People love fairy tales. They never seem to fade from popularity. Despite the increasingly materialistic and rational world that we live in, fantasy is booming. Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings have all become cultural staples. Fantasy as a genre continues to dominate book sales and streaming platforms. It’s a strange thing, our fascination with the other-worldly. It’s a universally persistent desire that traces back to the beginning of humanity. From ancient mythology to modern Netflix epics, our fantastical infatuation has never faded. In many ways, Marvel superheroes have become the modern equivalent of the Greek pantheon. What is the reason for this unchanging attraction? Is fantasy actually important or is it just children’s entertainment? Today we examine three of the world’s greatest fiction writers and their answers to these questions.

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Perhaps you’ve heard of the “Seven Deadly Sins”. They are very scary sounding. Most people have the impression that the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins was a medieval scare tactic- something invented by the church to scare peasants with hellfire. Clear categories. Dramatic art. Fiery Sermons. Moral crimes that lead to damnation. The reality is much different. They originated much earlier than the medieval period, and they weren’t a scare tactic, but rather a navigational tool. They were a map of the mind and soul. So what are the Seven Deadly Sins? And what is the truth about them?

The Origin

In the 4^th century, there was a Greek monk from Pontus (modern day Turkey) named Evagrius Ponticus. He left the Roman world for the deserts of Egypt to pray and meditate. Educated and theologically trained, he studied under the Great Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus before embracing the ascetic life. In the solemnity of the desert, he began analyzing the inner life and identified eight recurring “logismoi”- destructive thought patterns that disturb the soul. For Evagrius, these were not merely moral failings, but spiritual and mental obstacles that block the mind from the divine and prevent pure prayer. These “logismoi” were later reorganized by Gregory the Great in the sixth century into the Seven Deadly Sins. So what are these seven sins?

1) Pride

Pride is the mind curved inward. It delights in superiority. The Proverb, “Pride goes before a fall”, is getting at Evagrius’s exact view of pride. It is blinding. It darkens the intellect and prevents you from connecting with anything outside of yourself. Few terms describe it better than this one (that almost certainly did not exist in antiquity)- Main Character Syndrome. It makes you incapable of humility, without which you cannot receive God. It isolates the soul from light.

2) Envy

Envy is sorrow at another’s good. The opposite of gratitude, it is a corrosive force. It is a poison that, similar to pride, turns you inward. It prevents you from being able to celebrate other people’s wins. As a result, it makes you disconnected from others. It turns empathy into resentment.

3) Wrath

The great agitator of the soul. Anger itself is not always evil, but when unjust anger takes root, it shatters inner peace. It is not only a destructive force to others, but to the self. It makes the mind noisy and eliminates the possibility of true contemplation, without which, connecting with God becomes impossible.

4) Sloth (Acedia)

Acedia is not laziness, but a kind of spiritual exhaustion. It is restlessness and disgust with prayer. It is the feeling a skeptical teenager gets when he is dragged to church by his parents- “what’s the point of all this stupid stuff?”. Nihilistic at its core, it is when the divine becomes dull and the world seems drained of meaning. It is the apathy that results from disenchantment.

5) Greed

Greed fixates the mind on possessions. It reduces everything to acquisition. Evagrius believed that this kind of obsession with material goods, necessarily breeds anxiety and discontentment, which cloud the mind. Greed makes the material ultimate, which misdirects ones focus from the true ultimate.

6) Gluttony

Gluttony is disordered appetite. It is not just excess, but obsession with bodily satisfaction. It anchors the mind in physical sensation. As greed is to acquisition, gluttony is to consummation. It is like a chain that keeps us entranced in the vision of our next meal and prevents the mental freedom and clarity needed for true prayer and connection.

7) Lust

Lust reduces people to objects of use. It replaces love with appetite. For Evagrius, lust scatters the imagination, fills it with images and makes the purity of the mind impossible.

The Commonality

All of these sins have one thing in common- they block our connection with God. They distort our perception.

