299 Days Quotes

“They made a bunch of choices,” Pastor Pete said. “They chose slavery. Yeah, that’s a word we don’t use much anymore. But ‘slavery’ isn’t just people on plantations in the 1800s. It’s having other people in control of your life. It’s being totally dependent on others. It’s trading your liberty for ‘being taken care of.’ It’s selling yourself.” People were silent. “Most slavery is voluntary,” Pastor Pete said. “Not the kind like in the old days in the South. That was anything but voluntary. It wasn’t the plantation slaves’ fault they were slaves. But, unlike that time, most slaves throughout history willingly sold themselves into it.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“Speaking of hell,” Pastor Pete said, finally getting to his main point, “this whole situation they’re in is a lot like hell, if you don’t mind me saying. I believe hell is a place where people go and get what they want: no God. They have rejected God their whole lives. Over and over again, in little ways. Just like the Limas rejecting liberty over and over again. Well, in hell, God gives people who rejected Him what they want: a place where He isn’t around. They can do their own thing. And live with each other, with no God to intervene. They get to be on their own, totally. Which means human beings will look out only for themselves. So it’s a place no one can leave where everyone is only looking out for themselves. And preying on each other. Like prison.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“More silence as he let that sink in. “So it’s not that people really want all this, it’s that they had to know—had to—that it would be coming. So when it actually comes, they can’t say ‘I had no idea.’ They had an idea; it occurred to them several times, actually. They were just too greedy and too pathetic to do the right thing. That is the same thing as doing the wrong thing. There is no one in a Lima city who didn’t have a chance to get out of there and start making an honest living. Hell, we all did.” It was odd to hear Pastor Pete say, “Hell.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“But here’s the thing: they could see with their own eyes that the natural result of trying to get something for nothing was the eventual collapse of the system. Every single adult in a Lima town has said to themselves at one point or another, ‘This is headed toward something bad.’ But they all said, ‘Oh well. It’s the other guy who will get screwed, not me.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“And guns,” Pastor Pete quickly added. “They chose not to be a ‘weirdo’ or a ‘redneck’ by not owning a gun. Then—surprise, surprise—the gangs were running wild and they had no way to protect themselves. They had the chance to get a gun, but they didn’t want to look like a nut job by having one. They made lots of little choices to do the wrong thing. Now they’re in a world of hurt.” He continued, “You know, people in those Lima cities are getting what they wanted. Exactly what they wanted. They rejected liberty. They wanted ‘free’ stuff. Well, they got what they wanted:”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“They chose to spend money the government didn’t have,” Pastor Pete said. “They chose to let the country get into ridiculous debt. They chose to expect a lavish lifestyle, like a perfect retirement where they’d have plenty. So they demanded more and more from the government, like Social Security and Medicare, to make sure their high expectations about retirement would come true.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“Think about it,” Pastor Pete said, deciding to give more concrete examples they could relate to before going into the theology of it. “They voted for people promising them ‘free’ medical care, ‘progressive’ tax rates where, pretty soon, they weren’t paying any taxes, but getting lots of free goods and services. They convinced themselves that the little bit they paid into Social Security entitled them to the much bigger amounts they took out of the system.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“Purely voluntary choices,” Pastor Pete continued, “Where they knew, at some level, that what they were doing was wrong. Maybe they thought they couldn’t stop what was going on. Maybe they thought that if they didn’t do it, the next guy would, so why not get something out of it for themselves? Maybe they had talked themselves into thinking that taking things from others via the government was fair and the best for the majority. Maybe. But, whatever was in their hearts, they kept choosing to do the wrong thing. And they knew it. At some level.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“Oh, they didn’t make some big decision and say, ‘I hereby sell myself into slavery,’” Pastor Pete said. “Not in one big decision. It took many small ones over the past few years … decades, even. You know, they chose to accept the money that the politicians took from other people. They chose to believe that they could get something for nothing, and they helped the government go out and get it from other people. Maybe it was just voting for the people who promised to take more from others and give it to them.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War

“It was human nature to hurt those who brutalized a person and their loved ones. It was human DNA.”
― Glen Tate, 299 Days: The War