Jared Whitley argues the proposition. Just one of his examples:
“Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! — by being left behind.”
Screwtape must be grinning at headlines about public schools eliminating gifted programs, knowing how much this hurts the segment of society most likely to build it up: the middle class.
His closing example is good, too.
It is a troubling matter. If there remains any society opposed to the actual practice of slavery and genocide, it is surely this one; its self-criticisms on this score are so intense that it often misses that it has not engaged in either for a hundred years, and also that other nations are actively practicing both right now. Yet in this, as in all else, it has been turned from the apparently noble purpose to the destruction of the very forces that might be aligned against those evils. Evil somehow profits where it is actively pursued and also where it is apparently actively resisted.
Holy Saturday is the day of the complete triumph of evil, at least to all appearances. Today is Holy Saturday, but not only today.
Why were the Israelites slaves for so long?
ReplyDeleteWhy did they wait centuries with no prophetic word?
Jesus was born to angelic fanfare--and nothing happened, that anyone could see, for decades.
Why did the resurrection have to wait until Sunday?
I don't know why we wait--sometimes many lifetimes worth of waiting--but He has some good reason.