Pride closes the heart to God.

Envy resents the gifts of God.

Wrath rejects the peace of God.

Sloth/Acedia neglects communion with God.

Greed substitutes wealth for God.

Gluttony prefers appetite to God.

Lust separates desire from God.

Evagrius believed that God was the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty. So to be enslaved by these sins, was to cut yourself off from goodness, truth, and beauty. Avoiding these sins was never about following some arbitrary rules set forth by a petty God wishing to entrap you and send you to hell. They were a guide to truly living your best life. A life in communion with God. A life filled with truth, goodness, and beauty. A deeply meaningful and purposeful life within the context of an enchanted world.

The Seven Heavenly Virtues

If these sins block communion, their opposites should restore communion. Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologica, explains that virtues are often the opposites of vices. Later medieval theologians simplified Aquinas’ reasoning into more memorable oppositions to the seven sins. These were known as the “Seven Heavenly Virtues”

• Pride → Humility

• Envy → Kindness

• Wrath → Patience

• Sloth → Diligence

• Greed → Charity

• Gluttony → Temperance

• Lust → Chastity

There is a deep theological structure of this paradigm- vice versus virtue. It is that all sin is disordered love. All virtue is love rightly ordered. To live in accordance with these virtues is to restore love toward its proper end, God.

“When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is not because the gold is evil, but because he loves it wrongly.” -St. Augustine

It is not wealth that is bad, it is the disordered love toward it known as greed.

“Every sin consists in an inordinate desire for some temporal good.” -St. Thomas Aquinas

The virtuous life is one unblinded by the chains of vice. Therefore the Seven Deadly Sins were never about fear. They were about vision.

They name the patterns that distort our love and turn us away from God.

The virtues, rightly ordered love, draws us back to the source of goodness, truth, and beauty.

It’s no secret that the world is losing its color. Everywhere we go, we are surrounded by grey and beige neutrality. It is almost impossible to find an area of life untouched by the collapse of color. Why is this happening? What does it say about our society? Most importantly, what do we do about it?

The Evidence

Movies have become darker and more colorless with each passing year. Look at the progression of Robin Hood adaptations. The tonal shift toward grey realism is abundantly obvious.

But this isn’t happening just in cinema. It’s happening everywhere.

A study by All Star Home researched the most popular paint colors by state according to Google search data over a 12-month period.

The most popular colors were all bland neutral shades.

Fashion. Design. Architecture. Each one has followed the same pattern; a rejection of the colorful, in favor of the neutral.

What is the reason for this?

The Origin of Chromophobia

In his book Chromophobia, David Batchelor argues that the western disdain of color goes all the way back to Ancient Greek philosophy. Aristotle believed that linework and geometry were the true mediums of meaning, and that color was at best secondary and at worst a mere sensory distraction.

“A random distribution of the most attractive colours would never yield as much pleasure as a definite image without colour.” -Aristotle

Because of this, a recurring suspicion of color appears in parts of Western thought- a tendency to treat it as emotional and excessive. This suspicion intensified in the late 19th century, with the rise of industrialization and post-modernism.

The East, less shaped by Aristotelian influence, and late to industrialization, was more resistant to abandoning its deep affection for color.

The Sterilization of the World

But as globalization has increased, so too has cultural homogeneity, and the same forces that pushed color from the West have now threatened the East as well. The result is a bland uniformity, a sterile likeness, and an erasure of distinction.

Everywhere now looks the same. This phenomenon is often referred to as “cultural homogenization”.

In a 1909 article addressing Indian nationalism, British author G.K. Chesterton warned against the danger of cultural homogenization. He claimed that each people had a right to express their own distinct culture, and he urged Indian nationalists not to conform their traditions to that of secular British Imperialists.

The article inspired Mahatma Gandhi so much, that he translated it into Gujarati, stopped wearing a suit & tie, and started wearing traditional Indian clothing.

Chesterton viewed cultural distinction as a good and healthy expression.

