2006-12-29

How we got into this mess...

Owing to the pressure of an ever-increasing number of
subjects introduced into the curriculum of a school, it is
only too possible for men to be held to be educated and
intelligent without ever having seriously tested their
intelligence upon, say, the Book of Job, or upon the Epistle
of Paul to the Romans. No doubt there are very good excuses
for this lack of discipline. Many forward-thinking men will
tell you that the Bible is not worth serious attention, that
it is simple, trivial, and out-of-date; and so, even though
you may hear the Bible read, read it yourselves, or even study
it, the tension of your energy may be relaxed--subtly relaxed.
But it is quite certain that a widespread relaxation of the
tension of Biblical interpretation has disastrous effects. For
there is no corruption that threatens a country so surely as
the corruption or sentimentalizing of its religion; and there
is no corruption of the Christian religion so swift as that
which sets in when the Church loses its strict Biblical
discipline.
... E. C. Hoskyns (1884-1937), We Are the Pharisees [1960]