Quotes of the Week
Quote of the Week
by Jimmy Hopper
Each week, a quote pertinent to life and Christianity will be posted on the Riverblog. Your approval or disapproval of the quote or your thoughts regarding it are welcomed, so have at it.
The quote of the week this week is from Peggy Noonan in her book, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness:
I think that we have lost the old knowledge that happiness is overrated—that, in a way, life is overrated. We have lost somehow a sense of mystery—about us, our purpose, our meaning, our role. Our ancestors believed in two worlds, and understood this to be the solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short one. We are the first generation of man that actually expected to find happiness here on earth, and our search for it has caused such unhappiness. The reason is that if you do not believe in another, higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at happiness— if that is what you believe, then, when the world does not give you a good measure of its riches, you are more than disappointed ; you are in despair.
Posted by Jimmy Hopper at July 5, 2007 02:25 PM
Jimmy,
Great idea for the blog.
I’ll give thumbs up to the quote. I think it actually fits in pretty nicely both with your last post and with Tim’s sermon last Sunday.
I reread the Declaration of Independence yesterday and it really struck me how much of it is, in varying degrees, antithetical to what I believe as a Christian. (Example: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” - that’s post-modern argumentation)
The “pursuit of happiness” is another. It’s a tweak of John Locke’s phrasing of “life, liberty, and property” and frankly, I think the worse for it. It’s clearly not an orthodox Christian concept. Per Tim’s sermon, not only are we not promised happiness, we’re destined to suffer. And per Jimmy’s last post, God’s not handing out big screen TVs to Americans because we’re so faithful and deserve to be happy.
I hope no one hears what I’m not saying. I don’t think that folks should be forced by the government to do things that make them unhappy. But, Noonan is right. I think our modern society, with all its wealth and technical conveniences, really makes people believe that they can be happy with more stuff. No amount of iPhones are going to change the fallen-ness of this world, though.
Clay, I thought it was a great idea also as soon as Tim mentioned it to me! (G)
Something interesting that came out on Garrison Keillor’s “Writers Almanac” yesterday was that Jefferson’s (the Deist) phrase for “we hold these truths to be…” was “sacred and enduring.” Ben Franklin (the athiest/agnostic) changed it to “self evident.”
Great comments.
Kudos on the quote idea. Noonan is one of my favorites. She is concise enough to provide clarity and meaty enough to provide return trips to her writing and see varying facets of contextual meaning.
As we’ve talked about many times recently, the saturation of materialism in our culture is absolutely mind boggling and cannot help but lead to despair. Whether by limiting the universe to that which is tangible or by trying to cram our lives full with ‘stuff’, we are bound for the same destination- complete and utter emptiness (ironically enough) and, yes, despair. It’s almost as if material and hope are inversely proportional.