From First Things. R.R. Reno tells us that a "Culture of Life" is all very fine when it comes to bullying women, but not when it begins to interfere in even a minor way with the worship of the true God: Mammon, in the form of a higher value of he DJIA. And I must say, Matthew 25 does not command people to hold dinner parties during a plague so that their guests can infect one another: First Things: "There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost. https://twitter.com/firstthingsmag/status/1242174110035214338: 'R.R. Reno: "Satan rules a kingdom in which the ultimate power of death is announced morning, noon, and night.... This is what is happening in New York as I write. The media maintain a drumbeat of warnings. And the message is not just that you or I might end up in an overloaded emergency room gasping for air. We are more often reminded that we can communicate the virus to others and cause their deaths.... The mass shutdown of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse, even demonic atmosphere.... We... are collectively required to cower in fear—fear that we’ll die redoubled by the fear that we’ll cause others to die. We are stripped of whatever courage we might be capable of. Were I to host a small dinner party tonight, wanting to resist the paranoia and hysteria, I would be denounced.... Alexander Solzhenitsyn resolutely rejected the materialist principle of “survival at any price.” It strips us of our humanity. This holds true for a judgment about the fate of others as much as it does for ourselves. We must reject the specious moralism that places fear of death at the center of life. Fear of death and causing death is pervasive—stoked by a materialistic view of survival at any price and unchecked by Christian leaders who in all likelihood secretly accept the materialist assumptions of our age. As long as we allow fear to reign, it will cause nearly all believers to fail to do as Christ commands in Matthew 25. It already is..."
#noted #2020-03-23
