“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”
C. S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength
Reading Lewis is like working in a diamond mine. If you can ignore the wasteland of the mine the constant find of diamonds is a recurring delight.
Here Lewis captures perfectly the idea of how the antithesis works itself out over time as the elect and the reprobate who had, perhaps for generations, worked peacefully side by side eventually each become, perhaps due to some unforeseen momentous event or cultural crisis, epistemologically self conscious to the point that cultural friction becomes so prevalent that it is impossible to continue together as a people without conflict.
If the hate crimes legislation continues to slither its way through legislative process and becomes law the time of comparative elbow room will have come to an end. If this hate crimes legislation passes even the possibility of even apparent neutrality will disappear.
The contrasts are getting sharp out there. Montana has passed a gun and ammunition law that thumbs its nose at the Federal government and Federal gun and ammunition legislation. Reports are out there that suggest that homeland security document that labeled historical Americans as extremists are being taken seriously by law enforcement. Oklahoma has ignored a Gubernatorial veto and passed a resolution proclaiming Oklahoma sovereignty. I suspect that we are coming to a time where indecision will be decision and that no person will be allowed to temporize regarding their convictions.
One of my favorite fiction books of all time. This is why I think *Hideous Strength* should be required before Narnia. Lewis isn’t the cuddly fellow that Lifeway bookstores want him to be. In this novel he sees the New World Order for what it is–and his characters fight to the bone.
Yes the Space Trilogy is raw and bloody.
No nation can suffer two ruling gods. Eventually one gains the upper hand and momentum and pushes out the other. When this happens the thin veneer of civility and tolerance between them vanishes and conflict and persecution arises. However, when it appears that the Church is being pushed out, that is, the heathen have become the head and the Lord’s people the tail, it’s not that the Lord is being pushed out, but rather He is pushing the foreign gods out the church by bringing chastising judgment against His people for their idolatry, as I believe the case is for American Christendom, which has for several generations sought the peace and prosperity of the unbeliever, having unequally yoked themselves to him to build the future for their families upon the ongoing success of our debt-based commonwealth, which serves the god-state of humanism.
Ezra 9:5-7
5 At the evening sacrifice I arose from my fasting; and having torn my garment and my robe, I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God.6 And I said: “O my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens.7 “Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been very guilty, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to humiliation, as it is this day.
The testimonies of the Scripture clearly teach that one of the most effective ways for the Lord to separate His people from their unequally yoked relationships is to set on fire the comfortable fence of “neutrality” they love to walk through persecution, which forces them into the open to declare who they truly worship . . . God or the state, by forcing them to jump to one side or another, less they should burn. No, the days of serving both God and the state for American Christendom are rapidly closing. May the Lord be merciful to grant us His grace, “to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage.”