Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in the UK city of Birmingham, on December 6, 2022. Her crime? She was standing quietly near an abortion clinic, where she “might” have been praying. A fear of Christian prayer and what it might accomplish? Regardless, three state stalwarts showed up to put an end to it all, and did what they are paid to do—arrest the praying. Here is the video:
WATCH: British Police Officers arrest a woman for praying outside an abortion clinic. pic.twitter.com/JlozDcICX5
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 22, 2022
Various Western countries now have such laws in place, which seek to “protect” pregnant women, lest they be prayed upon as they make their way into “clinics” to have their babies killed (one may insert any euphemistic and state-approved wordage for abortion, to feel better). The UK is hardly alone in such “enforcement.”
The message, however, is obvious—Christians are unhinged, dangerous terrorists, who need to be reined in, because their beliefs have no place in today’s progressive society. They are a hangover from an ignorant, medieval superstitious age. The sooner they and their religion disappear, the better the world will be.
Many have already examined the tortuous road that brought the collective West to this place, where a woman standing and “perhaps” praying at the “wrong” place is arrested. Such historical meanderings certainly point out what has gone wrong, but they do little to suggest what might be done about it.
Indeed, many may feel “uncomfortable” about the arrest; that this is just not right, and all that. But what is to be done with this “feeling?” Are we merely supposed to “feel” a certain way, and live with that feeling, in our various comfort zones? We all intuitively understand that something is severely off kilter within the nations of the West, especially among their ruling elite.
This intuition has led to massive disinterest in representative “democracy,” where voting is nothing more than ballot harvesting to justify a preordained outcome. And what the ruling elite calls “democracy” is simply a system designed to fully disenfranchise us, where we must do the bidding of overlords that we did not choose, who force us to comply with their laws that we did not create, where we have limited means of self-expression—and no way to enforce what we want. We who inhabit the West are not citizens, merely voters, who must live with political outcomes that we did not choose, as Etienne Chouard points out. Such is the true face of Western democracy, which our overlords have further defined as a society of LGBTQ+, transgendered, pedophilic, green, cashless drones, who are “free” to slake whatever lusts they may have, and who are utterly powerless to affect any real change in their own lives. They must live as and where they are told to live.
A Monumental Task
Where do we belong? That is the question that each of us in the west will soon have to answer, whether we want to or not. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is one more emblem of that question. Do we belong with her? Or do we belong with the officers “protecting” the abortion clinic? The third option, being indifferent, is hardly somewhere to belong. Because a major part of being human is belonging. We cannot be rootless, free-floating, self-centered consumers.
Over the years, there was much talk about a “clash of civilizations,” of Islam battling the West for world supremacy, and so on. What a diversion! The real enemy of the West are the elite/politicians who rule over it.
Thus, the clash is right inside the West, happening between neighbor and neighbor, between family members, between friends—each struggling to answer where he or she belongs. You see, the West is no longer “home.” It is an agenda. And we are all continually being told to choose where we fit into it—because the agenda is now the West’s true identity, which some call “globalism,” “one world order,” or what have you. You know, all those things that are scoffed at as being “conspiracy theories” (the most nebulous phrase ever invented—but perfect for our age of mass confusion; confusion because we do not know where we actually belong).
Some might cleverly argue that Christianity, and any religion for that matter, is also an “agenda.” Fair enough. Sure, faith can be an agenda. But there is an important difference. And that difference depends upon how we answer the far more important question—“Why be good?” Political agendas and Christianity have markedly different understanding of what constitutes the good, and therefore both markedly build different types of human beings. The New Man of the political elite is the homo globalis, the Global Man who roams about the planet living where he is most needed: “I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better.”
But first we have to define what “good” is. For Christianity (leaving aside other religions for now because they have had zero impact upon the West), the “good” meant securing eternal life by first caring for the life of the soul, by bringing Jesus into one’s heart and loving Him. To some, this may seem an imaginary fiction, or even deluded nonsense; but Christianity’s greatest strength is the reality of this experience of God living in our hearts. When Christ dwells in the heart, the world we then build around us is a consequence of this intense love and leads to values such as virtue and civilization. Such was the care which built those great cathedrals. Such was the “engine” of the West once, an engine now mostly shut off, with few wanting to even restart it, let along knowing how to go about caring for it once it might actually start. In other words, the root of the West, the place of its belonging, was Christianity.
The question of love has also led to much confusion, where all manner of buffoonery, blasphemy, sin and “just being nice” is packaged as “love” and sold by various hucksters/politicians. Thus, sodomy, genital mutilation, killing of unborn children, and euthanasia are all sold to society at large as “love,” and said society more or less agrees to accept this fraud. But how can it be fraud, if people agree to it?
