The double-negative values problem - so Very tempting...

By Domenico Fetti

 (Wrong illustration of double-neg values on so many levels!)

I have been banging-on about the inadequacy of double-negative values (including double-negative theology) for such a long time (it seems) that it might be supposed that I am myself immune to this specific deception. 

Far from it! It really is so much easier to be opposed to bad stuff, to discover ever-more bad stuff, and to express this opposition - than it is to have positive values and aspirations; that this is a temptation which never goes away!

More than a temptation, double-neg thinking can become a mind-set; so that we end-up scanning our relationships, life (and the mass media, and System-outputs generally...) for things we can oppose. And they're so very easy to find!

And this mind-set gets to be a habit, because it is reinforced. We feel good about ourselves for pointing out bad stuff and our opposition to it; and other people think we are good for doing so. 

Even when the bad stuff isn't very bad, we can get self- and other-credit for pointing out that it can become bad - that it is full of hazards, highly risky, may be a slippery slope.

And all the time we can disguise from ourselves and others that either we lack coherent positive ideas; or that our own positive ideas are open to exactly the kind of double-neg critique as we inflict upon others. 

After all, how many positive ideals are not open to potential problems? 

How many positive values cannot be abused, misunderstood, or exaggerated into something bad? 

How many people are there who aren't harbouring sinful motivations? 

This, I take it, is the real meaning of the mote and beam in the eye parable in the Bible - which I would guess is indirectly from Jesus's true sayings, but seems to have been misinterpreted, and misleadingly-explained by the evangelist. 

The point of acknowledging the beam in our own eye is surely Not so that we can better perceive and cure the motes in other people eyes; but in order that we should cease to focus on the endless and addictive temptations of a double negative value system; and instead strive to build our lives around positive values...

Despite that this really does open us to infinite criticism from the multitudes of highly-motivated mote-detectors! 

And even when these positive ideals are (or seem) simplistic and incomplete - better that, than to live by negations.*

*Because, one great and decisive spiritual advantage of positive ideals is that - when they fail or reveal serious limitations - they can be improved by learning from experience. 

Saturday morning music - A Chopin nocturne played by Valentina Lisitsa

Valentina Lisitsa

Frederic Chopin only composed for piano, and his music is the most pianistic among all the great composers - absolutely specifically tailored around the instrument. 

He also pioneered a new way of composing (at least, in his best works) in which all of the rest of the music was dedicated to "supporting" the melodic line, so it would have the maximum effect. The same applies to the tempo - which needs to be fluidly subordinated to the needs of the melody. 

In Chopin's solo works, the pianist's left hand is usually "pushing" the musical-attention up towards the melody in the right hand; and much the same happens in the most successful parts of the piano concertos. 

The method for playing Chopin is also very specialized; and although almost any decent pianist can play the notes in Chopin - to play his music well is a rare and difficult art for which many of the greatest pianists have been completely unsuited. 

For instance, even thinking about a Bach-focused player such as Glenn Gould playing Chopin is painful (actually, Gould strongly disliked Chopin, which is just as well); but the same applies to many of those greats whose repertoire focuses on Beethoven and the Romantics. Someone like John Ogdon, for instance, had immense power, technical mastery, and architectural control - but was utterly unsuited to Chopin; not least because he was built like a bear.  

The first great Chopin playing I heard was from Maurizio Pollini, and I've never heard better since. But I stumbled across this live video of Valentina Lisitsa playing a Nocturne which is as good as anything by anybody!

What is remarkable is to watch how she achieves the gorgeous results. Her hands seem about 50% longer than usual, each finger has a mind of its own, and it looks as if she has had the bones in her hands and arms replaced by rubber (rather like what magically happened to Harry Potter in the Chamber of Secrets). 

Languid doesn't even begin to describe her playing - so laid-back she is almost horizontal; and she strokes the keys as if each was a small, delicate, furry animal.

This is, presumably, exactly what is need for exactly this music. 

Anyway - prepare for that particular brand of total sensuous enjoyment which is utterly distinctive to Chopin. 

Is it OK to fight on the side of evil, when you believe it is good?

Is it OK to fight on the side of evil, when you believe it is good*? 

Interesting question! Most clearly, what about those (apparently) sad dupes who go to fight as mercenaries (which are outlaws, in terms of the rules of war - and often treated as such) on the side of evil and against good; and do so on what they claim to be idealistic grounds...

But in the situation where those ideals have been absorbed from the mainstream mass media...

So in reality their ideals of good are a fake mask on purposive (indeed literally demonic) evil.

When - if ever - is such a person to be judged as good? 

My attitude is that when such people genuinely are innocent enough to believe that Western politicians, bureaucrats and the mass media are well motivated and honest - then they should be judged on the basis of their delusional ideals, and not on the basis that they are serving strategic evil. 

But if they have sufficient insight to ask the question whether their idealism is, or is not, true; then they cannot be regarded as truly innocent.

(Especially) If they have sufficient insight to defend their goodness by arguing that they have joined the side they believe is good, on the basis that there is no viable alternative to believing and serving the dominant societal consensus (e.g. of rulers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, priests or whatever); then they cannot be regarded as truly innocent.  

To be good, such a person's innocence depends upon untarnished ignorance; and (as Oscar Wilde said) "Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone."  

The merest touch of knowledge destroys that innocence which is the only justification for taking the side of evil. 

In other words, keeping oneself ignorant, by refusing to question that of which one is actually unsure; is not genuine innocence. 

It is instead self-deception - and in a bad cause.

And as such one is rightly judged primarily on the basis of which side one chooses; which is indeed the definition of good and evil.

*In an absolute sense; there is no division between good and evil persons, because all humans are variously mixed. As Solzhenitsyn said, the line between good and evil runs through each human heart. In reality, Good and evil are sides in the spiritual war: Good is to be on the side of God by personal choice, and evil is choosing the side against God. So the point at issue here is asking if or when those who have chosen to serve the agenda of what is actually evil, may (in their minds) be taking the side of God and divine creation. 

Is there are permanent and complete cure for this mortal life on earth?

Is there are permanent and complete cure for this mortal life on earth? 

Or are there just temporary and partial alleviations of the problems of living? Are there merely palliations that leave the essential problems untouched - of which the primary problems can be summarized as evil and "entropy" (aka death). 

Most of modern discourse on values and policies proceeds under the lie (whether explicit, or more often by implication) that partial and temporary would-be improvements will solve The Problem under discussion. 

