If We Become Apathetic, Government Will Devour Us
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If We Become Apathetic, Government Will Devour Us

I deplore apathy. I agree with Chesterton when he says that: Tolerance is the virtue of man without convictions.*


It’s easy to be apathetic about anything—perhaps the political structure most of all—but the consequences of such apathy are not easy.


We have been given a direct command in the Scripture to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). But how is it possible to “do justice” if we are apathetic? How is it possible to hold our government to the account of the objective standard of law if we have no desire to do so?


Tolerance, apathy, indifference, call it what you will, it’s the virtue of cowardice, the dogma of comfort, the rejection of reality. We love to talk about “respecting this person’s political views” and assume it’s the same thing as keeping our thoughts to ourselves.”


It’s not.


In reality, we respect a person’s political views by treating them [the ideology] as a political view: to ask what its principles are and what the outcomes of its adoption are. Staying silent enables a tyranny to rise with terrors more malevolent than what many minds can comprehend.


Finally, it’s worthwhile to note that Screwtape’s strategy to drag humans into Hell (which, in this article, is a tyrannical government) is not to make them wicked, but indifferent. As the contemplating atheist is wondering about the legitimacy of Christianity—if there is any legitimacy at all—Screwtape the Demon’s strategy is to instantly strike “at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggest that it was just about time he had some lunch.” Screwtape insinuated in the atheist's mind, “Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind.”**


Of course, distracted by lunch, the man loses the thought about Christianity and forgets it forever. The chapter ends with the haunting phrase, “He is now safe in Our Father’s [Satan’s] house.” And unless we are active in all matters political, ethical, legal, and moral, we shall be “safe” in the dungeons of tyrants as well.


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*https://selfeducatedconservative.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/tolerance-is-the-virtue-of-the-man-without-convictions/

**http://judithwolfe.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2017/08/Screwtape.pdf

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