Let us now make an important distinction. Christian love is not compassion, although the latter is often confused as the former. In fact, compassion has been the “engine” of all the dystopias in history, from the French Revolution down to the World Economic Forum and the New Green Deal. And what we call “Wokism” is nothing other than the latest version of compassion, which is an inversion of Christian love. And what is compassion? Trying to do good without knowing anything about goodness, which means that politics and the state become dispensers of compassion. The outcomes such state undertakings, or worldly love, produce are limited, because they are not spiritual. The world cannot be “fixed” by more money, or more laws, or more NGOs, or more charities. It can only be fixed by first fixing the soul; by first knowing why be good.
Consider this. What do we prefer—quality of life, or sanctity of life? Worldly love would have us focus on “quality”—which then leads to the arrest of a woman who “might” have been praying, because she is impinging upon the quality of life that women heading off to an abortion demand, need or require. After all, is it not for the “quality of life” of the pregnant woman that her abortion is protected by such police action in the first place? And various western countries now also openly push euthanasia, for the same “quality of life.” Is such “quality” love? Or is it compassion? It was Flannery O’Connor who said, “When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror.”
For the Christian, “tenderness” means Jesus, who is God, who is Love, and the personal relationship that the individual believer encounters and experiences, which then leads to the entire theology and philosophy of virtue, the very cement of civilization. For the esoteric and secular West, “tenderness” means the “compassionate” government, which seeks to bind society with the glue of “rights” protected by laws, where the focus is privileged groups (deemed by government policy to be “marginal” and therefore in need of “compassion”) and not individuals. Thus, western governments can no longer build upon what is the good, but only upon compliance (hence, agendas), which in turn is seen as “the good.”
And what is love? Turn to any parable told by Jesus; or here is a good summary of them all, by Saint Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may seek not so much to
be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
And, therefore, Christian love needs no agenda, no program. It is simple in its directness—the law of life (here and eternal) is love. But wielding such love in a lifetime is a monumental task, as any Christian realizes. Hence the necessity of virtue, which is the structure that enables us to manage the vastness of this love, for in that wielding emerges a world, in the here-and-now—a civilization.
Therefore, Christianity is not an agenda, for it demands nothing, as all agendas do. Nor does Christianity enforce anything, as all agendas do. Nor does Christianity need laws to sustain itself, as all agendas do. For once you are in love, you are ready to do everything to be more in love, in order to show that love—even sacrifice yourself. But it is love itself which must come first; and therefore God is love. God it not law. There are no first and last in love, as in the law. Love knows no hierarchy.
On the other hand, state-mandated compassion is the denial of love, because it vaunts a hierarchy of privilege; for privileged groups are entitled by law to all the rights; while the unprivileged are pariahs who must be controlled by various agencies of enforcement possessed by the state. Such is the compassionate West today—the real terror state.
Why Be Good?
For Christians the answer to this crucial question is simple—because we love, because God is love. The good is the structure of such love. For the post-Christian, secular West, the answer to this question is also easy enough—because they want to be compassionate. But then they run into a problem, because compassion without any source, without any root, without God becomes terror. Or to put it more bluntly, in the words of Percy Walker, “compassion led to the death camps.” You cannot build a good world with compassion. You will only build nightmares. This too is very simple. Why? Because loveless compassion must be selective—when you show compassion to one, you must push away the other who you think does not deserve any compassion. And how do you judge? You refer to the government’s agenda, namely, the law, the array of rights.
Thus, there has now begun, in the West, the real “clash of civilizations,” in which the post-Christian nations are trying very hard to fabricate a civilization that will be “better” than the one created by Christians, whose benefits they still enjoy, but one which they have decided was the cause of all the problems that they must now “correct.” This is what is commonly called, Wokism, which is, in the end, rootless compassion. Thus, will the West be Christian (a premise which many westerners reject in various ways)? Or will be it be compassionate (which most westerners seem to want, in its various avatars: “rights,” environmentalism, limitless pursuit of pleasure, more government, and so on)?
The arrest of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is an example of this clash: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions (aka, compassion),” goes the saying.
So, why be good? To keep showing more and more compassion, with police enforcement, if need be? Or to guide the soul to seek perfection through love, which once was the overall concern of the West. But love also hurts because it is tough, because it requires endless and self-less sacrifice. And how can compassion be self-less? How can compassion sacrifice?
As well, the Christian call to love—especially, to love our enemies because God first loved us, and thus all life is sacred because all men have souls—can be devastating, for it must first destroy what exists and begin to fashion something true and real. Or, far better, in the words of Christ: “Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6:33). And what are “these things?” Simply what we once called “civilization.” In other words, love is humanity’s true home. Which civilization, then? One built on compassion? Or one built on love?
And now, the hardest question of all. Where do you belong?
[If you wish to support Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, please visit her donation page].
Aristarch writes whenever something catches his eye and the Muse grabs him by the throat.