Tempus Fugit

My title has absolutely nothing to do with the following. I was merely stating so in light of midterms and the reality of the words in my life at the moment.

"My friends, in these two errors, I think, I find the causes of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief. And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship? Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves the temple to haunt the senate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor. Society lives to trifles, and when men die we do not mention them."

As far as I can tell, this is the world as we Christians know it. Worship is dead. Genius leaves the church to join the ranks of her opposers. Literature turns to Stephenie Meyer and her band of vampiric conspirators. Science is confined to itself, no longer allowing question to lead it to further greatness. We youth in general have lost our hope for the nations, contented to watch them fall apart on our TV screen and mock them for it. And who honors their elders; who seeks to know the past?

"Now man is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneaks through the world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his kind. [...] They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world."

My problem with any of this is that the masses do not even know they have a problem; we don't realize we have a problem, until we are introduced to our problem appropriately. I did not realize I was lacking until something I thought I was passionate about was attacked with something foreign--upon the attack I realized I had placed my trust in the secondaries rather than the primary, which according to Emerson is dangerous territory. But how can we introduce this problem to the masses? Am I making sense?

I knew a few people in high school whose daily mantra is: "God is in yourself." Perhaps they adopted this from Emerson; I would not put it past them. I disagree, of course, to an extent. The Holy Spirit is with us because of Christ's intervention. But this does not make us God. Emerson seems to neglect the rest of the story. I think he attacks Christians for taking Christ's words out of context, but I believe he is equally as guilty. I do not see in Christ an estimate for the greatness of man, for Christ while He dwelled on earth was wholly man and wholly God.

COMMENTED ON WILL'S

P.S. Feel free to destroy everything I just said. I am mindlessly ranting; welcome to midterms.