Converging Lens

Also entitled: Why Relativism Is Not Only Stupid But Boring!!

Because eternal truths shame our soothing lies.

{Source: Dictionary.com}

“The art of rhythmical composition”. “Literary work in metrical from.” Good poetry by nature transcends the mere words within and paints a picture; it reaches beyond the words and grasps at some deep, abstract truth unexplainable by anything else. The form of the poem, namely the meter and the rhyme, are part of what make this possible. The strange yet flowing cadence and odd word choices that rhyme schemes demand set our minds off thinking in directions where our normal thoughts and reading might not call us.

The last three definitions offered are hyperboles to praise any nonrhythmic literature, because prose is only called poetical when it is so fantastic that it manages to evoke the same sort of reaction as poetry.  In the same way, a painting could look so real that it seems to be a sculpture, but the artist would still be wrong to say that he had made a sculpture.

G. K. Chesterton, a great poet himself but slightly better known as an early 20th century British journalist and a ‘jolly fat apologist’ aptly that said,“Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.” And “An artist loves his limitations, they define the thing he is doing.”

One simply cannot have freedom without limitations.

It sounds rather counter-intuitive at first and grates on our postmodern ears, but it's true: If there were no limitations, there would be nothing. Poetry must be limited if it is to give that transcendent effect; it is precisely that confining rhyme and meter that makes the ideas come to a point, like the tiny nozzle of a pressure washer that concentrates the flow of water. The limitations are simply the ladder by which the words of the poets break through the heavens and give us a fleeting glimpse.

That’s real freedom.

Shakespeare and friends were once the universal golden standard, but lately the poetic equivalent of this:

{image source} 

has infiltrated our heroes’ ranks:

“Roast potatoes for.”  —Gertrude Stein

This is the exact opposite of poetry’s signature power of employing mere mundane words to paint a picture by allowing itself to be constrained and squished into something that can pierce hearts. Its utter disregard of  rule have robbed it of its powers.

The non-poet, psuedo-quasi-poets who dislike their limitations sit on the ground because they refuse to bow to the idea that those are necessary. That’s not real freedom. That’s the two-year-old screaming “NOOOO!” and refusing help because he wants to be independent.

It is the fake, hollow shell of freedom that happens when evil pretends to be good.

That is not a poem. That is relativistic “freedom” personified in an impostor of a poem. That is what no limitations or rules gets you. It epically fails. Why would anyone read that? It is a mockery of poetry. It’s not even prose, “the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.” It's not even a sentence. It's a mockery of language, which is funny, because “all evil is but a parody of good.” And good is a definite, objective, real thing. It has to be, or it would only exist in our minds.

Writing poetry with no definites doesn’t work, and neither does living without absolutes. A relativistic worldview has no place to begin, to jump off. In relativism, everything begins with that sacred “I”, and necessarily, ends with it too.

{image source}

 And you don’t even know why you are eating roast potatoes, or that you are even eating them, just that they are for something. Or are they for anything at all? We wouldn’t want to assume they are, for that would impose on our sacred freedom! If I say make a statement about them at all, I am choosing that statement and rejecting all others. They are for me to eat so I won’t starve and die? That is SO limiting! And so it is for everything.

Now real freedom would be to not think at all!! Or have bodies! For thinking is limiting too. When we think one thing, we think that one thing and discard all others. Or logic! How confining it is to have to follow rules! And our bodies are also limiting us, we are not allowed to float in the air like a bubble or turn into lizards. But without those rules of logic, we wouldn’t get far at all; without bodies, we wouldn’t be human.

The perfect freedom then, is not being bound to nothing (relativism), it is being bound to the right thing (Truth).

What is truth? Actually, a better question is Who is truth? All created things will enslave, there is only One who sets free. To be free, we must bind ourselves to Him who is Free.

God created us and dictated the laws of our nature. One of those laws (the only real one, really), is that we are perfectly fulfilled in Him alone. In being bound to God, we may perfectly fulfill our nature and our desires, while casting off those lies and parodies and false freedoms. This false freedom, moral relativism, the idea that morality is whatever we want it to be and that no one’s morality is better or worse than another’s can sound good at first: it is not judgmental or hard to follow, it lets you live your life largely the way you want to.  But that worldview does not bind us to anything, and if we actually carried it out (it's pretty uncommon to consistently hold to relativism, most people will admit to absolutes) ultimately leaves us floating around like bubbles or paralyzed like the verbless “roast potatoes for.”

Chesterton again makes a great point: “You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.”

A triangle is not a triangle without three sides, a poem is not a poem without rhyme and meter, and we are not human unless we are God's own.