In which I rebut myself.

Yesterday I not only proclaimed that everything in life is a pain in the hinder, I wrote the lyrics for a song about it. Friend Stiiv has threatened to put it to music, so watch those Billboard charts!

Meanwhile, I heed the advice of BG Bear in cheering the %^*# up. And this is where we get to the spiritual side of complaining, as I mentioned yesterday, courtesy of everyone's favorite Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis.

The professor at work, rejecting my arguments
before I am even born

One of the things that made a deep impression on me when I started reading Lewis's nonfiction was his evidence for the doctrine of the Fall. Whether there was an Adam and Eve and serpent and Garden of Eden or something else or nothing, human beings of all stripes live and think as if the doctrine of the Fall of Man is an unshakable truth. That there was some Golden Age from which we have descended. Here is Lewis, writing in Mere Christianity, which I think is the only bit of the book I did not quote when I featured it in the book club last April:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?

There's more, of course, but it argues, in his typical clear manner, if we were creatures made for a fallen world, we would have no sense that things ought to be better than they are. They would just be part of the existence and we would expect nothing else. But we do expect better things, even in novel experiences for which we have no expectation of perfection, and even in repeated experiences when we should know better.

So you see? All my complaining yesterday, while it shows an unfortunate lack of gratitude -- my favorite and not-always-employed virtue -- yet it shows that we are creatures made for a better world, but through some flaw of our own have landed in this worse one. My complaining demonstrates a theological principle. You're welcome!

Lewis has some odd moments in his writing where he tries to square the circle, reconciling the Genesis story of the Fall with the fossil record. Better is his Space trilogy, a work of fiction where the other planets in our solar system are not fallen. It's a very interesting take on what such creatures would be like in worlds that still have entropy, pain, and death, but no sin.

Anyway, I complained yesterday; I shall try to be grateful today. But I doubt it will inspire a song. Sarcasm is more my creative type.