Peter Kreeft - The Journey: A Spiritual Roadmap for Modern Pilgrims

PETER KREEFT

Illustrations by Jerry Tiritilli

The thirteen historical characaters in this book-Socrates, Epicurus, Protagoras, Diogenes, Gorgias, Democritus, Thrasymachus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Aristotle, Moses, Joshua and C. S. Lewis-were all men. But I dedicate this book to a woman who was greater than any of these men because she most clearly and perfectly showed us in one sentence the answer to the fundamental question, When life's journey brings us to a fork in the road, what makes a choice the right one?

When God asked her permission (1) to be born from her womb, her answer was "Be it done unto me according to thy word."

Many of the readers of this book may be Protestants, and I am a Catholic. But this is not an attempt to sneak in some Catholic theology. It is an honest dedication of honest admiration and thanks.

The book points to Christ-the only man in history who chose his own mother. Mary pointed to Christ too; her instructions were "Whatever he tells you, do" (see john 2:5).

I pray daily for reunion between our tragically separated sister churches. I believe Mary showed us the single most important principle for reunion in that single sentence. For we know our Lord's will is unity, and therefore we also know that if we love and obey his will with all our hearts, that is what we will find. When all the instrumentalists obey the Conductor's baton, the whole orchestra will play in harmony.

The following story is an allegory, like John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and C. S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress. I thought of entitling it Pilgrim's Egress, since it is about a pilgrimage to find the meaning of life, and about an egress, or escape, from ten wrong turns on this pilgrimage. But publishers don't like punny titles. I also thought of calling it Ten Right Turns, but I knew the L.I.E. (Left-Wing Intellectual Establishment) would label it "right-wing politics" even though it isn't political at all (and if it were, it wouldn't be either left or right).

The story is a roadmap for the most important journey you can make. It is about choosing your philosophy of life. Here are the ten choices, in logical progression:

1. Shall I question? Shall I go on this quest for truth at all?

2. If I question, is there hope of answers, or should I be a skeptic? Is there objective truth?

3. If there is any objective truth, is there objective truth about the meaning of life?

4. If there is an objective truth about the meaning of life, is it that life is meaningless, "vanity of vanities"?

5. If life has real meaning, is it spiritual and not merely material?

6. If it is spiritual, is it moral? Is there a real right and wrong?

7. If there is a real right and wrong, a real moral meaning, is it a religious meaning? Is there a God?

8. If there is a God, is God immanent (pantheism) or transcendent (deism), everywhere or nowhere?

9. If God is both immanent and transcendent (theism, creationism), are the Jews (who first taught this idea of creation) his prophets, his mouthpiece to the world?

10. If the Jews are God's prophets, is Jesus the Messiah?

Every one of these choices is momentous. As Robert Frost says in "The Road Not Taken," " when two roads diverge, the choice can make "all the difference." Julius Caesar faced such a choice in 55 B.C. when he and his troops crossed the Rubicon River in northern Italy to march on Rome and seize the emperor's crown, thus changing Rome (that is, the whole civilized Western world) from a republic to an empire. His choice of a physical road-to go south rather than north-was dictated by his choice of a spiritual road-that is, by his philosophy of life.

Your mind has roads that are just as real as your body's roads. And just as you must choose whenever you come to a fork in your physical road, you must also choose between different mental roads, different philosophies of life.

Different physical roads lead to different physical destinations. You can't get to the Atlantic Ocean by walking west from Chicago. Different mental roads also lead to different destinations, different destinies:

Sow a thought, reap an act;

Sow an act, reap a habit;

Sow a habit, reap a character;

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

Buddha knew this principle well. The very first line of the most popular Buddhist scripture, the Dhammapada, is "All that we are is made by our thoughts. It begins where our thoughts begin, it moves where our thoughts move."

Solomon knew it too. He wrote in his Proverbs: "Keep thy heart [mind, spirit] with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (4:23).

The image of We as a road is probably the single most popular image in the world's literature. It is itself a wellworn road. The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, The Lord of the Rings-all the great epics are true to life by being true to this image.

Quo vadis? Where are you going? That is the question.

READER: But that is a philosophical question.

AUTHOR: Yes, it is. It's the philosophical question.

READER: But I don't like philosophical questions.

AUTHOR: And thus you avoid them?

READER: Yes.

AUTHOR: No.

READER: What do you mean, "no"?

AUTHOR: I mean you can't avoid having a philosophy. Yours is a philosophy against philosophy; but that's a philosophy.

READER: No it isn't. Suppose I just refuse to philosophize.

AUTHOR: You can indeed choose that road. But that is a philosophy too: a bad one, one that deceives itself. You can't choose between philosophy and no-philosophy, only between good philosophy and bad philosophy.

READER: So what?

AUTHOR: So then why not come along on this trip?