A room without a door

The moment men cease to pull against [the Church] they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair. The man has exactly the same sense of having committed or compromised himself; of having been in a sense entrapped, even if he is glad to be entrapped. But for a considerable time he is not so much glad as simply terrified.

- G. K. Chesterton, On Conversion

i cannot name this
i cannot explain this
and i really don’t want to
just call me shameless
i can’t even slow this down
let alone stop this
and i keep looking around
but i cannot top this

if i had any sense
i guess i’d fear this
i guess i’d keep it down
so no one would hear this
i guess i’d shut my mouth
and rethink a minute
but i can’t shut it now
‘cuz there’s something in it

we’re in a room without a door
and i am sure without a doubt
they’re gonna wanna know
how we got in here
and they’re gonna wanna know
how we plan to get out
we better have a good explanation
for all the fun that we had
‘cuz they are coming for us, baby
they are going to be mad
they are going to be mad at us

- Ani DiFranco, “Shameless”

For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.

 - Deuteronomy 30:11-14 KJV

The trouble

with being liberal, religiously or politically, is that almost by definition you have to be the kind of person who considers the other point of view. You Might Be Wrong. People who “know right from wrong” in the typical conservative way do not suffer from this disadvantage. They might be persuaded on details, but it’s impossible to be both a solid conservative and at the same time open to a ground-level shift in your thinking. Some points of view often labelled “liberal” are similarly entrenched (e.g. dyed-in-the-wool Marxists), but they belie the liberal label thereby; the operative principle of freedom is absent. Freedom is freedom to change. It’s hard to write good liberal rhetoric. If it’s presented truthfully, it’s going to lack the heroic edge, the certainty of God’s blessing in the face of adversity. It should also hope to reach the truth at any cost, and that’s surely worth the trade in poetic goosebumps?

“Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”

—	G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy