The reality is that all structures, whether physical or institutional, need some preservation & some tearing down simultaneously. That’s where public discourse comes in where the public decides “public policy” which is politics. Too preservative & the structure becomes to stiff which it will break, too loose & it will loose it’s form.
In the US the founders attempted to every “right” to our value as God sees us. The American Constitution was written to limit government’s power & reach into the sovereign individual’s life. The belief was that each human was sovereign which only became a thing because of Jesus. The French Revolution ideas were individualistic which, from a particular angle, sounds sovereign. It was the concept of hiding a bad motive under a good one. Putting lipstick on a pig. Every time we have an individual or a group of people who think “they” have the answer for all that ails an entire society they’ve lost the most crucial ingredient…humility (as Roy D wrote).
What seems to be the only solution is Christ but if I think that that is the one & only solution for the society then I, like the authoritarian murderous dictators mentioned, become like them & the means will justify the ends. Jesus is supposed to be sovereign over the individual’s life & from that point of reference our public policy then gets dictated. Paul said that the non-believer isn’t accountable to the same standards as believers. This includes followers of other religions & no religions. It’s the unsettling truth about operating in this world. This is the tension we are supposed to navigate in this world because in Heaven it won’t be present.
We need others who don’t see the world as we do to help us sharpen our own views. The humble question, I believe, is How do the differing ideas fit into our public policy? In other words What is at the core of “their” ideas that’s right? From a public policy & even interpersonal stand point assuming the other person or group may know something we don’t is a great jumping off place for conversation. I try to be careful not to start conversations thinking that I’m right & “they” are wrong. This doesn’t make us wishy-washy because humility is one of the most powerful weapons we fight for the Kingdom with.
Historically, religion and state have been tightly linked. However, when Jesus said, "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s", a separation was introduced; each has its own appropriate sphere of action. Over the next two thousand years, this separation has gradually been widened.
The good news about this separation is that humans found their place in creation as having real agency, being created in God's image and likeness and exercising "dominion over the earth" (Gen 1:27-28), echoed in Ps 8:5-6, "Yet you have made him little less than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet". From this agency and creative capacity comes the flowering of the renaissance, enlightenment, the arts and sciences, and liberty, equality and fraternity.
The bad news is that when this humble dominion becomes arrogant domination, the Reign of Terror is close at hand. When the French Revolution occupied Notre Dame cathedral, calling it the Temple of Reason in 1793, they declared a new religion: the religion of man. Robespierre moderated it by renaming it the Temple of the Supreme Being in 1794, bringing the transcendent back, but in both cases, the state was supreme, allowing religion to toddle along behind as long as it obediently tamed the population into a public-minded, virtuous collective.
Christianity and the state are in tension and will never be fully resolved. Conflict has and will happen over and over. Our obligation is to humbly mediate the ension it as best we can and be prepared for the blow-ups that are bound to happen. When we recognize our God-given potential and our inherent limitations, we can use our intellect and technology humbly. The challenge is to exercise an appropriate dominion over our culture and world while taming the arrogant domination which threatens to destroy it.
I think most Americans have been taught to underestimate the brutality of our Revolution. There were atrocities committed on all sides. Washington was called the Town Destroyer by the Iroquois and if I recall correctly the Iroquois were also guilty of atrocities. There was a book published about the brutality of the American Revolution a few years ago, which I have not yet read, called “ The Scars of Independence”.
I am not disagreeing with your point about secular ideologies, but the American Revolution has been overly sentimentalized.
I think a lot of those ideologies that drove the 20th century, whether communism or fascism or humanism or whatever, all had a belief that the end goal justified the means. It was okay to kill however many people you needed to in order to bring about whatever utopia you were striving for... that’s what I see inhabiting a lot of American politics now, that the end justifies the means. I think as Christians we have to commit to only concerning ourselves with the means, and let Jesus be the one who worries about the end.
I wonder if the French Revolution would have happened if France, had not revoked the Edict of Nantes. What was the Edict of Nantes? -- "an edict of 1598 signed by Henry IV of France granting toleration to Protestants and ending the French Wars of Religion. It was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685." It is my understanding that many people -- Huguenots, the French Protestants -- left France at this time. With this history can we understand that the French Revolutionaries saw religion as an issue? If only toleration had been allowed, we will never know.
The reality is that all structures, whether physical or institutional, need some preservation & some tearing down simultaneously. That’s where public discourse comes in where the public decides “public policy” which is politics. Too preservative & the structure becomes to stiff which it will break, too loose & it will loose it’s form.
