And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?”  Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him.  And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.  So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.  Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.  But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said,  “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”  He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it.  Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

The mind is a rudderless wanderer blown here or there by any puff of breeze. If I mention watermelons, you must think of watermelons; if giraffes, giraffes. The very rare genius can keep his mind on course for a while, perhaps as long as a whole minute, but most of us are always at the mercy of every random suggestion of environment. We imagine that we sit down and think, but, in fact, we mostly gather wool, remembering this and that and fantasizing about the other. In our heads we recite some slogans and rehash the past, often repeatedly. Even in this foolish maundering, we are easily distracted by random thoughts, mostly about money or politics but often about sports or sex. Left to its own devices, the mind plays like a child in well-stocked sandbox, toying idly with trinkets and baubles and often doing the same thing over and over again until some slightly more interesting game presents itself.

If we want to pursue extended logical thought, thought that can discover relationships and consequences and devise its own alternatives, we need a discipline imposed from outside of the mind itself. Writing is that discipline. It seems drastic, but we have to suspect that coherent, continuous thought is impossible for those who cannot construct coherent, continuous prose.

``Writing,'' Bacon said, ``Maketh the exact man,'' as we all know, but we ordinarily stop thinking about that too soon. The ``exact'' part is only half of what writing makes; the other half is the ``man.'' Writing does indeed make us exact because it leaves a trail of thought that we can retrace and so discover where we have been stupid. At the same time, though, it makes us ``men,'' grown-ups who can choose what toys we want to play with and who can outwit the random suggestions of environment. In his writing, then, we can judge of at least two things in a man - his ability to think and his intention to do so, his maturity. An education that does not teach clear, coherent writing cannot provide our world with thoughtful adults; it gives us instead, at the best, clever children of all ages.

Richard Mitchell, Less Than Words Can Say

After reading what I have this weekend, however, perhaps I should start adding the qualifier:  “…within the bounds of an absolute commitment to truth.” 

Moderation of appetites is a virtue, of course.  “Moderation” of one’s views, when it means bending them away from true principles, is not.  A better word for that is compromise. 

Now, compromise is a fine thing when it settles the question of what we’ll have for dinner tonight.  It’s horrid when used to split the difference between good and evil.  “Nuance,” as the postmoderns are wont to say.  “You’re too black and white; much of life falls into the gray area.  Using the word ‘evil’ amounts to fear-mongering.”

How quickly we forget, or rather blind ourselves, to the lessons of history.  I would sum up those lessons thus:  “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?,” and “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, this will he also reap.”  In other words, the skids are greased for wickedness, and no human power can erase, or even duck, the consequences of sin and evil.

Human beings “suppress the truth,” and “worship created things rather than the Creator.”  We forget to be thankful, and to Whom our thanks is owed.   And so, humanity is given over to a debased mind, to do things we ought not do.  To one another.  Over, and over, and over again.  Sometimes horrific evil bubbles up overnight, via revolution and unrest.  Sometimes the road to debasement is taken step by tiny step, with the collusion of well-meaning people.  How many times does it have to happen, and in how many ways, before we’ll learn?

Two incompatible views of man are at large in the world.  There’s the “walking, talking matter” view, and there’s the “imago Dei” view.  Those who hold the former see humanity as a means to an end, as a malleable whole, whether the “mover” is the cosmos in general or society (and its arbiters) in particular.  Those who hold to the latter recognize the inherent worth, dignity, beauty, and divine purpose of each individual.

The two views are fundamentally irreconcilable.   Out of one grow philosophies marked by collectivism, pragmatism, nihilism and all those other ugly isms that have caused so much misery in the world.  Out of the other grows the tree of human liberty.  It’s as simple as that.  Any attempt to mix the two results in nothing less than capitulation to the former view, devoid of light as it is, just as a vacuum draws in anything that comes near it.

The duty of the Church in society is to be a lighthouse:  first, of course, to bear witness to the love of Christ in his redemption of mankind; but also to be a standard of righteousness in a dark world and to shine the light of truth over the death-on-the-rocks that lies behind godlessness—including the godless, materialist view of humankind.

Quite simply, we will fumble our mission if we compromise with that view. 

