That is what most Christians covertly hope for.
And it's a realistic hope to strive for. Because such a hope is for a world that is not 'wholly happy', nor should we hope for a world 'without suffering, disease, decay and death'. Such is impossible in this mortal earthly life; impossible because it is Not what this world is For.
(Hence not just impossible, but undesirable - a negation of what our lives are properly about.)
But I do hope for a world (my life, this actual world) as-wholly-as-possible meaningful and purposive; a world of experienced-relationships with God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost...
A world where the spirit is acknowledged as really-real...
A world where (as many as possible) lives are lived in expectation of Heavenly resurrected life...
A world where we each aim to experience and think and learn; where we strive consciously to choose that which is Good.
All that is quite possible - if we want it.
Not as a 100% permanent achievement - because this world is not made to be permanent, nor are our lives intended to be 100% anything - we are, after all, here to learn: change is part of the structure.
But it is possible that such a world as I describe can be our conscious, recurrent, hourly aim.
(Of course we will keep failing. It doesn't matter - ultimately. Repenting our failures, and trying-again; we will learn. And such learning - unlike human memory - is eternal.)
And that is what most matters.
We should not be satisfied with less than an Enchanted Christianity.
This post illustrates why I regularly read your blog. Despite having significant and fundamental theological and philosophical disagreements, I am often stunned by your insights. Interestingly, I feel the same way about the LDS tradition that you admire. They (the Mormons) get so much surprisingly right (from my perspective) despite their theological genealogy and eccentricities. Take, for instance, their approach to hierarchy or their sacramental approach to life. It's not what one would expect from 19th century people formed by iconoclastic Calvinism and egalitarian dissident Anglicans (mainly Methodists). And, yet, that's what happened. It really is extraordinary.
ReplyDelete@Joseph - You are very welcome. This was one of those posts I wrote under a sense of 'external' 'compulsion' that it was 'needed' by someone at this time. On this occasion I have found out who this person was!
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