I’m thinking about a conversation I had with a couple of colleagues over dinner two nights ago. I was talking about how it used to be simple. You had a problem — you negotiated a solution directly with a person who had skill, knowledge or power to solve it.
We deviated into how you took their advice — got jobs that were hard, dirty and boring to provide for families, did our duty, took our medicine.
But then we followed a narrative of oppression. That we needed an advocate to stand and negotiate on our behalf, to meet the needs of social justice, and to speak when we cannot.
And that advocate silenced us. We could no longer speak for ourselves. Instead of being free men under employ, we became votes on a plantation to be exploited.
But this is not to be. The prayers of a righteous man are to be received.
13Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. 14Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. 17Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
19My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, 20you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Bruce Charlton is a clearer thinker than I am. He describes the consequences of the feudal project that is progressivism as this:
To modernity, Man is born wanting stuff he cannot possible get – real freedom, real happiness, peace. God, Heaven, to become divine.
To modernity none of this makes any sense – people can never get what they want, because it does not exist to give them.
But Leftism deceitfully pretends to offer them what they want –Yeah, sure, we’ll give you what you want; you deserve it; the only reason you don’t have it is that they are keeping it from you – we’ll take it off them and give it to you – as is just and proper.
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However, all the time, the Left leaders believe that really they cannot give freedom, happiness, peace – because they are an illusion: so they provide illusions.
The Left robs and bribes and calls it freedom, provides distraction and calls it happiness, turns the world upside down, and calls it peace – but does all this with a clear conscience and indeed moralizing zeal.
They know they only offer illusions, but they regard illusions as infinitely better than the ‘reality’ which is nothing.
But the illusion is a lie. It will comfort people, not challenge them. The lie is a form of projection — the evil lies completely with the other, and the inquisition I do is right and proper to purge society of this.
But it is not true.
And it cannot save.
Our duty is to say the truth. To say things that are not in sympathy with the spirit of this age, but sound harsh, discordant, rude, and we need to say this until we are silenced.
Because if it saves but one soul from perdition that will be our reward.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions?
I don’t think progressives are inherently bad people. Their beliefs come from a good place; they just don’t always tend to work out. Although; you can say the same applies to conservative beliefs, as well. Politicians never seem to get anything right…
The followers are not bad people. They truoy believe what they have been told. But the people wbo make the lies… they are.