This is, indeed, the basis of the entirety of this-worldly, materialistic "leftism" as it emerged in the late 1700s, displaced and co-opted religion, and now exerts totalitarian control over much of the world. 

The lie is that leftist reforms make a fundamental difference, that their "answers" will fundamentally transform the nature of human life - but they never do, and cannot. 

Generations of waxing and enforced pacifism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, environmentalism etc. have led to a world in which all of the problems these ideologies are supposed to address, are instead perceived - by those who are most leftist - to be in a state of crisis, or indeed emergency. 

e.g. Feminist rhetoric and discourse perceives the condition of women here-and-now, to be as essentially unjust and oppressed as they did in 1800, or 1900, or 2000. Nine generations of incremental feminist reform, the transformation of society, the inversion of legislation; and yet, for feminists, the fundamental problem is untouched. Two centuries of what Feminists regard as quantitative palliation and alleviation - yet the qualitative problem remains as-ever. 

Biologically speaking; many diseases have become curable; infant and child mortality has been reduced from about 60% to about 1%; and the average lifespan in The West has been extended about thirty years - yet the existential problems of disease, ageing and death are the same as ever. There are many new and effective means of medical palliation - yet "the problem of pain", of human suffering, is still present as always.   

In economics; prosperity/ comfort/ convenience has rocketed in The West since the Industrial Revolution, and "Biblical poverty" has been abolished; yet the profound civilizational problem of the rich versus poor remains - and is rapidly increasing. 

The nature of this mortal life is such that nothing material can be done from within to cure its core problems; and anything short of cure leaves the problems qualitatively untouched. No amount of justice eradicates our perception of injustice, no amount of egalitarianism dents our perception of inequality here-and-now, no amount of delaying mortality leads to a solution to disease, ageing, and death. 

It is a case of cure or nothing. 

Alleviation or palliation don't make a fundamental difference. Either evil and entropy are eradicated permanently, or things will be essentially the same. 

That is the problem of which Heaven is the solution. 

Resurrection to eternal life in Heaven is an everlasting answer to entropy and evil. 

Do You want it? Is it truly possible? 

These are (ahem) important questions - or, so it seems to me. 

So do not You be distracted by claims of what can only be partial and temporary palliations of this mortal life; that leave fundamental matters essentially unchanged...

Seek first The Answer. 

 

 

My favourite Vivaldi Four Seasons - slow movement of Autumn

Lie down, close your eyes - and listen to this superb realization of the sumptuous slow movement from Vivaldi's the Four Seasons, in the version I bought with pocket money as a teenager. 

The performer of the harpsichord "improvisation" is unlisted, but was probably Leslie Pearson; the Orchestra is the Virtuosi of England conducted by Arthur Davison. 

The Virtuosi of England was a "scratch orchestra" organized for recording on the legendary (to me!) Classics for Pleasure label (whose recordings constituted about 90% of my schooldays record collection); composed of some of the excellent soloists moonlighting from the major London Orchestras of the day. 

Christmas considerations - Pagan and Christian

Not my picture; but winter 1962-3, snowball fight in Torbay, Devon - the first Christmas I'm sure I remember

There is much of the meaning of Christmas that is Pagan* - in the sense of being a celebration of this-worldly and mortal life. The decorations, feasting, presents, family, light-in-darkness, warmth-in-cold - all of these can make Christmas a truly joyous time for a child who is unaware of Christianity in any meaningful way. 

Christmas could, thus far, be considered a celebration of the positive aspects of our life on earth. 

Yet, Christmas also leads to much nostalgia, and considerable regret. 

As the years roll-by, and Christmas becomes clouded by experience of many losses - not least, memories of the loss of the unalloyed happiness possible only to young children. 

With age and experience; the happier has been the Christmas, the sadder its passing. 

We celebrate this life and world, but with a growing awareness that all is temporary, and all will be destroyed sooner or later. 

Intoxication (of one sort or another) can push this awareness under for a while, but it will always return. 

If not before or during; post-Christmas comes the blues. A recognition of the other side of this mortal life; of entropy (degeneration, disease, death) - and of evil. 

That is when the Christian aspect of Christmas can do its work. The celebrations of Pagan Christmas are real and valuable, but the sorrow will win in the end; unless there is more and better to come. 

Then Christmas can be enjoyed whole-heartedly - by grown-ups, as well as young children. 

*Note: There is much of value in paganism - but only in the context of being-a-Christian. It is bizarre, therefore, for Christians (of all people!) to be afraid/ dismissive/ rejecting of paganism! 

The Watchers and the Occult Police

Dion Fortune 1890-1946

Sometime in the 1920s, during her initial research into occult abuse, Dion Fortune: 

...became aware of the existence of an inner-plane and an outer organization of initiates which was called the Occult Police. 

Most of its operations were on the inner-planes, with adepti whose job it was to try to seek out occult abuse and spiritual wickedness and then to put an end to it wherever possible. 

Certain occults groups in the physical world had their own inner section to work with the Occult Police and these were called Hunting Lodges. They were the physical plane terminals for the inner-plane Occult Police organization. 

Another inner-plane group to help to control abuse was called The Watchers. They seemed to act as part of the Occult Police and their specific role seemed to be to seek out occult abuse, misuse of powers of the mind, and general misconduct in the field.   

The Watchers would then hand over the information either to the Occult Police or to suitable individuals on the physical plane who would then take the necessary action to put the matter right...

The Watchers and the Occult police did not die with Dion Fortune, in fact they are still [1998] very much in evidence...

Dion Fortune was instructed in the procedure she should use should she ever need to get in touch with the Occult Police to report abuse or ask for protection...

While using the resources of this inner organization, Dion Fortune was able to obtain a great deal of information about occult malpractice, as the Occult Police headquarters seemed to be the clearinghouse for all messages. 

Her connection with the Occult Police continued throughout her lifetime. 

From The Story of Dion Fortune by Charles Fielding and Carr Collins (1985). Second edition 1998, Thoth Publications: Loughborough, UK.

Francis Berger's blog has moved

My esteemed co-blogger Francis Berger has moved his blog to:

francis-berger.weebly.com

Be sure to update your records!

If God is a person, then God can be known (and if not - then not)

It seems important to Christians (particularly Christians) that we can know God. 

If God is a person, then we can know God. 

