It is no secret that I am a book lover and avid reader. Many people ask me for book recommendations, so I thought I would periodically post some recommendations of the books that I have chosen to keep in my home library. Many are books that I have read multiple times because they have spoken to me in some wonderful, but mysterious way.
My first book recommendation is Chance or the Dance?: A Critique of Modern Secularism by Thomas Howard published in 1969.
Background:
The “Enlightenment” was the beginning of the erasure of the Divine in western civilization.
The Middle Ages were infused with the belief that the presence of God was in both the tedious and the grand. The mundane was as much of a reflection of God’s glory as the magnificent.
The “Enlightenment” exalted the rational. Reason was valued above the metaphysical and sacred. Individual liberty and the concept of individual rights exalted the individual above his Divine creator.
Reason became the method of progress rather than the search for God’s wisdom in life. Science became exalted over imagination. The mysteries of God were replaced by the machinations of the scientific method. Action was exalted above contemplation or worship.
The world was inverted and man proclaimed his dominion over the Earth and God. The individual became exalted over the community of the faithful.
Rather than art and philosophy pointing to God, it pointed to the individual man. The triumph of the individual was seen as the highest good and ultimate goal of life. Man was no longer truly obligated to God or conscience, but only to his own desires.
The Book:
Thomas Howard has captured the essence of these developments in these sublime, poetic pages.
There is but one word to describe this beautifully written overview of the transition from the sacred to the secular: Exquisite.
Howard writes a strikingly beautiful treatise on the rise of secularism and how its worldview has turned our civilization from a world where “everything meant everything” into a world where “nothing means anything”.
Howard speaks as one in love with God and all the meaning the Divine imbues in everyday life.
He gives a clear and haunting view of a world that has replaced the Sacred with superficiality. Of all the books (150+) I have read in the past few years, this was one of my clear favorites.
Chance or the Dance? inspires me to cultivate the ritual and sacred in my own life and reaffirm my connection to the Divine.
I choose to believe that everything means everything. Christ is present in every created thing---both the grand and the tedious.
Howard will lead you through the intellectual transition that has inverted the past wisdom of the ages. Follow along as he so eloquently explores this transition that has defined the modern world.
You won’t be disappointed.
Thank you! I have purchased and read several books you have recommended on Twitter.
I'll have to get that book sometime. His comment about Enlightenment Reason is great. It calls to mind the phrase ascribed to this philosophy: "Nothing Buttery " (God is nothing but human projection; Creation is nothing but the random outcome of time and chance..)