The difference between the wise and a fool

The wise does at once what the fool does at last

       

— Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658)

My favourite Easter quote

Since the resurrection really happened, then no situation and no person are hopeless. No marriage is beyond repair, no child beyond recovery, no pagan beyond the reach of the gospel, no sin beyond forgiveness, no womb permanently sealed; no one and nothing are beyond restoration…          if bodily death is reversible, so are all the other little deaths that we suffer in life…  [In Christ] hope is not a delusion, but the driving power of abundant life.

– Peter Leithart (in the context of this joyous meditation on the resurrection)

My second best Easter quote

Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity. Any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection you’re not a believer. 

– John Irving

Will post my favourite quote tomorrow!

Basil of Caesarea on the folly of reincarnation

“avoid the nonsense of those arrogant philosophers who do not blush to liken their soul to that of a dog; who say that they have been formerly themselves women, shrubs, fish. Have they ever been fish?  I do not know; but I do not fear to affirm that in their writings they show less sense than fish.” 

– Basil of Caesarea in Hexaemeron, Homily XIII

Why Western governments are keen to destroy the family

If . . . marriage is transformed into a temporary arrangement for the satisfaction of the sexual impulse and for mutual companionship, which is not intended to create a permanent social unit, it is clear that the family loses its social and economic importance and that the state will take its place as the guardian and educator of the children. . . . Hence it is easy to understand the reasons for the hostility of the Communist, and even the milder type of Socialist, represented by Mr. Bernard Shaw, to the traditional code of sexual morality and to the old form of marriage, since the destruction of these is an indispensable condition for the realization of their social ideals.

Christopher Dawson

“Christianity and Sex” (1933)

Friday Fun: comedy pistol swap

How secondary issues are connected to the gospel

Take manners, for example. Manners can be described as love in trifles, love at the periphery. The collapse of manners in our society — a peripheral thing, surely! — represents a true downgrade. But here is Chesterton: “Love of humanity is the commonest and most natural of the feelings of a fresh nature, and almost everyone has felt it alight capriciously upon him when looking at a crowded park or on a room full of dancers.” Those activities are out at the edges, but by looking at the edges we can see the centre. You give the last piece of pie to God, who doesn’t eat pie, by giving it to your neighbour, who does. That is the point of courtesy, manners, etiquette — consider 1 Pet. 2:17; 3:7; 1 Tim. 5:17; 6:1; Eph. 6:2; Rom. 12:10; 13:7.

For more examples and some lucid thinking on this important subject, read the rest of Doug's post here

Parliament of Whores

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

From P J O'Rourke's Parliament of Whores, a humourist's account of the perversity of bloated government spending and the questionable competence of democratically elected leaders.