Why *must* we (all) strive for Final Participation?

Although it will strike many as implausible, including myself at some times; I think it is accurate to say that all modern people must strive to become more divine, more god-like; must organise their life around theosis.

'All' meaning all in The West, all who have moved out of the unconscious, taking-it-for-granted type of Christianity of earlier generations (including all who have been atheists) - all who have at any point been materialists, or put socio-political issues in a position of primacy...

All such people have no viable alternative but to strive for theosis (for the divine mode of consciousness, as well as salvation. To put it another way; here-and-now, and for everybody reading this, salvation is not enough. More exactly, if we strive only for salvation, a 'simple' salvation without theosis; then we will not get salvation.

This is because of the times; over the past 200 years a situation has developed in which the modern consciousness has an absolute need for theosis; such that when it is lacking, then salvation is sabotaged.

There is perhaps a brief time window in the new convert of Christianity when salvation is 'enough'; but the modern materialism, atheism, evil - is so pervasive, that we cannot just hold-on to salvation. We are compelled either to move on towards a move divine consciousness; or else to lapse back out from real Christianity, and into a secular worldly materialism that implicitly, or explicitly, rejects salvation - does not even want life everlasting in Heaven.

We moderns need to know about life everlasting, we need to know about Heaven in order to want these things enough to resist the temptations to let them slide. The kind of vagueness on such matters that sufficed in the remote past will no longer suffice. Negative theology is useless. Modern Christians must be clear, simple, explicit about Heaven and the divine consciousness.

In a sense, we must all strive to be 'saints' - but not saints in the medieval pattern. The greatest saints were not those who did good works, but those who attained to a divine consciousness while mortal - those who 'had their heads in Heaven even as their feet walked on the earth'.

And that task is now universal; we all most strive (each is our own and unique fashion) to move towards that goal.

The divine mode of consciousness is what Barfield has termed Final Participation, and I have discussed under the name of Primary Thinking. It can only be effective within the Christian framework - although it does happen spontaneously to many secular, materialist people and those from other religions - who inevitably misinterpret the experiences, because only the Christian framework is both true and sufficient.

(An individual may not be fully aware of, or able coherently to articulate, their Christian framework - often because they try to express it in a false metaphysical system - but that framework must nonetheless be in-place.) 

Of course we will not succeed in becoming saints in any permanent and complete fashion, because that is the nature of mortal life; change, decay, disease, weakness... these prevent perfection; or rather, mortal perfection is attainable but always temporary.

But the success is in the striving, and the outcome in in resurrected life eternal; mortal success is in the experiencing of momentary and infrequent successes, and in the value we place upon these experiences.

Conscious experiencing of the divine consciousness is what makes the qualitative difference between salvation and self-chosen damnation.