Sunday, January 03, 2010

Chesterton on Tyranny

Here is another quote that I gleaned from Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton:
The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace ; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.
We are watching our freedoms erode. I am by nature somewhat apolitical, but I am reminded in this quote that action must be taken before the tyranny is fully developed. I am beginning to pray to seek God for what I am to do with regard to maintaining the freedoms that we currently enjoy.

While the Church is not called to drive political movements, we are called to be salt and light in our communities. I think that we can do a better job of living out our beliefs and speaking out when we see freedom being taken away without succumbing to the titillation of political power.

Every time the church has gotten political power, it has been bad for both the church and the community.

1 comment:

Tom Spithaler said...

People under estimate the effects of the church on society, which in the US IS the political. As much as the media might try to make us all believe we live in a democracy, it is still a republic of the people. How is it that a nation in which 75% or more of the people claim to be Christians and yet we struggle as a nation is preventing laws that allow for abortion, euthaniasia and same sex marriage? It is simply because those people who claim Christianity, either do not know what that means, and therefore what they should stand for, or they simply do not care. Jesus never ran for public office, but He most of what He did and said had political effect.