Even a young child can know a person; so anyone capable of knowing, should be able to know a personal God. 

But if God is not a person, then God cannot be known -- such a God can only be known about. 

The problem is that too many self-identified Christians say that their God is personal; while actually defining (as dogma) that God abstract, impersonal, alien from Men; a God of attributes (such as omniscience, omnipotence, etc).

But such a God is infinitely distinct from, different from, Men in His nature. 

Such a God is not in practice knowable. 

The problem therefore is that too-many Christians have (over the centuries) posited a de facto impersonal deity-of-attributes, instead of a knowable God - while simultaneously asserting the incompatible doctrine that God is personal. 

Therefore, they block any possibility of really knowing God - for us as individual persons. 

Such Christians will not even try to know God experientially. For them, any God that is knowable (as a young child might know his parents) is not what they mean by God. 

What is knowable by experience is (for such Christians, and by definition) not really the real-God; but instead some-thing or some-one else...

Some lesser (or opposed) spiritual being; or some delusion or projection of Man's subjectivity. 

We therefore need to become clear and explicit about what we regard as primary about God: is God primarily and essentially a real person of the same kind as human beings? Or not? 

If God is a real person, then this is a knowable God, a God we can experience as a person - a God knowable (in principle) by anyone - to the extent that another person is knowable. 

Or else God is some unknowable entity. 

This ought to be an easy discernment, because we have Jesus Christ who was divine and also a knowable human person; and because of the way Jesus spoke of and to God in a personal and knowing way, in the Gospels; and because of the way that Jesus recommended we personally relate to this personal God. 

Yet, of course, it all depends on how we read the Bible, how we regard church dogmas, doctrines, traditions and teachings, the nature of our theology. 

There are plenty of these sources in the Christian tradition that point to God as ultimately, truly, genuinely an impersonal deity - and which regard God as a knowable person as a naïve, ignorant, or arrogant approximation or error.  

So, as usual, in the end, we are thrown back on our own personal resources, our own capacity for discernment. 

But this is what we should be aware of: that it all comes down to each of us. 

And then we should take personal responsibility for our choice. 

What then is it to be? 

The knowable personal God? Or the unknowable abstract deity?

Because it makes a big difference; and ultimately it cannot be both. 

 

The double-negative world of oppositional morality is ruled by demonic purpose

In this Western civilization, in which morality is double-negative; and consists of a multitude of oppositions to real or fake (it doesn't matter which - although fake is better) problems (abuses/ emergencies/ crises) - this world, is ruled by covert strategic purpose at the highest level. 

(This also happens within institutions, including within churches.) 

The "little people", the masses are kept occupied, and feeling good about themselves; by fire-fighting the latest problems; meanwhile the vacuum of purpose is filled from above, by the demonic agenda.

There are numerous examples. The demonic agenda of totalitarianism (ever-expanding bureaucracy, omni-surveillance, micro-control) proceeds via the moralistic frenzies of a multitude of "activists" who oppose... well, it doesn't matter what they oppose - whether it is slavery, war, climate emergency, famine, class/sex/race discrimination, social inequality, the latest bogey dictator/ nation/ religion. 

In the end, all such double-negations, oppositions to some perceived or real badness, are framed and directed by the overall agenda. 

The frenzy of opposition is led towards "solutions" that may not work, may not be relevant - but always forward the overall agenda - which has for many decades been totalitarian; but now is becoming more and more spitefully destructive: chaos inducing.

Thus the terminus of double-negative thinking, is the negation of double-negation! Using anti-war movements to promote actual wars; the environmentalist crusade to destroy the actual environment, deploying healthism to legitimize killing - and so on. 

Without God, Men are mentally sick; because without the divine there can be no purpose. 

And without purpose Men destroy themselves, and everything else. 

And without God - they do not even notice!

    

"Those who prefer security to freedom have lost both" - Dion Fortune writing during the Battle of Britain

From a letter of August 4th 1940 

There is something very strange about this war. The nations that have been subjugated were not beaten in the field, they fell to treachery and internal corruption; to lack of morale and lack of the will to victory. 

The key to their fall may be found in the words: "he who would save his life shall lose it, and he who will lose his life for My sake shall find it."

Those who prefer security to freedom have lost both. 

England stands alone and happy. All war gloom has gone. There is confidence in the future and pride in the present. Power is rising within us like a tide. The inflowing of a new life impulse is making itself felt. 

**

Letter 36 from The Magical Battle of Britain, by Dion Fortune. The war letters of Dion Fortune, edited by Gareth Knight.  

**

This insight of Dion Fortune referring to a very particular and unusual time and place has general validity. After the Second World War, there was a massive and (so far) irreversible collapse of Christianity in Britain. It was replaced by an overwhelming focus on this-worldly and material matters - i.e. what DF here terms "security". 

Nothing mattered to post-war people except security, happiness, prosperity, comfort, convenience and diversion. 

And, as predicted, this has led to the erosion, and incipient near-complete loss, of all of these - but especially security. 

Dion Fortune was talking about nations - but the same applies to individuals. 

Although we all (to some extent, sooner or later) crave security: there is none to be had in this mortal world; and the attempt to ensure it will bring the opposite - because by seeking security primarily, we will become oriented away-from reality. 

Unless the material is located in the spirit, unless the mundane is situated in the divine, this-world in eternity - then the material, mundane, this-worldly Goods will not merely be lost - but thrown-away. 

 

Unless you can understand that it Fundamentally doesn't matter that Jesus was a Jew, you haven't Really grasped Christianity

This, for reasons I explain here. 

Furthermore; I also indicate why the Old Testament is also inessential to what Jesus did, and being a Christian. 

Of course, as individuals, Jesus being a Jew and the historical link with the ancient Hebrews and their Law is interesting, influential, and may have personal validity and helpfulness on an individual basis. As may many other contingent and inessential matters such as one's own race and nationality.

(For instance: Englishness and England are, in this contingent way, both very important to me personally.)  

I think this clarity about ultimate and fundamental things has become ever-more essential, especially in recent years. 

Double-negative Christian thinking blocks the search for a positive solution

One of the themes on which I have harped in recent years is the importance of recognizing when we are engaging in double-negative thinking, without any positive strategy behind it. 

I mean that pervasive deformation of modern Western thinking which organizes society in terms of what people are against, with absolutely no notion for what people are for.  

