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On ‘Surrendering’ Without Giving Up
A Response to Susan Quinn on Her Post “If They Try Harder, Do We Roll Over?”
My title sounds oxymoronic, I know. But perhaps my favorite Catholic convert, G.K. Chesterton, was entranced by the seeming paradoxes of the faith that turn out to be simultaneously true — Christ is fully God and fully man (the hypostatic union). God is one in three persons (the holy trinity as a communion of love). My little paradox isn’t anything as profound, but I contend it is possible to both “surrender” and to not give up.
Here’s the comment that Susan asked to be clarified:
Western Chauvinist 7:46 PM PST ⋅ Jan 24, 2022
David Foster (View Comment):
Few would have been willing to bet on Britain’s survivalDid it survive, though? Britain is our family’s favorite overseas travel destination. But, it has a museum quality to it. Very pleasant to visit, lots of interesting history, charming villages and pastoral scenes. But, the people are not what they were, I’m fairly certain. And I think the same can be said about Americans. We’re an exhausted civilization. Prosperity, acedia, and godlessness have altered the American character.
I don’t think I’ve “given up.” I prefer to call it acceptance — or even surrender to the will of God. I will continue to tell the truth about the life issues, about the impossibility of same-sex marriage, about the psychosis of gender and race ideology, about the beneficence of the American founding based very much on Judeo-Christian principles and the necessity of a religious people to uphold them. And I expect someday I may end up in the gulag for speaking the truth, but I won’t stop. I can’t. That would be giving up. But, I also think I’m pretty powerless to have much of an effect on the national trajectory. I certainly don’t see same-sex “marriage” being undone even though it is immensely destructive to the family and feeds the gender insanity.
I also can’t waste my life worrying about tomorrow. We’ve learned that through intense trials — take it a little bit at a time. And as Prager says in one of his jingles, if nothing’s horrific, life is terrific. We have it so good. We should appreciate it while it lasts.
I’ve repeated the story of our traumas and trials with our daughters’ past and ongoing serious and potentially life-threatening health conditions often enough that you don’t need to hear them again. But the lessons we’ve taken away might be worth reviewing:
- You are not in control. Control is a delusion we practice to make ourselves feel better about our mortality.
- Your life is not about you. It’s about the ripples affecting other people’s lives by the choices you make.
- Faith is trust in God. Trust that his will is always for the good, even when you’re suffering and can’t explain it or see the ends he intends. Think Job.
In answer to Susan’s question in her post, I refer you to the latest Imprimis article by Larry Arnn, Ph.D., president of Hillsdale College, titled “The Way Out.” The whole read is worth your time, but I will attempt to briefly summarize.
Arnn reviews how it is we’ve gotten to the precipice of tyranny:
- Build a massive, complex, unaccountable rule-making bureaucracy with powers over most of the national resources.
- Capture the media composed of people educated by the same universities that promoted the creation of No. 1 who will advance the preferred narrative (lies).
- Enlist the aid of “big” business, whose executives were also educated as in No. 1 and No. 2 and who benefit by playing along with the regulators and contributing to the campaigns of the “right” people.
- Find any excuse (COVID) for the executive within crucial swing states to change the voting rules and practices (contra the Constitution, which requires the state legislatures to do so) during a contentious election cycle to put a thumb on the scales for your preferred
ideologycandidate.- Nationalize public education such that credentialing and content comes from committees of ideologically approved “experts.”
And on that last point about “experts,” Arnn turns again to his own area of expertise, Winston Churchill:
Any elaborate system of government must have a justification, and the justification of this one cannot simply be that those in the ruling class are entitled on the basis of their superiority. That argument went away with the divine right of kings. No, for the current ruling class, the justification is science. The claim of bureaucratic rule is a claim of expertise—of technical or scientific knowledge about everything. Listen to Fauci on Face the Nation, dismissing his critics in Congress as backward reactionaries. When those critics disagree with him, Fauci said recently, “They’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous.”
The problem with this kind of thinking was pointed out by a young Winston Churchill in a letter to the writer H.G. Wells in 1901. Churchill wrote:
Nothing would be more fatal than for the government of states to get into the hands of the experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge: and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows only what hurts is a safer guide, than any vigorous direction of a specialised character. Why should you assume that all except doctors, engineers, etc. are drones or worse? . . . If the Ruler is to be an expert in anything he should be an expert in everything; and that is plainly impossible.
Churchill goes on to argue that practical judgment is the capacity necessary to making decisions. And practical judgment, he writes in many places, is something that everyone is capable of to varying degrees. Everyone, then, is equipped to guide his own life in the things that concern mainly himself.
In the second half of his article, Arnn addresses how to defeat a rising despotism by telling the story of a multigeneration family-owned restaurant in Jonesville, just north of Hillsdale, and owner Mitch Spangler’s struggles to keep it running during Michigan’s draconian lockdowns. He also discusses the parents of Loudon County, Virginia, who have a conflict with the school board over critical race theory and transgender lunacy leading to the rape of one of their daughters in the high school bathroom by a “gender fluid” repeat offender. And this is where Arnn’s piece and my post overlap.
