If you want to to understand the relationship of Christian mercy and charity to the state welfare system, you need to remember the ideal of national security. Think about feeling safe and cared for. Then think about what it is actually like going through airport security.
Delegating mercy to the state is the same as being unmerciful.
PS Thoughts inspired by this.
I believe that giving those with political power (i.e. they get to point guns at other people and give orders) responsibility with producing and/or distributing goods in society is a bad idea (both practically and ethically). Rather, the responsibility should be given to society. Society, not the state (defined as the corporation formed by the people with guns), should have the power, right, and responsibility to produce and distribute goods and services.
There are basically two ways to gain wealth–the social means and the anti-social or political means. The political involves confiscation. You take from others. The social involves peaceful and voluntary cooperation. People typically trade goods and services, though other peaceful relationship such as family might not break down to as measurable a quid pro quo. Nevertheless, production and distribution are voluntary and peaceful rather than involuntary and violent.
There simply is no truth or principle that is so wonderful or important or glorious or blessed by God that it cannot be used as an opportunity and excuse for you to gyrate in the pleasures of the flesh: boasting, arrogance, hatred of others, pride in self.
There will always be people who wrongly reject this truth or principle–whether due to your own horrible representation of the same or for some other reason. Either way, if they see that your behavior affords them an excuse for theirs, they will bring it up.
And you will be able to use them as an example of how the world hates you and imputes to you the sins of the flesh when you are only being faithful to the Great Truth and Principle. This “persecution” will be your vindication, and the vindication will simply be another excuse to gyrate in the pleasures of the flesh.
Monetary inflation does not simply make prices rise for everyone. Price inflation is (all other things being equal) the societal recognition that monetary inflation has already taken place. The people who first got the new money were able to spend it before prices rose. Prices rose as people noticed that they were losing stock faster than before and raised prices to slow down the purchasing. (Would you rather have a store with empty shelves and only as much revenue as last month? Or would you like to get more money from the higher demand for your goods?)
So the rise in the prices is mainly a tax on those farther away from the new money. Those selling goods and services to the government will profit while janitors will see their standard of living slip lower.
How this money game works in the American bureausaur is not clear to me. But I’m beginning to wonder if it is connected to the stock market. To put it simply, if I want affordable gas and heating prices, then I want the DOW and Nasdaq to descend into the toilet. Immediately prices go down as well. And then I can afford to live.
So am I wrong? Is a rising DOW simply a measure of a successful predator class practicing “siphon up” economics?
For all her popularity, Shirley Jackson won surprisingly little recognition. She received no awards or prizes, grants or fellowships; her name was often omitted from lists on which it clearly belonged, or which it should have led. She saw those honors go to inferior writers, or to writers who were no writers, without bitterness, but with the wry amusement which was her habitual attitude toward her own life and career…
via DarkEcho/HorrorOnline: Shirley Jackson & The Haunting of Hill House.
I don’t care how brilliant or right someone is (or thinks one is), one simply cannot be as cogent as possible when one writes while angry.
For me, it is easy: The Horse and His Boy. I love the plotting and the dualities.
I also think I love it because it is a fantasy story rather than an other-world story, if that makes sense. People in a magic land have adventures. That seems purer to me than such a story in which getting to the magic land is part of the adventure.
But I wonder if part of my love for that book is due to my love for the series as a whole. Maybe the appeal of The Horse and His Boy is that it provides a glimpse of “normal” life away from the usual protagonists, world traversing children. No one can fail to want to go off on their own and explore the Narnian universes. Maybe following the story of Shasta scratches that itch.
What is your favorite Narnia book?
In this this post, I mentioned loving Harry Turtledove’s first Atlantis book and listening to it with my boy.
My reaction was, as it turned out, to Part One. Atlantis is an intergenerational story that skips a century or more between parts. It doesn’t stay as wonderful and beautiful (nor as savory) as Part One. Reader (especially young and Christian) beware.
More later.
History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. . . I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.