God, the Greatest Wielder of Color

Although Chesterton did not flush out a full theory of color, he explicitly believed color was a purposeful creation of God.

“The sky is blue not because it must be, but because it was chosen that way.” -G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton believed God to be the master artist. Clearly God did not have an aversion to color. He put it into everything, and every color communicates some meaning to us. Different colors naturally invoke different feelings and emotions. Thus, the color choices of God in His creation present us with a sort of cosmic riddle- what is the artist trying to tell us?

This view of color as something that is coded into creation, as opposed to a mere optical illusion, is supported by science. An object’s color is determined by its molecular structure. Different molecular structures absorb different wavelengths and reflect others. When these wavelengths reach our eyes, our eyes process the wavelengths as RGB values and transmit them to our brain, which then perceives the color.

This fact calls Aristotle’s assumptions into question. It means that color can communicate meaning in the same way that form does, because they are tied together at the most basic level.

It also means that the response to chromatic minimalism might not necessarily be chromatic maximalism, but rather the proper usage of color unto form- tasteful color.

Color Perfected

A good example of this is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Each color was precisely chosen by master Renaissance artists to communicate and reflect transcendent meaning. The rich gold throughout the nave and the dome reflects light and emphasizes sacred significance.

The deep blue backgrounds of the dome mosaics were meant to induce the same feeling of looking up at the sky and into the heavens. Blue is a soothing color, but when paired with gold it becomes royal and transcendent.

The red vestments and decorative inlays represent Christs blood, martyrdom, and ecclesiastical authority. It is a visually striking accent that helps contrast and complete the range of colors in the basilica.

All of this combined results in a sensory experience that is not minimalist and meaningless, nor is it chaotic and overstimulating...

... it is ordered and deeply meaningful.

Color and Re-Enchantment

If color is meaningful, is it any wonder that its collapse has coincided with the collapse of faith in meaning itself?

Of all the forces driving chromophobia, perhaps the un-enchantment of the world is the strongest. Perhaps a cultural restoration of faith and meaning would bring along an aesthetic renewal- one that does not see color as the enemy, but as a beautiful tool given to us by our Creator.

Dragons are Hollywood’s favorite trope for depicting a powerfully frightening & wild beast.

But did you know there was a middle eastern Christian Saint who was said to have actually slaughtered an actual dragon?

The city of Silene was part of Roman North Africa in the late 3rd century. According to legend, the town was terrorized by a monstrous dragon that lived in the marshes outside the city walls. The dragon’s presence was not a passing threat, but a permanent condition under which the city existed.

The people developed a system of appeasement. If they fed the dragon, it would temporarily refrain from attacking them. At first, they offered it livestock, but eventually it demanded human victims. Victims were chosen by lot and were told their sacrifice was for the good of the city.

One by one the city slowly surrendered its children until the lot fell upon the kings very own daughter. Gripped by the same fear that pervaded the city, the King dressed his daughter as a bride and sent her as a sacrifice to the dragon.

This is when a humble sojourner entered the scene. St. George was born in Cappadocia, Turkey but his mother had sent him to live in Lydda, Israel. He was traveling through Libya when he came across the town of Silene. He immediately noticed the fear that had gripped the town.

He saw the princess standing alone outside the walls awaiting her fate. She warned George to leave immediately lest he become another victim of the beast. George, now fully aware of the situation, refused to leave.

The blood thirsty dragon appeared expecting the standard submission. George, however, charged the beast on horseback and pierced it with his lance. The dragon was not dead, but wounded and subdued- rendered harmless. George told the princess to bind it and lead it through the city.

Only after she had led it through the city, did George kill it. Importantly, George did not parade the dragon through the streets himself as a trophy of his achievement. He knew the princess had to do it, to show the city that the culture of fear that had plagued them for generations, was now completely reversed.

Cool story but is it actually true? George was a real Saint who lived at that time in those regions, however the details around the dragon episode didn’t emerge until the high Middle Ages, likely as embellishments. This does not negate the moral impact of the story.

