Conservatism is best defined as an ordered freedom that reflects the Christian transcendent and revealed order. Of course, there can be no such thing as an ordered freedom that is not anchored in a Biblical worldview (transcendent and revealed order) since without a Christian and Biblical worldview there would be no way to define the concepts of order or freedom. This means that there can be no consistent conservatism that pursues an ordered freedom that is Christless since such a conservatism will, by necessity, inject the need for ordered freedom with a humanism that will either find order (i.e.- Tyranny) eating up freedom or freedom (i.e. – Licentiousness) eating up order.
Because humanism is the very opposite of Christianity it cannot find the integration point between order and freedom. Instead humanism (whether Roman Catholic, Jewish, Mooselimb, “Secular.” etc,) will always in the end using both order and freedom (as subjectively defined) as limiting concepts that have no real intrinsic meaning in and of themselves. Because humanism has no objective ballast all humanism can constantly offer is a kind of warfare between the notions of order and freedom as order and freedom exist as limiting concepts. For the variants of humanism
“order” always ends up as tyranny and “freedom” always ends up as anarchistic licentiousness. For humanism either “order” ends up as Statist collectivism and/or Statist command and control social order (think Chinese Social Credit system) or it ends up with a licentiate individualism where “each man does what is right in his own eyes.”
The difference here in the variant Humanism (whether Statist tyrannical ordered collectivist humanism or Democratic anarchist hyper atomistic individualism) are captured in the two competing novels “1984,” and “Brave New World.” Orwell, in 1984 captured the anthill/beehive social order that exists when Humanist order loses its head. For Orwell, freedom for the individual was a myth as the picture of Orwell’s ordered future was a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’ Orwell’s future vision of reality is a reality where the humanist limiting concept of freedom has been eclipsed as humanist order has eaten up humanist freedom. Huxley, on the other hand, gave us a vision of the future where humanist freedom had eaten up humanist order — although interestingly enough, as still in service of the totalitarian State. In Huxley’s view man is controlled by the State by giving individual men the ability to instantly satiate all their lusts. Licentiate freedom is maximized and personal / individual order and stability are absent.
This push me / pull you between humanist order vs. humanist freedom is where the West is right now as it continues to descend into its post-Christian quicksand. The Biblical Christian is forced to declare to each side “a Pox upon both your houses.”
The Biblical Christian proclaims a pox upon the house of the humanist freedom as it witnesses the excesses found in perverted sexuality, the break-down of the family, the war against the value of life, the growth of the drug culture and the open borders society. At the same time the Biblical Christian proclaims a pox upon the house of humanist order as it witnessed, in recent years, the demands of the state to be vaccinated w/ death dealing vaccines, to don masks that made absolutely no difference, to social distance, to close down and ruin small businesses by their policies and to destroy people who did not play along with their mandated “order” policies. In heathen arrangements of social order the citizenry always gets the stick of both woe-begotten notions of order and woe-begotten notions of freedom.
There are those in the Christian community who would restore the proper relationship between order and freedom by appealing to Natural law theories. The desire for placing order and freedom again on a stable definition foundation is admirable. However, Natural Law itself is a construct of ancient humanism (Greek Sophism) and as such is subjective and being subjective it does not take into account the fallenness of men to read this thing called Natural law aright. Natural law theorists promise a return to Biblical notions or “ordered freedom” but the history of Natural Law is not promising as to whether or not Natural Law can deliver Christian ideas of “ordered freedom.” In point of fact, Natural Law, if consistent can’t even speak of “Christian ideas of ordered freedom” since Natural Law is not religiously identified as being uniquely Christian.
Instead, there must be a return to the law and to the testimony (Isaiah 8:20) in order for there to be a return to a Christian social order again where order and freedom find their natural harmony of interests. Until the West returns to God’s revealed law the decline of the West will continue as order and freedom continue to be at war with one another.