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta was once purported to have said (paraphrasing): You can’t save the world, but you can do what’s in front of you. My comment about surrendering to God’s will but not giving up goes directly to this point. No, you can’t always know God’s will or why he allows you to suffer (persecution for your religious, moral, and/or political beliefs in a failing former republic, for example), but you can trust that he has a plan and that you fit into it in the time and place and circumstances you find yourself in. And while you can’t save the republic, you can take care of what’s in front of you, whether it’s your family business, your children’s education, or contributing to your friends’ and neighbors’ well-being. Those are causes we should never give up on, no matter how crazy and upside down the world gets. If we trust God, tell the truth, and do what’s in front of us, we’re doing the best anyone not in the ruling class can do.
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Exactly. Fields of academics and medicine have grown so specialized that we can have a guy with advanced degrees in the poetry of some obscure British poet but he’s never read Shakespeare. As to medicine, that’s been going on for so long that in the 1950s, comedian Alan King joked that his doctor couldn’t help him because “You have to go see a left eyelid man.”
This is very good. Very, very good.
I’ve mentioned the Surrender Novena before. Here’s the example for today (praying Day 7 on the 27th):
Day 7
Jesus to the soul: I perform miracles in proportion to your full surrender to Me and to your not thinking of yourselves. I sow treasure troves of graces when you are in the deepest poverty. No person of reason, no thinker, has ever performed miracles, not even among the saints. He does divine works whosoever surrenders to God. So don’t think about it any more, because your mind is acute and for you it is very hard to see evil and to trust in Me and to not think of yourself. Do this for all your needs; do this all of you and you will see great continual silent miracles. I will take care of things, I promise this to you.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything! (10 times)
I suppose we could call this a tactical retreat.
Great, wise, etc. but every nation, country society rotted when it became so centralized it couldn’t undo itself. So far the only exceptions were lesser places taken over by others before they died together. Thousands of years of history should not be lightly ignored. So where do we fit in? We’ve been going downhill, or uphill toward a narrower centralized governance for about a century. We’ve been passive and confident and didn’t fight back, deconstruct, or rewind. Our system was not really unique, most places start out diverse and ground up, but we did it on purpose, and are letting it slip away as if centralized experts can better manage this complex modern world. They can’t but their nature is to gather power, eliminate competition, simplify governance but it doesn’t work and the more diverse, and the larger the society the less it can work. We were unique, we got it right most of the time and we created the modern world. I don’t think we get another shot if we let the centralizers destroy what we had. We know the Chinese are involved and we don’t know how deeply but their purpose is unambiguous. Can we be confidently passive?
I don’t think WC is calling for confident passivity, or complacence. She is (I think) speaking of a limited resignation, and acceptance of whatever generally comes, while maintaining an attitude of staunch righteousness in thought and action with God the whole time, to the degree that she, or anyone, is capable.
Regarding the post title; sometimes the line between resignation and trust can seem extremely fine. As we say in church, we must work as if it all depends upon us, and pray knowing that it all depends upon Him.
I like it.
WC, thank you for taking the time and effort to respond! I’d like to respond to your response as well. I’ll include those comments that spoke to me or that specifically apply to my question:
We’re in agreement on this one.
I agree again, with the exception that I must take care of myself on all levels to have a positive and productive impact on others. I think you’d agree.
And this, too. We have no way of knowing what G-d intends. But I would not assume that everything that happens to me is G-d’s will. That’s when free will comes in, mine and that of others.
You provided a great summary on Arnn’s writing, but I’m not sure it applies to my original question.
I don’t think G-d has a plan; if He did, we couldn’t have free will. (I think this point has been argued many times on this site.) If He does have a plan, I don’t think we can know what it is, and can only live a good and faithful life.
I completely agree with you on these points. That said, Jews don’t believe that Jesus died for us.
I wonder if the place where we meet is to not let our suffering, whether physical or emotional, overcome our commitment to lead the kind of life that G-d wishes us to lead. Wherever the suffering comes from, we should try to live in gratitude, help others and serve G-d. What do you think?
Jesus was a Jew, who died for all, Jews first, and then the gentiles.
OK. Not to me.
Quoting my comment about how hopeless Britain’s chances for survival looked in 1940:
Few would have been willing to bet on Britain’s survival
…and your reply:
Did it survive, though? Britain is our family’s favorite overseas travel destination. But, it has a museum quality to it. Very pleasant to visit, lots of interesting history, charming villages and pastoral scenes. But, the people are not what they were, I’m fairly certain.
True, Britain is less than it was in many ways, and the trends (some of which were already identified in their early stages by CS Lewis and George Orwell in the 1940s) do not look good. But consider: Because Britain was able to avoid a Nazi takeover, millions of people in that country have had the chance to live in a non-totalitarian society. Hundreds of thousands of British Jews, and of other people who the Nazis considered as their enemies were not killed. Indeed, had Britain fallen..or even faltered…all of Europe might have been Nazified in a form safe from American invasion, and the Nazi Party or its direct descendent might still rule that continent.
Nothing is saved forever, to again quote Connie Willis…but that doesn’t mean that saving things is not worthwhile.
