This will have to be a short post. My new publisher is finally calling on me for input in getting my book put together, so I can’t give my topic the word count it deserves.
But here’s tonight’s Provocative Thesis™:
All liberals are Christians.
Even if they’re atheists. Even if they’re Jewish or Buddhist or New Age or “Spiritual, Not Religious.”
They’re Christian heretics, but they’re Christian heretics.
A heretic is a nominal Christian who has allowed some secondary aspect of the faith to overshadow the essentials of the faith.
Liberals, whatever their creed, have adopted a moral teaching of Christianity. That is Christ’s teaching to “Love your enemies; do good to those who persecute you.”
(They’ve also adopted the mandate to “Sell what you have; give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in Heaven.” They see government as the proper instrument for implementing that mandate. But that’s not my subject tonight.)
I was struck this weekend by the extreme emotional satisfaction I got from a couple fictions I enjoyed—the movie, “Taken” (which I saw again with a friend), and Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford novel, Ten Thousand Islands.
Both stories ended with the heroes coldly killing off people they might have spared—simply because those people were vile human filth who would certainly hurt many more people if left to live.
The Christian problem with such stories is, “Can such violence be reconciled with Christ’s teaching?”
The easy answer is no.
However, doesn’t our duty to our neighbors involve protecting them? Especially the young and the weak, who so often fall prey to the predators?
Society erects structures designed to capture and neutralize such predators, and I’m not questioning that, under ordinary circumstances, the right thing is to leave the matter to the forces of law (Romans 13:4). But when the laws become ineffective, or the predators are too clever or powerful to be touched by the law, is it always wrong to take the law into one’s own hands?
I don’t think it is. I willingly grant that it’s a dangerous action for the health of one’s soul, but I’m not at all sure it’s always wrong in God’s eyes. Turning the other cheek is the right thing to do in personal life, when only I am involved. I’m not at all sure we’re meant to stand by when somebody else is under the lion’s claws.
Fortunately, the situation doesn’t come up often for most of us.
But it does come up in telling stories. And this my position, at this point in my life.
That’s not a bad idea–shocking a bit, but not bad. It reminds me of the news I read today of a family which required their son to fight “Call of Duty,” a violent WWII game, with a code of honor and understanding the Geneva Convention’s rules. So the boy would not kill game characters who surrendered to him, whereas his friends would for sake of convenience. It helps him understand real moral choices, instead of playing without a conscience.
Lars, the provocative thesis is not so provocative. I said the same in my upcoming book The End of Secularism (see the pre-order page on Amazon), but I was just parroting many others who have made the same point. Still, you are absolutely correct.
And what you said about the person under the lion’s claws is straight up Martin Luther. (And you are a Lutheran, I know.) Luther said you should let yourself be beaten down, insulted, and destroyed, but you should defend your neighbor to the last.
Got to get that book. I suppose I’ve heard or read the Luther quotation before, and just stored it subconsciously.
Am reminded of Bonhoeffer, who seemed to have little trouble joining a conspiracy to illegally murder Hitler. The problem, of course, is that it’s a fine line between such exceptional actions and the idea that the individual can judge what is good for humanity.
Actually, I’m told that Bonhoeffer went through great and difficult soul-searching before he agreed to join the conspiracy. He was a pacifist, until the real world overwhelmed his categories.
My apologies, you are correct. But he did join.