This is a recipe for social destruction; but also for personal despair - since emotions are negatively triggered, and social life becomes a multi-pronged, recurrent sequence of urgent and often fanatical crusades against this, that, or the other "bad-thing"; but with no concept of where this is supposed to be leading. 

Thus we live in a society of dystopias, without any remotely plausible - or even remotely appealing, utopia For instance; the supposed-utopias put forward by the WEF over the past years "own nothing and be happy", "fifteen minute cities" etc. are actually horrific nightmare visions of the future, as well as ludicrously implausible. 

But a somewhat analogous situation applies to Christians; who are much clearer about what they are against than what they are for. And when most Christians do describe what they are for - typically they only succeed in painting a kind of nightmare scenario (usually with a totalitarian flavour); or else some more-or-less ludicrous and unconvincing clearly-subjective-and-partial daydream (e.g. of a sexual nature). 

This is apparently a basic and civilizational phenomenon, because what is most striking about the trajectory of religion in the West is the extent to which it replicates all other social institutions; and the extent to which broadly the same path has been followed by all the Christian denominations - and indeed all the religions, and all the political ideologies. 

Thus the publicly observable faith of all kinds of Christian is obviously much feebler than in the past; but also we can see the same in all other religions in the West. 

And the same again applies to political ideologies such as nationalism/ communism/ socialism; ideals that - only a century ago - inspired extreme personal heroism at a mass level -- yet now are feeble and tawdry excuses for personal hedonism, careerism, money-grubbing and power-seeking. 

Furthermore; while religion and ideology have declined; so has romanticism. People are more mundane and materialist in their thinking than ever before; accepting or indeed embracing of mechanistic, dehumanized, life-less and soul-less workplaces, art and architecture, music, movies and TV, literature - and churches. 

All of which are organized and conceptualized in bureaucratic terms - ruled by such abstractions as flow charts, auditing, hierarchy, surveillance and micro-control - and in which creativity is replaced by systematic plagiarism and fakery. 

There has been no significant mass movement in favour of individualism for half a century -- and even that one (in the late 1960s-early 1970s) was largely a fake: stage-managed by the Establishment/ Mass Media and Intelligence services.  

So if we honestly and rigorously seek for a genuinely positive outlook on life; we will search in vain through the public arena and public discourse. 

At all turns we will be baited-and-switched with (more or less disguised) double-negations of things-we-are-against; instead of things we are positively for.  

This change is so pervasive that I personally believe that it only makes coherent sense to regard it as a change in human beings, in human "consciousness" - that is; a change in the way we approach, perceive and understand The World, Our-Selves and The Divine. 

The above analysis and interpretation is why I feel that Modern Man already-is in a situation where the public realm is net-harmful (overall and by intent); where all forms of external guidance are harmful, not helpful; where all kinds of institutions, organizations, formal groupings are harmful, not helpful...

And therefore a world in which the only place to look for a positive approach to the future is in ourselves as individuals, and the direct and unmediated relationships we have with other individual selves - including those we love among the living and the "so-called dead"; among the material-beings and spirit-beings; among human-beings and not-human-beings; and especially with God the Creator and Jesus Christ. 

How we personally formulate and describe this individual situation matters less than that we actually do it - that we actually take personal responsibility for doing it. 

This is why I put-forward, describe and affirm my personal vision of Romantic Christianity - despite that I simultaneously urge each individual person not to accept this but to do it for himself.* 

The first step (but only the first) is to break free from the self-imposed prison of dependence on external authority - and to take personal responsibility for ones fundamental assumptions and convictions. 

Then comes the process of self-critical evaluation and development of a coherent world-view in harmony with all of our deepest assumptions and convictions. 

Because of the entropic nature of this world, and the triumph of evil in the public realm; this process has no end point in this temporary mortal life - but must aim beyond it and towards resurrected eternal Heavenly life.  

This is why there is no coherent or plausible utopia in this-world. 

And this is also why Romantic Christianity is the opposite of subjectivist escapism - in spite that it is rooted in each individual and seeks salvation beyond life. 

The real subjectivity is willingly and by choice, to be subordinated to the nihilistic will of evil-affiliated demons, Men, and institutions - and to be manipulated by them, at their will - towards their goal of opposing creation by means of unending double-negations. 

The real escapism is to be deluded into regarding this death-pervaded, temporary, and mortal world as a possible location for Heaven.

Whereas the Heaven reached after death, by resurrection, and through following Jesus; is the only proper object of, and context for, positive hope. 

*Note: A particularly important point that I want to get-across, is that there is more than one way of being-a-Christian. 

That the Orthodox-Traditional-Mainstream theology (shared by all Catholics and Protestants) is not the only possible way of sustaining Christian faith. 

That there is more than one set of assumptions that - with broad coherence - can sustain Christianity. 

This was first evident to me when I began to understand Mormon theology, how its assumptions were qualitatively different from the Mainstream assumptions; and that it had important advantages (in terms of explaining and validating free agency, and the nature and origins of evil) compared with Catholic-Protestant theology.

But Mormon theology is only semi-rooted in its metaphysical assumptions; and Mormon doctrine and everyday practice almost ignores, and sometimes contradicts, its own theological metaphysics. 

Which is why I first realized that a more-coherent and comprehensive theology was possible than either mainstream-traditional or Mormon - but that discovering this needed to be an individual and inwardly-motivated project. 

Birmingham, Glasgow and the escalating attention-magnet and motivation-sinkhole of geo-politics

No matter that I have for a decade-plus been cutting-down my consumption of media (and almost eliminating mainstream mass media from my life) - the fact is that the lure continues to escalate. 

Aside from the continually escalating geopolitical crisis of multiple wars, coups, and chaos (in which the UK unerringly joins the most evil side, in a fashion that paints a target over the country); there also the brutal and reckless destructiveness of UK domestic politics to contend with. 

The mask of benignity never come-off entirely; because mass media addiction and a godless aspiritual populace incapable of learning from experience, makes even gratuitously spiteful actions facile to prosecute under the most perfunctory of pragmatic or ethical rationales. 

The UK is being purposively annihilated by multiple strategies, any one of which would do the job on its own. But I can't do anything about it; and most native British people (a very large majority) are apparently so consumed with hedonism  / cowardly/ despairing self-loathing to be either ignorant or approving of the process. 

For instance, the main current national crusade and new legislation, which is widely-approved, is for the right to be painlessly murdered when the totalitarian state deems this moral and beneficial. 

