Noncomformity

Worldly philosophy teaches that inflicting injury is necessary to deter evil. Human society has relied on injury, vengeance, and fear as instruments of order — enthroning them in weapons, armies, penal codes, and government force. When non-resistance is proposed, many cry out in fear that such teaching would upend civilization itself. But in reality, the reliance on injury has only perpetuated global violence and cruelty. Despite its failure, people continue to worship this grim idol — INJURY — through war machines and systems of punishment. The doctrine of Christian non-resistance challenges …

The idea of separation from the state and from all participation in civil affairs, was universal among Christians for the first two or three hundred years. That then they began to grow worldly, apostatized from fidelity to God, lost faith in him, formed alliance with the civil power, became supporters of human government and imbibed the spirit of the civil institutions with which they affiliated.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.