"...the true, the beautiful, struggles in winds and spaces, and scarcely, perilously wins."

Daniel Berrigan, "Stars Almost Escape Us"

Something like this lies at the very heart of faith, of life. We fight to believe, sometimes in spite of every evidence, that the true and the beautiful is even there, let alone that it wins.

This is the great sally of Christianity against nihilism. Jacques Ellul argues that it is the very subversion of Christianity that has given birth to the modern nihilistic epidemic. Christianity set itself against every idea of religion, every idea of the sacred, every false meta-idea that brought social cohesion and a sense of meaning and purpose. "No!" it cried. It is Christ, or it is nothing.

And then Christ was subverted, Ellul says, and systematised, and structured, and powered, and politicked, and confined into "holy" spaces and "holy" times accessible only to "holy" people. It doesn't really matter how high or low your Church expression is, we are all subject to this subversion.

And so Christianity, having successfully undermined the things that had given purpose to the world, successfully failed to replace them with the radical freedom and grace announced by Jesus.

And so what is the point? Where is meaning? We have systems of thought now that have dismissed God entirely, dismissed sin entirely, and yet still rely on the notion of good and evil. We can still identify broad and narrow evil in the world, and witness it displayed before us on every available media channel. We are drowning in the news of sin, but we dare not call it such.

And we have lost the hope of salvation in the so-called death of God.

Hence, nihilism.

Christianity may have played a major role in the creation of this modern and post-modern scenario. But at its heart, the Christian message is a defiant NO to nihilism, to death. "And the last enemy to be defeated is death!"

Faith is about life, life and hope and beauty and truth. These are not ideals, not ideas, not theories, not inherent Forms or free-standing realities. These are found in the revelation of Creator into the world, through the flesh of Christ and the Spirit that inhabits the one new people of God.

We are a people who somehow are given permission, and reason, to believe that the true and the beautiful, though they struggle, will win. Have won. Will continue to win.