Litmus Test choices - a choice of totalitarian authority and surrender to that (versus heresy, versus Romantic Christianity)

There is a sense in which anybody that takes one step away-from obedience to an "authority", will continue to diverge - will continue to become more of what they have started. 

There is the observed fact that failure on one Litmus Test issue, or failure on a new Litmus Test as it arises, almost always leads towards greater corruption. 

And in this case, the corruption is an (in practice) assimilation towards the totalitarian program. 

So... people take a first step, and implicitly accept the authority of those who launched and perpetuated the Birdemic/ Peck international coup; or who provoked and escalated the Fire Nation conflict; or who propagandized and imposed the post-November-2022 "AI" pseudo-revolution...

Doing this involves both a decision to:

1. Accord authority to the powers who have devised and sustained these strategies; and

2. Also the decision to submit (to a significant extent) to that authority. 

(This applies to individual persons - but also to institutions - including churches.) 

So it is obvious why any single Litmus Test failure is usually a significant step towards further corruption; because the powers being accorded authority are overall-evil in their motivations; and the choice implies obedience to that authority. 

Authority to evil and obedience to that evil. 

To summarize: a Litmus Test failure is therefore both a decision to confer authority upon evil - thereby inwardly submitting to that evil; and a decision to think and act in accordance with that evil. 

In the short term, this "feels good" - exactly because totalitarian evil is dominant in our world (especially in The West); and in joining oneself with The System (even to what is, initially, a limited extent) there is a sense of becoming "part of something bigger", and of a larger world of increased opportunities for personal status, power, wealth...  

So (in practice) when someone chooses a Litmus Test failure; this is not something they do with shame and try to hide; but on the contrary, something boasted-about - and (as far as possible) parlayed into increased career, business or social opportunities.

The public discourse is currently full of people who have one or more radically dissenting opinions - but whose Litmus Test fails are actually the basis of their fame, or wealth, or other appeal. 

And this number is net-expanding with every new Litmus Test - so there have been many new recruits to the totalitarian agenda since "AI" began to be implemented across all major institutions, top-down.  

Some of these happy-successful-collaborators are individuals (entrepreneurs of one sort or another; whether would be "me cultists" or money-seekers, or combinations) - but many are church-Christians of one sort or another. 

This is how it looks to me. But I can see that there is a superficially-similar critique operating from the perspective of "traditional" Christian religious orthodoxy of the kind that sees "Christianity" as an entity authoritatively defined and controlled by some particular church (or system - such as a system of authority accorded to "The Bible" or other scripture; including a particular interpretation of it). 

Any individual who steps away from the institutionally-controlled and -validated orthodoxy of Christianity; can be seen (from this church/ system perspective) to be "on the road to heresy" - because, having rejected church-authority and been disobedient in one respect - nearly-always leads to further rejections and disobediences. 

Therefore, the traditional orthodoxy of the favoured church is defended strongly by asserting that particular church's primary authority; because perceived the alternative is likely to be a collapse of "faith", that (it seems) does not have an end-point - and leads (it seems) towards Christian apostasy: abandoning the Christian faith altogether... 

This perception of the anti-Christian consequences of rejecting the chosen-authority in any single point; is almost inevitable if and when somebody believes that Christianity Just Is embodied in an external institutional authority. 

For an individual instead to assert his personal authority to discern the nature of Christianity; and to accord primacy to (what he believes) is a personal, direct and unmediated relationship with Jesus Christ, and God - is therefore regarded by the traditionalist as amounting to "the same thing" as mainstream atheistic materialism and its accompanying New Agey "spiritual"-hedonism.  

For the trad-orthodox church-based religious person; true authority is always external, and true virtue always depends on voluntary obedience to external authority. 

The crucial distinction for church-Christians is between what they regard as the real and valid authority of their church on one side; and the false authority of global totalitarianism on the other.

No other possibility is recognized.  

So any heresy seems analogous to a Litmus Test failure. 

Yet from my Romantic Christian (Christian individual) perspective; I observe that the trad-orthodox church-based Christians have in fact failed one after another of the Litmus Tests, and continue to do so!

And for the simple reason that their churches are In Fact part-of the System of global totalitarianism.

As of 2025; a church cannot exist as a socially-significant institution, except by being mandatorily locked-into The Totalitarian System in a multitude of ways: 

...Financial and economic, legal and employment-wise, and as part of a dense network of regulations to do with buildings, gatherings, social interactions etc. 

All of which is enforced by the police, the bureaucracy, and the immense destructive power of the mass/social media.     

It is a question of whether one is opting-out or opting-in; and what is being opted-into or out-from. Into authority or out. 

Is the opting out-from one authority (e.g. a church) into another authority (...secular totalitarianism)? 

Or, is it an opting out-from the primacy of external authority. 

It is a question also of the decision about the location and nature of ultimate authority.

Is authority to be outer-institutional to be obeyed - or is it aspirationally-rooted in a personal relationship-with the divine? 

And answers to such questions are, in turn, based on what one regards as possible... Mainstream materialists regard the divine as false and impossible. Church-Christians regard the divine as necessarily institutionally-mediated. 

But Romantic Christians regard the divine as real and rooted in personal relationship. That is the basis of its claim to provide a third option with respect to ultimate authority.