Goodbye to an Ideological Century

April 03, 2011 by J. E. Dyer

Continued from Page 1

The limits of public indebtedness are a hard boundary we cannot bargain with, particularly when every nation on earth has the same problem. Our managerial complacency is as stymied by this self-incurred phenomenon as by colossal natural disasters and mass uprisings abroad. We can't regulate these things, control their inherent operating principles, or redefine the meaning or the existential menace out of them. We can only do our best to face them, as we revert to the oldest of human patterns—power politics, wary diplomacy, emergency engineering, learning from our mistakes—without the ideological certainty about outcomes that we became accustomed to in the last century.

We are only just beginning to realize how permeated our lives have been by that ideological certainty. Its recession doesn't have to paralyze or discourage us; Christians will readily see how it can instead put us right where God wants us. A humbler and more open attitude toward His instruction is one feature of that posture, but there is another feature I think we will become much better acquainted with in the years ahead. We will have to walk by faith more than we ever imagined, stepping out where we are uncertain of the outcome and cannot prescribe what others should do, but know only what we believe to be right for our own actions.

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About J. E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval intelligence officer and evangelical Christian. She retired in 2004 and blogs from the Inland Empire of southern California. She writes for Commentary's CONTENTIONS blog, Hot Air's Green Room, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

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