You know what drives me crazy? When people say, “Well, you can’t turn the clock back” about some issue like abortion or gay marriage.
Underlying this cliche is the assumption that some vision of liberal utopia will eventually win because it represents progress – good or bad. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Some constantly accuse Christians of trying to turn the clock back on women, on gays, on contraception or whatever.
The truth is that what they mean when they say “you can’t turn back the clock” is that they don’t want to see a return to Christianity for our secularized culture. But we know that the Church is both the foundational building block of Western civilization and the future. If we fail to make Christianity the basis of our future I fear Western civilization will cease to exist. And by saying so, I’m not trying to turn the clock back. I’m simply trying to point out what time it is.
July 30, 2012 at 4:42 pm
You're a fckin dumbass. Stop reproducing.
July 30, 2012 at 4:56 pm
I'm reminded of a G.K. Chesterton quote:
"There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, "You can't put the clock back." The simple and obvious answer is "You can." A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed."
July 30, 2012 at 6:31 pm
And when they say that they make it obvious that they know neither history or scripture. Because there is no sin that they are trying to hold on to that is new, that hasn't been tried in some other so-called civilization. And those civilizations are no longer around.
July 30, 2012 at 6:54 pm
We do exactly that every year in October.
July 30, 2012 at 8:33 pm
Ellen,
That's a terrific Chesterton quote. Here is another one that seems very appropriate:
"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."
More Chesterton quotes on progress can be found here:
http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/quotations-of-g-k-chesterton/#The%20Cult%20of%20Progress
August 1, 2012 at 5:48 am
It is amusing to note that the Romans had the precise same attitude—"you can't turn back the clock"—about slavery. They considered slavery to be an innovation, not a part of human nature, because nobody if left to himself would say "Plainly, I ought to be coerced to labor for someone else." Slavery was a product of economic conditions, probably some combination of the immemorial practice of raiding other tribes with the development of agriculture. Most Roman slaves (who were almost all themselves Romans, not foreign captives) sold themselves because they were in debt.