A Christian manifesto IV: the finish.

Well, I've read through it all, *think* I understand it, and am trying to digest it.

Schaeffer is undoubtedly correct about some things. As an example, the arbitrary creation of law based on society rather than a higher authority is something that I've known instinctively was wrong.

But underlying this manifesto are a number of issues that I'm not at all sure are either right or good. One of these is a justification of civil disobedience up to the point of the use of force of arms against an 'illegitimate' government (i.e. one that does not base itself on the 10 commandments) although it treads carefully around this issue. Another is the assumption that a society that does base it's legal structure around the 10 Cs will provide freedom, when in fact I'd be much more concerned about it providing a modern form of Judeo-Christian sharia law.

He uses a historical perspective in part to justify this stance: protestants in europe who raised arms survived and those that did not were wiped out. However the picture is much less clear in my opinion than it is painted, because those protestants were often fighting the armed forces of a 'mother church' who saw them as the rebels, breaking 'God's order'. While to a degree the church was also controlling the government (therefore by his American standards out of place) it was still very much one line of theology against another, and not the godly against the godless. The founding of the United States is portrayed as being righteous, but I have very serious doubts about either the righteousness of it's founding, or the 'freedom' that the constitution produced. Quite the opposite in fact - the US seems to have been a centre of hardship, greed and oppression toward minority groups until the humanists were thoroughly entrenched in the system, undermining it's 'Christian' values. Racial segregation was given a 'theological' justification!

As I said, I'm trying to digest it.

The problem is STILL the one I mentioned much earlier on - that having these rules or those rules doesn't fix man's natural inhumanity to man. We don't segregate blacks or imprison gays any more, but instead we'll quietly kill millions of babies every year in abortion. We don't lock away and hide single mums now (as the Swiss were doing until the start of the 1980s!) but sex outside marriage and even homo-sex is now entirely socially acceptable and normal - even expected. We've just exchanged one set of screwed up values for another set.

There's one more observation that is interesting, and I think Schaeffer is right about.

When a set of absolute rules are replaced with arbitrary ones and the basis of thought behind government is that we are here by chance and evolution then government will change from righteous authority to oppressive autocracy. With the surge in terrorism of the last decade we have seen an erosion of freedoms in both the UK and US. Some of this loss is reasonable and some is not, yet it has all been brought in under the guise of protecting the public in the face of the present threat. I applaud the reduction in the time period a 'terror suspect' may be held without charge, recently brought about by the present coalition government, but there have been many such laws enacted by the outgoing labour government (a government with humanism at it's heart, even if it had Christian roots). I wonder if there will be a reluctance to rescind many more such laws, and if we are witnessing an 'authority creep' of government power.

Guess in 20 years time we'll see.