As we witness the appalling phenomenon of American cities burning amid horrible violence, we hear unbelievable cries from radicals for defunding police departments. Forces that are opposed to Christian social order — organizations funded by George Soros and other bankrollers of chaos — may be working for their own perverse agenda, but they are ultimately only proxy warriors in the effort to bring about a more powerful Nanny State.
As one who is very happy with the police force who serves the community he lives in (the Cheshire County Sheriff’s Office), I can make no complaints regarding “bad cops” — certainly not in my own experience. I am certain that there are many other Americans who can say the same thing. These are locals who are our fellow citizens and neighbors, whose presence has been peaceful and benevolent, as it should be.
It is nonetheless true that some police forces across the nation — including Minneapolis, Minnesota have been trained by the Israeli police, whose history of brutality is well documented (see here and here). In some American locales, we are witnessing an increased militarization of the police, many of whose members are combat veterans of our prolonged wars in the Middle East with experience in “urban warfare.” Add to that the near total loss of military ethics in our armed forces, and this becomes a recipe for disaster.
What we have here is a classic dialectic of action and counter-reaction that serves no other cause than to plunge the nation into chaos and thus invite tighter control and despotism. It’s a Big-State globalist’s dream come true, for the present effort at defunding the police does not have as its endgame an anarchical America, but rather an America with a federalized police force (a very bad idea; see also here and here). This movement is nothing new; to their credit, since 1963, the John Birch Society has worked to stop this agenda of a nationalized or federalized police force.
The puppet masters who are adding their financial fuel to this fire are counting on the fact that they can manipulate human passions. They are using the old Marxist dialectic to pit the white man against the black man, the rich against the poor, and any group of so-called “haves” against an opposed category of “have-nots.” Inevitably, the rich almost never lose (some are actually getting richer); rather, it’s the middle class that is being destroyed — but you’re not supposed to notice that. The tried-and-true methodology of Cultural Marxism is at work, with a great deal of help from the servile mainstream media.
You can choose to become part of the dialectic by hating, execrating, and doing violence to the dialectical opposite class that you’ve been assigned, or you can choose not to enter into that Marxist matrix.
Saint Augustine famously told us about the “two cities” in his classic, The City of God: “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.”
As part of those two cities, along with the two “loves,” there are also two opposed “services” or “slaveries.” The denizen of the City of Man, in his disordered love of self, serves his own pride or his base passions. He is a “servant of sin” (John 8:34) — that is, a slave to vice. On the other hand, the inhabitant of the City of God has been cleaned by the Blood of Christ “to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14), knowing “that [his] old man is crucified with [Jesus], that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that [he] may serve sin no longer” (Rom. 6:6).
In the Sermon on the Mount, Our Lord Himself connected the ideas of love and service: “No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24).
You will serve God or Satan. If the latter, you will be a slave of your pride and of your passions. You will either allow your irascible appetite to be aroused by exposure to mainstream media accounts of violence, or your concupiscible appetites to be captivated by such evils as pornography — or both! In any such scenario, as a slave of sin, you will become prey to the demons and their willing accomplices on earth. In other words, you will have been reduced to the status of a useful idiot of Satan.
The idea of being a slave or servant of God is all over the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments. The word for “servant” in many of the New-Testament passages I have in mind is δοῦλος (doulos), which can also be translated “slave.” Here is a small sampling of the Apostles calling themselves slaves:
- “Simon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained equal faith with us in the justice of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:1).
- “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God…” (Rom. 1:1; cf. Titus 1:1).
- “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called” (Jude 1:1).
Jesus Himself gave the ultimate example of holy servitude: “But I am in the midst of you, as he that serveth [διακονῶν]” (Luke 22:27); He “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Philip 2:7; cf., Imitating Christ’s Humility), while the Devil gives us its polar opposite where tradition attributes to him those words Jeremias puts on the lips of rebellious Jews: Non serviam! (I will not serve.) John Milton, in Paradise Lost (1667), has Satan saying, “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
Slavery is found in the Church’s liturgy. In the Holy Mass, the celebrant refers to his priestly action as a “service,” and himself as a “servant”: In the Hanc Igitur, he refers to the oblationem servitutis nostrae (“oblation of our service”); shortly after the consecration, he refers to himself and his fellow sacred ministers as nos servi tui (“we, your servants”); and at the Placeat just before the final blessing, he refers to the Mass as the obsequium servitutis meae (“tribute of my service”).
The concept of slavery or service cuts to the very heart of what religion is. Among the diverse etymologies proposed for the word “religion” is an origin from the Latin verb religo, religare meaning “to bind fast” (Saint Augustine preferred this etymology). Whether or not that is the actual origin of the word, the fact remains that an act of the virtue of religion is the rendering to God of what is His due, and that includes our very selves and hence our service.
In his controversy with John the Faster (explained here), Pope Saint Gregory the Great appropriated to himself, and consequently to the highest office in the Church Militant, the title, Servus servorum Dei (the Servant of the Servants of God). Had not Jesus said, “whosoever will be the greater among you, let him be your minister: And he that will be first among you, shall be your servant” (Matt. 20:26-27)?
Truth itself is a conformity (of the mind to reality), which implies a servitude or slavery to reality — to what is. Slavery, then, of the right sort, is an eminently reasonable thing. It is rational and even ennobling to serve something greater than oneself. It is irrational and degrading to serve a base creature or one’s own passions. If we may press the matter further, any act of the free will is something that limits man. This is so because with it, we can either choose to act or not to act (not both); and we can choose to do this or that act (often not both). Our free-willed decisions and acts therefore bind us (bondage=slavery) to a certain decision. By our morally good or morally evil decisions, we are constantly either bettering or worsening ourselves. Ultimately, we will either serve God or Satan.
Why not, then, stop all pretense that we are utterly autonomous and will serve nobody? This is a diabolical lie, a false liberty that can end nowhere but in Hell. If we serve the Queen of Heaven, our service goes to the King, Our Lord Jesus Christ; and through Him, to the Holy Trinity.
Such slavery elevates us. Moreover, if we really live it, we will not be the slaves of Satan, of sin — or of George Soros, for that matter.
For further reflections on the notion of “Holy Slavery,” including its specifically Marian aspects, I refer the reader to the following three pieces on our site:
