day no. 15,238: democracies do not want great men

"In that promising land (England) the spirit of 'I’m as good as you' has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – 'parity of esteem.' An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I’m as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says 'I’m as good as you.' This was, after all, the social group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, 'A democracy does not want great men.'” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

C.S. Lewis published these words on December 19, 1959.  He foresaw the state of state education. "I'm as good as you" reduces the goal of education from setting minds free (liberal arts) to enslaving whole persons (indentured servitude).

While God would use education to help His people appreciate their freedom (Galatians 5:1), Satan would twist it to help people despise the freedom they're rejecting. Education energized by "I'm as good as you" produces disciples oriented in egalitarian nothingness. Egalitarianism seeks to remake the world in its own image -- without form and void, shapeless and substance-free. Rather than affirming the value of different shapes, they force everyone into one shape. The trick of diversity training is its insistence on sameness. God loves diversity and made two sexes, Satan hates diversity and seeks to eliminate their distinctions by insisting "one is as good as the other."

But this is obviously untrue. Men are better than women... at being men and women are better than men... at being women. It's always as if they were born with an advantage of sorts. Call it gender privilege. And that, as we all know and have been relentlessly told in our time, this unacceptable and intolerable. We are told that if were more tolerant, we would not be so insistent. But therein lies the snooker. In order to be considered tolerant by their standard, we must stop tolerating such insistent distinction and get with the uniformity program. Because if we don't, we're narrow-minded.

Poppycock!!!

day no. 15,237 continued... family religion is necessary for the nation

"Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." - Joel 1:3

"In this simple way, by God's grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land--the beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the gospel, and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family hearth: he is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order of the Lord's arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids; these can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; proxies and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High. Parental teaching is a natural duty--who so fit to look to the child's well-being as those who are the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our offspring is worse than brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots Popery is covertly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is left almost neglected, namely, the instruction of children in the faith. Would that parents would awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children through the parents' prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this volume shall come honour the Lord and receive his smile." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

day no. 15,237: on par excellence

"You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them 'tyrants' then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, 'democracy.' But now 'democracy' can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks". - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Egalitarianism hates excellence. There is enmity between them as there is between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. They are diametrically opposed to one another. They each have wills which they desire to impose upon the other.

Egalitarianism resents the implication of the differences. Inequality always sniffs of injustice in their eyes as though all nuggets of gold must weigh the same or that pellets of gold and plastic of equal weight should be equally valued.

Excellence, however, is not plagued by envy. It does not resent smallness. It does not hesitate to be great. It aims high and does not apologize. It doesn't need the smallness to recognize how much bigger it is. It's aim is not downward. Yet, it refuses to aim low. That is why small things stay so small. They are always looking down on things. Excellence grows upward towards the sun from where it receives its energy. It isn't hamstrung by looking down to ensure everything else is looking up to it.

Lewis foresaw the participation award, self-esteem culture coming down the pike, The spirit of "I'm as good as you" can only slide and tumble one direction. A dead fish can only swim downstream and as long as you know where the current is going, you can predict where the fish will end up. God is great and His Spirit in a man compels him to greatness. He desires to achieve in keeping with His calling in order to honor His Creator. He does not do so in order to be considered great by others, but because he considers his God worthy of the effort. He doesn't need to be noticed by anyone as long as he is noticed by His God. He can be great in secret knowing the greatness of His God allows Him to see him in secret. But whatever he does, he does not seek to be insignificant. He does not try to go unnoticed across the board. In fact, he desires all the more to be noticed by his primary audience. He doesn't dance as though no one is watching, but as though only One were watching - One who loves dancing.

day no. 15,236 continued... everything for nothing

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing."
 -- Diettrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Grace is like an all-inclusive resort with an all-you-can-eat buffet and an open bar.  One way to shirk the generosity of your admittance is to be stingy, to refuse to enjoy the great lengths that your host has gone to in favor of your preferred shrewdness. The other way to abuse to this generosity is by taking 12 fried chicken legs, eating the skin and tossing the rest; piling slices of watermelon on your plate, taking a bite out of each and tossing the rest; taking 8 shots of whiskey because it's on the house and throwing up most of them in a drunken stupor later.

The first way treats grace as insufficient and makes grace more costly than it already is by attempting to add your payment to that which it already cost your host. The latter way treats grace as unimportant and makes grace so cheap that no thought is given to the costs of the host. The first refuses to accept anything for free and the latter refuses to consider how much it costs someone else to offer you freely.

Grace is free because someone else paid the bill.

John 19:30
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished"

day no. 15,236: confidence in the conspicuous

"Suspicion often creates what it expects. (Since, whatever I do, the neighbors are going to think me a witch, or a Communist agent, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and become one in reality.)” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

At some point, a person begins to think, "If I'm going to be hung as a thief, I might as well steal something."

If you are the one being suspected, do your very best to resist this temptation to be as bad as they already imagine you are. It is better to be hung between two thieves as an honest man accused of treason than to be hung as a traitor, guilty as charged.

If you are the one suspecting others, do your very best to resist the urge to subtly season each of your glances or words with suspicion. If they are who or what you suspect them to be, they won't be able to conceal it forever. If they aren't, why would you want them to become what you suspect? Don't be so set on being right in your assessment that you would be disappointed to discover that they are, after all when everything is said and done, an honest chap and nothing of the sort you suspected. This comes from pride and it must die.

Place your confidence in the conspicuous.

1 Timothy 5:24-25
The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden.

day no. 15,235 continued... like leaning on a sharpened stick

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. 
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.

The other day while walking and praying, God revealed to me just how often in life I have leaned upon my own understanding. I have long been in the habit of taking great comfort and finding great confidence in assuming that I understood things or could understand them if given enough time. My confidence was in my ability to see what was going on or to figure it out if I thought about it long enough.

But in recent days, I've discovered that I don't. It is humbling, but it is hopeful. Because it is a sin, it can be repented of and forgiven and because it is a promise, it is a comfort to know that there is understanding in Him in whom I am asked to trust. Straight paths and clear headedness come from Him. May God grant it as I seek through trusting Him. May He be my starting block instead of my own understanding. May I look to Him before I look within.

day no. 15,235: I'm as good as you

"The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say, 'I’m as good as you.' The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the center of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says 'I’m as good as you' believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: 'Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"I'm as good as you" is envy with mascara. It is cosmetically concealed smallness. It boasts of integrity, but is fueled by disingenuinity. It is meretricious. "I'm as good as you" recognizes its own inferiority by asserting its equality. Equality in this sense of the word is the essence of the egalitarian leveling agent that seeks to devour any and every difference by reducing all peoples to the lowest common denominator imaginable in order to eliminate that nagging feeling of inferiority. It is like leaven working its way through the lump only with the end in mind of leaving no lump. The problem is not the superiority of the neighbor, but the way one's own inferiority makes the man feel. Being inferior is not inherently problematic. It's only problematic if one refuses to accept it or the feelings associated with it. If, instead, those feelings are fanned into the flame and weaponized with words like, "justice" and "equality," well then, that is now a problem and not one which will long we tolerated. In this spirit, one will soon be subject to the picket line chants of "What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now! How do we want it? By any means necessary!"