day no. 16,902: the beginnings and ends that justify the means

"The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future. Evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a Kaffir to work underground; he will soon become an underground animal, like a mole. He need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the deep seas; he will soon be a deep-sea animal. Men need not trouble to alter conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be beaten small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off the slave; knock the slave until he forgets the fetters.” — G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

Origin stories and eschatologies are inescapable. If you presume to speak of where we all came from, why we're all here, what we all should be doing, and where it all should be headed, you must have some explanation of where you think we came from, where we are, and what we should do to go where you think we should go. The beginnings and ends must justify the means... or at least attempt to.

2 Peter 2:19

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

Tyrants do not want to set people free, they want to enslave people who consider their chains to be essential for safety and well-being. Tyrants typically know the end at which the aim. They consider the end before they begin, but fail to remember that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Anything that cannot go on forever... won't.

Philippians 3:19

Their end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

By the grace of God, tyranny will come to an end.

day no. 16,901: assembly lines

"Well, that is a perfect parallel. 'After bread, the need of the people is knowledge,' said Danton. Knowledge is now a monopoly, and comes through to the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread might come through to a besieged city. Men must wish to know what is happening, whoever has the privilege of telling them. They must listen to the messenger, even if he is a liar. They must listen to the liar, even if he is a bore. The official journalist for some time past has been both a bore and a liar; but it was impossible until lately to neglect his sheets of news altogether. Lately the capitalist Press really has begun to be neglected; because its bad journalism was overpowering and appalling. Lately we have really begun to find out that capitalism cannot write, just as it cannot fight, or pray, or marry, or make a joke, or do any other stricken human thing. But this discovery has been quite recent. The capitalist newspaper was never actually unread until it was actually unreadable." — G.K. Chesterton, A Utopia of Usurers

Crapitalism weaponizes the market place of ideas. It sells some comfort for the price of total control. It gives away some information for the price of printing truth. It is willing to let its slaves have faster internet if it secures a faster way to control the internet/s on/off switch. It is willing to give its citizens a morsel of news in order to buy time to complete the newsfactory where the details are manufactured. Every headline is now made on an assembly line and comes hot off the press like a newly minted novelty tee.

The news is now boring because it is made by boars and the pigs are fine with slop.

day no. 16,900: without attraction, there would be no attraction

"Very few people ever state properly the strong argument in favour of marrying for love or against marrying for money. The argument is not that all lovers are heroes and heroines, nor is it that all dukes are profligates or all millionaires cads. The argument is this, that the differences between a man and a woman are at the best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest. To put the matter in one metaphor, the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red-hot. Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of 'Beauty and the Beast.' Every man has to find out that his wife is cross—that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else's sanity." — G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man

Men and women are so different that they wouldn't be attracted to each other unless they were first attracted to each other. Praise God for the blessing of being naked and unashamed in the covenant of Christian marriage.

day no. 16,899: every school a prison, every prison a school

“It matters little whether our masters stoop to state the matter in the form that every prison should be a school; or in the more candid form that every school should be a prison. They have already fulfilled their servile principle in the case of the schools. Everyone goes to the Elementary Schools except the few people who tell them to go there. I prophesy that (unless our revolt succeeds) nearly everyone will be going to Prison, with a precisely similar patience.” — G.K. Chesterton, A Utopia of Usurers

Government schools are concentration camps for kids minus the concentration. They want a high concentration of minds behind their barricades with little to no concentration of those minds once they get there. Schools no longer provide the tools of liberty — the original meaning and import of the liberal arts. Instead, the shackles of slavery are clapped onto empty heads to prevent them from developing any kind of acumen or craft competence for the fervor of freemen.

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods?"  — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Screwtape Proposes a Toast

Democracies do not want great men and the government schools produce excellent results with respect to their objectives by eliminating excellency in the populace by nipping it in the bud.

day no. 16,898: God is tenderer to His torturers than we are to our admirers

Thou wilt not break as we have broken

The towers we reared to rival Thee.

More true to England than the English

More just to freedom than the free.

O trumpet of the intolerant truth

Thou art more full of grace and truth

For the hopes of the world than the world that made them,

The world that murdered the loves of our youth.

Thou art more kind to our dreams, Our Mother,

Than the wise that wove us the dreams for shade.

