December 31, 2005
Praiseworthiness
By William
F. Buckley
In this season we are encouraged to express our reverences. Not
as specifically as on the Fourth of July, or on the birthdays of
national leaders passed on. It is something of the human disposition,
if not exactly to doubt, at least to be patient of doubt. Skepticism,
it is sometimes called, and we are urged to reflect that skepticism
brings on curiosity; curiosity, an alteration of accepted ways and
of accepted solutions. It was dissatisfaction with the heavy traction
of sled over ground that brought the wheel.
Continued
impatience with physical actualities harnesses man's efforts to
overcome them. We accepted the immutability of the laws of gravity
even when we discovered means of defying them in flight. But we
do not attempt to repeal gravity, to which -- this being the lesson
of the season -- we liken patriotism. The love of country. Patriotism
can attenuate, and defective patriotism isn't instantly punished.
But we can, and should, detect it when it rises to the level of
a challenge to the great moorings of life, as when one hesitates,
on our country's holy days, to pay obeisance to what we have.
A recent
issue of Time magazine speaks of iconoclasm on the subject
of Joseph of Nazareth. What do we "know" about him,
never mind that we revere him as the husband of Mary and the custodian
of the Christ child? Not much, is the answer to that question.
Columnist Bill Toland plays it out further: "Joseph's appearance
in the New Testament was practically a cameo walk-on: His death
was never recorded, his age was never certain, and John's gospel
barely mentions him. Our knowledge of the carpenter father is
so limited that we are not certain whether he even attended the
birth of Jesus or, as some artists have imagined it, whether he
napped through the whole event."
The language
here betrays the lure of impiety. And it is a cognate temptation,
in dealing with figures in the secular world. Sometimes there
are cameras on hand to egg skepticism on. No one can ever question
the truth of it, that sometimes President Reagan's eyes closed
at high theatrical moments in history. We cannot doubt that Thomas
Jefferson wrote the great pieties expressed in the Declaration
of Independence, and died owning slaves.
What irks,
and even grieves, is when the motives of the commentator are detectable
as agents of greater designs than merely to touch on amiable eccentricities.
The writer who wonders out loud whether Joseph slept through the
birth of Christ is fondling a skepticism that seeks not so much
humanizing, as desanctification. Time magazine reports
on the shifting views of Joseph over time. He was initially seen
as "the chaste caretaker," but it was not long before
he was portrayed as "the alienated cuckold." In the
late Middle Ages he became "the adoring protector ... the
paternal model for what would eventually be called the nuclear
family," and now he is the "modern-day evangel,"
a "lunch-pail hero not born to holiness but who, by his hard-won
and steadfast belief, finds a role in salvation."
It has to
be true that reverence discourages trivializations, and that to
consent to such as have recently been traded about Joseph encourages
an exploration of the meaning of impiety. In some societies, impiety
was punishable by death. The thinking, most directly expressed,
was that the society's gods would take offense at slights and
punish them by corporate displeasure, for instance the visitation
of a plague.
Socrates
was condemned to death for impiety, for putatively disregarding
or offending the Athenian gods, whose displeasure the judges would
not tolerate, let alone court. It is rather a pity that Socrates
gave impiety a good name, Socrates being Socrates, his accusers
being philistines. (A respectable case can be made justifying
the sentence given to Socrates.)
But impiety
is not merely the violation of the command against taking in vain
the name of our Lord. It is also the denigration of holy things,
and not only those which are housed with altars and organs. To
mention the saints of modern liberty without any sign of appreciation
is an impiety that casts doubt on one's care about freedom, and
the deference owed to man because he is God's creature.
A retreat
from the lure of doctrinal skepticism tells us about the long,
effective reach of human grace. The scholar Howard Edington, who
is also a Presbyterian minister, is quoted at the end of Time's
feature on Joseph. Edington wrote, "Joseph took God's son
into his heart, thus discovering a purpose for his own life within
the greater purposes of God." Then Edington concludes, in
words many Christians might echo, "My prayer is that you
will do the same."
Copyright
2005 Universal Press Syndicate
