Christ & Public Life
If Christianity is true, it should make a difference in the Church and the home that flows over into the marketplace and the voting booth. That much is clear. As to what that difference might be, there is little consensus; less, it seems, with every passing year. I submit that its determination should start with the following propositions, four essential cornerstones of any approach to public life that can claim to be either Christian or reality-based:
1. There is only one Messiah, and the state is not he.
2. No program or theory that undermines individual responsibility is acceptable (or even tolerable).
3. Programs or theories that seem to advance "social justice" by violating one of the first two propositions will backfire in the long run.
4. Compassion that fails to understand human nature and human motivation is equivalent to cruelty.
We violate these principles at our peril.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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24.1—January/February 2011
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