Originally posted November 5, 2008
Put Not Your Trust in Man
So, while the State of Washington votes for a ballot measure for physician-assisted suicide, America has voted for politician-assisted suicide.
Wow, dude — you really think it that dire?
Yeah, I do. The storm clouds are nearly upon us. The tsunami tidal wave is just over the horizon. We’ve been talking about the slippery slope for many years now — well, eventually you’ve gone so far as to slip off the slope and into the abyss. When things as fundamental as truth have been, not only relativized, but turned into something that can be applied or not applied, or wholly manufactured out of whole cloth, at the will of those having power — government, politicians, media, academia — when truth no longer exists as truth, then we are past even a dictatorship.
Perhaps the problem is that we have been guilty of the same error as the “progressives,” who think that we can and should create a utopian paradise here on earth. We conservatives have long held to the idea that America is a “shining city on a hill,” that we are a beacon of hope and liberty to the world. If that was ever true, then it surely has been the rarest of exceptions in the history of mankind. We have had it really good in this “land of liberty” for a long time, and we perhaps have allowed ourselves to falsely believe that this is the way it has always been and always will be, here and everywhere. In our zeal for natural rights, we have perhaps failed to see the world as it really is in practice. If we take a truthful look, we must see that freedom has been the exception in the world, and that, more often than not, the bad beats the good. (That will not be the case in the end, but it has been the case in the meantime.)
In short, perhaps we must come out of our dream and realize that being in the oppressed minority is the (worldly) usual state of things. And that our trying to create a conservative utopia, a conservative Kingdom of God on earth, is as much a folly as is a progressive utopia and Kingdom.
Perhaps we must realize that, although we may be in the world, we are not of the world. We are strangers in a foreign land. We are merely sojourners passing through the shadow of the valley of death. We pass our days on earth, but are citizens of heaven. Perhaps it is time to remember that. All of this — America included — will inevitably turn to dust. So we should place our trust and hope in those persons and things which do not decay or decline, we should place our trust and hope in those persons and things which are eternal and incorruptible. Trust Him and only Him.
.
Put Not Your Trust in Man
So, while the State of Washington votes for a ballot measure for physician-assisted suicide, America has voted for politician-assisted suicide.
Wow, dude — you really think it that dire?
Yeah, I do. The storm clouds are nearly upon us. The tsunami tidal wave is just over the horizon. We’ve been talking about the slippery slope for many years now — well, eventually you’ve gone so far as to slip off the slope and into the abyss. When things as fundamental as truth have been, not only relativized, but turned into something that can be applied or not applied, or wholly manufactured out of whole cloth, at the will of those having power — government, politicians, media, academia — when truth no longer exists as truth, then we are past even a dictatorship.
Perhaps the problem is that we have been guilty of the same error as the “progressives,” who think that we can and should create a utopian paradise here on earth. We conservatives have long held to the idea that America is a “shining city on a hill,” that we are a beacon of hope and liberty to the world. If that was ever true, then it surely has been the rarest of exceptions in the history of mankind. We have had it really good in this “land of liberty” for a long time, and we perhaps have allowed ourselves to falsely believe that this is the way it has always been and always will be, here and everywhere. In our zeal for natural rights, we have perhaps failed to see the world as it really is in practice. If we take a truthful look, we must see that freedom has been the exception in the world, and that, more often than not, the bad beats the good. (That will not be the case in the end, but it has been the case in the meantime.)
In short, perhaps we must come out of our dream and realize that being in the oppressed minority is the (worldly) usual state of things. And that our trying to create a conservative utopia, a conservative Kingdom of God on earth, is as much a folly as is a progressive utopia and Kingdom.
Perhaps we must realize that, although we may be in the world, we are not of the world. We are strangers in a foreign land. We are merely sojourners passing through the shadow of the valley of death. We pass our days on earth, but are citizens of heaven. Perhaps it is time to remember that. All of this — America included — will inevitably turn to dust. So we should place our trust and hope in those persons and things which do not decay or decline, we should place our trust and hope in those persons and things which are eternal and incorruptible. Trust Him and only Him.
.
