More from Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s“Journals.” Writing in 1977, he mused concerning the trend he saw of a restless spirit taking hold of people, making them insist that everyone had to change their lives … “but how and where is never explained.” Father A. answers the question they’re not asking (boldface emphasis mine):

That explanation will remain impossible as long as mankind, while keeping eschatology, denies God. Here, in this paradox, is the whole absurdity of contemporary civilization, its internal dead end. Contemporary civilization speaks a religious language, and, at the same time, hates religion.To a totally meaningless — without God — world, it announces ‘meaning.’

Where would that meaning come from? The real demonic mystery of our civilization is not in the search for a meaning, but in why it so passionately searches for a meaning without God. Why is civilization so metaphysically foolish? The name of that foolishness is pride: “Be like gods.” The Fall of Adam and Eve is happening, continuing, acting always, and the place of that continuing Fall is not an abstract nature which we inherited from Adam; the place is civilization — the tempting serpent!

Civilization opens to men endless possibilities and hides from them their ontological limits. It tells them: be like gods.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. The world culture loves to celebrate its own ingenuity, marvel at its own innovation and cleverness, and brindles at any discouragement coming from those frightful Christian prigs. But watching them is like watching someone try to find the stairway to heaven while plunging headlong into the same brick wall at the end of the same dead end, over and over and over.

The only suspense is wondering whether they’ll gain real intelligence before knocking themselves unconscious. What a world.