The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the contradiction in civilization between noble ideals and negative actions, particularly regarding materialism.
Alan Paton reflects on the dual nature of human civilization, where high ideals, such as love and charity, coexist with greed and a fear-driven attachment to material possessions. He suggests that while society may profess noble values, the reality often reveals a disturbing disparity between these ideals and human behavior, marking a tragic complexity in our collective existence.
In practice
In a discussion about the moral responsibilities of society, this quote can illustrate the contradictions in our practices.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.
Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West.
Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.
Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.
Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
We can glimpse it in the book of Acts: the method of the kingdom will match the message of the kingdom. The kingdom…goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always – as Paul puts it in one of his letters – bearing in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed.
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
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