Reply #178: I doubt if the army can be commended for this spirit of heroic [View All]

[Joe Chi Minh]

self-sacrifice, which I think is most of the time latent, if nevertheless active, in very many "ordinary" people, but war is perhaps the most dramatic context in which it reveals itself.

It is certainly the raw material in mankind God is able to call upon, which in some way, admittedly derived and a gift from Him, which fits him for a life of eternal bliss shared within the very life of the Holy Trinity in Heaven. Remember Chesterton's take on Jesus' words, "Take up your cross daily and follow me": "Christianity has never been tried and found wanting; it has been found hard and left untried."

How many emergency-service workers, and ordinary Joe's will make a split-second decision to risk their lives, to save others, even in the most desperately perilous circumstances. Then again, others are called to a tremendously burdensome life of self-sacrifice, below the radar so to speak.

To quietly struggle to bring up a family (often just the one parent), so that one's children grow up to be good people, in our shocking world, ever spiraling down to greater depths of depravity of all kinds, must surely be one of the most epic undertakings open to any human being. "They also serve, who only stand and wait."

And now there seems to be many ways in which many Americans have it harder than Europeans, not least in the struggle simply to survive with a roof over their head. It's bad enough in the UK, and would be worse if Blair had a free hand.