The lessons contained in the story are as true as true can be. A culture that built a way of life around normalized fear and appeasement upended by a single person willing to go against the status quo and confront the source of it all.

“The real power of a society is found not in its laws, but in its habits.” -Alexis de Tocqueville

How many negative mindsets do we pass on to our children? How many normalized fears persist through generations?

We like to imagine that we are independent thinkers, that we are impervious to the cultural trends of our time, and that if we were living in Silene, that we would have been like St. George. In truth, we are much more heavily affected by the culture that surrounds us than we like to think. We probably would have learned to fear the dragon and to appease it, like all those who came before us.

Children learn from their parents, and often subconsciously emulate them even if they don’t want to. Their parents learned from their parents, and so on and so forth.

So is it even possible to break free from generational curses?

Yes.

The unique thing about humans is that we have free will. It’s what separates us from AI. Our actions are not born from pure causality. Therefore, we have the capacity to defy the programming of the world. We can end the familial chains of negative behaviors and mindsets. We can defy cultural trends. We can mount our horse and ride out to meet the dragon.

“You have power over your mind- not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” -Marcus Aurelius

Why has no civilization in human history ever been good enough to last?

The Egyptians built monuments and mapped the stars while most of the world was still nomadic. They didn’t last.

The Babylonians mastered law, mathematics, and empire. They didn’t last.

The Persians ruled from India to the Mediterranean and governed with unprecedented administrative genius. They didn’t last.

The Greeks gave us philosophy, political theory, art and the very idea of rational inquiry. They didn’t last.

The Mayans charted the stars with mind numbing precisions and raised cities out of jungles. They didn’t last.

Even the Roman Empire fell. Rome conquered the known western world. They built roads that still exist. They mastered engineering, governance, architecture, and war. They achieved what every civilization dreams of: order, power, wealth, and cultural dominance.

In the year 410 AD, when the Visigoths sacked the Eternal City, the unthinkable became thinkable. The civilization that was destined to last forever proved to only be another chapter in the human saga.

In that moment of civilizational despair stepped a North African Bishop named Augustine. Pagans raged that Christianity had caused the fall of Rome. In response, Augustine wrote a book that would permanently change how the world understood history, politics, power, and human nature. Its title was The City of God. Its central claim was as devastating as it was clarifying:

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It comes to us not from a single author, but from a range of references found in poetry, travel writings, and encyclopedic works that circulated in the Hellenistic world. They were passed along as a sort of shared cultural knowledge, documenting places so astonishing that they bordered the pinnacle of human achievement, and divine intervention.

Only one of these wonders still stands today. So what happened to the rest?

The mystery around them still calls to us. It beckons us to put on a fedora, leather jacket, and whip- and delve into a world of ancient riddles and clues.

1) The Great Pyramid of Giza

Ironically the oldest of the wonders, and the only one still standing. It is so old, it has been said that Cleopatra herself lived closer to the building of the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Tennessee, then to the building of the Great Pyramid. It came about around 2560 BC as the royal tomb of Pharaoh Khufu.

It’s advanced engineering still puzzles archaeologists and gives way to many conspiracy theories involving aliens, demons, and lost technology. The pyramid is aligned true north within a few arc minutes which is astonishing even by modern standards. The base is level to within centimeters across football-field distances. The blocks fit so tightly that blade of paper barely slips between the joints. It consists of 2.3 million stone blocks most weighing several tons, built without modern industrial equipment- some quarried locally, others transported hundreds of miles by river. Its internal chambers align with circumpolar stars demonstrating advanced astronomical knowledge. Many chambers and passageways within the Pyramid, have yet to be explored. Modern scans continue to reveal voids and anomalies within the structure.

2) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are perhaps the most mysterious of the seven wonders. So mysterious that their very existence is disputed.

