{"id":519,"date":"2018-01-06T05:40:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-06T05:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/divergence.blog\/?p=519"},"modified":"2018-01-06T05:40:15","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T05:40:15","slug":"modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/","title":{"rendered":"Modernity as the Refusal of Innocence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

If you remember your childhood, or have children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, then you know what it is like to see the world as enchanted.\u00a0 In such a world, monsters exist\u2026under beds, in closets, and so on.\u00a0 The dark can be foreboding.\u00a0 The forest holds secrets, both wonderful and horrifying.\u00a0 The night sky is an unending kaleidoscope of light and movement.\u00a0 Falling stars are magical.\u00a0 Grass and flowers are shockingly beautiful and \u201cfeel\u201d good to our feet and eyes.\u00a0 \u201cImaginary\u201d friends are possible and blankets, stuffed toys, and any number of supposed \u201cinanimate\u201d objects are comforting\u2014even\u2026friends.\u00a0 And, we are told beguiling stories by our parents, extended family, churches, schools, neighbors, and friends.\u00a0 We start off in a world that is perceived as enchanted, both comforting, wonderful and terrifying, all at the same time.<\/p>\n

If you have ever been a teenager, young adult, or raised them, or been around them in some form or fashion, then you know what it is like to see the world as dis-enchanted.\u00a0 Innocence is lost.\u00a0 This age can begin to see the world from a jaded perspective; the world is suspect, and we cannot trust many people, institutions, beliefs, and perhaps even our parents.\u00a0 And against all the deceit, against all the drivel we were force-fed, we strike out on our own (together\u2026with everyone else our age\u2026but, anyway\u2026), and we, in our idealism, begin to make the world anew.\u00a0 This one though is accurate, true, and not weighed down by the false stories we were told as children. Oh, how silly. Oh, how we have moved on now.\u00a0 We are adults; we have \u201cmatured\u201d and we now know such earlier understandings were just part of being a child, of not knowing how the world works.\u00a0 We are \u201cpast\u201d that now.\u00a0 We have \u201cgrown\u201d up.<\/p>\n

Something strange begins to happen though as we get older (although what I\u2019m describing isn\u2019t age\/time dependent).\u00a0 It\u2019s something that comes from tears.\u00a0 It comes from heart-break.\u00a0 It also comes from joy and laughter.\u00a0 It comes from living life, from experience.\u00a0 It is possible, not always, but possible, we sometimes learn the child knew more than we did.\u00a0 In their ignorance, in their innocence, perhaps they knew something we\u2019ve forgotten over time.<\/p>\n

David Bentley Hart<\/a>, has a wonderful description or definition of wisdom.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cWisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wisdom is a return<\/em>, not an arrival.\u00a0 It is a recovery of something present (possible), and yet hidden, or lost along the way.\u00a0 What allows for this recovery or return is experience, living and dying.\u00a0 The scars, the joys, the successes, the failures, relationships, the hopes and dreams, all of it\u2014leads us, if we are open, to a place of innocence again.\u00a0 East of Eden, the journey away, is<\/em> the far end of experience that returns us (possibly), to the garden once again.<\/p>\n

If we were to apply this truth to cultures or historical moments, we might say that to be modern, or modernity, is the refusal of this return or recovery.\u00a0 It is, in effect, the refusal of innocence, the decision to not mature and move past the adolescent mark of jadedness and suspicion.\u00a0 It remains stuck in that time where we think we know more than the child we were or the aged person we eventually will become (the aged and the child are very alike).\u00a0 Because modernity is the very loss of innocence, of an enchanted universe, it remains stuck in that mind-set, and can never allow the experiences of living lead it back to innocence because to do so would call into question modernity\/modernism itself.\u00a0 After all, it defines itself as that which is \u201cenlightened\u201d\u2014that which has \u201cprogressed\u201d beyond the naive innocence of earlier times.\u00a0 One can almost hear the teenager\/young adult commenting, \u201cOh, I haven\u2019t believed that since I was a child.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can see this most readily in the jaundiced eye with which the modern sees myths, mystery, mysticism, fables, stories, and, of course, religion.\u00a0 It has out-grown such idle and, clearly, false tales and superstitions.\u00a0 Only a child, in their naive innocence, believes such things.<\/p>\n

We can also see it in the worship of youth and being young.\u00a0 Modernity fetishizes youth.\u00a0 We have a multi-billion-dollar industry that revolves around keeping us all young-looking.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reminded of the sobering Who<\/em> lyric from \u201cMy Generation<\/a>,\u201d\u2014 \u201cI hope I die before I get old\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

However, maybe they meant I hope I don\u2019t ever lose my innocence and, if I do, I\u2019m dead.\u00a0 But I digress\u2026<\/p>\n

To the extent the FG world is also modern, it suffers from the same sensibility.\u00a0 One example of this is in their worship.\u00a0 It is constantly changing to attract and keep the young.\u00a0 Another is it too thinks it has out-grown the \u201csuperstitious\u201d beliefs of the early church (meaning Catholicism\/Orthodoxy).\u00a0 There is no place for mystery or enchantment in the FG world.<\/p>\n

The modern (and its imitators) wanders then in a place of spiritual and intellectual stagnation and stasis, refusing to mature, because to do so would require a return to innocence, which is a return to enchantment and mystery\u2014all the things it supposedly left behind.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTruly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.\u201d Matt 18:3<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you remember your childhood, or have children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, then you know what it is like to see the world as enchanted.\u00a0 In such a world, monsters exist\u2026under beds, in closets, and so on.\u00a0 The dark can be foreboding.\u00a0 The forest holds secrets, both wonderful and horrifying.\u00a0 The night sky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89,116,206,278,290,497],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-hart","tag-enchantment","tag-innocence","tag-modernity","tag-mystery","tag-wisdom"],"yoast_head":"\nModernity as the Refusal of Innocence<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you remember your childhood, or have children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, then you know what it is like to see the world as enchanted.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Modernity as the Refusal of Innocence\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you remember your childhood, or have children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, then you know what it is like to see the world as enchanted.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Divergence\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-01-06T05:40:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Darrell Lackey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@darrelllackey1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Darrell Lackey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/\",\"name\":\"Modernity as the Refusal of Innocence\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-01-06T05:40:15+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-01-06T05:40:15+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/#\/schema\/person\/d88a32b8d4b5f40fbd6ccbfce4e0f813\"},\"description\":\"If you remember your childhood, or have children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, then you know what it is like to see the world as enchanted.\u00a0\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/2018\/01\/06\/modernity-as-the-refusal-of-innocence\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Modernity as the Refusal of Innocence\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/divergence\/\",\"name\":\"Divergence\",\"description\":\"Commentary Regarding Fundamentalism - 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