day no. 17,437: from within and from without

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo

If we are going to triumph over our enemies out there, we must first triumph over our enemies within. Traitors and haters in the camp must be addressed before we can successfully repel our invaders. The sin within did not invade us, it is native. It is more legit than an anchor baby. It was born of the blood and soil of its host. Your sins are truly yours. They have your last name and they share your DNA. If you do not deal with those, you will not be able to righteously deal with those who have invaded your world. 

“A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem if Pain

If you assume that other men from other places or from other races are bad, but fail to see that natives are as well, you will never build anything that can survive. You cannot win a war against reality. If you do not accept your own depravity, you will not be able to defend yourself against another's hostility.

"One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not when you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If we are blind to how bad we are it is a sign of how truly bad things are for us. But when we begin to acknowledge and accept and take responsibility for the wickedness within, we will know that we are on the right path toward dealing with the wickedness that is coming at us from without.

"A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men; it is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.” — G. K. Chesterton

Men who do not acknowledge their own weakness are too weak to resist the strong temptation of becoming like our enemies. Weakness is worse than wickedness. Good men who are not good at being men are no better in the long run than wicked men for they will one day be just as wicked as their current enemies. Wickedness, for all its faults, never skips leg day. It is always raring to go and it keeps its eye on the prize. Goodness, for all it virtues, sometimes gets soft. It prefers peace to war and so it sometimes forgets that it is in war. Wickedness never forgets.

“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” — G.K. Chesterton

Society's are smashed from without because they have gone soft from within. Men who ignore their own evil are hardly equipped to defeat the evils of others. Men who are regularly conquered by their own lusts will not be able to conquer men motivated by their respective lusts.

They end up with rosters rounded out by round men who cannot rise up to defend their people. Civilization, if it is not in shape, will be overcome by barbarism. You cannot be in good shape without first acknowledging how bad of shape your are within.

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” — Thomas Sowell

If you are not yourself civilized, you are merely one barbarian meeting another in battle. Civilization requires civilized men. Those men are not soft because they admit defeat before God, rather they are empowered by the Spirit of God in destroying evil strongholds within and without.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

If you have lost on the battleground of imagination, you will lose on the battleground of infiltration. You cannot defend the world from demons without when you are defeated by your demons within.