Rather than lock people down and terrorize them with fear, the semi-totalitarian System inspired people to run amok in the world and freely indulge in officially-sanctioned sins, mostly via hedonism, lust, greed, and pride.
As is the case with the System's current closed world strategy, the open world strategy sought to instill a denial of the reality of God and replace it with the misguided belief in the sole reality of the System.
The open world strategy sought damnation through misguided pleasure and hope; the closed world strategy seeks to ensure damnation through misery and despair. Both strategies encourage people to become overly preoccupied with their physical, temporal selves; both strategies promote inflated egocentricity and the belief that the purpose of life begins and ends in the physical world of the System and its necessity.
In essence, both strategies work to degrade consciousness by locking people in the objectified world, thereby diminishing people's ability to effectively relate to God and to what is god-like in themselves.
The only way to avoid the slavery consciousness the System foments - regardless of how it is fomented - is to understand that we are not wholly determined by forces external to ourselves - that what is most meaningful and beautiful about us is, in fact, determined by internal forces.
These forces lie in the recognition of ourselves as primarily spiritual beings. This recognition also affirms the reality of God.
As is the case with the System's current closed world strategy, the open world strategy sought to instill a denial of the reality of God and replace it with the misguided belief in the sole reality of the System.
The open world strategy sought damnation through misguided pleasure and hope; the closed world strategy seeks to ensure damnation through misery and despair. Both strategies encourage people to become overly preoccupied with their physical, temporal selves; both strategies promote inflated egocentricity and the belief that the purpose of life begins and ends in the physical world of the System and its necessity.
In essence, both strategies work to degrade consciousness by locking people in the objectified world, thereby diminishing people's ability to effectively relate to God and to what is god-like in themselves.
The only way to avoid the slavery consciousness the System foments - regardless of how it is fomented - is to understand that we are not wholly determined by forces external to ourselves - that what is most meaningful and beautiful about us is, in fact, determined by internal forces.
These forces lie in the recognition of ourselves as primarily spiritual beings. This recognition also affirms the reality of God.
From Francis Berger - read the whole thing.
Francis Berger is currently doing a great job of putting into words, and thereby clarifying, the nature of what has happened over the past year.
When I try to put myself into God's place, and understand the broad reason for the nature of changes (and it can only be a broad reason - not one that encompasses the truth of divine purpose as it actually applies to billions of individuals considered - as God considers them - as individuals); I can see that one spiritual purpose the 2020 changes fulfil is precisely to encourage Men to make the distinction between world and spirit that FB describes.
This is a tough lesson genuinely to learn, in our hearts - even among those of us who believe it theoretically.
In the past, there were times and places when society was overall-Good, overall God-aligned; and in those situations it was probably easier for Men to suppose that by going-along-with the prevalent and officially-encouraged behaviours, they were also choosing God.
In fact, they were perhaps merely being socially-conformist and advantage-seeking.
Now that possibility is being closed-off by the closed-world strategy. The contrast between social conformity and God is stark, separated and clear. We cannot (without gross, conscious and self-damning self-deception!) pursue security, wealth, status, wealth and other worldly-Goods under the guise of Godliness - because security, wealth, status, wealth and other worldly-Goods only lead us ever-deeper into the closed-system of purposive evil.
To be spiritually-free to choose God and to follow Jesus Christ to resurrected life eternal we first need to be free-from The System and its values. And if we are not able to see-through the System lies - we will have accepted the values of Satan, and will cease to want salvation.
It is by making our options of damnation and salvation so distinct and separate, that God is helping us to learn what most people most need to learn.
The above, as I said, is only a very broad and approximate statement to account for the broad and approximate change-in-state of the world; when is most-needed is for each of us as individuals to understand our exact situation, and the divine lessons that we personally most-need to apprehend.
And that is what this day is bringing to you, and me.
Hmph. And I boasted along with many others how little life changed under the plandemic.
