Another "Colbert Report" Nugget

Dan Savage, sex advice columnist and guest on the Colbert Report recently, said that we should not give weight to the importance of monogamy in marriage "because we're not good at it".

Any thoughts on this or the applications of this philosophy to other areas of moral living?

"All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal... The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man...

"Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions.

"A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us very little. No two examples are so exactly alike that there is not some subtle difference, and that is what makes us expect that our expectations will not be disappointed this time as they were last time. So, while the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death comes as the ultimate and eternal climax.

"What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

"God alone is man's true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place..." -Blaise Pascal on man's search for happiness.


The comment I want to direct you to is right in the middle. To paraphrase, Our search for happiness reveals how incapable we are of achieving it and by extention reveals our need for God. That same with this situation. It is our difficulty in overcoming this that should point us to the fact of our need for Jesus. Or maybe we should have said, it's too hard to get into space, lets not go. It's too hard to drill and refine oil, lets forget it. It's too hard to mine gold and process it, Let ignore that precious metal.


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Insightful stuff, Tim. Thanks!