As grown-up people, we need to overcome groupishness and passive acceptance of external sources of authority - and this applies to Christianity as much as anything else.
At present, many/ most people regard it as a satisfactory evaluation analysis of Christianity to encounter somebody self-described as A Christian who does something abhorrent to the evaluator; and then to deploy some version of the phrase: If that is Christianity - then I want nothing to do with it!
Yet on that basis, there is nothing-at-all which could be regarded as Good.
By saying 'if that is Christianity...', all we are deciding is that we do not want to be that. But we are not correct in assuming that that is indeed real Christianity, merely because somebody-else says-so...
To know the reality of a situation, we cannot evaluate by group categories, neither as an average nor as the worst member of a group - we must go behind the group and into our-selves. And in going behind the group, the evaluation must come from our-selves.
And in evaluating from our-selves, the evaluation needs to be of the heart, of the intuition of the real self - because it is useless to deploy superficial and socialised evaluations because they are mutually-contradictory, labile and manipulable.
We must also go beneath the surface of our multiple false selves. Only when we can get down to the level of our the real-self evaluating the essence of the situation, can we attain the stability and validity that is pre-requisite to truth; attain to something we can build-upon.
Behind the group, beneath the surface... this clarifies why the general level of normal public discourse is absolutely worthless to us if we really want to evaluate the truth of anything - and this constraint naturally applies to evaluating Christianity.
Nobody-else and nothing-else can do this for us; so if we really want it done, we must do it our-selves. We can do it ourselves, but doing it absolutely entails stepping outwith the current and prevailing ways of thinking and being, the usual conventions of what counts as true.
And this means that we will not be able to justify our evaluations to other people, not be able convincingly to explain our reasoning - or at least not to people operating in the mainstream of social discourse; and especially not to those in leadership positions (i.e. those whose role is to monitor and implement the current, prevailing, usual ways of thinking and behaving).
In conclusion, we can know-for-our-selves the truth and validity of Christianity, or of other vital matters; but only by stepping outside the mainstream ways of discoursing.
To those remaining on the inside, who have assimilated and endorse the assumptions of the mainstream, we will seem to be stupid or irrational - or simply dishonest and manipulative.
Yet if we really want to know the real truth, Christians will need to expect and accept this Outsider status.
4 comments:
@EM - You mistake my beliefs as they have developed:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2015/04/we-cannot-escape-from-incredible.html
I don't believe everybody will converge on Christianity because Christian belief is incredible. If people understood, many would want Christianity to be true - but not all; there are those who do not want to be conscious, who find it unbearable. There are those who hate Heaven and what it entails. It is possible to opt-out, and it is possible to fight God and creation.
@EM - " Then you go on to assert that "Metaphysical assumptions are not supported by evidence, so don't look for any!" What if this is not the case?"
It is the case if you understand what metaphysical assumptions are. Admittedly, such understanding is rare (and people are always claiming to go beyond it, or prove the validity of it) - but once you have personally understood what metaphyisics is, you will see that evidence could never, *in principle* prove or disprove it.
However, metaphysics is explicit statement, communicable with others - and as such is not fundamental. What is fundamental is our direct intuition. We cannot get beyond that - even if our intuition is that something else is more fundamental!
St Synchronicity again. I just bought a copy of The Outsider today.
The key point that 'if that is what it is to be Christian I want no part of it' is a good observation.
I feel that way all the time with Christians.
Here is the problem: Let's say I detach from the horror of modern Christianity's social conformism, which in today's world means yet more leftism, and go deep into myself and say Christ is risen, the way, and so on. Then what?
Do I have to hang out with the supposed Christians who through human life have created groups of Christians whose by-products include promiscuity/fornication while talking up chastity and marriage, national and ethnic dissolution supported by Christians and Mormons, and a relentless altering of basic Biblical statements by and about Christ with the justifying argument that it's all supposedly an interpretation!?
X leads to Y. As in, why X?
If you had 100 people who claim to be Christian we get rainbow flags, the welcoming of the Other Religion, and funding of refugees over local neighbours who are poor! It's astounding how self-declared Christians dispense with Christ's 1st and 2nd commandments.
By contrast if you had 100 people who had a significant increase in direct perception the transformation required would begin.
@FX - You sound like you are 'already' an Outsider Christian implicitly; but to become effectual it needs to be conscious and explicit.
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