"The True & Only Humanists"

I recently joined the National Association of Pro-Life Nurses.  I got a newsletter in the mail and read a couple of paragraphs that I feel are a beautiful, succinct, summation of how I feel because of Jesus and have never been able to articulate.  These words are not about me, though- forgive me for interjecting myself into an expression that is so much bigger than me or anyone else.  In my heart, the level of explosive love, joy, and righteousness which makes me feel like bursting is so out of this world.  It is not for me to bottle up inside, but to do my part in passing the message along.  Jesus...glory.

       From Anthony Esolen for the editors in the July/August Touchstone magazine, we have this conclusion to his thoughtful essay "Hagiophobia":


Let us, finally, be clear about one thing.  Those who believe in God, and who honor his holiness, longing to be transformed in mind and soul - they are the true and only humanists.  They hold so high a view of man that, if they were to see a victim of cholera dying in a ditch in Calcutta, they would burn in shame that the image of God should be treated with such contempt; or should they see a rich man destroying his soul with vices that money can buy, they would pray that he might someday see what man is called to be.
Because God is holy, man, made in his image, a little less than the angels, is worthy of our reverence.  But those who deny the holiness of God will be the quickest to deny the holiness of man.  They will reduce their neighbors and, in the end, themselves to animals, to machines, to something to be managed and controlled.  They who begin by hating God and his saints must end by hating man.  It cannot be otherwise.