Friday, September 21, 2012

SUBSTITUTE SACREDS

A society that denies the supernatural usually ends up elevating the natural to supernatural status.  Annie Dillard tells of experiments in which entomologists entice male butterflies with a painted cardboard replica larger and more enticing than the females of their species.  Excited, the male butterfly mounts the piece of cardboard; again and again he mounts it. "Nearby, the real, living female butterfly opens and closes her wings in vain."

C. S. Lewis uses the phrase "sweet poison of the false infinite" to describe this same tendency in the human species.  We allow substitute sacreds, or false infinites, to fill the vacuum of our disenchanted world.

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World


#3071

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