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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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Amen.