I don’t see the difference. If they steal the next election we have to do something and to do something we have to actively plan and organize prior to the election. If we’re allowed to win, we have a chance to fix matters, but that can’t be business as usual either.
Well, this distinction is better to be answered by @westernchauvinist, since it’s about her comment.
On my way home from work. I’ll be with you shortly ☺️
Ah, work. I remember that.
I sincerely hope you’re not driving. (Sorry about that.)
I’m repeating my comment from another thread here, but just because God knows how you’ll use (or misuse) your free will and builds it into His plan from the beginning (omniscience and omnipotence) doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice. He has foreknowledge, but He made you with the freedom to choose.
I thought your original question had to do with our response to the country’s rapid movement toward tyranny, for which Dr. Arnn provided excellent examples of resistance, although I think even he isn’t optimistic — “Pray it isn’t too late.”
I don’t think God not having a plan is logically coherent, so we’ll disagree on that one. What were all those prophecies and prophets about? But, I agree, we have trouble discerning what it is (especially when your children are born with serious health conditions, having nothing to do with your free will choices, but seeming random acts of nature). And our best bet is to live a good and faithful life, both for happiness in this one and (hopefully) the Beatific Vision in the next.
I was just discussing this with friends in Bible study this week. We know people (terribly wounded Vietnam veterans, for example) who’ve let their suffering embitter them. These are our free will choices in the face of suffering: wallow in self-pity and become bitter, or trust that God will use your suffering for His glorious purposes. I like Dante’s depiction of Satan in the pit of hell encased from the waist down in the ice of his own self-pitying tears.
I don’t mean to be snotty, but like what? What should we do if they steal the next election? And under what umbrella will you actively plan and organize prior to the election? The GOPe? I know Donald Trump has said some things about the importance of election integrity, but for the ordinary Joe out here in flyover country, I’m not sure what that looks like. And Trump is damaged goods for so many people, I’m not sure he can lead any kind of effort.
I think the time to fight the Left is long past. I think 2012 was our last chance and we put up a weakling, opportunistic RINO like Romney. But, the culture wars are where it’s at, and federal-level Republicans have been pathetic in fighting for common sense decency and against woke tyranny.
Thanks for this comment. G-d likely has the ability to know all, including the future, but I think it’s possible that he chooses not to know. That empowers us even more to make good choices.
Why do you think it’s not logical for G-d to choose not to have a plan? What evidence do we have that he does have one? The prophecies were about what could happen if we continued to violate the law; but there were times we shaped up, and other times where G-d chose to hold back. So there was never a guarantee of reward or punishment. And of course both of those concepts are mainly our own, not G-d’s, in Judaism.
I just want to add how much I admire your strength and commitment to G-d, your community and your family, WC. You are such a fine woman and set a beautiful example of how to live and to serve.
I only text when I’m stopped — like in a drive-thru picking up dinner for LMA.
God says he does know and declare the end from the beginning, though. And He does according to His good pleasure. This would imply that from the beginning He knows what He will do until the end. That sounds like a plan.
Isa 46:9-10
I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
I’d say there are many different ways to interpret this comment. As you know, Christians use Isaiah as evidence that Jesus was the Messiah, and Jews do not agree.
This is not a “Christian” passage, and has nothing to do with Messianic prophecy but deals specifically with the Jews of Isaiah’s time. And I think the words and meaning are clear.
To speculate that God does not have a plan when he says I will do what I do, and I know the end from the beginning is a pretty powerful statement.
I’m a little verklempt Susan. Thank you. But, don’t let me fool you. I’m weak and sinful just like everyone else. Thankfully God reaches down to us when we’re at a weakest moments and showers us with His mercy. It’s the only way I’ve gotten through.
Amen! dear Susan . . . Amen!
I wish I could make sense of the free will vs God’s sovereignty debate. I’ve spent many looooong hours looking into it from every perspective and I’ve had my own opinions and changed them too many times to any longer be capable of a dogmatic thought on it. I kind of agree with Susan though. While I think that God clearly must have a plan, I think He must’ve given us some agency as part of that plan.
Near as I can tell, the whole purpose of life is to realize that we are God’s handiwork, created in His image and that we need to surrender any authority over our own life in spite of that divine spark. The more we fan that spark with our own effort, the more it gets snuffed out. The more we surrender, the more it burns.
Maybe it’s the same culturally. We need to surrender this whole experiment to the one who really created it.
I think our problem in trying to understand God’s omniscience it that we forget to consider that He is not bound by time as we are. He exists in eternity, which fact I find very hard to comprehend.
Being limited creatures contemplating an omniscient God, it makes sense that we would struggle with the concept of free will. But, the way I think about it is God’s foreknowledge of our free choices doesn’t prohibit us having them. And I absolutely believe He’s able to fit our free choices — whether for good or ill — into His plan. “O happy fault!” (The Exsultet: The Easter Proclamation).
And it’s very hard to comprehend God outside of of time and space. Very hard. Perhaps impossible. I flatter myself that on rare occasions I can, but at best it’s probably more like a crawling baby looking at a flame in the fireplace, which is probably not really comprehension at all, but at best little more than awareness.