The Glenn Beck of the Sixteenth Century?

I'm taking a class on John Calvin and our weekly reading summaries take the form of a blog post highlighting something that 'struck' us from the reading. Here's the latest installment:

John Calvin’s world was filled with turmoil. Religious tensions in France forced him into exile in Geneva, where he wrote a pastoral and theological guide called: Institutes of the Christian Religion. He wrote it originally in Latin, the scholarly language of the day and translated it into French to be an aid to his countrymen. In the Dedication to the French king, Calvin describes these tensions, which had political, economic and religious facets like this:

"Thus from the individual vices of a number of people have come public error, or rather a common consent to vice which these valiant men want now to consider as law. Those who are not completely blind will see that practically oceans of evil have inundated the earth and the whole world is infected by a number of deadly plagues – in short, that everything is fallen into ruin so that one must either despair of the human condition, or put such evils in order even by extreme remedies."

Wait a minute?! Is that John Calvin or Glenn Beck? The modern and pre-modern political commentators note the importance of individual virtue for public good, an idea that echoes throughout human history. Individuals harbor their little vices, which then bleed into public errors and the culture shifts to an expectation of vice. The expectation of vice grows and infects everything that it touches, until the culture eats itself and like the proverbial Phoenix, and a new culture (political, religious, or social) rises from the ashes. It’s nothing really new, just history.

I’m no saint, nor am I a politician, but I have seen the face of evil by dealing daily with my adopted daughter’s mental illness, caused, at least at some level, by the abuse she suffered as a little girl. The financial, personal and societal costs continue to mount in the application of hoped-for remedies to close this one little part of the destruction wrought ultimately by a culture which turns a blind eye to ‘little’ problems. Little gaps in virtue… downloading music because ‘everybody does it’ means that it’s okay to steal. Stealing a little bit of data might lead into stealing love from our spouse: an ‘acceptable’ level of lust. The lust that gnaws at the fabric of marriage until the basic unit of society shifts from a lifelong commitment to a social contract open to all, dropped as quickly as the deposit on your apartment and for about the same cost. The destruction of family…

John Calvin’s alienation from his homeland resulted from the long, slow corruption of the Roman Catholic Church that led to war, exile, death and homelessness. At long last, the ‘extreme remedies’ were applied: intellectually by scholars and practically by pastors and the laity. He died in exile from his homeland, paying that price and more for his contributions to the Christian faith. He quoted Habbakuk 1:2, “How long, O Lord?” on the title page of the Institutes. As I view the political, religious and social problems in our society, Habakkuk resonates with me, too.