In another iteration of his overarching narrative that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, writer Anthony Esolen today had A World Without Hope published at Crisis Magazine, a supposedly Catholic site that attracts the angriest and gloomiest of Internet warriors. For someone who reveres "that guide of intelligence and beauty, Lady Faith" and quotes Charles Péguy as saying that Hope is the "little sister" of the other theological virtues because she gives them "the heart to go forth", his piece is surprisingly pessimistic. We live, he writes, in "a cheerless world".
After demonizing public schools for relating morality to secular politics while simultaneously claiming it is parents that instil faith in their children, he goes off on a tangent about 1 Samuel. In this Old Testament narrative, a woman named Hannah, the favorite wife of Elkanah, grieves about her apparent inability to bear children and prays for a child. She eventually manages to produce Samuel, whom she hands over to the Temple to be raised and trained by a priest, Eli. Eli has two badass sons, Hophni and Phineas, who are described as "scoundrels" and "the sons of Belial". Hophni and Phineas, in contradiction of the Law of Moses, keep the meat of sacrificial animals for themselves and have sex with women who serve at the entrance to the Temple. Eli scolds his sons, who pay no attention.
Old Testament God then gets all butthurt because Eli is honoring his sons more than his God, so he sends a "man of God" to gleefully announce that God will break his former promise that members of Eli's family would "minister before me forever". Instead, God will now ensure that nobody from Eli's house will reach old age, that his sons will die on the same day, that all his descendents will die in the prime of life, and that those family members allowed to continue serving at God's altar will only be spared in order to have their strength sapped and their sight destroyed. OT God then apparently allows the Philistines to attack the Israelites. The Philistines kill 30,000 Israelites, abscond with the Ark of the Convenant, and kill Hophni and Phineas. On hearing this, Eli keels over, breaks his neck, and dies. It is mentioned that he is overweight, perhaps from eating all that meat that was supposed to be sacrificed (I keep telling people veganism is the way to go). And all these people had to die because Hophni and Phineas are "sons of Belial".
So apparently this story proves that hope is good but optimism is bad and that schoolteachers can't be religiously neutral but must choose between being the wise Samuel or the evil Hophni and Phineas. I don't get it either. The "reasoning" behind this conclusion is that Eli, like certain bishops (Pope Francis not specifically mentioned), was too lenient in his rebuke of his sons. If I had to order the immorality of the characters in the story, God would be first, and the Philistines, who killed thousands, would be second. The sins of Hophni and Phineas would be small potatoes by comparison. Poor old Eli seemed like a reasonable dude.
Esolen claims that modern schooling is "Belial, with bright banners and sparkle-dust". He claims children are raised today to embrace wealth, pleasure, and self-advancement. He claims efforts to raise children to "make the world a better place" are not based in true goodness but in "a perfectly grim hedonism, gussied up as Progress." This is a very uncharitable view that excludes the very real possiblity that many teachers act with the best of intentions.
If Esolen wanted a biblical story that would inspire a teacher, he could have chosen better than one so filled with murderous themes of sadism, control, and submission. How about the parable of the loaves and the fishes with its kindly sentiments of mutual support? Or the parable of the good Samaritan, with its ethic of reaching out to the marginalized? His resentment of "progress" and the benefits of modernism seems to be based in fury that the world, as I have pointed out in other posts, is becoming a kinder, gentler place, even as it is becoming more secular.
If Esolen wants to make the case for the value of religion, he needs a better story than 1 Samuel. If he wants to make the case for the value of hope as a theololgical virtue, he needs to stop moping and wringing his hands and passing judgment on everyone and start seeing the beauty and goodness in the world and its people (which he dismisses as "optimism ... mere atheism with a glad hand and a smile.")
Perhaps he believes we are all "made in the image and likeness of God" and that God is the monster of 1 Samuel who kills off people who aren't sufficiently servile. Well, that would make me depressed too.
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