As of 2024 (in The West); I am finding that whether or not a person self-identifies as A Christian (or a Christian of any particular church or denomination) is not of any practical value in establishing which side that person has taken, in the spiritual war of this world.
Most "Christians" are nowadays (it seems to me) on the side of the powers of purposive evil, and some of those who do not call themselves Christian seem likely to be open to salvation.
Therefore the old ideal of "conversion" has come to seem almost irrelevant - and traditional (church-membership-focused, mortal lifestyle focused) missionary, conversion and apologetic activities have become worthless, or harmful.
(Although I am sure that apologetics, missionary and conversion work was effective and valuable in the past when Men were different, and the situation was different - including the fairly recent past of a few decades ago.)
What I look for, and most hope for, among those I love; is that they ultimately would want resurrected eternal life in Heaven - if they knew that this was a real possibility.
And this seems to be mainly a matter of whether that person is capable of, and values above all, inter-personal love in a "creative" sense: that is, love between people (or indeed beings - e.g. potentially love of a particular animal/s, such as a pet dog, cat, horse) which is alive, dynamic, and develops - forever.
If love is their highest value (for which other goals are willingly sacrificed), then I think such people will choose salvation when it is offered to them (after mortal death) as true, real, possible.
In other words: Is a person's ideal to live forever in a world in which love is the ruling value?
When people call themselves Christian, and lead a devout life etc; but don't want this above all else - then I usually assume that they would not choose salvation (when it comes to the crunch) but something else.
Note: Of course this all hinges on what is understood by "love" - and what is regarded as the model for the highest love. I think this is quite simple and everybody capable of love already knows it. By my understanding; the proper Christian model is the inter-personal love between members of a family (i.e. of the best imaginable family, which everyone (i.e. everyone who is capable of love) knows innately; even when he has not personally experienced it in mortal life. This is the proper model for the love of God and by God, and the love taught and modelled by Jesus Christ.
I used to say on Orthodox forums that the Great Commission was over. Everyone knows where to find us and we're no longer small bands of believers speaking truth to power, like St. Paul in front of Herod Agrippa. Time for the Church to feed Her sheep,. After all, if we're not going to evangelize our Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim neighbors, what is the use of trying to poach from other Christian sects or try to be first on the ground before the Catholics or the Protestants to cultural followers in some African village.
ReplyDeleteIt was not a popular view; everyone fancies we're back in the catacombs in the Apostolic Age. I call this perspective the Church Juvenile.
Then the State declared its birdemic and whatever was left of the Church as a spiritual entity disappeared. (I think this has been ongoing since at least World War I.) As you say, there is no longer an aspirational "membership" requiring recruitment i.e. evangelism. The "club" one might say has been disbanded.
I might not agree with you on conversion, but I do appreciate the emphasis that Christianity is supposed to be about eternal resurrection.
ReplyDelete@A-G - My impression is that a great deal of what the residual churches do is displacement activity - a kind of fidgeting; because, after all, they must do *something*.
ReplyDeletePeople like the social side of church, and that requires activities to do together - but the exact nature doesn't matter much, and people are almost indifferent to the results.
Maybe there is also a kind of superstitious fear at work too; and an absolute paucity of creative positive thinking.
I was very struck by the experience of the Mormons. When they began missionary activity in Lancashire, England (with a handful of missionaries), they averaged about three converts Per Day (converted from other types of Christian, mostly Protestant); of whom the majority would leave England, cross the Atlantic and emigrate permanently to Deseret/ Utah.
But recently, the CJCLDS maintains *tens of thousands* of full-time missionaries, yet most of these missionaries convert nobody at all; and active church membership is shrinking pretty rapidly in the UK and - and US heartlands - among the European population especially.
Yet, so far, the CJCLDS has chosen to double-down on missionary work - do it more, do it harder and better.
Instead of being a means to an end of gaining converts, being-a-missionary has become regarded as an end in itself - regarded as an intrinsically valuable activity - despite that ex-missionaries haemorrhage from the church...
The CJCLDS also build ever more and more Temples, for their flat-lined/ declining numbers of active members. And Mormons now (in the US) have sub-replacement numbers of children (i.e. fewer than two on average) - so they are not building for a projected future growth.
Churches - including new (i.e.19th century) churches - seem still stuck where they have been for a couple of centuries - which is either they try to do what they have always done - the "trad" approach; or else the assimilate/converge towards mainstream leftism - the "liberalizing" tendency.
Both directions have been tried and always-failed many, many times - but that makes no difference at all.
Yesterday at the Orthosphere Bonald wrote a post assuming that 20% of the US population were serious Christians (and he regarded this estimate as conservatively small!). Of course nobody really knows the number - but I would regard the real proportion of Christians in the US as much less than 2%.
And among real Christians, nearly all seem to be so deeply incoherent in their views and priorities that they are vulnerable to apostasy at any moment when things get tough...