Those who stir up strife in towns, churches, cities, or nations are trying to create a situation when everyone will get to a point of desperation, and then try to resolve the problem with some kind of dramatic action. That dramatic action is sudden, forceful, fascinating, and its effects are very potent . . . and temporary.
The Silent Refutation of Every Lie
Topic: Exhortation
Those who stir up strife in towns, churches, cities, or nations are trying to create a situation when everyone will get to a point of desperation, and then try to resolve the problem with some kind of dramatic action. That dramatic action is sudden, forceful, fascinating, and its effects are very potent . . . and temporary.
This is why mobs function the way they do. This is how lynching occurs. This is how Marxism envisaged the growth of the revolution. This is why many churches split. This is why Internet blog wars start. Those who foment discord have a deep faith in the power of chaos to rejuvenate itself, and so they try to plunge the societies of which they are a part (whether small societies or large does not matter) into chaos, so that the chaos can perform its transforming magic. This is why discontent souls always stir up trouble. They do not see trouble as trouble, they see trouble as the penultimate stage just before salvation.
But it is a pseudo-salvation. It is a lie. When this kind of person succeeds in stirring up a sacrificial crisis, he gets the mob, or the crowd, or the presbytery, or the congregation, as the case may be, whipped up into a sacrificial crisis and ready for a dramatic solution to all the trouble. And this is where paganism always produces the scapegoat, a delight to all men.
What is the Christian response to this?