In the weight room one day I made the acquaintance of a man from Alaska. I steered the conversation onto Chris McCandless and others of the wild and crazy crew who seek Something More in the last American frontier. My interlocutor was not familiar with the McCandless story, but he reminded me of the case of Timothy Treadwell, who camped among grizzlies, and whose luck ran out. This piece from Outside magazine tells the tale. And here is his final letter.
In the Outside article, the author, Doug Peacock, reports that Treadwell "told people he would be honored to 'end up in bear scat.'" And in his last letter, Treadwell refers to the grizzly as a "perfect animal." There are here the ummistakable signs of nature idolatry. Man must worship something, and if God be denied, then an idol must take his place, whether it be nature with its flora and fauna, or money, or sex, or the Revolution, or the crotch-grabbing one man melting pot, or some other 'icon.'
Addenda, 19 August:
1. Theists need to consider whether they are worshipping the true God or a theological fabrication. There is the almost irresistible tendency to identify God with one's conception of God. But the two cannot be the same. There are various conceptions of God, some better than others; but God is obviously not a conception. It is easy to succumb to the worship of a product of the human mind, whether it be an individual product, or a collective product such as the conception authorized by a particular cult or church.
2. The knee-jerk use of 'icon' throughout the media is a good indicator of contemporary idolatry. What we need is a new iconoclasm. Memo to self: develop this 'stub.'
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