Progress

"And why should physical strength survive in a world where there was never the need for physical labor? As for such qualities as loyalty, generosity, etc., in a world where nothing went wrong, they would be not only irrelevant but probably unimaginable. The truth is that many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain or difficulty. . . . Presumably . . . the inhabitants of Utopia would create artificial dangers in order to exercise their courage, and do dumb-bell exercises to harden muscles they would never be obliged to use. . . . It is as though a London stockbroker should go to his office in a suit of chain mail and insist on talking medieval Latin."

-George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937).

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Morning, June 10

“We live unto the Lord.”Romans 14:8

If God had willed it, each of us might have entered heaven at the moment of conversion. It was not absolutely necessary for our preparation for immortality that we should tarry here. It is possible for a man to be taken to heaven, and to be found meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light, though he has but just believed in Jesus. It is true that our sanctification is a long and continued process, and we shall not be perfected till we lay aside our bodies and enter within the veil; but nevertheless, had the Lord so willed it, He might have changed us from imperfection to perfection, and have taken us to heaven at once. Why then are we here? Would God keep His children out of paradise a single moment longer than was necessary? Why is the army of the living God still on the battle-field, when one charge might give them the victory? Why are His children still wandering hither and thither through a maze, when a solitary word from His lips would bring them into the centre of their hopes in heaven? The answer is—They are here that they may “live unto the Lord,” and may bring others to know His love. We remain on earth as sowers to scatter good seed; as ploughmen to break up the fallow ground; as heralds publishing salvation. We are here as the “salt of the earth,” to be a blessing to the world. We are here to glorify Christ in our daily life. We are here as workers for Him, and as “workers together with Him.” Let us see that our life answereth its end. Let us live earnest, useful, holy lives, to “the praise of the glory of His grace.” Meanwhile we long to be with Him, and daily sing—
“My heart is with Him on His throne,
And ill can brook delay;
Each moment listening for the voice,
‘Rise up, and come away.’”

-Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Order and Creativity

"Love achieves its creativity by being perceptive."

-Oliver O'Donovan

Success and Family

“The American dream dismantles the body of Christ into component family units pursuing dynastic success.” 

-Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life, p. 179.

Law and Friendship

"Every law aims at establishing friendship, either between man and man or between man and God."

-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IaIIae Q.99, art. 1 ad 2 (citing 1 Tim. 1:5)

The Crisis of Secular Faith

"Believers did suffer a serious [crisis of confidence] two or three generations ago . . . . But that crisis was precipitated by the presence of a rival confidence, a massive cultural certainty that united natural science, democratic politics, technology, and colonialism.  Today this civilizational ice-shelf has broken up, and though some of the icebergs floating around are huge-- natural science and technology, especially, drift on as though nothing has happened-- they are not joined together anymore, nor joined to the land.  The four great facts of the twentieth century that broke the certainty in pieces were two world wars, the reversal of European colonization, the threat of the nuclear destruction of the human race, and most recently, the evidence of long-term ecological crisis.  The master-narrative that was to have delivered us the crown of civilization has delivered us insuperable dangers."

Oliver O'Donovan, The Ways of Judgment, p.xii.

Intellectual Innocence

“Totalised criticism is the modern form of intellectual innocence—not a harmless innocence, unhappily, for by elevating suspicion to the dignity of a philosophical principle, it destroys trust and makes it impossible to learn.”

-Oliver O'Donovan, Desire of the Nations, p.11.