You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to know that Jesus Himself swung His pimp hand at the deserving more than once. There’s a reason He commanded his followers to sell their cloaks and buy swords. Just as a kid who is never allowed to feel the burn from his own mistakes never learns anything, so the man who is prevented from sinning by main force is not saved thereby.
The following is not a theological argument, it’s an observation about human nature: Both faith and works are necessary, because by their fruits ye shall know them. If one has faith, then the works will follow — naturally, as it were. But works without faith are mere mumbo-jumbo, no different than the crudest magic spell. The kind of guy who does what David French does — performs the works solely to be seen performing the works — is what Jesus called a “whited sepulcher”, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
Again, you don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to observe that Jesus commanded what the parlance our times calls “tough love”. Just as you can’t save a sinner by taking away all his opportunities to sin — we are ALL guilty; we are ALL fallen; that alone is sufficient to damn us — so you can’t “save” a drunk, or an illegal alien, or a criminal, or whatever by enabling his lifestyle. The reason I’m not in church today is because the church is exactly like that gaggle of Karens in Starbucks — they talk a good game about renouncing the wiles of this world, but they bend over backwards to enable every possible social dysfunction.
No, Jesus did NOT command us to patch up the gutter addict every time he OD’s, so that he can go out and OD again. He did NOT command us to provide all kinds of food and shelter and medical care to every Squatemalan who broke the very first American law he had the opportunity to break by coming here. No, He did NOT command us to tolerate deviance — there are two clauses in “love the sinner, hate the sin”, and we must obey both.
The only route to salvation starts by admitting that everyone is fallen. You can take that in whatever sense you like, because it’s not theology, it’s just an obvious fact about human nature. Alas, it’s one you have to learn by age 12, or you’ll never learn it at all. That’s the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled.
Severian, “On Being Bad”, Founding Questions, 2021-12-12.
August 2, 2025
QotD: The path to salvation
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