Dec 16, 2023·edited Dec 16, 2023Liked by Alastair Roberts
Just finished reading "Till we have faces" for the first time, alongside my high school frosh, to accompany her on a school assignment. Brilliant work; I'll be cogitating on it a while. So many jewels to mine.
"we must think from the positions within which we find ourselves, rather than imposing ill-suited ideals considered purely in the abstract upon our societies in radical moves."
I've been thinking on this a lot recently, particularly in the context of how abolition of chattel slavery took so long in Christendom. I believe the abolition was firmly taught in the fulfillment of the land laws by Christ; yet, for some reason, we were blind to it for centuries, until the great enrichment revolutionized how we think about economics. Suddenly the enslavement of our neighbor became clearly stupid and against our economic interest, something which Adam Smith argued, with some opposition. It's to our shame we didn't realize it from scripture sooner, but it's to the grace of God that he finally taught us the lesson in a seemingly perverse way... by gobsmackingly blessing the West long before we'd abolished slavery. (enough to, somewhat understandably, mislead certain operators to argue that it's slavery which made us rich). "His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance."
Those instances of radical repentance in the Kingdoms always fascinated me, e.g. the putting away of foreign wives. Its seems that radical moves are possible, but lamentably rare. Of course, the topsy-turvy thing is that going farther from the radix is the way to die... going closer to it is the way to live. “You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness”
Just finished reading "Till we have faces" for the first time, alongside my high school frosh, to accompany her on a school assignment. Brilliant work; I'll be cogitating on it a while. So many jewels to mine.
"we must think from the positions within which we find ourselves, rather than imposing ill-suited ideals considered purely in the abstract upon our societies in radical moves."
I've been thinking on this a lot recently, particularly in the context of how abolition of chattel slavery took so long in Christendom. I believe the abolition was firmly taught in the fulfillment of the land laws by Christ; yet, for some reason, we were blind to it for centuries, until the great enrichment revolutionized how we think about economics. Suddenly the enslavement of our neighbor became clearly stupid and against our economic interest, something which Adam Smith argued, with some opposition. It's to our shame we didn't realize it from scripture sooner, but it's to the grace of God that he finally taught us the lesson in a seemingly perverse way... by gobsmackingly blessing the West long before we'd abolished slavery. (enough to, somewhat understandably, mislead certain operators to argue that it's slavery which made us rich). "His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance."
Those instances of radical repentance in the Kingdoms always fascinated me, e.g. the putting away of foreign wives. Its seems that radical moves are possible, but lamentably rare. Of course, the topsy-turvy thing is that going farther from the radix is the way to die... going closer to it is the way to live. “You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness”