My Thoughts
First and foremost, I do not, do not foster a belief that humans are an incorrigible, incurably ignorant, or irredeemably deplorable species. Quite the opposite; if it were so, what would that say of the One who made us in His image and likeness. We are not gods, our nature is neither divine nor infallible, though there are and have been far too many fools who would stake their claim to such high exaltation. There are likewise, many more who slavishly kneel and bow before such fools in absurd adulation.
G.K. Chesterton introduced his history book The Everlasting Man with these words: “There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place. … The point of this book,” he wrote, “is that the next best thing to being really inside Christendom is to be really outside it.”
And a particular point of it is that the popular critics of Christianity are not really outside it, they are on a debatable ground, in every sense of the term. They are doubtful in their very doubts. Their criticism has taken on a curious tone; as of a random and illiterate heckling. Thus they make current and anti-clerical cant as a sort of small-talk. They will complain of parsons dressing like parsons; as if we should be any more free if all the police who shadowed or collared us were plain-clothes detectives. Or they will complain that a sermon cannot be interrupted, and call a pulpit a coward’s castle; though they do not call an editor’s office a coward’s castle. It would be unjust both to journalists and priests; but it would be much truer of journalists. The clergyman appears in person and could easily be kicked as he came out of church; the journalist conceals even his name so that nobody can kick him. They write wild and pointless articles and letters in the press about why the churches are empty, without even going there to find out if they are empty, or which of them are empty. … They will suddenly turn round and revile the Church for not having prevented the War, which they themselves did not want to prevent; and which nobody had ever professed to be able to prevent, except some of that very school of progressive and cosmopolitan sceptics who are the chief enemies of the Church. It was the anti-clerical and agnostic world that was always prophesying the advent of universal peace; it is that world that was, or should have been, abashed and confounded by the advent of universal war. … When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do. … But these people have got into an intermediate state, have fallen into an intervening valley from which they can see neither the heights beyond them nor the heights behind. They cannot get out of the penumbra of Christian controversy. They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being Anti-Christians. Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They still live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith.[1]
What I do believe, with regard to the habits and thoughts of the common man is for the most they have been led astray by false and foolish gods not by what has been said but more of that which has not been revealed, what has been denied the light of day. In clearest terms: what one does not know will kill you or at least secure you from the truth. Plausible deniability works best when the truth is denied any audience. Nonsense sounds sensical when spoken sensibly without questioning; one-sided questions are as lopsided as two-faced politicians and as jaded as journalists jacking jawbreakers.
The Constitution and the Declaration enumerate unalienable natural rights granted to us by our Creator and rights granted by the nature of man; from God: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; from man: the bill of rights including religious liberty, freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, among others. The freedom of speech and of the press are, and have always been, founded upon the virtues of honesty and truth; rights demand such virtues, such virtues the providence of Almighty God, not of government; such freedoms are of, by, and for the people against the powers of those who would govern.
The public press once was rightly called the fourth estate, the fourth check of the abusive power of an unruly government. Alas, no more. The press has abused its power, complicit in the corruption of the Constitution and the rights of the people of this great and glorious nation. It is time to ask the question: Quis custodiet Ipsos custodes? Who will watch the watchmen?
Wake up America.
Just my thoughts for a Thursday, for what it is worth.
[1] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. 2007; originally published London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), 5-7.
