Into the Wardrobe

Hi Tuke

Nice to have you back on this one. I found the first article hard to follow because I don't understand the various types of Muslim ideology very much. Could you run over some of that for us and explain some of these differences.

I would be a better and wiser man if you did

Thanks

He doesn't understand the issues.

I would like to replace the idea of 'rights' with...Orthodox Christianity.
It's not hard to say. You just don't want to hear it. You want a solution acceptable to many people.

You see, I live in a country where I don't have nearly as many rights. It has forced me to look to God more. The more secular rights we have, the less we need God. The place we need him most is in prison, in the arena, at the chopping block, when facing death and an end of all talk about rights.

True Christianity is ultimately incompatible with this world, and ultimately incompatible with politics as such. Where Christians can, they should try to influence the lands they live in to support Christian morality and stop the natural slide into sin. But sooner or later the tides of the world will wash against the efforts of even godly people, for this world belongs to the Prince of Darkness. God made the world and saw that it was good, but now it is a fallen world.

So if I say we should do something in this world, I mean we should do something that shores up that same Christianity practiced since the birth of the Church. It's likely to offend many people, because the world is offended at Christ and His commandments. Purely as an example, love is fine with the world, as long as it can define it and practice it its own way, so that (for example) homosexuality is seen as an expression of love, abortion is a woman's 'freedom to choose' (these things being merely euphemisms), etc etc etc, and when we find that people who do such things cannot inherit the Kingdom of God unless they repent, that is offensive to the world. There is no compromise. If we can have a state that acknowledges that such things are not normal and good, fine. If not, there is no place for a Christian to compromise with the world.

Liberalism has not gone yet because people are trying, at this stage in history, to compromise Christianity with the world, rather than follow the hard teachings of Christ and the Apostles. As Lewis might put it, it becomes, "Christianity and politics". But strategically, I think the Bishop is right.