Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Warren puts his finger upon it

The difference between the Islamic outlook and the Christian seems fairly subtle at first (and has been badly blurred by Protestantism, particularly of the Calvinist flavour, that leans heavily towards the Islamic concept of using the law to "compel the good") but boils down to this very essential one of human freedom.

But this must be voluntary, in the main. For the Christian message is of freedom -- a radical freedom, reflecting Scripture and Tradition received as divinely inspired. God, in the Christian account of things, has left man very free to choose his destiny -- left the individual, as it were, to choose his poisons. Law requires that we punish exceptionally evil behaviour, for the sake of defending our own autonomy, but when law is used to “compel the good,” there can be no freedom.


God, the Christian God that is, (we do not indulge the politically correct religious fantasy that the God of Abraham and Christ is the same as the Demon Allah,) does not compel human compliance to the Good. We may freely reject the Good. We pass laws to protect ourselves and our families from people who reject the Good, but we do not waste our energies attempting to force all men to live uprightly.

It is the subtlety of the difference between the two ideas that bolsters my idea that Islam is a Satanic delusion, a heresy, a clever perversion of Christianity, and one that appeals very directly to those who fear freedom. It is precisely this kind of half-twist that Satan likes in his work. Yes, Islam acknowledges the existence of an objective good and evil, but its attack on human freedom is the give-away. As I understand it, it was the ability of Man to choose, his essential freedom that makes him "in the likeness of God", to which Satan so objected that he, as Screwtape put it, "chose to withdraw his support"* from the heavenly hosts.

It is notable also that it is in this rejection of human freedom and the attempt to "compel the good" that Islam and the modern social hygiene advocates on the left have their meeting place. The Human Rights Tribunals that are working to force Pastor Boissoin and Fr. deValk and countless others to conform to the neo-liberal Shariah law, are attempting to compel the (anti-)Good of the theories of the New Left. Pan-sexualism, materialism, relativism etc...the usual suspects.

* ~ * ~ *

* "Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy's determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw his support from Him.)"

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