Godlessness usually doesn’t present itself as such.  In fact, it often comes with a religious window-dressing (e.g., liberation theology).  But all of the left-leaning isms in play right now borrow their paradigm from Marxism, which is unquestionably godless.  The panoply of identity groups are pitted against one another, competing for power and resources. There is a group to which you decidedly belong, like it or not, and from the perspective of the ideology you owe your value and allegiance to the group.  Thus, we see the leftist doctrine that societal structures are inherently racist, or all people of a certain skin color are inherently racist, or that all people of a certain sex or social status are inherently oppressive or oppressed, etc., and so the battle between the groups is really endless, requiring endless top-down intervention.

Your identity may be found in Christ, but these political philosophies will never recognize it.  They’ve already got you neatly pigeon-holed according to your superficial characteristics.  They look on your outward appearance, not the real you.  Your soul matters not a whit to them.  What does materialistic ideology have to do with souls?

But, what about social justice? you ask.  Shouldn’t a Christian be concerned about social justice?  Shouldn’t we be helping the downtrodden? 

The Christian should be concerned about justice.  Justice implies impartiality.  It can only happen when the law is applied equally to everyone without regard to their appearance or station in life.  We will achieve justice when we abide by our Constitution as it is written. 

But “social justice” is really code for partiality.  “Social justice” means advocating for “stuff” or privileges for a certain social group based on its standing in the “oppressed” or “oppressor” paradigm, i.e., over and against other groups.  It rips the blindfold off lady justice, rendering her irrelevant to the process.  Partiality is the *opposite* of justice.

The Christian should also be concerned about helping others in the name of Christ.  But how Christian is it to endorse the seizure of your neighbor’s property to carry out that aim?  How Christian is it to abdicate that responsibility to the state?  Can the state help people "in My name" as Christ commanded, without taking over the Church's mission?  Each Christian has a personal duty to obey God; he cannot carry out that duty on behalf of another, nor vice versa.  When you stand before God, will you answer for what you have done, or for what your neighbor has done?  

Good intentions don't always bring good results.  It’s quite possible for well-meaning Christians to become confused by guilt-inducing rhetoric, when they reject the standard of revelatory truth and live in a void of relativism (as is the case in our postmodern society).  It’s quite possible for those with high ideals to be hoodwinked into embracing ideas that they little realize are the death knell of human freedom.  It’s very possible for people who intend to help, to become busybodies, and inflict a great deal of damage on their intended beneficiaries/victims, making life far more troublesome for everyone in the process.  It’s quite possible for people of good will to become useful tools to people of bad will. 

The Christian view of humanity is one that upholds the individual worth of each person before God.  When we help in the name of Christ, we help individuals with our own hands--not faceless, stereotyped groups with the coerced livelihood of others.  The problems of humanity cannot be solved group by oppressed group, using the power of the state to punish “oppressor” groups and reward “oppressed” groups.  Most of the problems of humanity are directly traceable problems of the heart, which no human institution has the power to touch.  

(Granted, some of our problems arise from calamities beyond our control, as nature groans under our fall from grace; but show me a human institution with the power to eliminate human suffering by fiat.  Death, disease, and disaster ultimately remain beyond our ability to control.)

Yes, the state can force people to mouth its doctrine by punishing free thought.  It can break the mind and emotions under torture and kill the humanity inside a person.  It can incarcerate, kill, and bury the truth in individuals.  But even then, it cannot come near to touching the human heart.  (Cf. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Corrie Ten Boom, and many, many others.)

Christians rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to effect change.  For God is the *only* source of hope and change.  To look elsewhere for them is to reject Him.  We look to Christ for humanity’s hope.  We look to society for just law, to protect people from doing harm to one another.  Our government is to derive its just powers from our consent, and we are to be left free to worship God with our lives.

Any philosophy claiming to “bring the kingdom” through the arm of the state is essentially heretical.  This has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.  Furthermore, it is fundamentally opposed to the founding principles of this nation, which set up a limited government with balanced powers to keep in check the tendency of power to corrupt human beings.   It takes very little effort to measure a political philosophy against the Constitution; it’s easy to see if its proposals go beyond the enumerated powers of the government.  Any philosophy that exceeds the bounds of law of the land will not be just in its effects.  Christians should be ever alert to warning signals of the potential loss of freedom to be the light we're called to be.

