"Remind them, avoid wrangling over words." 2 Tim 2:14 and The Character of Nations

Were a time machine to somehow to cause any community of the founders' generation to appear among us, they would surely notice that we now enjoin actions once prohibited and prohibit actions once enjoined. Contemporary American elites, in turn, would find the founders' intolerance of pornography and their mixing of religion in public life to be violations of the First Amendment, their treatment of criminals in violation of the Eighth. They would deem pathologically anarchic their attachment to firearms, [emphasis DH] as well as their distrust of government. The founders would likely beat a hasty retreat to their time machine, pointing their muzzle loaders at the atheist, servile folks who had twisted their words and perverted their republic.


Today, those who make laws in Western society find no truths to be self-evident, and their concept of decency is a grab bag of elements for which they have developed the taste. Hence drawing up the list of moral imperatives by which we should live has become a contest of tastes, decided by trials of political force. We thus see goernment telling people that happiness is doing whatever pleases them, and then putting some of them in jail for pleasuring themselves with drugs. Nevertheless, this public contest over the content of our souls determines the outcome of all the other contests we must wage. (Kindle Locations 1678 - 1679)

Click to expand...

Doug Huffman said:

As I go about my business I am frequently amazed by the resonance of a simple idea in daily life. I am frustrated here by vulgar language and misunderstanding of carefully crafted statements.

Then today's gospel lessons featured 2 Tim 2:14 (in a particular translation), "Remind them of this, and warn them ... that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself ... as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth."

A trivial coincidence of my interests with some church calendar, except I had just read this in Angelo Codevilla's The Character of Nations This latter sentence seems to be a restatement of the book's primary thesis. Please read Angelo Codevilla's The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility

http://www.amazon.com/Character-Nations-Politics-Prosperity-Civility/dp/0465028004

Click to expand...