https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=k1X1BccGRXI
One of the problems of the reification and deification of the state is the state seems to have to, certainly these days in the kind of democracies that you and I are from, exists as part of a polarity. So it cannot be, you cannot have an omnipotent state without tyranny. You cannot demand the kind of surrender that Galatians would ask of us, say. I’ve been thinking lately, Jonathan, about the solution to my crisis of identity is to die on the cross with Christ, that he can be reborn in me. These ideas can be found outside, obviously, outside of Christianity. I suppose the word Islam itself means surrender. I suppose Marcus Aurelius spoke of, you know, you are dead, now live the rest of your life properly. But do you think that there is something uniquely benevolent or uniquely nourishing about the idea that we, obviously you do because you’re a Christian, but what is uniquely nourishing about the Christian surrendering the self not to the state, your new material God, whether you live in a communist or capitalist country, but to something higher. And indeed, does that make you and is that a radical proposition? And does that radical proposition involve the taking up of arms? I mean that metaphorically. I mean that metaphorically. Well, this is the place where Christianity in terms of politics is complicated, you know, in the sense that what Christians believed, at least at the outset, is that you will be able to transform the state, but not through revolution. That in fact, the Christians were actually quite, even they were submitted to the state that persecuted them. If you think of the early centuries when Rome was authoritarian on top over them, persecuting them, they would submit to all the rules that Rome gave them, except for the ones that betrayed their conscience, except for the ones that were against what they believed to be true beyond what the state proposed. So they were actually model citizens. And they believe that the transformation that would happen would be through self-sacrifice and through self-transformation. Like a good example to understand this is the manner in which, according to tradition, the way that the gladiatorial games ended in Rome. You know, these fighters would come and kill each other, and then as Rome was becoming Christian, one day a Christian man went onto the field and stood between the two gladiators and said, you know, stop in the name of Christ. And obviously the gladiator just killed him. And that was it. That was the end of the gladiators’ fight in Rome. Everybody walked out of the stadium and there were no more fights. And so that is in some ways the image of the Christian, which is that through, you know, holding on to the true light and then be willing to sacrifice your own desires for that, rather than thinking, you know, that we’re going to rise up and cause a revolution. The raising up and causing revolution is actually what brings about tyranny most of the time, if you think of the way that revolutions happened in our history. The French Revolution leads to Napoleon, the Russian Revolution leads to Stalin. These revolutions usually lead to tyranny.