At lunchtime yesterday I was sitting in the ward tea room. One of the nurses said that I looked relieved. I was. The clinical week was over. We started talking about how busy it had been, and how when I arrived that morning there were two people sleeping on couches and two waiting admission. (This is a rare event in Dunedin, but it used to be a daily event when I worked in Auckland.)
Everyone at the moment is tired. Apart from my sons– they have enjoyed vegetating for a few days before school starts.
Which it does on Monday.
So in a dyspeptic mood last night I started putting together another fairly misanthropic post. I’m moderately conservative, but I know some people who argue that we should go back to direct rule by kings and an established church. The Misanthrope came out, snarled, and has not yet gone into his cave.
But Peter does give a correction in today’s reading.
7The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. 8Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. 9Be hospitable to one another without complaining. 10Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. 11Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.
12Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. 14If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.
The corrections to my misanthropy are dual.
The first is that suffering for Christ’s sake glorifies God and leads to us being glorified by God. Sitting in the stream does nothing. But this suffering is allied to a discipline of the mind and body that is lacking in many. (I instantly think about chocolate fish, which are off the diet, and I wants, I wants them).
The second is that we are commanded to love one another, and love is incompatable with a sense of disgust with one’s brothers. Instead, I should be disgusted that I felt in anyway superior… and let my tendency to sarcasm and contempt reign.
Oh, and on Alte’s plan?
She is anti divorce because she is a Catholic, And because, like most people in the millenial/Gen X groups, she has seen divorce ruin families and damage children. She argues that men keep children because that was traditional, and that when women got custody the divorce rate goes up.
She is opposed to debt prisons — particularly those run by the family courts and by student loans. On the grounds that they are unjust, and that tertiary education is a bubble.
On voting, she is not as strong as Laura Grace Robbins — she blames most the success of most social progressivism on allowing those who do not have assets or earnings to vote.
My concern, my serious concern, is that we are heading into a period of increased governmental debt — to the point that if the state run the entire economy there would not be enough money to sustain the promises that have been made to three or four generations in a row. The demographic fact that the baby boomers are now retirning will stress, if not destroy the system.
And the older systems — which revolve around the family, the village, and the church — have been deliberately destroyed or subverted by the state. In the middle of this transition are… people.
We are told to not be surprised by the fiery trial that is to come. We can see the crash of this system coming closer and closer… but the only people who make serious plans to correct this are marginalized and labeled. For they are the libertarians, the Far right, and the Far left.
