For Christians 'personal God' - means (or ought to mean) both that God is a person, and that God regards each of us an individual persons.
This means that salvation, resurrection, theosis, damnation - all the cosmically significant possibilities are essentially personal.
God does Not deal-with-us, primarily, as 'a people', a nation, civilization, as Mankind or as a Planet; rather God deals with us primarily deals with us each as a person; and the larger and group units serve that personal primacy.
So, although group-aspects are real, necessary, and (especially the family) vital; for Christians they are secondary.
When we look at the general situation in 2021 - whether that be our family, the immediate environment, region, nation, civilization or Mankind - we should mainly regard it as the mass product of many personal discernments and choices.
As a group-phenomenon - the world in 2021 can be seen as providing within-itself many instances of the kind of personal situations that provide the best (i.e. most spiritually-necessary) learning opportunities.
Thus, the world as we experience it is individually-tailored (by God, through creation) to provide each person (not immediately, but sooner or later) with personal experiences that provide the opportunity for us to learn spiritually - with the aim of following Jesus to resurrected eternal Heavenly life.
Repeat: This world is designed to induce people to know and choose to follow Jesus to resurrected life... Therefore this world is Not designed for those who do Not want to follow Jesus - and for Non-Christians the world is indeed ultimately meaningless and purposeless.
For those with Christian assumptions (but only those) therefore; the world in 2021, our world in 2021, shouldn't be lazily (taking the lead from officialdom, statistics and mass media) regarded in mass terms, by group-ish analyses. God isn't create-ing this world in mass terms.
Because the spiritual reality in 2021 is one of literally of billions of spiritual micro-environments!
We can (and should) assume that the mass world is one that is overall potentially beneficial to us (sooner or later), to those we love, and to everybody else as persons - but we cannot possibly know exactly how or in what way beneficial; nor when learning-situations will present themselves to each (because billions of individuals!).
This is why individual discernment of the spiritual nature of our actual reality (especially of the side of God versus Satan, Good versus Evil) is spiritually-essential.
(And essential means essential - without personal discernment, individuals will almost certainly choose to be damned - that is the nature of the world of 2021, which is highly/ increasingly unified in its evil-aligned global agenda of value-inversion. Accepting value-inversion = rejecting Heaven and wanting damnation.)
Christians can each (consciously, explicitly) know spiritual reality and its necessary discernments and learning for themselves; for sure, sooner or later; because God makes it thus.
And we might also know for a few of our loved ones - and we might be able to help them towards salvation (by our love); but in the end they each and all must decide for themselves - from themselves.
I have been studying and exploring trauma in my being recently. And the inappropriate and unnecessary activation of the autonomic nervous system (flight/fight, adrenalin/cortisol). Recently the active choice to regulate my nervous system has come to feel intuitively similar to the choice of good or evil, god over destruction and chaos. Disregulated nervous systems are fertile ground for evil and destroyers of logical thought. Very rarely are we actually about to be eaten by a lion yet our collective nervous system functions as though we are.
ReplyDeleteColin
@C - But the spiritual is primary and should if possible be considered first; and it is the 'learning-experience' of some people to deal-with their own illness or its consequences. I don't think it is true as a *generalization* that ill people (or any particular kind) are a more fertile ground for evil - after all, we have just experienced two generations of vast prosperity, comfort and health and these were the years of unequalled moral inversion preparing for now. By contrast, past societies where life was short and hunger and sickness were endemic and highly prevalent, were all in far better spiritual shape than the West in 2021.
ReplyDeleteYes many aspects of our physical health have improved in recent generations. But I wonder if our ability to regulate our nervous systems has at the same time significantly declined as threats have become more abstract. This may shed light on the phenomena often described on this blog of the staggering and rapid decline in our societies capacity for logical thought. Just two thoughts in a row. Frontal cortexes in a state of semi permanent shut down by adrenalin and cortisol.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes it is ultimately a spiritual matter, but this may be an aspect of how it is manifesting in the material.
@Colin - I think Christians can be sure that it will always be made possible for anyone to acknowledge God, and recognize sin - and to repent and decide to follow Jesus. Health and thinking problems will (by God's direct action) be cleared in time and for long enough to allow this.
ReplyDeleteBut not, of course, if someone has joined the side of Satan in the spiritual war; or embraced Satan's global/ establishment/ leftist/ official/ mass media/ corporate and institutional ideology of inverted values. Anyone - no matter how healthy, intelligent, or informed - can chose to reject God, love and The Good.
"this world is Not designed for those who do Not want to follow Jesus - and for Non-Christians the world is indeed ultimately meaningless and purposeless."
ReplyDeleteThis is why nihilism is basically unassailable, because it is true for non-Christians who are decidedly so.
The fact that many seem unable to see this as Hell, now and later, kinda baffles me.