The program of UK annihilation is now openly documented. This week we learned (from mainstream media) that in the past two years - by official figures (which are underestimates) net immigration has been about 1.7 million extra people... Which is an additional load (extra housing, education, health services, doles etc.) of the population of the second and third largest UK cities (Birmingham and Glasgow) combined. The government response is extract more taxes and introduce new laws to cover this crowded island with colossal swathes of cheap housing.

This is just one of the lethal plans - on top of war, anti-environmentalism, crushing farming, breaking transportation, smashing the economy, antiracism/ DIE, pseudo-socialism, omni-surveillance, total-bureaucracy and so on and on - mandated by an alien leadership class on a docile and demotivated populace.    

So the world is being destroyed, my country is being destroyed - and I am confident that nothing effective and significant will be done to oppose either of these killer trends. 

Yet the temptation is to monitor and evaluate the situation; and that monitoring needs to be ever more frequent, and ever more complex - and I have only so much time and energy and motivation. 

If I keep tabs on this stuff, and "do my little bit" to oppose it; then this is not merely futile, but drains finite life force and will-power from what I ought to be doing. 

There is a vast amount of real and important stuff that (given our consent) has a magnetic attraction for attention; and consumes motivation like a bottomless sinkhole... 

There is a great deal of "reality"! 

But the problem is not impossible - because each of us has a destiny, and sufficient divine guidance to enable us to discover what is most important. 

Hence, we need to ignore without denying most of "reality". 

Then, it is up to each of us to do that - and not something else. 

And this is not something to feel guilty about, nor to apologize-for - we should instead reserve our contrition for those things we fail to do that we really ought to be doing. Those "spiritual" things that can really make a difference to everything - not just here and now, but forever.  

Note to commenters: In any response, please try to resist the temptation to be topical and political; don't fall into exactly the trap I am describing! 

The situation of becoming a Christian is like the choices of a child born-into a loving family

Jesus Christ offers us the gift of salvation... It is up to us to accept this gift. But, somehow, the gift is only really accepted when we love Jesus. How can this be understood?

It is like a child born into an ideal loving family. 

The parental love is there, as a kind of background reality; and that parental love brings with it all kinds of benefits. What is at issue here is the child's choices in relation to that parental love. 

Jesus's love for us, and the gift of salvation, is a background reality. What is at issue is our response to this reality. 

Somehow or another (and it doesn't really matter how) we become aware of the nature and possibility of salvation. 

What then?

Every child in a (genuinely) loving family must decide whether that love is real - and some children decide it is not, and proceed accordingly. 

It is noticeable that those children who decide their (genuinely loving) parents do not really love them, seem to be children who are themselves rejecting of the significance of love in life. 

The love-rejecting child may be (apparently) himself incapable of love, or may have decided that love should be subordinated to expediency. The un-loving, expedient child may recognize that his parents are indeed loving, but chooses to exploit the situation - to take as many advantages, while avoiding any inconveniences or responsibilities. 

The love-rejecter notices that those who love him will "give him stuff he wants" - and that is the actual basis of his relationship. 

The love-rejecting child aspires to be a successful parasite in relation to his parents. And if the parasite kills the host? No matter - there are plenty of other hosts; the parasite simply moves-on to the next. 

When it comes to gifts; the love-rejecting child aims to "take the best offer" in any particular circumstance. His allegiance is contingent on his estimate of consequent rewards and punishments. 

He is analogous to a love-rejecter who chooses to accept Jesus's gift of salvation - but someone who does not love Jesus. 

The love-rejecting "Christian" regards salvation as a transaction - either a "free gift", without conditions, or else as an offer with conditions that can be "gamed" in a way that yields net-benefit to the parasite.

The love-rejecting "Christian" is half-right; in that salvation is a kind of free gift; but in the same sense that to be born into a loving family is a free gift - and it is striking how many children (often in adolescence, or young adulthood) reject exactly that free gift. 

The plain fact is that it is impossible to participate in loving family life, and also simultaneously to reject love and exploit family love in an expedient fashion. 

(At any particular moment) If you are not in, then you are out. Insofar as family life is a transaction, then it is not a loving-relationship. 

Because we are mixed and mortal beings, in an entropic and evil world; we can (and do) alternate in our behaviour between the Goodness of loving, and the evil of regarding those who love us in an expedient fashion.

In this mortal life, nobody is wholly and under all circumstances affiliated to God and divine creation. We are all "sinners" as Jesus made clear - and it is as sinners we are saved... or not. 

What is at issue is the aspiration of sinners: what do sinners most want for themselves and from themselves and forever? Is it love?

The thing is: salvation is resurrection to eternal Heavenly life: which is a life wholly rooted in love. And forever. And irreversibly. 

Salvation entails the free and voluntary agreement to leave-behind everything of-us that is not harmonious with love. In resurrection we are re-made and transformed into beings-wholly-motivated-by-love. 

But only if we want this, only if we agree to this - and we need to ask: Why would someone want and agree to this?

Salvation therefore entails an everlasting commitment to live forever in a situation of love: salvation offers this choice, and makes the choice a real possibility. 

And how we have-been in mortal life, what we aspire to as our highest values and hopes - these impinge on that (potentially) final choice. 

When confronted by the choice of salvation: either we value love primarily, or not (and instead value... something else). 

When it comes to love there ultimately is no possibility of trickery, or deception; or rather, rejecting love and adopting the aspirations of a parasite is its own consequence. 

It is simply incoherent to suppose that it is possible freely to choose to reject love as primary here-and-now and because other things are valued more; on the expectation that we will later-on make an eternal and irrevocable choice to live only by love! 

The problem is not that repentance is forbidden, but that people don't want it! 

Repentance is always a possibility, and requires nothing more than to acknowledge and reject some evil, something opposed to God and divine creation. 

Yet people are (to all appearances) very strongly resistant to repenting sin; and very much inclined to assert that their sins are virtues, or insignificant, or that their sins are (somehow) out-voted by their virtues!

How can someone agree to leave-behind their sins - completely and eternally; when they have decided that these sins are actually virtues? Or because they suppose they can hold-onto a favourite sin/s because they suppose that their virtues count for more, in some quantitative fashion? 

It's not that Jesus expects us to be sinless, which is impossible; but that - unless we want to be sinless, we do not actually want salvation. 

How can someone agree to live by love - completely and eternally - when he regards love as a means to some other end; when he uses the love of others love expediently. 