Americans were never meant to be ruled by an all-encompassing bureaucracy of rules and regulations.  Our founders intended that we govern ourselves and that the powers of the government would be derived from our consent.  Bureaucracies do not answer to the electorate; their rules and regulations are made without the consent of the governed, yet we are legally subject to them.  

But it seems we have as a nation been educated out of the “imago Dei” view of man.   We have been conditioned, little by little, to accept without question state intrusion in the most personal areas of our lives.  Perhaps people are seeking to fill the void with statism.  Many Christians themselves have been educated by the state at cross-purposes to their faith, without even being aware of it.  (This is one reason I homeschool and have turned to a classical model of education.  I hope my children will learn *how* to think rather than *what* to think.)

Ideas have consequences.  Life issues are good indicators, for they are watershed issues.  If a politician does not hold the line on the inherent dignity and worth of human life, a Christ-follower should have no use for anything else he preaches.

I consider our current President to be pretty radically opposed to our founding principles, and that’s a serious thing.  However, the main “tell” for this, and the main reason I did not support him, was because he displayed an incredibly hard heart when confronted with the case of a helpless infant abandoned to die alone in a dirty linen closet.  He was not willing to bring true justice to bear on a real injustice according to the law (“...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”).  He is in the grip of the “man as malleable matter” view.

This view of humanity is unacceptable to any Christian believer, or should be.  What Would Jesus Do is a no-brainer here.  What the law says is also a no-brainer.  We should not embrace such evil. 

The life issue splits ideas into two totally different directions, just as the watershed does the falling rain.  It’s not very difficult to discern that any policies flowing from such a heart will be flowing down the wrong side of the mountain, emptying into the wrong river, and leading us to the ocean of nihilism.    On one side, the human animal is a pawn of the state, and the state is the arbiter of power.  On the other side, the state is answerable to the citizen, and the individual is free to guide his own destiny (hopefully back to his Maker and Redeemer, when the Church is effective as a lighthouse).

The president’s economic views illustrate what the philosophy looks like further downstream.  Your property--which is really a material manifestation of your very life, for you invest your life-time in your work--really belongs to the state, not to you.  Your salary can be determined by the government.  Your business, your blood sweat & tears, can be seized by the government whenever it declares a “crisis.”  Is there really any such thing as human freedom with out economic freedom?

How much does it take to open the Church’s eyes?  The policies of the current administration have been creeping slowly to this point all along, yes, and perpetrated by both political parties, yes.  But this administration has taken it to unprecedented levels at unprecedented speeds.  We’ve got to get our heads out from under the Marxist “big business deserves it” meme that is spread abroad by blame-shifting politicians, populist sentiment and media elitists, because unlawful government meddling up to this point is as much to blame as any private sector corruption; and furthermore, it wasn’t big business, but ordinary businessmen who recently lost their car dealerships through political favoritism. 

The private sector is truly no longer that.  Pretty soon the government will be taking over another huge segment of our economic decision-making, through a radical reinvention of health insurance, placing all forms of insurance under a government-controlled “exchange.”  Some Christians, unbelievably, call this “fair competition.”  I call it what it is:  statism.  And I know from whence it comes, too, and where it inevitably leads.  I know there is no such thing as human freedom without economic freedom, for without economic freedom, we cannot truly determine our course in life.

Christians, there are really only two ways to go here, principially speaking, and to moderate is effectively to choose one.  I am bold enough to say that moderation is compromise when it comes to the two views of man...and compromise is choosing the death of liberty.  If you disagree, I respectfully recommend re-reading the Constitution of the United States and the sources from which it sprang.

Beware of “moderating” light with darkness.  Your job is to dispel the darkness. 

"For what fellowship has light with darkness?" 

/screed

My interest in the Sunday Post extends only as far as the coupon inserts.  The rest of the paper goes straight to garden mulch.  (But it makes an excellent mulch.)  A little balance in your reporting might restore my interest.  Thanks!

A (reluctant) subscriber