Peter Kreeft on Faith

The Faith is not selling well.


Faith is selling well – extremely well: faith in general, faith as an attitude, faith as positive thinking, faith in faith. Also selling well are many strange new faiths: faith in cults, faith in UFO’s, faith in ICBM’s, faith in the Force, faith in ancient astronauts, faith in astrology – faith in almost anything. We are an incredibly credulous age.


The reason for this is probably that "nature abhors a vacuum" spiritually as well as physically. Our modern Western civilization is ready to believe in almost anything to fill the vacuum left by the de-Christianization of the last four centuries.


- Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven, p. 193


This reminds me so very much of Hogfather, from the Discworld series of novels by Terry Pratchett, where people ceasing to believe in the Hogfather (Discworld's analogy for Santa Claus) leaves a lot of 'extra belief' sloshing around. As a consequence, anthromorphic personifications like the Verruca Gnome, the oh God of Hangovers, and the God of Indigestion are created out of all that spare belief. I can't help but wonder what sorts of things we have created with our spare belief when our society turned away from Christianity...


Slenderman, maybe.


O.o.


Then again, we may deserve it for everything we've done.


In Pace Christi,


Elyse