Of note
Principles are what people have instead of God.
To be a Christian means among other things to be willing if necessary to sacrifice even your highest principles for God's or your neighbor's sake the way a Christian pacifist must be willing to pick up a baseball bat if there's no other way to stop a man from savagely beating a child.
Jesus didn't forgive his executioners on principle but because in some unimaginable way he was able to love them.
- Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC"
To be a Christian means among other things to be willing if necessary to sacrifice even your highest principles for God's or your neighbor's sake the way a Christian pacifist must be willing to pick up a baseball bat if there's no other way to stop a man from savagely beating a child.
Jesus didn't forgive his executioners on principle but because in some unimaginable way he was able to love them.
- Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC"
posted by Jmac at 5:44 PM
4 Comments:
Dude. I totally don't buy that. If you're picking up the baseball bat, it's based on some other principle. Even forgiveness is a principle.
Yeah, what Hillary said. Plus, an Amish guy actually WOULDN'T pick up the baseball bat. There are pacificists out there who go "all the way" with it.
At the same time, I agree that we live too much by "abstractions" in this world, and that "principles" are often a part of that. It all depends on what one defines as a "principle." On a broad enough definition, just about everything is a principle, and so principles are unavoidable.
If you're picking up the baseball bat, it's based on some other principle.
But is it? If you're completely committed to a life of non-violence, and the only way to subdue someone who is, say, beating a child, is to use some means of violence to end such a situation, are you or are you not violating this principle?
It seems like you're talking in a circle. You violate one to uphold another then.
On a broad enough definition, just about everything is a principle, and so principles are unavoidable.
Don't you mean 'in principle just about everything is a principle ...'?
What I mean is that God = principles, that it is impossible to live any sort of life without them. I don't think I understand anything about what that quote is saying. Or why that guy is saying it. Can you not have principles that are in conflict? I don't understand why you can't ever violate them. (But, at the same time, of course I think you shouldn't.)
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