People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
Interpretation
This quote suggests that civil society and self-governance require personal virtue and restraint, without which fear will dominate.
Charles Colson emphasizes the importance of virtue in the context of self-governance. He argues that a society composed of individuals lacking in moral restraint and civility cannot sustain itself and will inevitably succumb to authoritarian rule. The phrase highlights a critical truth regarding the relationship between moral character, societal stability, and the propensity for tyrants to exploit fear in the absence of virtue.
In practice
During a civic engagement event discussing the importance of community values.
The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible.
Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess.
Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.
Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.
One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is that I don't ever get up in the morning and wonder if what I do matters. I live every day to the fullest because I can live it through Christ and I know no matter what I do today, I'm going to do something to advance the Kingdom of God.
I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.
Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.
There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
One must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.
I have neither permitted, nor shall I permit, the things which have been settled by the holy fathers to be violated by any innovation.
Wicked sons do not have the Holy Ghost in the same way as do beloved sons, and yet they do have Baptism. So, too, heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have, even though they have Baptism.
Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a sea-anemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
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