As I was cleaning up my room this week, I found these quotes from Thomas Merton “On Freedom”. They remind us that there is an ethical and spiritual dimension to the insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021 and the lies that fueled it and continue to be parroted to this day.
With regard to the former president and his lie about the election being stolen:
“To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration, centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god. But this is impossible.”
With regard to those politicians, media personalities and American citizens who let themselves be swayed to go along with these lies:
“The immature conscience is not its own master. It is merely the delegate of the conscience of another person, or of a group, or of a party, or of a social class, or of a nation, or of a race. Therefore, it does not make real moral decisions of its own, it simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own, it merely “conforms” to the party line. It does not really have motives or intentions of its own. Or if it does, it wrecks them by twisting and rationalizing them to fit the intentions of another. That is not moral freedom. It makes true love impossible. For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another. If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another? It is not mine to give!”
