Eostre, besides being an Anglo-Saxon, pagan goddess of fertility is
also a Christian festival which happens to fall over the northern
hemisphere''s Spring equinox (which I don''t believe is a coincidence,
and was the appropriate time to give gifts of colourful eggs and tell
equally colourful stories of Eostre''s appearance in the shape of a
rabbit). Hence the adoption of the name Easter for the festival in
Christianised Europe.
I am largely indifferent to the use of the name, as Paul was to the use
of the names Zeus and The Unknown God in Acts 17. Easter, for the
Christian, falls over Passover and signifies the sacrifice, suffering
and death of Jesus Christ and, more importantly, his
resurrection. Not
his ''subsequent'' resurrection; the use of the word ''subsequent'' here
would appal me! Because this resurrection did not take place inside of
time space as if by some sequence of cause and effect. It is utterly
metaphysical.
Which brings me to the subject of this post.
Futility, I
think the
point of Easter celebrations is not to uplift biological
life (as
Eostre was), but to magnify spiritual, metaphysical life. Easter
actually calls to the mind the utter futility of biological life,
except where it leads to metaphysical life - and that is usually in the
realm we call ''morals''.
The purpose of Easter is to remind us that first births are not as
important as second births. That first deaths are insignificant
compared to second deaths. The Christian celebration of Easter is about
supernature, not suffering; it is about resurrection, not death. Paul
puts it quite well: Romans 8:18 "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” That is not a stoic statement.
Augustine said “Happiness is something mankind has
forgotten so completely that they do not even remember having forgotten
it... If it were possible to put the question in a common language and
ask all men whether they wished to be happy, all would reply that they
did. But this could only happen if happiness itself, that is, the
state which the word signifies, were to be found somewhere in their
memories.”
Easter is the true story designed to reach so far in and back as to
awaken the memory of The Ultimate Effect; which turns out to be a moral
one, or an ethical one. Easter finds its own ''equinox'' in our
understanding of the origins of
Morality.
CS Lewis - The Weight of Glory
“Almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”
One thing we can know for sure is that morality is not mere evolved
futility. There are more focused and gifted minds than ours that have
blunted themselves on the quandary of the origins of morality, but very
few of them hold that Ethics is an effect for which we can reason a
cause:
Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: "Metaphysics must precede, and is in every case indispensable to,
moral philosophy"
Schopenhauer in The Basis of Morality (which I am busy reading and highly recommend): "the
ethical basis, whatever it be, must itself attach to, and find its
support in, one system of metaphysics or another, that is to say, in a
presupposed explanation of the world, and of existence in general... of
the many lawful, approvable, and praiseworthy actions of mankind, only
the minority will be found to spring from purely moral motives, while
the majority will have to be attributed to other sources."
Plato "Do you think then it is possible to
understand at all adequately the nature of the soul,without at the same
time understanding the nature of the Whole, ie., the totality of things?"
So let''s say you rescue a little dove from the clutches of a cat; or
you turn down the offer of a ripped DVD; or you keep your paper and
don''t throw it out the window of your car; Is that futile morality? No,
it''s not, that''s what Easter tells us. Gladwell relates in The Tipping
Point that fixing broken windows and cleaning up graffiti transformed
New York.
Now here''s the important bit: The power of ethics to transform is not
in feelings of self-righteousness associated with moral action... It
has nothing to do with religious creeds (that is just smoke and
mirrors). It is the simple acknowledgement that you just know that this
is what you ought to be doing. It has everything to do with a
metaphysical connection, the subjection to an admitted divine
relationship... Immortality
Now we think that morals are there to somehow curb our passions... That
is not the case at all, and the object of Christ''s resurrection is to
show that to us; it is actually the opposite that is true:
CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory
“We tend to
think that our passions are too strong and that the purpose of our
faith is to sterilise them, neutralise them. When actually our passions
are far too weak, the purpose of our faith is to strengthen them, we settle for far too little.”
More summaries about the Futility