And not by lapsing from his ideals, but does this rejection as a matter of principle? 

In the end; I think we can see that accepting the gift of salvation and becoming a Christian is something that cannot be extricated from the primacy of love. 

That - in the end and ultimately - the gift of salvation will not be accepted without us loving Jesus Christ. 

Loving Jesus is not an imposed condition - Not a matter of "you Must Love Jesus or else salvation will be denied you... 

The gift of salvation is not a transaction - it is a relationship; closely analogous to the gift of parental love in an ideal family. 

A love-rejecting child can expediently accept some of the consequences of love; he can exploit his loving family like a parasite exploits its host - but such a child is not, and never can be, a member of a loving family. 

Someone who is motivated to accept Jesus Christ's gift of salvation, but without loving Jesus Christ; will not want, and will therefore reject the complete-and-everlasting state of love that is salvation when the final choice comes to be made. 

(And that is why Jesus places such an emphasis on love, in the Fourth Gospel.)

Note added: Of course, the life-long love-rejecter might nonetheless change his mind, and accept salvation on the basis of wishing to remade from whatever-there-is-of-love in-himself. I believe that the steady background reality of parental love (including from "beyond the grave" can be a factor in this kind of last minute, and perhaps post-mortal, repentance. Because that parental love is always there; anyone who repents, and decides to make love his ideal, can then immediately participate in loving relationships with his parents (whether the parents are still alive, or are resurrected). A love-rejecter may nonetheless be aware that this parental love is still present; and at some point, something may change his mind about the value of this love. So we can never rule-out ultimate hope, because that hope may be operative after death. So even "one-sided" love may have value in inducing salvation. Yet in the end salvation is always and necessarily by an individual's choice and consent. 

Further note: The above assumes that it must be possible to love Jesus in the same personal way that a loving-child loves his loving-parents; which means is must be possible for our love for Jesus to be a matter of personal experience. And must means Must. Therefore knowledge "about Jesus" will not suffice - no matter how abundant and detailed that knowledge may be. To have a robust faith, therefore, each Christian needs to know Jesus and experience love of Jesus for himself. All Christian religious practice needs to eventuate in first knowing Jesus in this experiential way; and any religious practices or rules that hinder or block such experience need to be be bypassed.   

Why does mainstream-orthodox-traditional Christian theology underestimate Jesus?

My position is that Jesus brought us the new possibility of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven - a Heaven that (unlike this mortal world) is a place of beings motivated by freely-chosen love; and therefore a situation free from entropy/death and evil. 

Heaven is therefore a Second Creation. 

And Heaven is a place where Men are wholly Sons of God, therefore not just observers or enjoyers; but active participants in divine creation. 

Before Jesus this was not possible. Jesus's life, death and resurrection was necessary for this to happen.

And this is why Christianity is unique, and itself necessary for those who desire for themselves resurrected life in Heaven.

(It follows that Christianity is Not necessary for those who desire something else than resurrection and Heaven.) 

**

So why does mainstream, orthodox, traditional Christian theology fail to acknowledge this? 

I think there are two main reasons. 

One is the commitment to making Jesus's Jewishness into something theologically necessary. The other is the commitment to defining God monotheistically and as omnipotent. 

When theologians are committed to Jesus's necessary Hebrew ancestry (including that he was the Jew's prophesied Messiah, the rightful King of the Jews on earth); then they are compelled to integrate the Old Testament with the Gospels (including the Fourth Gospel "John" which ought to be regarded as primary).

Compelled, therefore, to emphasize the continuity with Jewish monotheism, and a specifically racial (and this-worldly) account of Jesus's work and achievement (because the Messiah was the rightful King of Jews in this-world). 

If Jesus is seen as part of an ancient and tribal process of a monotheistic God; then this apparently pushed some early Christianity theologians (whose view became dominant, then mandatory) to abolish Time from Christianity - which led them to elide, ultimately deny, the difference before and after Jesus.

(Because when Time is regarded as ultimately, divinely, unreal - then all Time is one, and there is no before or after: that sequential view of history is just an illusion from the mortal perspective.) 

Instead of being something newly possible, Heaven became regarded something more like a return - resumption of a paridisal state of blissful contemplation, worship, and joyful gratification.

The difference between Paradise and Heaven is that Paradise is essentially static. 

Paradise may be cyclically conceived (like the cycle of fights and feats in Valhalla), or a state of suspended-Time - with the abolition of Time. 

But in Paradise nothing essential changes: Paradise is not going anywhere - it Just Is. 

Whereas Heaven is properly understood as a transformation of this mortal life -- to become a life for all rooted wholly in love, having eliminated entropy/death and evil - such that love and all creation become everlasting, while remaining dynamic and growing. 

Heaven is a continuation - in a new form - of divine creation (or rather divine create-ing). 

Thus the term Second Creation for the work of Jesus... 

Thus Heaven is open-ended, dynamic, and changes creatively - eternally.  

Jesus can only bring something wholly new insofar as Jesus is a divine being distinct from God the primary creator. 

If there must be One God, and Jesus is divine; then Jesus is merely a part of God (as with the paradoxical-mystical mainstream conceptions of the Holy Trinity) - and since the One God has always been, and was primary creator: then Jesus is nothing new. 

If God is an Omni-God - omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present, impassible etc - then Time must abolished, and God must live outwith Time - therefore Jesus is nothing new, because there is nothing new. 

From the above it can be seen that (unnecessary, mistaken) decisions about metaphysical assumptions - presumably introduced by some early Christian, and probably Jewish, theologians; had the effect of rendering Jesus Christ theologically dispensable. 

(Whatever bald assertions to the contrary are so strenuously, but incoherently, asserted!)

This; because whatever Jesus did was also regarded as done by God the primary creator; and Jesus could not be separated from God the primary creator - therefore Jesus the mortal Man was inessential.

Indeed, because Time is ultimately illusory, whatever Jesus did was actually already-done before Jesus was conceived and born!

Consequently, through these and other stream of thinking that converged theologically; Jesus's work and transformative achievement was blurred, distorted and diminished; and this was done (I infer) in order to fit with Hebrew and monotheistic theological assumptions: assumptions that soon became theological dogmas.   

Defence against Psychic Attacks of the totalitarian-materialist kind

Traditional psychic attacks are (or were) of a spectacular nature; such as a person being made sick, or becoming possessed with mind and body under control from some evil spirit, or demon. 

