The Triumph of Triviality

We live, it seems to me, in the most curious of all ages: one that considers itself the most enlightened, the most progressive, the most emancipated from the shadows of superstition, while in reality it is sinking into a mire of triviality, distraction, and despair. Never has humanity been so convinced of its own cleverness, and never has it been so impoverished in wisdom.

Consider the spectacle. We can, with the push of a button, beam images across galaxies, split the atom, and manufacture the very organs of the body. Yet this same modern man, flushed with technological mastery, cannot manage the simple, ancient task of raising a child without fracturing his soul. He can extend life by decades, but not supply a single reason why it should be worth living. His genius is undeniable, but so is his emptiness.

The False Gods of Progress

Our age has rid itself, or so it tells itself, of superstition. We mock the peasants of earlier centuries for their trembling before altars and shrines. But look closely and you will see that we are as superstitious as any age before us. The idols have simply changed shape. Where once men bowed before carved statues, they now prostrate themselves before comfort, pleasure, and self-expression. The gods have new names: Technology, Self, and Progress. And their altars are everywhere, glowing from the little screens in our hands.

What is our worship but endless distraction? What is our devotion but the tireless pursuit of the next indulgence, the next novelty, the next “experience”? In our flight from God, we have made ourselves gods, and discovered in the process that divinity sits uneasily upon us.

The New Moralism

Even our moral life is a curious parody. Having declared sin an outmoded invention, we find ourselves consumed with guilt. Having abolished the thought of judgment, we tremble at every accusation that flies across the public square. A poorly phrased joke, a misstep in speech, a failure to conform—these bring down condemnations swifter and harsher than any sermon ever thundered from a pulpit.

We thought ourselves free from the tyranny of religion, but we have created a religion all the more ferocious for being godless. Instead of a merciful Father, we face an unblinking mob. Instead of absolution, we receive exile. Instead of grace, we have only grievance.

The Great Illusion

The great illusion of modern man is that he is the measure of all things. He imagines himself free, autonomous, self-created. But this very freedom enslaves him. He is “liberated” from the old moralities, and discovers only loneliness. He is “emancipated” from the burdens of faith, and finds only futility. He is “freed” from the fear of God, and becomes haunted by the fear of men.

The result is a world buzzing with noise, filled with activity, and yet bored to the marrow. A world where men chase novelty with the desperation of addicts, because in the silence they sense a question they cannot answer: what is all this for?

The Final Word

And yet, curiously, there is hope in this wasteland. For illusions, no matter how intoxicating, do not last forever. Men drink themselves dry at the fountains of pride and power, and still thirst. They burn themselves out at the altars of self and pleasure, and remain unsatisfied. When the wreckage of their gods lies before them, they sometimes at last come seeking the true and living God.

The saints of old said it well: without God, life is absurd. Our age proves them right more thoroughly than any sermon or tract could hope to do. For in our absurdities, in our self-worship, in our trivialities, the faint outline of truth flickers once more: that man is nothing, and God is all.

Perhaps that is the strange mercy of our times. When man has exhausted every illusion, when he has stripped himself bare with his own cleverness, he may yet stumble into reality—into the blinding but merciful light of God.