ReplyDeleteAt least the feckless and self gratifying get a taste of that which we already withdrew from. It's a little less grating seeing the mindless and self absorbed having less of the neverending good time that costs everything to have. "Not feeling so "sublime" now, are we? Welcome to the real world that you ignored". What did they do with all that freedom they had? They mainly just bought things and stuffed their fat faces.
Diminishing returns though: Ideological poisoning and sardonic humor only goes so far. But I'm reminded of the tail of a friend who deployed his boat in his flooded valley, roads being closed and such, to help a neighbor who needed to get to the store. My friend is the sort who learned Greek so he could read the concordant version. So he does this sort of thing.
His neighbor got cigarettes.
Ego Sum Victor has left a comment:
ReplyDelete..."I was born in 86 and spent most of my childhood in a sleepy river town in Kentucky and for the most part it was like something out of the 1950s, like The Andy Griffith Show. Social cohesion, common sense, patriotism, hard work and deeply rooted Christian values. It was so deep in the Bible belt that a preacher used to visit our elementary school and hand out WWJD bracelets. It was a fundamentalist Christianity and my family was Catholic but I always got along alright, even with my esoteric, mystical leanings.
"I think about what is passing away as sit here sipping whiskey in the rainy Pacific Northwest."
Bruce, do you consider The System an independent and discreet "thing" - having volition, purpose and power which is independent of the minds and souls of the men who, by all appeareances, are the ones who actually build it up?
ReplyDeleteIf so, and if it is an Evil System (which I agree it woudl be if I subscribed to the above thesis), wouldn't this mean that we are doomed from a physical and mental point of view, because we are forced to participate in that System since there is nothing outside of the system in this day and age (certainly nothing for a Westerner to go to)?
But wouldn't it be strange to think that God, our loving Father, would give us physical and mental needs which certainly need satisfying (and indeed, God gave us wholesome delight in satisfying, in an orderly manner, our godly physical and mental needs) and then cause us to engage relentlessly in evil when trying to satisfy them?
Is is not more useful to consider that only men are evil, and are evil to the extent that they open their hearts to evil (an evil which *is* objective, distinct and active/purposive)? That there is no "Evil System", but just the appearance of an "evil System" which is really just the strong impression caused by a massive amount of sin engaged in by massive amounts of men over a long time, unrepented? Of something which, viewed from the outside and using the mind's eye (the intellect), resembles a thick, dark web of evil, but is not itself somthing distinct and separate?
For example, I make a living and strive to do well for my family - I try and do this as much as possible in a way which is not sinful, and repent if the Holy Ghost convicts me of having let evil into my heart. I do, however, interact with the system constantly (As I am doing so by reading your blog and writing this comment right now) but it does not seem that this is intrinsically sinful. It really does seem to me that whether or not we are doing Good depends on moment-by-moment choices made by individual men and women,
In other words, that the possibility of doing good is available to all men at all times, and that except in rare circumstances, God would not put his children in a situation of having to choose between what could be considered a decent, dignified life with normal, orderly joys and achievements, and spiritual progress and exaltation (i.e. one or the other but not both).
In short, I think that in general God wouldn't want to give us needs and drives which we cannot fulfill without becoming evil- however, this conclusion seems to be implied if we consider The System a distinct entity as opposed to simply the sum total of mountains of individual decisions by multitudes of individual men over a "long" space of time.
@GB - It might help to consider the number of people, the number of Christians, who have been slaves - and whose physical existence was compelled; and that some of them were, nonetheless Christians.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bruce.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your observation regarding earlier time being more aligned with God and the good, which made navigating and functioning within a system less perilous. Yet as you note, even then a great deal of this navigating and functioning was wrongly motivated.
In any case, we are not living under such conditions. We are more physically dependent on the System than ever before; at the same time, we must be acutely wary of any tacit consent we nurture for the System.
The "point" of things having come to a point is coming into focus.