I was reading-through a discussion of a very small, but significantly hyped, phenomenon called Mormon Transhumanism, written a few years ago; and I got a certain kind of feeling from the writings of those advocating MT.
There was a surface plausibility, an insinuating reasonableness, fuelled by an evangelising energy... the MT advocates were saying many of the right things, indeed I sensed that the individuals were believing many of the right things; but at the same time I knew with certainty that the MTs were on a very wrong track; deeply wrong, deeply destructive of good.
This is, of course, a tiny and obscure example of he way that evil works in the world today. The vast sweep of modern culture - from the hammerblow simplicities of the mass media to the learned complexities of academia this is the normal dominant, indeed mandatory mode of discourse.
Surface plausibility, reasonableness, persuasiveness, enjoyability... yet all the time, underneath, nagging away at me - there a revulsion, a rising tide of suspicion. The 'balance' of 'evidence' suggests that these are 'well-meaning' people, saying things that have 'some value'... yet from the start, and all the time, there is this drum-beat of inner rejection.
This is what I call That Antichrist feeling - that sense that I am here dealing with an Antichrist phenomenon...
It is the knowledge of my own heart that I am dealing with some person, institution or product that has (to some degree - perhaps unconsciously to itself) a rotten, corrupt, dishonest, manipulative heart. That is pretending to be on the side of God, while actually working against God... That is pretending to be on the side of God in order to work against God.
This is 'the demonic' in its various degrees - and at the extreme (eg. with some leaders of nations, corporations, international organisations) it is felt like a direct channelling of the demonic: the demonic speaking through a person.
More often, it is felt as a person hiding an secret evil that covertly drives them, creating around itself a vast and elaborate web of 'rationalisation' to justify this to themselves and others.
Other times, there is an apparently a puzzled, uneasy personality being manipulated by some demonic impulse of which they are only vaguely aware... and when awareness threatens, they respond by vehement denial.
The difficulty is that this Antichrist feeling is so pervasive that it is almost unrelieved in mainstream public discourse. If I consider the world of politics, literature, science, academia, media... I find either nobody at all (in politics, among major CEOs, in the mass media...) or merely a handful of people and institutions that do not almost-immediately overwhelm me with the Antichrist feeling.
Those who do not seem Antichrist-dominated may not be terribly good or impressive people - they may not be Christian, they may even be 'anti-Christian' in their explicit views; but they are operating largely from their own agency - and not as minions, sock-puppets or megaphones of purposive evil. I am much, much happier dealing with anti-Christians than with Antichrists!
Because, having experienced that Antichrist feeling from some-thing, I really don't want to deal with it anymore; and when I do continue dealing with it I will have withdrawn my engagement, suppressed my enjoyment, and regard with detachment and suspicion... a miserable state to be-in; but necessary if I am not to be 'seduced' into unthinking agreement.
It is very difficult to explain such rejection to other people, without trying to persuade them of my rightness; and such explanations tend to gravitate towards trying to 'prove' by 'evidence' what I actually know from intuition, from that Antichrist feeling. But I have learned from experience how very dangerous it is to suppress and ignore that Antichrist feeling when I get it.
Once you start down that path of disregarding your heart; there is no stopping, there is no resting point - just more and more evil, more and more elaborately justified...
