Nowadays, most people are nowhere near being a Christian - because they do not even believe in 'deity', let alone a personal creator God, let alone Jesus Christ...
So for people such as myself, becoming a Christian is part of a very big 'package' of beliefs; which amounts to such a profound reorientation that it took years to 'work through' my life, even to a moderate degree.
Rudolf Steiner insightfully distinguished between dis-belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost - emphasizing that atheism is a literal pathology - a profound spiritual sickness. Steiner is, I am sure, absolutely correct - and this is the primary explanation for the insane and unrepentant species of inverted-evil that plagues our world now.
Just as one example: if we do not recognize that we dwell in A Creation - therefore a universe with purpose, meaning, and personal relevance; then we will be have no core or coherence to our belief and life. We shall be adrift, and probably oscillate between hedonism-to-forget, and despair-when-we-remember.
Steiner said that to believe in God but not Christ, was a calamity. To believe in God and Christ but not the Holy Ghost was to live disorientated and dulled in a fog of incomprehension.
But since the time of Steiner - at least in The West, but I suspect everywhere - to believe in God, one must be a Christian; and to be a Christian one must believe in the Holy Ghost - i.e. (by my understanding) must have a lively, active, interactive, direct personal relationship with Jesus via The Holy Ghost.
(In other words, we must now actively believe in all three of God/ Christ/ Holy Ghost - and the partial forms of the past have become impossible. This includes that Christianity is the only Possible religion for now, in The West.)
And I believe that the nature of genuinely-Christian changes to the life of a Christian convert need to begin with this kind of deeply-rooted reorientation, and well-up into the specifics of what we do.
Arising bottom-up and from inside-out - not vice versa.
In other words; as of 2022 - we don't become a Christian by following a rulebook or recipe, or changing our lives.
We might - like a devout monk - spend every hour, 24/7, following a strict Rule, engaged in prayer, meditation, worship, study, confession, fasting etc. - and (as of 2022) not progress a single micrometer towards being a real Christian.
What once was effectual, is effective no longer.
(As is, or should be, evident from the way such persons have actively allied themselves with work on the side of Satan - the totalitarian evil rulers of This World.)
These things may be good from some people to do from grounds of expediency, and 'psychologically' to break free from evil influences and habits...
But the Real Thing (at the level of the soul) needs to come from some combination of solid and confident faith in the hope of resurrected life eternal (i.e. the decision to follow Jesus to Heaven after mortal death)...
And the guidance of knowledge of 'what to do' which can be conceptualized as a consequence of our direct and personal relationship with the Holy Ghost.
The Christian life has become very simple, but that simplicity constitutes its great difficulty. And the simple make take a long time to work-through the confusion, complexity, and burgeoning chaos of Life Now.
4 comments:
Good day Dr. Charlton. There is a Buddhist parable that relates the necessity of discarding laws - moral and ethic assumptions - to the requirements of crossing a river using a raft and so leaving the raft once one has crossed instead of picking it up and taking it with them. Instead of reaching Enlightenment, the men of the West have been discarding such things as are not laws, but truths and the notice of ignorance in individuals. One who is inclined to be spiritual can only perform mortifications for the ends of realizing that they alone are the ones with the reins to the conduct and experience of life.
@TC - I'm afraid I don't understand your point.
I lament the political revolutions that have removed all support for our health as a people and as individuals. Where anyone stands on their own is very far from the way things used to be, and it is a matter of, so to say, shutting off the lights and isolating individuals from their origin which has been accepted as an elevation of the human being.
Forgive me Dr. Charlton for I repeatedly make the mistake of speaking when I am unprepared to do so, and I am currently invested in tasks which are ultimately a distraction to what is necessary yet I uphold them for to do otherwise would be viewed as a greater error by those who I rely upon during this Winter.
Christ's command in "I AM" has been reduced progressively and deliberately into the wretchedness of the Body of Christ lacking all realization and action that elevates Body toward Soul and an elevation that causes Soul to descend to Body. In baffling argumentation, the lives of those who were once Christians have turned against Christ's command and the Body became a mockery of itself.
Communion with the Holy Ghost is an act, it is opposed to mysticism. The act requires that one hold certain dignities which is acknowledgment of the Creation, and through the act come trials of humility which produce knowledge of the Body and Soul, and by these one finds unity in Creation and can speak Christ's command.
Bless Us
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