Four theories of artistic expression and other writings on cultural relativismIt is necessary to provide adequate environments to educate our children. Their basic needs are: shelter, food, rest, rest, play, feeling accepted, respected and protected. Not to be mistreated. Love and limits. This way they will grow up healthy and safe.
It is the duty and right of parents to provide all this to their children. And in today's society, it is also essential to educate them for a healthy discernment of the information they receive. There are things that destroy them and others that edify them. It is a matter of talking a lot with them and giving them moral education.
May God be present in our environment
"It's a total loss," said my car insurance adjuster after the flood damage assessment. "The car was in the water too long and it's not made for that."
I reflected on this and it seemed to me to be a significant parallel for the life of the human being. I remembered a luminous phrase of St. Augustine: "You have made us Lord for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you".
When for whatever reason we turn away from God, we can experience a kind of total loss of self.
We would all like a world of peace and we live in war. We would like solidarity and we act selfishly. We want to be valued and welcomed, but we behave with contempt towards some of our brothers and sisters.
We need to return to the environment that is proper, natural to us, one imbued with faith, hope and charity. Let us cultivate these three virtues in our homes.
The Russian writer and philosopher Nikolai Berdiayev points out three key moments in the evolution of human thought.
There was a theonomy until the 16th century. From its Greek roots, theonomy means "Law of God", "theos" (God) and "nomos" (law, rule). God mattered. God made clear to us the difference between good and evil and asked us to choose the good.
Then came the anthroponymy, the laws are founded by us on our own criteria. God does not exist and our reason can give us all the answers. But when we do not get those answers with reason alone, human anxiety grows, confusion and fear enter. Thus giving way to what we live today and what we could call entroponomy. Of "entropy", disorder, chaos, there are no laws. Everyone can do what he wants, pure relativism.
Can we live like this, without a lighthouse, without a north, without light?
Relativism
If God disappears, so does any possibility of establishing a solid and definitive ethics. If God does not exist, everything is permitted and only one position is possible: that of arbitrary consensus. In the recent olympic games we were able to observe clear manifestations of its effects. From the inauguration we witnessed how gender ideology is normalized. We are told that everyone is what they feel they are, that it is possible to change sex without painful consequences; it is like saying that a car can stay in the water without being damaged, or that you can call the accelerator the brake and use it as such if you "feel" like it.
Without God as a referent, we lose objective truth, common sense, the compass. This relativism in which we are immersed, enslaves us all. Only the Truth frees us.
Generating Christian environments
Let us create Christian environments for our children. Where Christ is, there is Light, there is Truth. May they see us praying together, may we thank God in our daily conversation, may we talk at the table about our faith, about the people who live it coherently and inspire us. That we know the beatitudes, that we practice the works of mercy as a family. When in doubt about how we should act, let us turn to the teachings of the Church on moral matters.
Let us attend Mass with enthusiasm, not to fulfill a precept but to love and thank the one who gave his life for us.
Let's develop environments in which they walk together faith and reason. St. John Paul II said that two wings are necessary to be free, without both, we are going down. Neither rationalism (reason without faith), nor fideism (faith without reason). Let us prepare ourselves to give reason for our faith.
It is important that in world events, we generate an environment of universal values, those that contribute to dignify our relationships and our essence: responsibility, effort, generosity, solidarity, order, joy, unity, respect, honesty, tenacity, perseverance. May these events not become trenches for proselytizing of any kind. And when this happens, let us talk to our children for that healthy discernment that they should develop.
God will return to the world when we decide to practice the theological virtues, when each one of us lives the Christian principles in the first person. The transmission of the faith is given by the witness of a life that practices charity and sows hope.
