Dark and light, sitting side by side

This exchange encapsulates the dichotomy that permeates everything in post-American life. On one side is the possibility that Western civilization can survive. On the other is the probability that it won't.



As I've stated before, one of the last sticking points for me before committing to a faith walk was that I saw myself as an alright guy, with room for improvement as is true of anyone, but on balance a decent human being.



And it didn't help that most of the invitations to consider Christianity that I encountered were boneheaded turn-offs. Little pamphlets that thought they were winning me over with messages like, "We deserve Hell and death, but there's good news!" or, "Your works are as filthy rags before the Lord."



Might be just the sales job for some people, but my reaction was, "Save it for somebody else, pal." And I continued to let my Bible collect dust on a shelf.



I was a conservative long before I became a follower of Christ. With regard to Questions of a Spiritual Nature, I went years vaguely deferring to the Buddhist and Taoist teachings that resonated for me during my hippie days. But after my ideological conversion experience, I had to admit to myself that I'd become a secular agnostic. The whole notion of what the nature of ultimate reality is was pretty far down my list of important stuff to think about.



And that is what Louis C.K. reveals about himself in the last few minutes of this clip. He sees himself as a good citizen, taking what he sees as harmless measures to keep sane.



Of course, now we know there was more to the story than that.



And that's what I came to realize about my own life, fraught as it was with foibles and habits that I didn't see as being of much consequence, but that I sure wasn't going to speak about in public, or even in most private conversations.



It got to the point where contradictions and tensions got in the way of my basic engagement with the world. The remaining pieces of the puzzle didn't fit.



Meanwhile, as a conservative, and therefore a defender of the notion that people ought to comport themselves with dignity, ought to prioritize cordiality, and ought to eschew rough, crude language and behavior, I saw the culture I lived in going in exactly the opposite direction. And then I had to ask myself, do I contribute to the rot?



And I started to see that one major difference between the Judeo-Christian worldview and the eastern worldview is that the former requires one to take a stand.



I didn't even know what that meant at first, but just for grins I began cracking open the Bible and even attending church services occasionally. I began to seriously consider the notion that the universe is designed in a particular way, and not another way. Everything from the placement of galaxies to the nature of the human man and the nature of the human woman is manifested according to a blueprint.



There's a law that governs it all, if you will.



Then I started seeing that chaos and misery - in the world, and in my own life - arise from a willful disregard for that law. Then I started seeing that free will, left to its own devices, is going to steer a person to such disregard. Then came a better understanding of grace and all the rest.



But cockiness, of the sort Louis C.K. is displaying here, is deadly. Just deadly. It sets the individual up as his own god, and since one is not capable of creating, or even sustaining, oneself, there's nothing to look forward to except an eternity in complete aloneness, basically death.



It's also interesting that a typical modern viewer of this clip - certainly me - has to work through an initial reaction to the woman as a Pollyanna or even a porcelain doll, cartoonishly virtuous and unacquainted with the messy little corners of human life. It's not until the end of the exchange, when Louis C.K begins insulting her and using crude language that we can see by her unfazed response that she indeed completely understands that messiness, and also knows the way to fit together the broken pieces of life that result from cockiness.



In her humility, she displays a strength that Louis C.K. can't even conceive of.



Which is why people like her don't run into the kind of trouble that Louis C.K. has found himself in of late.



None of us is "just an alright guy or gal." We all need grace, and upon realizing that, there's a humbling effect, the onset of a profound gratitude, and one desires to be an agent of the light rather than the darkness.