Anthony DeStefano - A Travel Guide to Life: Transforming Yourself from Head to Soul

In the middle of the journey of life I found myself in a forest so dark that I could not tell where the straight path lay.

D ANTE A LIGHIERI , Inferno

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

J OHN 8:12

S ome books you plan for years. Some come to you like lightning bolts from heaven. This book is the second type.

One Saturday afternoon a couple of years ago I was at home doing some research on the Internet, and I accidentally came across an interview with a well-known Hollywood director, who was giving his opinion about religion. Predictably, he was an atheist, and his philosophy of life was one of the bleakest, most hopeless I had ever heard. He actually compared the world to a giant toilet bowl and said that every hundred years or so, someone comes along and flushes it (he conveniently neglected to mention who) and all the people living at the time are just washed down the drain into some mass sewer of nothingness.

This same flushing action takes place every generation, he said, and not only wipes everything out, but also renders all human activity and relationships meaningless. And, he added, since the universe itself is expanding and doomed to die at some point, nothing produced by humanity has any lasting value, either. The works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Einstein, etc., are all destined to be flushed down the same cosmic toiletand therefore the highest achievements of civilization are really just as inconsequential and worthless as the human beings who create them.

The moviemaker concluded by saying that the only sensible way to live your life is to find ways to distract yourself from this terrible reality. Whether its work, art, love, or sex really doesnt matter. The important thing is to keep yourself so busy that you never have time to think about the fact that nothing means anything.

When the interviewer asked the director about the value of religion and spirituality, he just waved his hand away dismissively. Priests, pastors, and rabbis were all just witch doctors, as far as he was concerned. Some of them might be well-meaning, but as a whole they were dimwitted, delusional, and living in denial.

Thats exactly what this famous director said. Interesti ngl y, his comments didnt offend me at all. In fact, I thought he was at least trying to be honest and consistent. So many atheists today are inconsistent in their thinking. They deny the existence of God and objective truth and permanent reality, and then they pretend that certain thingslike art or love or progresshave some kind of value. But they cant have any value. Not if everything is destined to die and vanish into the black void of nothingness. The moviemaker was actually being very logical. If you accepted his premisethat there is no Godthen the only way to live is in distraction. Everything else is just nonsense and self-delusion.

Anyway, the interview ended and left me feeling a bit depressed. I happened to like some of the movies made by this particular director, and I was sad to learn that he had such a dismal view of life. I felt sorry for him, and for all those like him who share the same black, hopeless outlook. But then something surprising happened. That evening there was some kind of Christian ecumenical conference going on in New York, and I had the opportunity to have dinner with two extremely brilliant clericsone a Catholic priest and the other an Evangelical pastoror, as the Hollywood director would have called them, two of the foremost witch doctors in the country.

We met at an Italian restaurant I like called Patsys, on Fifty-Sixth Street in Manhattan, and sat down at my favorite corner table, where we proceeded to have a wonderful, warm Italian meal. The priest and the pastor were both in excellent spirits. It had been a busy day for them, filled with speeches and workshops and debates, and they were ready to just sit back and relax and enjoy some good fellowship. The restaurant, as always, was buzzing with happy people, excited to be done with their workweek, perhaps looking forward to a Broadway show or a jazz club later in the evening, and mostly just elated to be in such a cheerful place and to enjoy the delicious food and hospitality of the Scognamillo family, who have owned the restaurant for decades.

Amid all the laughter and gaiety, the waiter brought over some hot, crusty Italian bread and a carafe of good red wine and poured it for us. The priest immediately raised his glass to make a toast, smiled brightly, and said in his booming, jubilant voice: All this, and heaven, too! We clinked our glasses and began a marvelous night of good food and good conversation.

But as the Catholic priest and the Evangelical pastor were talking with each other, I started to think about the toast the priest had made. All this, and heaven, too. What a contrast, I thought, from the interview I had listened to a few hours earlier. What a difference in outlooks between the atheist moviemaker and these two Christian clergymen. What a complete reversal of worldviews. To the atheist, life was devoid of any meaning. At the end of it there was nothing, and in between there was just a random series of experiencessome good, some bad, some indifferentall of them ultimately pointless. But to these two believers, life was full of joygenuine joy, not mere distractions. It was full of joy despite all its pain and suffering. And at the end of it, there wasnt black nothingness, but rather, the brightest, most joyful thing of all: heaven.

Could there be a more stark contrast between philosophies? I asked myself. It wasnt simply that these clerics held a different worldview than the atheistit was as if they actually inhabited a different world altogether. A better, happier world. But were they just witch doctors, as the filmmaker had claimed? Were they just dimwitted and delusional? I looked closely at the two men sitting across the table from me and tried to be unbiased about them. The priest had written seventeen books. He had five or six advanced degreesnot just in theology, but in literature and philosophy and even civil law. He spoke eight different languagesfluently. He had been the publisher and editor of a number of well-known Catholic magazines. By any standard, he was a first-rate scholar. The Evangelical pastor was equally impressive. He, too, had written close to twenty books; he, too, knew many languages, including Chinese and Russian. He, too, had several advanced degrees. On top of that he had built one of the largest international Christian organizations in the world. Yet, despite all his accomplishments, he was a gentle, soft-spoken, and humble man.

I looked at these men and couldnt help but be impressed. Both had come from relative poverty. Both had experienced difficult family situations growing up. Both had known plenty of suffering in their lives. In other words, both had