God is more good to the gods that mocked Him

Than men are good to the gods they made.

Tenderer with toys than a boy grown brutal, 

Breaking the puppets with which he played.

— The Towers of Time by G. K. Chesterton

God is more kind to His accusers than men are to their flatterers. Jesus offers more forgiveness to His murderers than men do to their fan clubs.

Luke 6:35

Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

God is good to those who are bad to His good gifts. He provides good things to bad people despite their mistreatment of them. He sent His one and only Son to people who took Him for granted instead of taking Him with gratitude.

God is tenderer to His torturers than we are to our admirers.

God gives good things to those who confuse stewardship with ownership. We imagine ourselves the rightful owners of the gifts we've been given and presume that we merited God's grace.

"We teach them not to notice the different sense of the possessive pronoun .. . Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by 'my Teddy-bear' not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but 'the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.'" — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

God is more tender with us than we are with our toys. We make idols so that we can break them. We love to own things for the sake of doing with them as we please, but God owns everything and does what is best for it. Despite His claims to complete dominion, He leverages His power for the good of the creation. Man, however, often makes things merely to have something to rule ruthlessly.

Matthew 5:45

For He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

Despite our desire to destroy His gifts, He continues to lavish His kindness upon us. Even though we use rainwater to waterboard, He continues to send Spring showers. Even when we use the warmth of the sun to cook our neighbors, He makes the sun rise in the morning.

day no. 16,897: life without lust or lust without life?

So in her house Life without Lust was born,

So in your house Lust without Life shall die.

— G.K. Chesterton, An Agreement

There are only two households. 

Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit. He inherited no sin from His Father in Heaven and committed no sin in His person. In His house is life forevermore.

Adam fell into sin by forsaking his Father in Heaven and he passes the sin he committed in his person to each succeeding generation. In his house is death as God promised.

In the house of Christ, there is love without lust.

In the house of Adam, there is lust without love.

In the house of God, babies are born and brought up in covenant.

In the house of man, babies are aborted in utero or abandoned.

In the house of God, there is adoption.

In the house of man, there are orphans.

Love leads to life.

Lust leads to death.

Love builds.

Lust consumes.

Love leaves a legacy.

Lust devours its future.

"There are two types of women to whom men are attracted.  One is ‘readily mixed with charity, readily obedient to marriage, coloured all through with that golden light of reverence and naturalness which we [the demons] detest. The other type is the ‘infernal’ Venus. One whom he desires brutally, and desires to desire brutally, a type best used to draw him away from marriage altogether but which, even within marriage, he would tend to treat as a slave, an idol, or an accomplice." — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Many men are not simply looking for sexual partners, they are looking for partners in crime. They aren't interested in acquaintance as much as they are interested in accomplices. They want to rob and be robbed. They want to be assailant and assailed. And they want their victim to be a villain and their violators to be victimized. They want to replace the prize with a cheap, fleeting trinket. They prefer the flavor of stolen bread (Pr. 20:17).

1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Lust consumes. It delights only in devouring. It does not blush when it licks the plate. It happily undoes whatever good it finds in order to suck it up momentarily. It would rather consume than construct.

Love builds. It invests and sacrifices in order to see something else thrive. It goes without. It delays. It finds gratification and gain in seeing something else satisfied. It cheerfully gives away and contentedly possesses what's left.

Childbirth is life out of love. It is a fruitful bedroom, plants full grown and fruitful.

Abortion is lust without life. It is sex without children, uprooted trees without fruit.

day no. 16,896: we work six days from rest, not five days for two days of rest

Exodus 20:9

Six days you shall labor, and do all your work.

Christian, you are called to work six days and rest on the seventh.

Philippians 2:12-13

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Because Christ recreated the world in His resurrection, we begin our weeks with rest on the first day and work the rest of the week. We do not work for rest, we work from rest, just as in Him we work out our salvation, not for it.

Hebrews 4:9-10

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.

Before Christ recreated the world, man worked six days for the one day of rest at the end. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where Christ has been raised. We live in a new world, a new creation. So, we rest first and then work six days.

All that to say, if your employer or union only requires 5 days of work, your God still demands a sixth. The labor unions don't control the calendar or the work week. Christ is King of the calendar and Lord of our labors.

Don’t be lazy.

Be a Christian. 

Get to work.