While (apparently) still happening to some extent; modern psychic attacks are very different in form, much less spectacular, much more insidious, and so common as to be completely unnoticed. 

Traditional psychic attacks (supposedly) depend - to some degree - with someone inviting possession, or surrendering will to another being - a being that is motivated by self-gratifying emotions such as lust, power, or pleasure in inflicting pain. 

Modern psychic attacks are usually mundane, mainstream; indeed, so normal as to be completely unremarkable. 

They involve surrender to materialism, to the will of the totalitarian system, to the guidance of some external "group-mind", and abrogation of personal responsibility.

Such psychic attack is pervasive and continuous, and happens via official sources, educational institutions, the mass media, laws and regulations - and pretty much all of the major social institutions - the arts, science, the police and military - and the churches. 

In a world where all social institutions and groups are more or less, and increasingly, corrupted by the totalitarian agenda of evil; anyone who chooses to serve any institution; who chooses to take their facts, concepts, motivations etc. from the civilizational and social group-mind - any such person (and this may be a majority) has yielded willingly to this evil form of psychic attack.    

And in a societal world of pervasive spiritual corruption it all slips-by unnoticed. 

And most Christians are as much willing victims of such psychic attack as anyone else - because they have chosen to put their faith primarily in a social institution, to serve and obey a social institution. Because all major churches are system-converged; they devoutly blot-up the psychic attacks, along with their religion. 

Such psychic attacks are simply a part of the major strategy of evil; which is to induce people to deny/ ignore/ subordinate the spiritual; to think materially and put materialist reasoning first, to focus primarily on this mortal life and its conditions; and to be orientated-towards (and motivated-by) the normal, ordinary civilizational group-mind. 

When this has been achieved (as it very largely has by-now) then whoever controls the material world, control the minds as well. 

For example; censorship, selection and control of those perceptions and concepts that are regarded as high status, authoritative, official - worthy of consideration and belief - entails mind-control of those materialists who interact with them.  

So we find that victims of modern psychic attack are just normal, ordinary, decent, respectable people - modestly thinking and doing what such people think and do. 

(Intelligent, modest, sensible folk - because to reject the mind-control of specialized social institutions would be dumb, arrogant, or just insane.)

The fact that their minds and bodies are colonized by demonic will seems absurd because theirs is a majority behaviour. 

There is no defence against this demonic influence, unless it is acknowledged to be happening; and the Christian churches are net-agents of exactly this form of psychic attack - so they are not going to acknowledge it!  

As with all psychic self-defence, the Big Thing is Not to invite evil into one's self, Not deliberately to surrender one's will to an external will that system-assimilated; hence opposed to God and divine creation.

And instead to adhere to the principles of Christian faith that the material is only a sub-set of the larger spiritual world; that this mortal life is only a finite episode in our eternal lives; and that we are committed to following Jesus to eternal resurrected life in Heaven. 

Against the siren calls of materialism - of the escapist illusions of safety, power, pleasure; there is a determination to consider first love as primary value; and our personal and creative destiny in this mortal life; and to be rooted (as best we may) in that which is divine within our-selves; and our personal and direct relation with the Holy Ghost.    

Why does (a supposedly Good) God allow "X" to happen? A legitimate question, versus idle curiosity

Why does (a supposedly Good) God allow "X" to happen? This is a very serious question - or, at least, potentially so; and inadequate answers to it have probably led to more Christian apostasy and failure to convert than anything else in the past century. 

But there are (at least) two ways that the question gets asked. The first is to ask about some-thing, some incident, some phenomenon of which we have direct and personal experience - including of the actual degree and nature of personal suffering entailed. 

The second, and most usual, form of the question is to ask about some-thing of which we have only indirect and essentially hearsay knowledge, usually from the mass media or educational institutions. This version of Why does God allow X refers to something somewhere place, involving strangers, often remote in history - something such as the Spanish Inquisition, or the Holocaust, or the victims of some "natural disaster or catastrophe (the Lisbon Earthquake was a popular example in the 18th century - see the novel Rasselas by Samuel Johnson).

The second form of the question cannot be answered satisfactorily, because it is an ill-formed question which contains assumptions that make it intrinsically unanswerable. It assumes the validity of our secondhand, remote knowledge, the competence and honesty of those who generated and transmitted this information, and many links of inference involved in constructing it. 

And it assumes that we know what was the nature and degree of suffering of (often) large numbers of individual persons - and indeed it assumes we know what these people's attitude was, to whatever they experienced. 

None of this is solidly knowable, so we are debating insecure inferences - and such debates never go anywhere useful or valid. 

Indeed, I would regard such discussions of big, remote abstractions concerning phenpomena of unknowable validity as fundamentally unserious: merely idle curiosity, the dishonest seeking of excuses, or moral grandstanding ("virtue-signalling").  

But even when we stick to valid questions concerning that suffering of which we have direct and personal knowledge, so that we feel absolutely confident of what we are talking about; such that we would literally stake our lives on its truth...

Even then, if a Christian answer is desired, then a Christian context must be assumed: and here must means must. 

If the questioner asking "why does a Good God allow..." demands a this-worldly answer, an answer in terms of providing a reason for suffering that is justifiable purely in terms of some kind of measure of mortal-life gratification, an explanation within bounds of time only between conception and death - then he has already assumed that Christianity is untrue. 

Because a Christian answer will ultimately strive to explain things, including all instances of suffering, in a large context of time - indeed an everlasting context that includes resurrected eternal Heavenly life. 

If we have a valid question about the origin of suffering in this divine creation of a Good God, and with eternal life beyond salvation, then this question is what absolutely needs a satisfactory answer. 

That is, an answer which is sufficiently clear and concise to be comprehensible, and whose assumptions are endorsed by that person's intuitive understanding. And an answer that really answers the source of suffering in the divine creation of a Good God - and which does not merely kick the can a but further away from the initial question.

To say "the devil did it" is just a can kick; if we assume that God made the devil - entirely, and from-nothing; and made the devil with his demonic nature. 

And any explanation in terms of randomness is likewise an evasion; if God is asserted to have made everything as it actually is.  

Also, it is not Good enough for Christians to say that such questions can't be answered because God the creator is too different from us - too Great, too inscrutable, or that His ways are not Our ways...  

Christians can't coherently plead divine incomprehensibility because Jesus was a Man. 

