Sometimes I collect and log thoughts I don’t want to discuss at full length.  So you may consider today’s post a sheaf of promissory notes.

Loving One’s Enemies.  After the defeat of the Axis powers in World War II, the victorious Allies embarked on the Marshall Plan to help their former enemies rebuild their economies and institutions.  I have sometimes wondered a victorious Israel might be able to accomplish something like that in Gaza.  Of course such a plan could work only if Hamas were entirely uprooted and eradicated, for if permitted a hand in rebuilding, those currently in power in Gaza would rebuild nothing but the capacity for more terror.  Unfortunately, it now looks as though Israel will not be permitted to finish the job, so my speculations are probably moot.  A Marshall Plan for Gaza might have been impossible anyway, for it is much easier for the people of a territory to accept help from those who merely put an end to their campaign of extermination, as happened in Europe, than to accept it from the very people they had tried unsuccessfully to exterminate.  But one may dream.

The Administrative State.  I carelessly remarked to someone the other day that the administrative state is out of control.  What made the remark fatuous is that the administrative state is designed to be out of control -- to be as autonomous, as free from checks and balances, as anything in government can be.  Elected officials pass by like rain showers; bureaucrats endure like glaciers.  Laws are highly visible; regulations are too numerous to keep track of.  Theoretically, legislators can override administrative decisions; in reality, they like having someone else to take the heat for them.  Voters mutter against big government; but the agencies generate their own constituencies, which are much more highly focused and committed.  So of course the administrative state is out of control.  What else should anyone have expected?  That it will one day collapse is a certainty.  Whether it can be cut down to size before that happens is a much harder question.

The Limits of Law.  All law is premised consciously or unconsciously on moral judgments.  Yet as Prohibition taught us, or should have taught us, law cannot punish every sin or suppress every vice, and attempting the impossible may make matters worse.  Sometimes, when I make such observations, people draw the strange conclusion that even certain forms of murder should be legal.  No, allowing people to kill the very young, the very sick, and the very weak isn’t like allowing people to drink more than is good for them.  If we refuse even to protect innocent life, we may as well give up having any laws at all.  In the case of abortion, a sounder deduction from the fact that law cannot punish every sin would be that only the practitioners of this grisly trade should be punished, not their dreadfully misguided clients.  Leave the women to the judgment and mercy of God.  As pro-lifers have always maintained.

A Strange but Common Combination.  Not long ago a young woman lambasted me for defending the Israeli effort to eradicate Hamas, declaring that I was championing murder.  She insisted that all humans are naturally loving and peaceful – and yet at the same time, defended the rape and murder spree of the terrorists themselves, not to mention their other attacks and atrocities over the years.  Am I alone in finding it difficult to reconcile these two views?  She said I am a poor excuse for a Christian.  No doubt I am.  But I don’t think that’s why.

Ears Too Pure to Hear Unwokeness.  There is nothing surprising in the fact that people don’t like hearing views with which they disagree.  The surprising thing is how difficult some folk find it to hear such views at all, even when their ears seem undamaged.  For example, if I remark that men tend to be more aggressive and women to be more nurturing, I can expect to be told that I consider women inferior.  No.  In some ways they are superior.  But I refuse to judge women by the standards of men – and to do that, I think, really is to consider them inferior.

You aren’t indoctrinating me enough.  Over the years, the distribution of my teaching evaluations has always been bipolar.  I receive both strong praise and strong criticism, and not a lot in between.  That hasn’t changed, and in most ways, neither has my teaching.  What’s new is the character of some of the complaints.  They used to focus on things like my grading, my assignments, or my lecture style.  In recent years, though, I have sometimes been told that I’m a poor teacher because I’ve expressed skepticism about one or another conventional progressive dogma.  One student, who didn’t even take my course, complained to my dean because he had hunted down my blog and didn’t like it.

Parasitism.  Deism is parasitic on Christianity.  When people in a Christian culture lose their faith, they become Deists.  But as Christianity loses cultural influence, people do not become Deists; they repaganize.  That is, they no longer merely deny biblical faith -- they reject the natural law, place other gods in God’s place, and deny their need for His grace.  It may seem strange that it is even possible to deny something like the natural law.  Isn’t it a human universal?  Yes, but our fallen condition produces two universals, not one.  One is the law written on the heart, which is ultimately impossible to erase.  The other is the desire to erase it, which is equally inexorable, for we are at war with ourselves.  The best of the old pagan philosophers clearly recognized the first universal, but they were only dimly conscious of the second.  They seemed to think that the problem was merely that some people aren’t virtuous enough.

A young man in one of my classes ingenuously suggested that the educated and well-off are more virtuous than the poor.  I wasn’t surprised that he held such a complacent view, but only that he so readily gave voice it.  Among well-off people, this sort of thinking is no less common than it ever was, but nowadays it is impolitic to let it show.

Such views have a history.  Most political thinkers in most times and places have believed good character more prevalent among the well-off.  They may have disagreed about which is more to be admired, the rich or the middle class, but they agreed in their suspicion of poor and working folk.

