We live in a world where there is a single, totalitarian and evil system - that has assimilated all major institutions, and controls both supply and demand sides of the economy.
The System is global, and it is aligned with the agenda of Satan; and also The System is what keeps everyone alive.
The measure of our situation (and what identifies these as the End Times) is that we cannot truly escape The System without dying.
In such a situation, our inescapable duty can be described as System Distancing - so long as it is understood that this distancing is an essentially spiritual activity. We need to discern the evil of the system; identify its evil and sin, and thus repent our inevitable and unavoidable involvement both in and with The System.
What about practical material aspects? What should we do?
What about reducing our engagement with the system - maybe even reducing our dependence on the system in one or more specific aspects?
What about Boycotting this or that aspect of The System which is exceptionally-evil?
What about setting-up or supporting less-evil new 'alternative' institutions - economic, media, political or whatever?
One or all these may be spiritually beneficial for specific people in particular ways; so long as we realize that we are merely engaged in picking and choosing among evils; we are merely creating or supporting a lesser evil institutions in order to avoid supporting a greater evil one; our supposed 'alternatives' are merely part of the-same-thing; we are merely quantitatively reducing dependence in a few minor areas while remaining utterly dependent of The System.
We are not in the slightest degree changing or even challenging The System.
It may be that some specific actions are absolutely necessary for our own personal integrity; and at the extreme this may entail accepting death rather than doing certain things - but these are spiritual imperatives and we should not fool ourselves into supposing we are engaged in any kind of effective socio-political action.
If we do fool ourselves, and imagine or advertise to other people that we are acting practically to oppose The System; we will be reducing a potentially spiritual activity to a merely material and ineffectual correlative.
So, let us all do (as individuals and without waiting for anyone else's agreement) whatever is necessary to our personal spiritual integrity (and this will vary from one person to another); but let us set-aside any delusory or grandiose notions of pursuing some kind of incremental, piecemeal socio-political reform of the world government bureaucratic media complex.
Sounds similar to the admonition to avoid announcing how much you’ve given to the church.
ReplyDelete@Doc As many ways as *possible*? I disagree, because that is an endless task and is not spiritually motivated. As many ways as *necessary* I would say.
ReplyDeleteThis came to me yesterday: As long as we allow ourselves to become angry over this or that individual outrage, we plunge ourselves deeper into the evil morass that generated the anger in the first place. The system quite deliberately stages events, and places rotten people in the limelight specifically for the purpose of causing outrage and anger. Our anger plays straight into their game. As long as outrage occupies our minds, we're not doing anything creative, or Good. It poisons us, and increases their power. Go ahead and swat that tar-baby for all your worth. It will be damn near impossible to get your hand out, and all you're going to gain from it is a fist full of tar.
ReplyDeleteJWM
I think the outrage feeds the demons
DeleteThey draw strength from it. GDD.
ReplyDelete"The System is what keeps everyone alive."
Everyone? That seems to be a gross exaggeration. Can you clarify?
"We are not in the slightest degree changing or even challenging The System." I disagree. Loving others as Jesus loved us with tiny acts of mercy toward others in our short lives is challenging the system.
I do agree with the spirit of what you wrote. But someone could have the wrote this same essay during the first two hundred years of Christianity when people professing a mind set and behavior of Christ were slaughtered relentlessly. One could argue times were worse than now. And what happened? Christianity not only survived but thrived.
Perhaps I have misunderstood, but I think your only error as I see it is that you have underestimated the amount God has invested in his human project.
@Steve - https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-industrial.html
ReplyDeleteEvil is that which opposes God (hence Good) and divine creation. These are the worst of times because of to-down and widespread denial of the reality of God, denial that this is a created world - and value inversion of the Good such that sin is regarded as virtue, ugliness as beauty, and lies are affirmed as truth (and vice versa). This is substantially and increasingly enshrined in law, enforced in all institutions, subsidized, celebrated, mandatory.
Nothing like this has ever existed before, and now it is global.