Friday, October 2, 2020

Western Man Abolishes Himself

 “So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. 

"Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”

- Malcolm Muggeridge, from "Vintage Muggeridge, Religion and Society"

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Resisting the Devil

 When the Devil brings up your past, remind him of his future. (Rev. 20:10)

Christ Is For You, Against Your Sin

 "There is comfort concerning such infirmities, in that your very sins move him to pity more than to anger. . . . For he suffers with us under our infirmities, and by infirmities are meant sins, as well as other miseries. . . . 

"Christ takes part with you [=takes your side], and is so far from being provoked against you, as all his anger is turned upon your sin to ruin it; yes, his pity is increased the more towards you, even as the heart of a father is to a child that has some loathsome disease, or as one is to a member of his body that has leprosy, he hates not the member, for it is his flesh, but the disease, and that provokes him to pity the part affected the more. 

"What shall not make for us [=be turned for our advantage and welfare] when our sins, that are both against Christ and us, shall be turned as motives to him to pity us the more?"

-- Dane C. Ortlund, "Gentle and Lowly"