Aristotle thought generosity required wealth, because the poor have nothing to be generous with.  The Romans depended on men of wealth and good family, because they had leisure to attend to the affairs of the community.  Thomas Jefferson located the mainstay of the republic in sturdy yeoman farmers, who had enough property for independence of spirit, but not enough to oppress those who had less.   Alexander Hamilton was more impressed by “gentlemen of business,” who couldn’t be pushed around and had experience in getting things done.  From time to time I hear people say that tycoons are more to be trusted than working people, because they are too rich to be bribed.

Not all of this is mistaken.  Certainly there are differences among classes and social groups, and there really are advantages to experience and education.  But there is far, far less to these complacencies than meets the eye.  The comfortable are not less prone to vice than poor and working people, but prone to different vices.

A man from the slums is more likely to rob a convenience store.  But a man from a gated community is more likely to embezzle.

A mother on the dole is more likely to commit welfare fraud.  But a bank examiner is more likely to defraud the bank.

A poor man’s sense of humor is more likely to be crude.  But a rich man’s is more likely to be arrogant.

An uneducated bully is more likely to twist an arm.  But an educated bully is more likely to twist the law.

As to bribery, it isn’t through indifference to the chance of gain that one becomes a tycoon in the first place.

And as to generosity, I will never forget the poor woman who invited me and my wife to sit down and share her cake.

I’ve asked before why some people don’t think about God, or even about whether He exists.  Let me change the question.  Supposing that He does exist (you may not accept the supposition), then why would it be wrong to ignore Him?

Most of the nonbelieving young people I know -- most of the nonbelieving old ones too -- have a pretty primitive view of Christianity.  They think of it as based on the low motive of fear, and say people worship God only so that they won’t be sent to hell.  And they say that if this God is really good, He wouldn’t send them to hell just for not abasing themselves before Him.

Let’s consider these two arguments.  As to fear.  Scripture does say that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but it also says that perfect love casts out fear.

Plainly then there are two kinds of fear.  The kind which perfect love casts out has traditionally been called servile fear, the anxiety of a sneaking menial who is afraid of being caught while he is stealing the silver.  But the kind which is the beginning of wisdom has traditionally been called filial fear, the loving awe of a child for his papa. 

As to whether a good God would send anyone to hell.  Whatever else hell might be, at least it is eternal separation from Him.  But isn’t this just what someone who spurns God is choosing?  Being “sent” to hell means merely getting what he wants.  When he gets it, though, he won’t like it.  I don’t know whether hell features literal flames.  I suspect, though, that the hopeless misery of being eternally cut off from the wellspring of life and of joy in life is more terrible than corporeal fire anyway.  One of the saints speculated that the flames of the damned are nothing other than the light of God’s glory as experienced by those who reject it.

“Why would God care?  An all-sufficient God wouldn’t need our worship!”  Correct, but it isn’t for Him; it’s for us.  Supposing that we really are made in God’s image (you may not accept that supposition either), then anyone who is alienated from Him is also alienated from himself.  He cannot truly know who he is or what he is, and he cannot truly be free.  To lose God, then, is to lose man.  Do we really need another reason not to turn our backs on Him?

“Yes, I do!”  Very well, think of the matter like this.  It is abhorrent beyond words to abandon those who have done us the greatest good.  Disloyalty to my friend, unfaithfulness to my wife, ingratitude to my parents, treason to my fatherland -- such things cannot even be spoken of without shame, calumny, and disgrace.  But what greater treason could there be than to turn traitor to the Author of our being, who is not only the Good above all goods, but the Source of all these goods?

Why would you want to do that anyway?  For He is the true Friend and origin of friendship, the true Bridegroom and origin of marriage, the true Father by whose name all earthly fathers are called.  His kingdom is the true Homeland, of which our earthly homeland is hardly a shadow.  Don’t any of these seem good things to you?

And if we still need more reasons to admire what is so great and good, what's wrong with us?

“But I don’t know all this to be true.”  Perhaps not.  But wouldn’t it be prudent to find out?

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

-- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

"If you inquire into the truth of His nature, you must acknowledge the matter to be human: if you search for the mode of His birth, you must confess the power to be of God.  For the Lord Jesus Christ came to do away with not to endure our pollutions: not to succumb to our faults but to heal them.  He came that He might cure every weakness of our corruptness and all the sores of our defiled souls: for which reason it behooved Him to be born by a new order, who brought to men's bodies the new gift of unsullied purity.‌

“For the uncorrupt nature of Him that was born had to guard the primal virginity of the Mother, and the infused power of the Divine Spirit had to preserve in spotlessness and holiness that sanctuary which He had chosen for Himself: that Spirit, I say, who had determined to raise the fallen, to restore the broken, and by overcoming the allurements of the flesh to bestow on us in abundant measure the power of chastity: in order that the virginity which in others cannot be retained in child-bearing, might be attained by them at their second birth.”‌

-- St. Leo the Great, Nativity Sermon II‌