‘The Good’ on Good Friday
The Atlasphere just published a holiday column by Editor Jason Dixon titled ‘The Good’ on Good Friday.
It’s an excellent article — and today’s required mudita reading.
It begins:
Around the world today, Christians are celebrating Good Friday — a commemoration of Christ’s crucifixion.
Catholic and Protestant traditions alike offer special services on this day. Hymns, processions, reverence, and solemnity are the mainstays.
I submit that this ritual is one reason for Christianity’s success. Not this particular ritual, but ritual itself, and the reverence that accompanies it.
In philosophical terms, they provide a concrete symbol of an abstraction. In layman’s terms, they’re food for the soul.
Many fans of Ayn Rand’s work go on to embrace her philosophy, and consequently — in many cases — become atheists themselves. Ayn Rand herself said that she was not a “militant” atheist. She didn’t discard religion outright: She maintained it was an early attempt at philosophy. But she’d never heard a convincing argument for God’s existence, and refused to take anything on faith.
At the same time, she said she didn’t dislike the phrase “God bless you,” because it expressed the wish for the best possible to a person. And she did not dislike Christmas because — even apart from its secular flavor in modern Western society —it expresses a natural goodwill toward loved ones.
Following this example in particular, many Objectivists have sought to reshape holidays for their own purposes, stressing the good aspects of even overtly religious holidays and implementing their own traditions along the way.
I’ve personally always liked this, because it recognizes that we are people at a certain time in a certain place. We come from families that, in many cases, celebrate the major holidays — and perhaps even the minor ones — and there can be a sense of needless loss at the idea of discarding all observance.
It is also a statement of independence to look at a holiday with fresh eyes, consider its meaning, and make it one’s own, providing a bridge from our past to our present.
It is in this tradition that I offer a suggestion for a way to ritualize Good Friday: You can celebrate Good Friday by celebrating the Good.
For those atheists who can see no way to make this particular holiday your own, perhaps you’d be willing to reconsider.
We hear about, and are exposed to, hatred of the good for being good. But what about celebration of the good for being good?
Keep reading...