In the US the founders attempted to every “right” to our value as God sees us. The American Constitution was written to limit government’s power & reach into the sovereign individual’s life. The belief was that each human was sovereign which only became a thing because of Jesus. The French Revolution ideas were individualistic which, from a particular angle, sounds sovereign. It was the concept of hiding a bad motive under a good one. Putting lipstick on a pig. Every time we have an individual or a group of people who think “they” have the answer for all that ails an entire society they’ve lost the most crucial ingredient…humility (as Roy D wrote).
What seems to be the only solution is Christ but if I think that that is the one & only solution for the society then I, like the authoritarian murderous dictators mentioned, become like them & the means will justify the ends. Jesus is supposed to be sovereign over the individual’s life & from that point of reference our public policy then gets dictated. Paul said that the non-believer isn’t accountable to the same standards as believers. This includes followers of other religions & no religions. It’s the unsettling truth about operating in this world. This is the tension we are supposed to navigate in this world because in Heaven it won’t be present.
We need others who don’t see the world as we do to help us sharpen our own views. The humble question, I believe, is How do the differing ideas fit into our public policy? In other words What is at the core of “their” ideas that’s right? From a public policy & even interpersonal stand point assuming the other person or group may know something we don’t is a great jumping off place for conversation. I try to be careful not to start conversations thinking that I’m right & “they” are wrong. This doesn’t make us wishy-washy because humility is one of the most powerful weapons we fight for the Kingdom with.
Humility seems to be an important factor here.
Historically, religion and state have been tightly linked. However, when Jesus said, "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s", a separation was introduced; each has its own appropriate sphere of action. Over the next two thousand years, this separation has gradually been widened.
The good news about this separation is that humans found their place in creation as having real agency, being created in God's image and likeness and exercising "dominion over the earth" (Gen 1:27-28), echoed in Ps 8:5-6, "Yet you have made him little less than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet". From this agency and creative capacity comes the flowering of the renaissance, enlightenment, the arts and sciences, and liberty, equality and fraternity.
The bad news is that when this humble dominion becomes arrogant domination, the Reign of Terror is close at hand. When the French Revolution occupied Notre Dame cathedral, calling it the Temple of Reason in 1793, they declared a new religion: the religion of man. Robespierre moderated it by renaming it the Temple of the Supreme Being in 1794, bringing the transcendent back, but in both cases, the state was supreme, allowing religion to toddle along behind as long as it obediently tamed the population into a public-minded, virtuous collective.
Christianity and the state are in tension and will never be fully resolved. Conflict has and will happen over and over. Our obligation is to humbly mediate the ension it as best we can and be prepared for the blow-ups that are bound to happen. When we recognize our God-given potential and our inherent limitations, we can use our intellect and technology humbly. The challenge is to exercise an appropriate dominion over our culture and world while taming the arrogant domination which threatens to destroy it.
I think most Americans have been taught to underestimate the brutality of our Revolution. There were atrocities committed on all sides. Washington was called the Town Destroyer by the Iroquois and if I recall correctly the Iroquois were also guilty of atrocities. There was a book published about the brutality of the American Revolution a few years ago, which I have not yet read, called “ The Scars of Independence”.
I am not disagreeing with your point about secular ideologies, but the American Revolution has been overly sentimentalized.
Here is a link to a NYT book review ( I don’t know if you need a subscription to read it)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/books/review/scars-of-independence-americas-violent-birth-holger-hoock.html
I think a lot of those ideologies that drove the 20th century, whether communism or fascism or humanism or whatever, all had a belief that the end goal justified the means. It was okay to kill however many people you needed to in order to bring about whatever utopia you were striving for... that’s what I see inhabiting a lot of American politics now, that the end justifies the means. I think as Christians we have to commit to only concerning ourselves with the means, and let Jesus be the one who worries about the end.
I wonder if the French Revolution would have happened if France, had not revoked the Edict of Nantes. What was the Edict of Nantes? -- "an edict of 1598 signed by Henry IV of France granting toleration to Protestants and ending the French Wars of Religion. It was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685." It is my understanding that many people -- Huguenots, the French Protestants -- left France at this time. With this history can we understand that the French Revolutionaries saw religion as an issue? If only toleration had been allowed, we will never know.
In fact, the Soviet Union also insisted that they were guided by the principles of humanism.