In search of sanity
By Tom Quiner
What is sanity?
Most would consider sanity a measure of the soundness and rationality of the mind.
To a certain view, unfettered abortion is not sane.
Nor is same-sex marriage.
One must live in a half-blind reality to embrace such extreme notions as truth.
I had coffee last week with a delightful woman who embraces unfettered abortion, same sex marriage, and state-mandated contraception as a societal good.
We share the same religion, Catholic. We probably come from similar middle-class backgrounds.
But our view of the Truth is different.
To her, truth is relative. To me, it is absolute.
I picked up a book yesterday I am eager to read, titled “Theology and Sanity,” written by Frank Sheed.
Mr. Sheed addressed the idea of sanity in his foreward:
“Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world. But some of the most important elements in the real world can be known only by the revelation of God, which it is theology’s business to study. Lacking this knowledge, the mind must live a half-blind life, trying to cope with a reality most of which it does not know is there. This is a wretched state for an immortal spirit, and pretty certain to lead to disaster. There is a good deal of disaster around at this moment.”
The secular world is at war with religion, using their political clout to remove God from discussions on the critical moral issues of our times.
Our search for sanity, he states, must include God. Without Him, we are impaired. Our very sanity is suspect.
When people claim that “truth is relative,” what they are really saying is that there’s really no such thing as truth. While I would never claim to have a corner on the truth, and I’m sometimes perplexed as to what the truth is on a given question, I operate from the premise that there IS truth, whether or not I can discern it correctly. This puts me at odds with a very large segment of society, and renders our arguments on particular philosophical and policy questions a waste of time, since we aren’t even operating from the same premise.