Ancient writers described a lush, multi-terraced garden rising like a green mountain irrigated by advanced water lifting technologies. The problem is that no Babylonian records mention it, and it’s not the sort of achievement that would have been left off the books.

Assyrian records however do describe artificial mountains and aqueducts in detail which has led some scholars to believe that the Hanging Gardens could have been in Nineveh, not Babylon. According to this theory, “Babylon” functioned for Greek writers as a symbolic name for imperial Mesopotamia, allowing the gardens’ true location to be confused over time. Archaeologists have found massive stone aqueducts and canal systems in Nineveh that are overbuilt- unless they supported something extraordinary... like monumental gardens.

3) The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

This towering gold and ivory statue of Zeus sat inside the temple at Olympia, where the Olympic games were held. Built around 435 BC by the sculptor Phidias, Olympic athletes would often stand before the statue to pray and make offerings before competing in the games.

As Christianity spread through the Roman world, pagan sanctuaries fell out of popularity. The statue was eventually moved to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in a fire sometime in the fifth century AD.

No pieces of the statue have ever been discovered- only descriptions, coins, and images. The ruins of the temple that once housed the statue remain to this day and are a major tourist attraction at Olympia.

4) The Temple of Artemis

Few buildings in history have been rebuilt as often as the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Artemis was the patron goddess of Ephesus, the goddess of hunting.

According to the New Testament, the city profited from a business of making statues of Artemis and shipping them out to the Roman world. When the Apostle Paul’s evangelism in the city threatened that business, the Ephesians drove him out.

The temple itself was destroyed by arson, rebuilt, damaged by invasion, restored again, and finally dismantled. As Christianity rose, its stones were repurposed for other buildings.

Today, only foundations and a single reconstructed column stand.

5) The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Built as a tomb for the Persian governor Mausolus, this structure blended eastern and western architectural styles. It was so unique that mausoleum became the term for monumental tombs everywhere.

It stood for centuries before earthquakes cracked it apart. Crusaders later reused its stones to build a fortress, unknowingly dismantling one of antiquities greatest monuments.

Most of its surviving fragments now sit in the British Museum in London after being excavated in the 19^th century. Its foundations still exist in Bodrum, Turkey.

6) The Colossus of Rhodes

Built around 280 BC near the harbor of Rhodes, this statue of the sun god Helios stood about 110 feet tall- nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty’s figure.

It was erected to celebrate the city’s survival after a devasting siege. Its massive figure confronted every arriving ship with a message of victory, protection, and independence. It only stood for about 56 years before an earthquake snapped it at the knees.

No remains of the colossus have ever been found, only coins and images. Most archaeologists believe it was melted down and sold as scrap metal.

7) The Lighthouse of Alexandria

Built around 2880 BC, the Lighthouse of Alexandria was designed to guide ships into one of the busiest ports on earth. It stood an estimated 330 to 430 feet tall- comparable to the height of a modern 30 to 40 story building.

It stood near the legendary Library of Alexandria, and somewhere nearby lay the long-lost Tomb of Alexander the Great, a site that remains one of history’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

The lighthouse survived longer than most of the other wonders, but earthquakes between the 10^th and 14^th centuries gradually reduced it to rubble. In 1477 a fortress was erected at the location of the old lighthouse, as a visual tribute to it.

Modern underwater archaeologists have uncovered pieces of the original lighthouse in the Alexandrian harbor and excavations are still continuing.

The New Wonders

In 2007 a global vote created the New Seven Wonders of the World; The Taj Mahal, Petra, The Coliseum, Chichen Itza, El Cristo Redentor, Machu Picchu, and the Great Wall of China.

But the original seven still captivate us. Though the world that built them is long gone, it’s echoes reverberate across time. In the absence of these wonders, the unanswered questions grow louder- inviting us into the mystery and reminding us that the adventure has not ended for those still willing to seek it.

