, whereas for most of us our misery is a springboard from which we launch ourselves, in a thousand ways, away from God.3 We tend to flee from deep feelings of misery, whereas the saints do not. They do not flee from it, but instead allow themselves to feel it, and then run right through it toward the only One who can heal it. The wound remains, but they do not try to cover over a mortal wound with a thousand bandages, as the rest of us do, frightened to death of the void which pierces all the way down to the heart. Instead, they go to the Divine Physician, who pours out the healing balm of His Spirit, filling the heart with His very Life.
This is the full-fillment which all of us seek—to be fully filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit, the very Life and Love of God. This is the happiness and peace that our being longs for—a union with the fountainhead of goodness, where we may taste and see that the Lord is good,4 and know the joy of possessing eternal Life.5 The saints on this earth are witnesses to these realities. They are full of the grace and presence of God, full of the Holy Spirit, as they drink from the divine wellspring and taste the sweetness of the Lord.6 This union with God is the source of their happiness, joy, and peace.
As the telos of the acorn is to become a fully mature oak tree, the telos of the human being is to reach union with the living God, and in this union to be transformed into the likeness of God. As Saint Athanasius said, “God became man that man might become God.” How high of a calling we have! For we have been called to participate in the Divine Life.7
There are many today who wish to become divine, but to do so through their own means—to grasp at equality with God through technological power, as seen in transhumanism, or to claim to already be gods, as seen in New Age Spirituality—rather than through grace. This is the same move that Adam made when he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden—the temptation is as old as sin, and it is doomed to fail. It is to this topic that we will turn in the next part of our series.
“Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” by U2 is a song all about this.
So did Bertrand Russell, another renowned 20th century philosopher and atheist, who said: "The center of me is always and eternally a terrible pain - a curious wild pain - a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite."
Reference here Louis CK on Youtube: “embrace your loneliness,” describing this flight (though with some crude and explicit language).
Psalm 34:8 “O taste and see that the Lord is good!
Happy is the man who takes refuge in him!”
John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”
John 4: 7-14 There came a woman of Samar′ia to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samar′ia?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
St. Paul, Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”