Who's Dan? It's a question BNS heard over the past weeks from Bats hither and yon. BNS reports that Dan's one of the blog's favorites - a hippy Christian. After reading the most recent comments, perhaps the question should be "Who's Kevin?" We'll all piece it together as time goes by.
Dan is a strong believer that, if implemented correctly, socialism would be a healthier environment and system in which to live. Greg has responded that in a broken world, no system will be better - and some will be worse. Heaven will be achieved in heaven, and not a second before.
BNS has stumbled across this quote from C.S. Lewis that is somewhat appropos:
Since the Fall no organization or way of life whatever has a natural tendency to go right. In the Middle Ages some people thought that if only they entered a religious order they would find themselves automatically becoming holy and happy: the whole native literature of the period echoes with the exposure of that fatal error. In the nineteenth century some people thought that monogamous family life would automatically make them holy and happy; the savage antidomestic literature of modern times - the Samuel Butlers, the Gosses, the Shaws - delivered the answer.
In both cases the "debunkers" may have been wrong about principles and may have forgotten the maxim, abusus non tollit usum* but in both cases they were pretty right about matter of fact. Both family life and monastic life were often detestable, and it should be noticed that the serious defenders of both are well aware of the dangers and free of the sentimental illusion. [...]
That is the first point on which we must be absolutely clear. The family, like the nation, can be offered to God, can be converted and redeemed, and will then become the channel of particular blessings and graces. But, like everything else that is human, it needs redemption. Unredeemed, it will produce only particular temptations, corruptions, and miseries. Charity begins at home: so does uncharity.
~C.S. Lewis, "The Sermon and the Lunch", The Grand Miracle (1970)
*"The abuse does not abolish the use"
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this is low even for you greg. (i like starting with that one)
ReplyDeleteyou've mischaracterised me to the point of slander. i am not a hippy christian and it would be gross simplification to say i am a socialist.
let's just say i'm a christian emerging from the haze of modernist consumer churchianity into the bright light of a missional/incarnational view of my faith. a label i would also accept is "post-evangelical".