As a solution to our alarming socio-economic crisis, we have proposed “a return to order.”
In so doing, we have endeavored to look beyond the impending collapse and outline the timeless principles of an Organic Christian order that addresses certain yearnings that modern man senses in the depths of his soul.
Such a depiction cannot fail to suggest the figure of the Prodigal Son who, having left his father’s house for the “frenetic intemperance” of a dissolute life, realizes the gravity of his error and longs to return. In looking for our solution, we believe we must follow a similar path.
Like the Prodigal Son, our first step must be to realize that we have erred. We have followed a path to ruin amid the din of the great party of frenetic intemperance.
In the course of these considerations we have sought to show how we have erred. Our error was not the fact that we enjoyed the enormous bounty of our great land but rather it was our flight from temperance.
We sought speed and agitation when we should have delighted in recollection and reflection. We have tried to build a materialist paradise while our nature yearns for the sublime.
We trusted in the rule of money to provide us with comfort and merriment only to be afflicted by sadness, stress and anxiety. The gods of the modern secular pantheon—individualism, materialism, and technological utopianism among others—have failed us.
As we approach our great crisis, we are left in a vacuum without clear direction or oracle.
Saint Luke tells us of the Prodigal Son (15:14): “And after he had spent all, there came a mighty famine in that country: and he began to be in want.”
The present hour should give us pause to reflect. For we too have exhausted our resources on a party we thought would never end. We too find ourselves on the edge of an impending and “mighty” disaster.
Looming on the horizon are radical ecological and socialistic solutions that threaten to throw us in the pigsties of abject misery. If in this grave hour, we could but realize that we have sinned, it would serve to awaken in us humble and contrite hearts, which is the first and most important step in our solution of “a return to order.”