What discernment ministries and Lenin have in common
internetmonk.com » Blog Archive » How I’ve Changed: Ten Ways
…many Christians can excuse anything if they believe there is a doctrinal battle to be won in the process.
Michael is right, as usual. Remember that every True Believer in a cause adopts some form of end justifying the means — in practice, even if they are repulsed by ethical relativism in theory. Because their Cause is more important than all else, and they have felt the Call and subsumed all humanity in it, they must MUST win the argument, or their existence has no meaning.
Contrast this with the actual Christian prototype of the True Believer, St. Paul. Passionate and willing to fight, sure, but concerned above all in his letters with winning the hearts of his people, and not just with winning arguments with them. Think Corinthians. He is willing, in his terminology, to seem a fool in order to stay in the relationship with them. It is easy to feel the passion of Paul’s means and not notice what he defined as the successful end, which was to “win them all”.
The Christian blogowarriors aren’t trying to win any relationship with any actual breathing person. They are trying to win the intellectual contest according to that constant mental judge who sits over their shoulder and keeps score — that internal mapmaker, diagram checker, captain of their flag. That cold, cold father.
Another quote on the folly of collectivist “compassion”
from Douglas Wilson:
The simplest mistake in the world is to think that an act of human kindness, extended from one person to another, is capable of being translated to the larger scale of millions of people, with everything essential in that compassionate gesture remaining unaffected and unchanged. The mistake is a natural one, but it has nevertheless ruined economies, ensalved millions, killed millions more, led to streams of refugees, and untold misery.
Goodness in politics
The only political virtue is to maximise private life. All the rest is a debate over whom to steal from, and who gets the loot.
