I found this book a very helpful and challenging read. I started this on Audible but there were so many things that I wanted to go back and re-listen to that I bought the book. The format of the book made it very challenging to keep ideas straight. It was challenging to keep the ideas straight in my head as the author moved back and forth between the two major visions he addressed. So many ideas. I needed to summarize the main points at the end of each chapter. Then I could reflect on those ideas and see where I personally fell. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we can categorize the political struggles into just two categories. We are too complex. Experience and education change our thinking and beliefs. It also changes how we view the world. I think I can straddle both lines (the constrained and the unconstrained) in some situations, especially in areas where I don’t have a deep understanding of the factors and influences involved. For the constrained vision the big idea is that human beings are flawed. So, to best help society we need to understand the fundamental laws of nature, government, and economy and then constrain man in order to maintain a healthy society. This is very different from the unconstrained vision that believes that we can perfect society if we have the right conditions. I guess we all want to live in a utopia. However, by definition utopia is an “imagined place of state were everything is perfect” (Oxford Languages).
So, what if you believe that man is flawed but is perfectible through Christ? It makes it hard to completely land in one group or another. The book does not address this idea. The focus is how man believes that he can perfect society if the conditions and teaching are right. For me that is a flawed belief since I believe that man in his current condition is not omniscient enough to make decisions that will lead to a perfect society. We just don’t understand ourselves, our world, or others well enough to begin to believe that we have the right to determine how everyone should live.
So, what if you believe that man is flawed but is perfectible through Christ? It makes it hard to completely land in one group or another. The book does not address this idea. The focus is how man believes that he can perfect society if the conditions and teaching are right. For me that is a flawed belief since I believe that man in his current condition is not omniscient enough to make decisions that will lead to a perfect society. We just don’t understand ourselves, our world, or others well enough to begin to believe that we have the right to determine how everyone should live.
RSS Feed