{"id":1801,"date":"2022-07-14T07:31:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T11:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1801"},"modified":"2022-07-14T07:31:43","modified_gmt":"2022-07-14T11:31:43","slug":"in-search-of-the-true-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/14\/in-search-of-the-true-center\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search of the True Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On July 14, 1789, a Parisian street mob stormed the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the oppressive regime of King Louis XVI.
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Today is Bastille Day, the French version of America\u2019s Fourth of July.\u00a0 It commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution.
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The French ardently admired what the American colonists had accomplished in their revolt against Great Britain the previous decade.\u00a0 There were great hopes on both sides of the Atlantic that a new wave of revolutions would overthrow tyranny in all its forms around the world.
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But the French Revolution, as it played out over the next quarter century, took one dark turn after another.\u00a0 It quickly became clear that the Spirit of 89 was different from the Spirit of 76.\u00a0
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Whereas America has become arguably the most religious nation in the West over the past 200-plus years, France has arguably become the least.\u00a0
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Groups of French radicals vied with their rivals for control of the emerging new order.\u00a0 The Revolution became self-destructive.\u00a0 The status quo sometimes changed overnight.\u00a0 The king and queen were tried and executed.\u00a0 Tens of thousands of politically suspect citizens went to their deaths during the Reign of Terror.\u00a0 Maximilien Robespierre, who had orchestrated the Terror, was himself arrested and sent to the guillotine within 24 hours.
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Along the way the French sought to throw off the shackles of everything that seemed to stand against the revolutionary core values of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.\u00a0
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Since the Church had traditionally provided support to the royal court and to wealthy aristocrats, most of the revolutionaries were eager to cast it aside.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Thus began what historians have called the \u201cradical dechristianization\u201d of France.\u00a0
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Churches became public property.\u00a0 Priests were relieved of their duties.\u00a0 Most were given a choice: either join the Revolution or go to the guillotine.\u00a0 More than 1,400 streets in Paris were renamed in an effort to erase any memory of the Catholic saints.
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On November 10, 1793, the most famous place of worship in France, the Cathedral of Notre Dame, was renamed the Temple of Reason.\u00a0 A popular opera star portrayed Liberty.\u00a0 Robed in white, she bowed to the flame of Reason at the very spot where Christ had been worshipped for over 600 years.
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But this grand religious (or anti-religious) experiment didn\u2019t work out quite as the radicals expected.\u00a0
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Returning to the words of British author G.K. Chesterton, which we quoted earlier this summer: \u201cWhen a man stops believing in God he doesn\u2019t then believe in nothing.\u00a0 He believes in anything.\u201d
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The French Revolution needed a center.\u00a0 A final source of truth.\u00a0 They anticipated that Reason would fit the bill.\u00a0 But history reveals, sadly, that Reason was quickly dethroned by the revolutionaries.
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To quote Pete Townshend of The Who:\u00a0 Here\u2019s to the new boss, same as the old boss.\u00a0 <\/em>The Revolution unleashed tyrannies that rivalled anything the world had seen before.\u00a0 Historians agree that the ultimate legacy of what happened in France was the elevation of the Nation or some version of a New Humanity to the center of everything.
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And from there it was only a short journey to the State-is-Always-Right miseries of the 20th<\/sup> century, starring Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their imitators.
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The Hebrew prophets never budged an inch as to who they thought ruled the cosmos.\u00a0 \u201cRemember what happened long ago, for I am God, and there is no other.\u00a0 I am God, and there is none like me\u201d (Isaiah 47:8).\u00a0
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You don\u2019t have to be a student of history or politics or revolutions to know that it matters who or what we think occupies life\u2019s center. \u00a0When people say, with revolutionary flourish, \u201cI\u2019m in charge of my own life, and from now on I\u2019m going to follow my own truth and my own wisdom\u201d \u2013 storming the Bastille of their parents\u2019 constraints or society\u2019s traditions \u2013 they\u2019re actually reading a very old script.\u00a0 And they will discover soon enough that putting Me<\/em> at the center of everything leads to even deeper disruption and disappointment.\u00a0 \u00a0
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Bastille Day remains a mid-summer opportunity for the French to shoot fireworks, sip wine, and savor croissants that are so much better than the ones at your local grocery.\u00a0
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But it\u2019s worth noting that the French philosopher Voltaire, who died in 1788 \u2013 just one year before the Revolution he helped inspire \u2013 once remarked that Christianity would no longer be taken seriously 100 years after his death.
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By 1888 his own estate had become, in part, a Bible distribution center.
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That\u2019s an irony that would no doubt have made even Voltaire smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 14, 1789, a Parisian street mob stormed the Bastille, a state prison that symbolized the oppressive regime of King Louis XVI.\u00a0Today is Bastille Day, the French version of America\u2019s Fourth of July.\u00a0 It commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution.\u00a0The French ardently admired what the American colonists had accomplished in their revolt against Great Britain the previous decade.\u00a0… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[470,469],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-reason","tag-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}