No Profit, All Loss
The Humanity Lost When Our Ends Are Denied
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
So said the Lord, after Peter, with those good intentions that pave a certain broad, smooth, easy, inoffensive way, rebuked him and tried to talk him out of going to Jerusalem. For Jesus said that in Jerusalem he would suffer at the hands of the elders and the priests, and give up his life. More than justifying his own way toward death, as if it applied to him alone, Jesus made sure that his disciples understood that the way of the cross was the only way a man could take to follow him, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (16:25). It is the law of love without reserve, of setting one’s whole life on the line, for “except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
What applies to the individual man, I believe I see now, applies to mankind, who is in danger of becoming a single homogeneous mass, operated on by the engines of mass marketing, mass entertainment, mass schooling (but not, however, education), and mass politics, mutually reinforcing functions of the same rootless and placeless thing; and now also by the engine of “data,” the machine that saps our ability or our willingness to take the time to think.
No Place to Go
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Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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