From Irenaeus<\/p>\n
Dear Kendall:<\/p>\n
I’ve been deeply troubled by the extent to which rage drawn from secular politics and culture wars has shaped comment threads on T19 and some other orthodox Anglican blogs.<\/p>\n
We dishonor the gospel by conflating it with our own conventional secular politics. We also impair the unity so sorely needed among Anglican reasserters when we treat the theological divide as a subset of a hackneyed secular political divide—as though secular divisions were paramount.<\/p>\n
We should take to heart these wise words from Thomas Merton:
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In our refusal to accept the partially good intentions of others and work with them (of course prudently and with resignation to the inevitable imperfection of the result) we are unconsciously proclaiming our own malice, our own intolerance, our own lack of realism, our own ethical and political quackery. Perhaps in the end the first real step toward peace would be a realistic acceptance of the fact that our political deals are perhaps to a great extent illusions and fictions to which we cling, out of motives that are not always perfectly honest: that because of this we prevent ourselves from seeing any good or any practicability in the political ideas of our enemies—which may of course be in many ways even more illusory and dishonest than our own. We will never get anywhere unless we can accept the fact that politics is an inextricable tangle of good and evil motives in which, perhaps, the evil predominate but where one must continue to hope doggedly in what little good can still be found.\u201d\u009d —New Seeds of Contemplation, ch. 16.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oswald Chambers sounds a complementary warning about our own cozy ways of thinking:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Lord never tolerates our prejudices [i.e., our preferences or our customary ways of thinking]. He is directly opposed to them and puts them to death. We tend to think that God has some special interest in our particular prejudices, and are very sure that He will never deal with us as He has to deal with others. We even say to ourselves, \u201d\u02dcGod has to deal with other people in a very strict way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right.\u2019 But we must learn that God accepts nothing of the old life! Instead of being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately removing them from us. It is part of our moral education to see our prejudices put to death by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him. There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender.\u201d\u009d —My Utmost for His Highest, Oct. 23<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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