Spurgeon Day 4
October 18, 2008 | 4:46 pm
The principle of love has been found to possess very great power over men. In the infancy of history nations dream that crime can be put down by severity, and they rely upon fierce punishments; but experience corrects the error. Our forefathers dreaded forgery, which is a troublesome fraud, and interferes with the confidence which should exist between man and man. To put it down they made forgery a capital offense. Alas for the murders committed by that law! Yet the constant use of the gallows was never sufficient to stamp out the crime. Many offenses have been created and multiplied by the penalty which was meant to suppress them. Some offenses have almost ceased when the penalty against them has been lightened.
It is a notable fact as to men, that if they are forbidden to do a thing they straightway pine to do it, though they had never thought of doing it before. Law commands obedience, but does not promote it; it often creates disobedience, and an over-weighted penalty has been known to provoke an offense. Law fails, but love wins.
Wanted to reply to your comment. I’m new to this facebook thing so not sure if this is the way you do it.
Well, actually I believe we are partially socialized, but that’s besides the point. Karl Marx believed it was a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism. That’s scary to me. The idea of socialism is in great opposition to non-regulated economic markets. In other words they believe in regulating otherwise free markets. Sound familiar? Now, both Socialism and Communism should have been left as theories. They are dignified and work in theory but don’t work well in the real world. Especially if the economic form was originally meant to be an open and free market. A lot of bad economic and political things can happen because of them. That’s not to say that bad economic and political things don’t happen in democracy but there are better checks and balances. Of course, those checks and balances are being squeezed out very cunningly. I believe lack of God, lack of sound government, main-stream media, including the Hollywood elite have a lot to do with this.
Anyway……how are ya man?!
I see and agree where you, (Spurgeon’s) point is going from a spiritual standpoint, but my hope is that you are not generalizing the concept of less law/more love to resolve the current or any issues of the “day”. Whether it’s today or any other “day” present or past.
Below is just one example of spreading the “worldly” love around through less law or governance in this specific case. And now through a combination of greed, ignorance, lack of self-regulating, (you put the combinations together) on the part of millions of individuals around the globe, retirement, education, medical savings have been obliterated.
Greenspan:
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.”
When asked “were you wrong” about the benefits of deregulation:
“Partially.”
Hmmm…… thanks for that Mr Greenspan…..
There is no love outside of Christ, and the heart of man has and always will be incredibly wicked thus requiring some level of oversight, i.e. law.