Image Credit:

Modern Ninevah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nineveh_kuyunjik_mashki_from_nw_cor.JPG

Ruins of the Temple of Artemis: Ruins of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Selcuk, Turkiye

Runis of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus: File:The ruins of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Citadel of Quaitbay: File:The Citadel of Qaitbay.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

According to a Flight Network survey, Paris was ranked as the most beautiful city in the world. It’s the city of love. A city which daily welcomes hordes of tourists hoping to experience what Hemmingway meant when he said:

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

Paris might be humanities best attempt at urbanized beauty. As such it can be said that as Paris goes, so goes the world; for within its tourist trod streets one can trace the movement from a world in which beauty was believed to be real, to a world in which beauty became a display of achievement, and finally to a world unsure of whether beauty exists at all.

The Pre-Modern Era

Ranging from antiquity to the late 1700’s, the pre-modern era was marked by the belief that beauty is something divine. It is not created, it is discovered. Architecture therefore should be a kind of window to the divine. A portal to heaven; not so that humanity can reach God, but so that God can reach us. Famed Gothic architect Abbot Sugar explained:

“The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material, and in seeing this light is resurrected from its former submersion”.

This philosophy was made manifest in Paris’s most famous church: Notre Dame.

Embed with meaning in every detail, the cathedral not only tells a divine story, but draws the human eye upward towards the heavens. Natural light was viewed as divine, a visual sign of God’s favor. It’s flying buttresses allowed the building to retain its structural integrity while maximizing the window height so the sanctuary could be filled with natural light.

One would imagine it to have been designed by a master architect, but it was not. Instead, it was built over nearly two centuries by generations of peasants and craftsman guided by a shared understanding of beauty, meaning, and divine order.

The Modern Era

In 1789 the streets of Paris ran red with blood. The French Revolution had begun. Some of the revolutionary leaders wanted to destroy Christianity. Others wanted to reshape it into a new civic religion grounded in human reason and revolutionary ideals.

This marked the end of the pre-modern period, and the beginning of the modern period; a time that would place old superstitions under the foot of rationality and productivity.

In 1889, Paris hosted the World Fair. It marked the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution. It was a celebration of human industry, engineering, and progress; a grand fair for a world that no longer needed God.

Such an event would need a grand entrance. A monument to human achievement. Some testament to the sheer power of humanity. Thus, the Eiffel Tower was constructed.

It was scheduled for removal in 1909, two decades after the fair. It was the tallest structure in the world.

Unlike Notre Dame, its construction was not guided by a philosophy of discovering beauty, but by the confidence that beauty could be created.

Paris’s artists, poets and architects revolted. They signed a public letter of protest condemning the tower as a “tragic street lamp”, and a “factory chimney dominating Paris”.

Among these critics were some of France’s most influential cultural voices; Guy de Maupassant, Charles Gounod, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Garnier, and Joris-Karl Huysmans.

They did not oppose engineering. They opposed what the tower symbolized. To them, it represented a break from humility- towards self-glorification.

These men were skeptical of the Revolution’s cultural consequences, especially its attempt to sever France from its pre-modern conceptions of meaning and beauty.

The Eiffel Tower was even likened to an ancient story- the Tower of Babel. A structure built not to honor God, but to turn man into God.

The tower stands today not because it was loved, but because it proved useful. It wasn’t taken down as initially planned, because it was used as a radio tower. This became invaluable to the state, especially during the events that came next.

The Post-Modern Era

The World Wars. The period from 1914 to 1945 contained both world wars, genocides, famines, and pandemics. It produced a level of mass death unprecedented in its scale and speed.

It brought the enthusiasm of the modern period to a screeching halt and shattered modernities faith in human progress. This marked the beginning of the Post-Modern Era.

Both faith in God and faith in humanity were gone. A deep cultural skepticism abounded. Societal narratives- religious, political, and philosophical, were now treated with suspicion. Because there was nothing left to believe in, truth, goodness, and beauty became relative.

There were no more absolutes, and beauty became viewed as something that exists purely in the eye of the beholder, not in reality. Meaning itself, could not be trusted.