 

All Christians ought to have such answers thought-through and ready for deployment when required - because the question is vitally important, and not one that is going-away.  

Where did I come from? Where am I going?

Where did I come from? Where am I going?

What was I before I was born, what will happen to me when I die? 

These questions are probably spontaneous among many people - if not all people. 

They arise from a sense of trying to understand "my" situation in life, in this world.  

The current options in answering include the following:

1. The questions make no sense. There is no you except in this temporary life and world, a current by-product of brain activity. And indeed "you" is probably only the same thing as itself here-and-now - and was not so when you were a young child, and "you" may be obliterated before your body dies by brain pathology. This is mainstream secular atheism, as taught by Western culture.  

2. The second question: Where am I going? is a real question, and the answer is [some kind of afterlife, such as heaven]; but the first question: Where did I come from? is an illegitimate question that has no answer; because "I" did not exist until my-self/ my-soul was created from nothing, some time before it was incarnated in a body. This is the conviction of mainstream orthodox Christianity, and some other religions.   

3. The reincarnation answer, which varies in its ultimates on either side of this particular mortal life (eg, varies concerning explanations of the ultimate origin and destination of "me"); but reincarnation belief generally has the take-home message that where I came from was a previous mortal-earthly incarnation, and where I am going is another mortal-earthly incarnation. This is asserted by the likes of Hindus and Buddhists and Eastern influenced Westerners of a New Age and/or Esoteric flavour. 

Answer 2 - we came from nothing, and/but will live eternally after death - is the mainstream, orthodox Christian answer. 

I would draw attention to its intermediate position in the above list; in that it asserts that (like mainstream atheism) there was a time in the past when we did not exist. 

This mainstream-orthodox-Christian asserted non-existence in the past of some essential "self" that is me; is something contradicted intuitively in some people (including myself) - to put it simply, I (like may people) have some kind of an inner conviction of a pre-mortal existence*. 

That mainstream, orthodox Christianity decided to assert that each soul is created-from-nothing was, I believe, a very unfortunate decision. It is impossible to know how many people through history have rejected Jesus Christ because they were thereby compelled (by the churches) to reject their intuition of pre-mortal existence - but it must have been A Lot of people.

Especially unfortunate as there are many scriptural references that plausibly refer to pre-mortal existence - especially the Gospel discussion of whether John the Baptist was, or was not, another "incarnation" of one of the ancient Hebrew prophets (e.g. John 1: 21-5).

At present, the only widely known option with respect to pre-mortal life is reincarnation; but there is another possibility that seemed to go unnoticed until Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet; which is that we all existed eternally before this mortal incarnation, but as not-embodied, not-incarnate, spirit beings. This is indeed my own intuition with respect to myself. 

(i.e. The phases of life, according to Mormonism, go roughly as follows: eternal pre-mortal spirit life; temporary mortal incarnation on earth; resurrected incarnate eternal life, of some kind - whether Paradisal or Heavenly in various degrees, or Hellish**.)  

But I see no Christian grounds for excluding the possibility of reincarnations preceding this mortal life. I just don't feel this is true for me.

I wish that more people knew of, and had seriously considered, the Mormon idea of eternal, pre-mortal, spirit existence because, well... I think the idea has "a lot going for it!" 

In other words, I think it is true that I lived a a spirit before this incarnation - so the idea is true at least for people like myself: those whose intuitive sense, direct knowledge, or memory rejects both creation from nothing, and (multiple) prior incarnations - but is convinced of prior existence. 

However, looking forwards from this mortal life, I think that a Christian will - almost by definition - not desire further reincarnation, nor a return to spirit existence; but the Christian will instead desire to attain resurrection to eternal Heavenly life. 

Of course, in principle, a Christian might feel he was not ready for resurrection, and therefore needed further reincarnations to prepare for the final choice of resurrection. 

However; I think that resurrection is not the kind of thing that can be delayed in such a fashion; because from here-and-now (now that Jesus Christ has made this possible) future reincarnation actually involves rejecting the chance and possibility of resurrection after we end this mortal life - which doesn't seem to me like something a Christian would want to do...     

But that's just me!

* Mainstream Orthodox Christians find themselves in the difficult position of having to argue that our soul is immortal going forwards, but not going backwards. Such Christians must argue that it does not make sense to suppose our souls can be annihilated into nothingness after death; but that is does make sense to suppose that the soul emerged from nothingness before birth. I say this is difficult to argue - it is not of course impossible! Yet such arguments very rapidly become extremely complex and abstract, and thereby (for most people) are not compelling.

**This is the orthodox Mormon understanding. My own is broadly similar in terms of phases, but somewhat different in terms of detail in that I believe reincarnation is a pre-mortal possibility; and that resurrection to eternal incarnation is only for those who choose Heaven, so that other (not-Heaven) choices will to remain post-mortal spirits.

James MacMillan - Ave Maris Stella - sublime modern choral music

I just heard, for the first time, Ave Maris Stella by James Macmillan done live at an advent service in our local church; and it was a thrilling and beautiful experience. 

I'm genuinely astonished that this music is not better known - but judging by the YouTube numbers, word seems not to have spread about this modern choral gem. 

It is highly accessible, consisting almost entirely of block chords in diatonic harmony against high pedal-point sustained notes from the trebles; but with periodic extraordinary dissonances - so it rewards close attention. 

The Amen is a wonderful climax - my hair literally bristled when it happened. 

 

What kind of diseases does everyone "battle"?

According to the mass media, everyone with "cancer" (which is a pathological process - not a disease) "battles" it - even if the sufferer is a new born baby, even even when there is a swift and effective cure. This has been the situation for decades. 

(Also, anyone who does not die of "cancer" is a "survivor" - even when the expected death rate from that type of "cancer" is near-zero.) 

But now it seems that people with dementia are battling that, as well. 

What is it about cancer and dementia that make a sufferer battle these pathologies? When it seems that hardly anybody - or only the rare celebrity* - battles heart disease, strokes, pneumonia, duodenal ulcers, renal colic... or most other diseases. 

*Because celebrities "battle" everything... They even battle self-chosen and self-inflicted health threats such as alcohol or drugs. And it is still a battle even when they have sought-out and spent vast sums on their inebriant, organized their lives around getting and taking it, and written/ sung/ or otherwise bragged-about their adventure in auto-intoxication. Some particularly admirable celebrities are courageous enough to battle "sex addiction".