Commentary On Dining Hall Propaganda Rag

This is from a flyer in the North dining hall:



"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." - C.S. Lewis

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The vast majority of people at UConn have some sort of religious background, and the majority of those people grew up in some sort of Christian environment. Yet for a lot of students, the Christian faith, and the God of the Christian faith, is merely a side note in their lives.

But Lewis points out the truth of the matter. If Christianity is false, then not only should it not be that important, it should be totally unimportant. It would be faith based on lies. But if it is true, then the central figure of human history is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, who came to die and rise again, offering each one of us eternal life if we would place our trust in Him. And if that's true, then Christianity is of infinite importance.

[Obligatory "All the cool kids are doing it" section.]

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Alright. See what they did there? They began by using a quote in which either of the two answers are at opposite sides of the spectrum, and the middle is removed as false. They then go forward and somewhat address the negative side of the quote. Basically, they restate it.

Then, in a very clever sleight of hand, they move to the positive side of the quote and manage to make it the truth (for the purpose of the diatribe). The "if" in the sentence becomes invisible by the weight of the grandiose statements that are being made: "the central figure of human history is Jesus of Nazareth," "offering each one of us eternal life," "Christianity is of infinite importance."

Oh, but wait...there's an "if" in there. Well, nevermind that. The next section states that "On this campus hundreds of students are opening their hearts to follow Christ and are getting involved in community with others who know Jesus." Christianity has gone from being an enormous "if" to being "it." If you replace "Christ" and "Jesus" with "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and "Christianity" with "Pastafarianism" you can understand how absurd it is that the leap from "if" to "it" was made.

And since quoting people is the name of the game today, I'll use Camus:

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable."

Never end anything with a quote, they say.