Great Saints & Great Sinners
“All Christians are persecuted, but some more than others for two reasons. Either they live in an unusually evil environment or they are unusually good Christians.
Most of us aren’t good enough to be persecuted much by the paganism of one of the most Christian nations in the world. Since most of us are lukewarm, we are therefore safe, for the world persecutes mainly great saints and great sinners. Both threaten its comfortable compromises.
Why does the world feel threatened by great sinners? The answer is that not only do they hurt people, but also they expose the world’s own evil. Shameless sinners implicitly throw an unanswerable challenge at the world: ‘Why not be a great sinner, a selfish opportunist, a shameless criminal, if only you can get away with it?’
The world has no answer to that simple question except that it finds such an attitude ‘unacceptable’. That is perhaps an interesting fact about the feelings of the speaker, but it is in no sense an answer to the question asked. With no transcendent source of moral authority, no ‘thou shalt’ or ‘thou shalt not’, the world must persecute its criminals not because that is an absolutely right thing to do but because force and threat are its only possible answers to crime and to the fundamental challenge to the world’s empty ethics that the criminal poses. ‘Why not be a criminal if I can get away with it?’ The world’s only possible answer is: ‘Because we shall see to it that you don’t get away with it.’ So sinners as well as saints are persecuted by the world. It was fitting that Christ was crucified between two thieves.”
~Peter Kreeft
Most of us aren’t good enough to be persecuted much by the paganism of one of the most Christian nations in the world. Since most of us are lukewarm, we are therefore safe, for the world persecutes mainly great saints and great sinners. Both threaten its comfortable compromises.
Why does the world feel threatened by great sinners? The answer is that not only do they hurt people, but also they expose the world’s own evil. Shameless sinners implicitly throw an unanswerable challenge at the world: ‘Why not be a great sinner, a selfish opportunist, a shameless criminal, if only you can get away with it?’
The world has no answer to that simple question except that it finds such an attitude ‘unacceptable’. That is perhaps an interesting fact about the feelings of the speaker, but it is in no sense an answer to the question asked. With no transcendent source of moral authority, no ‘thou shalt’ or ‘thou shalt not’, the world must persecute its criminals not because that is an absolutely right thing to do but because force and threat are its only possible answers to crime and to the fundamental challenge to the world’s empty ethics that the criminal poses. ‘Why not be a criminal if I can get away with it?’ The world’s only possible answer is: ‘Because we shall see to it that you don’t get away with it.’ So sinners as well as saints are persecuted by the world. It was fitting that Christ was crucified between two thieves.”
~Peter Kreeft
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