Timothy Snyder's on How to Avoid or Resist Tyranny: His quotes with my thoughts #15

The students who majored in Philosophy at Sacramento State University, because at the time few in number, could often be likened to close-knit groups. Pranks were important. I couldn’t participate in the class on ethics so it was taped for me. The professor at one point was teaching on the philosopher Nietzsche, the other students made a pact to pretend they loved Nietzsche’s ideas, and told me their plans. When I got the tape I laughed and laughed, the professor was astounded and disappointed. But they finally told him the truth. 

Now we face some of those ideas, ideas, about the “will to power.” The anti-democratic events happening right now in the United States include, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an immigrant who was mistakenly sent to an awful foreign prison in a country where his life was threatened and two officials of the first Trump presidency being threatened, by the president, with an investigation by the DOJ because they disagreed with the him. The events are too often based on the dark desire for revenge and enemies. But Timothy Snyder’s booklet On Tyranny replaces the darkness with some light. He tends to use fellowship against tyranny. In his 14th chapter Snyder writes: 

“Contribute to good causes: 

Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.”

 I want to quote a few more of his suggestions in this chapter. 

“The anticommunist dissidents of eastern Europe, facing a situation more extreme than ours, recognized the seemingly nonpolitical activity of civil society as an expression and a safeguard of freedom.” 

Snyder points out that “one element of freedom is the choice of associates, and one defense of freedom is the activity of groups to sustain their members.” 

He writes, “Háclav Havel, the Czech dissident thinker, gave the example of brewing good beer.”

 It seems that all or most of the organizations I have belonged to were formed to either promote the goodness of Christianity or stand for the truths of Christianity. My last two, Apologetics Resource Center and then in the Presbyterian Church USA, Voices of Orthodox Women, (VOW), which was formed to counter “Christian” women worshiping Sophia and doing communion with milk and honey.

 But in all of that I think beer making might be a very good thing. And, in fact, a group of men in a Presbyterian Church in Loveland Colorado, where VOW held their board meetings, made beer together and it was very good beer. 

Christian or not the members in these groups did sustain each other and friendships were deep. And their love for Jesus grew because of their friendships—that is part of freedom. 

 I have visited the Inklings pub, The Eagle and the Child, in Oxford. There they gathered and read their works to each other and forged deep friendships over good ale and probably tea. They kept away what C.S. Lewis would call Britian, and France and China. Looking for peace, not power he wrote in That Hideous Strength, “When logres really dominates Britian, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China—why, then it will be spring.” 

He goes on to say “we’ve got Britian down but who knows how long we can keep her down.”

 So the United States is rising, that hideous strength is rising here, but stay in fellowship with those you care about, doing those things you care about with the gifts given by a gracious Creator.