Anguished over Romantic Choices? A Lesson from Jane Austen

Jane Austen's lesson here is that when one is anguished with one's own personal life choice, instead of following Charolet in her pragmatic rationalism, or Lydia in her emotionalism, we can follow Elizabeth in aligning ourselves to our telos, our true end, for Christians this telos is the resurrected life. This telos is what C.S.Lewis refers to as he says that Christians of the ancient times were people who had a heavenward view of life, but in the transition to modernity we have become too focused on happenings of  this earthly life. Given this context, it shouldn't be surprising why the existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, from Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, considered choice a burden than a gift of freedom! Perhaps, it shouldn't be surprising that we modern this-worldly neurotics stymied with limitless choices find Jane Austen's world quaintly attractive!

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A Good Man is Hard to Find - the Misfit Disciple!

 

Jesus. O'Connor is not trying to prove the faith, but rather to critique the Christian culture which often misses the radical nature of the person of Christ by equivocating Christianity to some banal morality of niceness. Flannery O' Connor puts the words of truth in the mouth of the criminal, perhaps not unlike the criminal crucified alongside. In a Flannery O Connor sort of way one could say that Misfit is a better disciple of Christ than the grandma. 

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