Tried With Fire

The following is a quote from " A Message to the 21st Century " by philosopher Isaiah Berlin written in 1994. He is rather optimistic at the end and sees a move toward rationality and tolerance. If he were still alive today, would he think the same? This essay came to mind again after reading this article by Carl Trueman on the Salutary Lesson From the Evils of Nazi Ideology. The warnings from Trueman and Berlin dovetail and should be taken seriously. Rather than a rise in rationality and civility, we are moving away at a pace that discourages me especially when I see it between Christians. To borrow Berlin's language, how many people are we willing to break like eggs to achieve our ideal, and what is it in the first place? Who and what groups of people are we wiling to throw under the bus? The gospel is the only ideology, if you want to call it that, that does not, should not coerce from the outside. It is the opposite of the wisdom of man and seems foolish that the ...

If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any... So we must weigh and measure, bargain, compromise, and prevent the crushing of one form of life by its rivals. I know only t...