When we no longer see life and humanity as a precious thing, then we will fail ever to see the loss of it as a horrific and tragic thing.
Is there such a thing as a tragic even any more? What constitutes something “tragic”? Do we use such a term merely as rhetoric, or do we as a society still have the capacity to feel something to be truly tragic? In a recent blog, John Piper cites from Soren Kierkegaard, who said, “When the age loses the tragic, it gains despair.” Piper noted that this sounds profoundly right.
He added,
For tragedy to be real there has to be something hugely precious, and there has to be the capacity to feel a great emotion. When these are both present, tragedy can happen. Despair is the horrible blankness that settles over us when nothing is seen as precious anymore and there is no capacity to feel it anyway.
When we no longer see life and humanity as a precious thing, then we will fail ever to see the loss of it as a horrific and tragic thing. Despair’s hollow depth is the result of the vanquished capacity to value something as precious, such as the life of the unborn.
Such is noteworthy at all times, but especially in an election year.
