April 1, 2018
FROM THE ARCHIVES: MEN BY THEMSELVES ARE PRICED:
The Truth about Everything: Death on a Friday Afternoon (Charles Colson, March 24, 2005, BreakPoint)
As [Father Richard John Neuhaus] writes [in Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus], "If what Christians say about Good Friday is true, then it is, quite simply, the truth about everything." That "everything" starts with telling the truth about the human condition. How? By paradoxically punishing the offended party, instead of the guilty.As Neuhaus tells us, we are all aware that "something has gone terribly wrong with the world, and with us in the world." It is not just history's best-known list of horribles. It's also "the habits of compromise . . . loves betrayed . . . lies excused . . . "
Yet, instead of acknowledging our complicity in the world's evil, we minimize our own faults and regard our sins as "small." Good Friday puts the lie to that claim. If the Son of God had to suffer such a horrible death, then our sins cannot have been "small."
The Cross reminds us that "our lives are measured," not by us or by our peers, but "by whom we are created and called to be, and the measuring is done by the One who creates and calls." Instead of glossing over our sin with an understanding nod, the Cross renders "the verdict on the gravity of our sin."
Our unwillingness to see our sins as they really are, as God sees them, leads us to embrace another falsehood: that is, that we can make things right. Even though our culture is, in many respects, post-Christian, it still clings to the idea of redemption. However, just as with our ideas about sin and guilt, our ideas about redemption are pitiful and impoverished.
On Good Friday, God made it clear "that we are incapable of setting things right." He made it clear by taking our place. On the Cross, "the Judge of the guilty is Himself judged guilty." This is, of course, the great scandal, one that paradoxically points to the great truth at the heart of Good Friday: We are powerless to set things right, and only God, the offended party, could undo the mess we created.
The Cross--God's way of bearing witness to the truth about our condition--is as offensive today as it was two thousand years ago. Now, as then, we insist on misinterpreting the events of that Friday afternoon, but to no avail. Our sin has been judged, and God Himself bore the punishment. And that is the truth about everything.
One need not believe directly in this truth to understand that it is the only basis for a decent state.
MORE:
What's the matter with liberalism? (William Rusher, March 24, 2005, World Net Daily)
The truth is that liberalism's last two really big ideas - that government should micro-manage the economy to uplift the poor, and that fascism was unrelievedly evil but that communism should be appeased because its aims were noble - both lost resoundingly, in world competition, to the conservative propositions that a free market is the greatest engine of prosperity for everyone and that communism must be opposed and destroyed. The present happy condition of conservatism is simply more support for the old adage that nothing succeeds like success.What, then, should liberals do? [...]
To be blunt, they must come to terms with reality. That means accepting the principles of the free market wholeheartedly - not simply with "mouth honor," as Macbeth put it. And it also means coming to terms with the world as it really is. Peretz warns that liberals have invested far too many hopes in the United Nations. He is absolutely right.
At a deeper level, liberals must give up the conviction, born of the Enlightenment, that humanity, by the use of reason alone, can design a happy future for itself and the planet. That will entail abandoning their long romance with atheism and accepting a more modest place and role for mankind in God's plan for His universe.
[originally posted: 3/24/05]
Posted by oj at April 1, 2018 12:52 AM
We're in Iraq because we can make it better, not right.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2005 6:01 PMThe "only" basis for decent state? Does that mean the Japan, India, Taiwan, et al have no chance for a decent state short of mass conversion to Christianity? And that their state are indecent right now?
Posted by: Brandon at March 24, 2005 6:50 PMSo in order for liberals to triumph, they have to celebrate the free market and give up a belief in untrammelled reason? What's left of liberalism after that?
Posted by: Matt Murphy at March 24, 2005 6:51 PMBrandon:
Yes it does mean that if they hope to endure they'll require a montheistic/messianic basis.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2005 7:57 PMAs one of the Unchosen, whatever happened on the cross had nothing to do with me, holds no lessons for me and -- except that people who do think it important are very dangerous to me -- would be a matter of complete indifference.
I have been reading 'The Shaker Experience.' It does not make me yearn for the days when Christians bored holes in the tongues of other Christians to make them see the error of their doctrines.
