day no.17,394: education and transmission

“Education is only truth in a state of transmission.” — G.K. Chesterton

Education is the way truth is passed on from one generation to the next. Or, at least it should be. It is always performed under the auspices of doing so, even when the truth being transmitted is candy-coated lies. Education always presupposes itself to be leading its pupils toward some greater end. It assumes on the front end something the student needs and doesn't have as well as the teacher having both it and the ability to relay it. 

Education, then, is always, an attempt to communicate something that is received as the truth, even when that something is a lie. It may be known to be a lie or it may be believed to be true, but it is taught a though it were Gospel truth and required to be believed with as much passion as an altar call. Please come to the front of the class and testify to what you have seen and heard and now believe to be true. That is the nature of religion and education and that is because education is always religious and religion is always educational/covenantal. It always involves generations, information, transformation, justification, and sanctification. 

Schools and churches both concern themselves with feeding the sheep. The schools like to think of them as little lambs and the churches like to think of them as flocks of sheep, but both view their people as theirs and look to give them what they believe is best for them.

day no. 17,393: big league chew

"Some acknowledge that some women are ahead of some men, but then attribute this to the men concerned not actualizing their full potential. But I believe that there are men who are maxed out, and are still behind some women. This is because some women were created to be helpers to men who are way above average." — Douglas Wilson, Late May Letters Late in May

There are some women who are out of some men's leagues. There are men who are maxed out and would still be a step down for some women to submit to. She could humble herself and submit to him, but she could not submit to him without descending to his level. 

To be fair, the same can be said for men. There are some men who are out of some women's leagues. There are some women who are maxed out and would still be a step down for some men to lead. He could go slower in order to lead her, but he could not lead her without hamstringing himself to do so.

Some men are better men than others and so it stands to reason that better men need better helpers. That said, no man should need so much help as to need a helper merely to be a man. That man does not need a woman, he needs Jesus. God gave Adam a wife, not a mom. God gives boys a mom, but if they do not grow up, they should not look for another one. A man must leave his father and mother in order to cleave to a wife. She cannot be another mother, she must be a helper and a lover.

day no. 17,392: wicked representation (but i repeat myself)

“For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.” — G.K. Chesterton, On the Cryptic and the Elliptic from All Things Considered

There once was a time where politicians felt the need to limit the number of skeletons in their closet in order to run for and stay in office. Those days, unfortunately, are behind us. In Chesterton's day (circa early 1900s), politicians were boring enough to be out of the headlines completely. Nowadays, politicians feel no pressure to behave. Whether it is due to a long track record of getting away with it or whether it is due to society no longer demanding more from their representatives, politicians do what they want without consequence. In that sense, perhaps more so than ever, our representatives represent us well. We elect what we deserve. 

“When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers." — John Calvin

Wicked men choose wicked men to represent them. God judges wicked people by giving them over to oppressive rulers and He also judges them by convincing them that wicked men are the best men to represent them.

“And ye, O peoples, to whom God gave the liberty to choose your own magistrates, see to it, that ye do not forfeit this favor, by electing to the positions of highest honor, rascals and enemies of God.” — Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism

Good people must manfully resist the temptation to vote for scoundrels. They must demand better of those who represent them. They must insist on a certain level of decorum. In the meantime, we may have to settle for Jehus in lieu of Josiahs. But we won't get Josiahs until we demand them.

“In any successful attack on freedom the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sensual pleasure, and so loses the power of his own initiative.” — Abraham Kuyper

In a representative government, the state may grow and swell to a wicked size, but not without the consent of the governed. The more we demand special treatment, the more we vote for wicked measures to ensure them. We vote away the rights of our neighbors in order to secure the property of our neighbors. But theft is theft, even if we vote on it and theft is theft, even if is the government who does it.

day no. 17,391: inflicting pleasure (and the threat of pain)

"Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.' In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

You can create blindness by turning the lights in the room off or by flooding the room with light. Orwell worried that Big Brother would have his finger on the off switch, Huxley worried that we would add more lights and get rid of the switch. Either way, distinction and differentiation are obliterated. Orwell imagined a society starved for meaning whereas Huxley imagined a society so full of crap that it could not fit a bite of meaning into it. Orwell assumed the tyranny would come from without, Huxley predicted the tyranny would come from within. Orwell imagined the threat of pain would be the best weapon whereas Huxley's imaginative powers wielded pleasure. The one was the desire for satisfaction and the other was the burden of over saturation. 

day no. 17,390: the first shall be sassed

Proverbs 18:17

The one who states his case first seems right, 

until the other comes and examines him.

The one who quotes Proverbs 18:17 first seems to have the moral high ground...

day no. 17,389: free to give and costly to get back

"Freedom is already being lost in a network of police prohibition... English liberty may well be entirely lost. I should not write this if I did not think that it may also be saved. But I could not write it without recording my own conviction that there is only one way of saving it." ― G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News (1920)

Freedom can be freely given away, but it cannot be taken back that way. 

Galatians 5:1

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

If you have been set free, you must resist the temptation to use your freedom to enslave yourself. Freedom is full of responsibility and that can be a heavy burden to carry, so heavy that some opt for the weight of chains. They prefer bondage and endless bureaucracy to the weight of personal responsibility and endless liberty.

John 10:9

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

When attempt to break yourself free from the kingdom of Christ, you break away from the kingdom of freedom. You do not find open prairie beyond the fence, you find the abyss. Inside the fence through the narrow gate, there is space to play, but outside the gate and beyond the fence is only the void.

"We have lost our national instincts because we have lost the idea of that Christendom from which the nations came. In freeing ourselves from Christianity, we have only freed ourselves from freedom. We shall not now return to a merely heathen hilarity, for the new heathenism is anything but hilarious." ― G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News (1920)

There is no heathen hilarity waiting to embrace those who adopt a libertarian pipe dream. There is no freedom at the end of the road of every man doing what is right in his own eyes. You do not get Heaven on earth like that, you get the book of Judges. If we are to be free, we must return to Freedom. He is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father or to freedom but through Him. Getting back to Christ will cost us a lot. Not just something, but everything. And if we are not willing to give up whatever gains we imagine we have found without Him, we will never get back to the font of freedom that gave us the freedom in the first place.

day no. 17,388: satire and society

"It may be that the modern world has outstripped satire." ― G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News (1920)

Over 100 years ago, Chesterton worried that the world had robbed us of satire. If he thought that about that world, imagine what he would think about ours. It is nearly impossible to outcrazy the crazies. You can invent the most absurd scenario only to discover that it is currently being used as a curriculum on a major university campus somewhere. You can try to flex your hyperbole muscles, only to have a trip to Wal-Mart show you how weak minded your exaggeration exercises have been.

Satire assumes a center. It requires a generally accepted standard. In that way, satire is a lot like society. Without widely agreed upon norms, you cannot satirize anything and you cannot have a functioning society. The punchlines only work when you can provide an unexpected outcome. When the unusual becomes the expected, it ruins the ability to surprise you. Insanity is humorless. It is no joke. It refuses to join in with laughter and instead passes legislation to make mockery a hate crime.