This new post-modern philosophy culminated in the building of a new cultural center for Paris; one that would embody openness, experimentation, and modernity. It was named “The Pompidou”.

The building itself was built inside out, with all its ductwork and piping on the outside of the building. It makes no claim about beauty as an objective reality.

There is no meaning embedded, inherited, or revealed.

Instead, it is left open to interpretation- a perfect reflection of a faithless culture committed to the idea that objectivity is oppressive, and that beauty only exists in the mind of the beholder.

The Journey

The pre-modern era taught that beauty was discovered. The modern era taught that beauty was created. And the post-modern era teaches that it doesn’t exist at all.

All three philosophies captured perfectly within walking distance: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Pompidou. A 2.7-mile stroll will take you by all three.

It’s the same walk that humanity has been on for the past millennia. A journey from faith, to reason, to meaninglessness.

But a journey is not a destination. Paths can be retraced. Perhaps the task before us, is not to invent a new definition of beauty, nor to abandon the search altogether, but to recover the humility to believe that beauty still waits to be found.

Take a walk out in public. Look around. What do you see? People going about their business. People on their phones. People that have never been more connected, while simultaneously never more disconnected. Those people are us. We are cut off from each other. We are separated from the past, and clueless to the future. Blind to the larger story unfolding all around us. We live like a ball in a pinball machine, knocked around by invisible forces. All the while wishing for a life of meaning and purpose but seemingly doomed to repeat the cycle.

We distract ourselves from the emptiness with subjective goals. Academic success, career achievement, financial pursuits. But the emptiness always lurks behind, ready to consume us in the quiet moments. We push away the silence with entertainment and pleasure, but it always returns. The emptiness stalks us. It hunts us like the boogie-man. A monster from which we can never escape.

The emptiness bears one other similarity to the boogie-man- it’s not real. It is imaginary. It is born of a lie we have been sold. The lie is this: we are mere particles in motion- bugs on a rock floating through the vast abyss of space, all just trying to survive. How could anything matter on such a view? It couldn’t. There could be no goodness. No truth. No beauty. And that’s where the emptiness we feel comes from. The lie. A lie whose effects cannot simply be dispelled by denunciation. It permeates our modern culture. It is the soup we swim in. Its poisonous fog has to some extent clouded the vision of even the most resilient among us.

There is a way out of this toxic cloud. A way for us all to truly live. It’s not a magic pill or a secret trick. It is a process of healing our perception. A restoration of vision. A renewal of the mind. A transformative journey of which we can only be certain of the first step.

What is this first step? It is the enemy of the first sin- humility.

The humility to believe that we are not it. We are not all there is. There is something more. Something beyond. Something that transcends the natural world.

Throughout history great thinkers and artists have attempted to put language to this. Philosophy, theology, art, literature, music etc. All attempts to somehow bring the divine into view. To capture the transcendent and put it on display for us all to see.

We may never fully see in our natural lives. This journey of healing our perception leads to a destination that is unattainable this side of eternity.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” -Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 13:12)

A helpful classification that has emerged from these great thinkers over the centuries is the idea of the transcendental categories; beauty, truth, and goodness. These are things that could not exist if the material world was all that existed. These transcendentals are infused within the created order. A constant reflector of our Creator.

“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”- G.K. Chesterton

In a world starving for want of wonder, nihilism abounds. Almost every bad thing you can think of is downstream of that- depression, crime, suicide, etc. All things that are on the rise in modernity. They are fueled by their close benefactors- relativism & subjectivism. All growing from the soil of a lack of wonder. The dense fog of the modern lie that blinds us from seeing the world for that which it is- true, good, and beautiful.

The goal of this publication is to play some small part in reversing that. To re-enchant us with the beauty of the world. Not to instill some sense of false hope, but to see reality clearly so that we can live purposefully with our eyes wide open.

Each week we will explore stories, people, art, and places- historical and literary- that help us recover a vision of the true, good, and beautiful.

Help Re-Enchant

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