Face it, until securlarist ideas injected humanity into the mix, there were no decent states. Orrin's tongue would be in just as much danger as mine -- probably more -- in such a Christian Commonwealth.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 24, 2005 8:38 PMHarry:
That's the beauty of it--He died for your sins too and thanks to Him you live in a relatively decent culture.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2005 8:47 PMOn this, I am basically with Little Jimmie Madison, his longshoreman disciple Eric Hoffer ... and OJ. The human beast is not innately evil, in my judgement, but it is innately capable of evil ... and good. Absent the good graces of the matriarch, we are doomed.
Posted by: ghostcat at March 24, 2005 8:55 PMStill hoping for a cross to nail yourself to, eh Harry? A Christian Commonwealth would be the greatest thing to ever happen to you, and woe betide the Pilate who tried to ignore you.
Posted by: joe shropshire at March 24, 2005 11:24 PMWell, you see Harry, calling oneself a Christian doesn't necessarily mean you are a follower of Christ. Much like identifying oneself as a rationalist has meant one were always reasonable.
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford, Ct. at March 24, 2005 11:30 PMHarry:
"It does not make me yearn for the days when Christians bored holes in the tongues of other Christians to make them see the error of their doctrines."
Oh c'mon, thure it doth. It muth be awfully fruthtrating for you to keep hearing all theth Chrithtians argue for life and tolerance. Thomething has gone terribly wrong, hathn't it? Or maybe we are all juth biding our time. You thould thee what we all thay and do after dark when the curtainth are drawn. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Harry: From my vantage point on the outside, it's clear that you're on the inside.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 25, 2005 7:21 AMHarry: From my vantage point on the outside, it's clear that you're on the inside.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 25, 2005 7:30 AMPeter: Betht Commenth Ever! I lafth thil I thried.
Posted by: Mike Morley at March 25, 2005 8:10 AMHarry, Peter, if either of you have a tongue stud, I'm not sure I want to know about it!
Posted by: Mike Morley at March 25, 2005 8:15 AMHarry:
Methinks you doth protest too much. Is that the breath of the Hound you sense?
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 25, 2005 8:52 AMImagine Japan, Taiwan and India developing in a world without a Christian west...
Posted by: Tom C., Stamford, Ct. at March 25, 2005 11:43 AMWell, I'm not proposing to bore holes in people's tongues.
In the event, Mother Ann's tongue was left intact, not because of Christian love but because a secular magistrate declined to impose the penalty for blasphemy.
Had she lived 20 or 30 years earlier, she would certainly have lost her tongue and possibly her life.
If you guys want to bore holes in each other's tongues, go for it. Just leave me out.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 25, 2005 12:23 PMHarry has a point, and in my view one of the things that made the USA (and to some extent Western Civ as a whole) great was the yin-yang, balance-of-power relationship between the Judeo-Christian tradition and OJ's much-reviled reason. I'm not sure I'd want a civilization with just one or the other.
Matt: What I've always wanted liberals and leftists to do was to concentrate on their supposed goals (helping the poor, etc.) and not on their traditional means. Too often it seems that they want socialism (e.g.) regardless of the actual effects on the poor, and want to ignore free market solutions that actually do help the poor. It just shows how much of politics is based on emotion and not logic/evidence/reason, I suppose.
Posted by: PapayaSF at March 23, 2008 5:55 PMTo the contrary, it was the Anglo-American rejection of Reason that saved us from the murderousness of the French/Reason model.
You're thinking of the sort of reason that has always been a feature of Grecco-Roman/Judeo-Christian culture and that is honest enough to demonstrate that it has no basis in reason, but is dependent on faith.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2008 7:34 AM
How is that a basis? Saying that we are powerless to set things right? Then why are we in Iraq?
If the Enlightenment overreached in thinking that man can perfect himself, certainly Christianity underreaches horribly. This gets back to the question with caring for the world. If nothing can be made right, why care?
If that is what Christianity teaches, then our Founders were not Christians. The very act of rebellion against the English Crown to create a more perfect union flies against the lesson of the Cross. What made them think that they could redeem government by basing it on the will of the people? The people cannot redeem themselves, let alone government!
It's a good thing that the Founders listened more to Enlightenment thinkers and less to Christian pessimists. We didn't get perfect government, but we did get better government.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at March 24, 2005 5:56 PM