Two kinds of Christian belief in the nature of God's provision of the requisites for salvation

Because God is the Creator and loves us each as His children; therefore, either:

1. Even if all trace of Christianity had been utterly forgotten, or was eradicated from the world; if the Bible was destroyed or corrupted; all Christian Churches annihilated; all Christian teaching and theology inverted to evil; or if somebody had never heard anything about Jesus Christ...

Then God would ensure there was a personal and effective path to salvation for every human being on earth.  

Or:

2. God would ensure that Christianity would never be forgotten; and would not be eradiated from the world. 

For instance: 

A: God would ensure that The Bible was written, collected and edited truthfully, preserved through all history, and made available to all those who could benefit from it - for as long as there are souls to be saved. 

And/or

B: God would ensure that the true Christian Church would survive spiritually intact and salvifically effectual no matter what - for as long as there are souls to be saved. 

What I am articulating is that all Christians would probably agree that God would ensure that - no matter what, and so long a Man continues on this earth - because He is The Creator and Loves us each as his child - God will be able to provide whatever is needful for every Man's resurrection and eternal life in Heaven. 

But there is a qualitative difference between, on the one hand, those who believe that this would and must be done by the preservation of the generically-available means to salvation (e.g. Bible, True Church)...

And, on the other hand, those who believe that God does not need any worldly means of salvation, and could and would provide the knowledge and guidance required for salvation directly* to each and every human being.

A distinction between the essential provision of the requisites for salvation being either by generic, group means; or direct and individual knowing. 

*Note: "Directly" meaning by some combination of the innate and naturally-known, acting within each individual; with external spiritual guidance apprehended by the soul.

Further Note: The two kinds of Christian belief can also be understood as between those believing that God works for the salvation of Men considered as groups (tribes, nations, church members, of civilizations) and with God primarily working at the group-level; and those who believe God works for the salvation of Men as individuals, one at a time: ultimately with each person an unique salvific "project". 

Instant nostalgia, and Camberwick Green

As a young kid the only children's television was very old re-runs on lunchtime BBC - entitled "Watch with Mother" - which was immediately followed by "Listen with Mother" on BBC Radio: The Home Service. 

(Our small, monochrome, blurry TV also had a radio receiver built-in - as modern digital TVs also do.)

TV comprised Andy Pandy, The Woodentops, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, and a handful of others. These had only a few episodes each and continually re-cycled - which repetition is, of course, perfectly congenial to the young child.  

Then when I was about seven years old, some new Children's TV programmes were made, including Camberwick Green. These were apparently filmed in colour, although initially broadcast in Black & White - which was all that most people possessed in the UK in the middle 1960s.

(Initially, from the later sixties, there was only one of the three TV channels in colour  - namely BBC2, with limited distribution and few people possessing the needful equipment; and it only broadcast briefly during the evenings.)

I could see these new kids lunchtime programmes only in the school holidays, and already felt a bit "alienated" from them (i.e. an observer, not an immersed participant) as I sensed they were pitched at kids younger than myself - not that that stopped me enjoying them, then or now. 

Maybe it was partly that sense of having grown-up, and the new-fangled business of making fresh TV; but I watched the first broadcast of Camberwick Green with some, brief, suspicion; before being won-over. 

And I recall that the title sequence and theme tunes seemed instantly sad and sweet, and loaded with nostalgia - even from the very first time I experienced them. 

It was instant nostalgia; and perhaps only at seven years old did it become possible for me, as a child, to feel such a thing. 

Later on, this emotion (or, more than an emotion) became a familiar accompaniment to many of the happiest and deepest fulfilments of life: a sense of inevitable loss, and the preciousness of the present moment. 

The title sequence of Camberwick Green - especially the theme music composed and performed by Freddie Philips - is exceptionally good. 

First a silent, earnest, clown winding the titles; and accompanied by a little arpeggiated glockenspeil tune-let (with one sour note, just like the instruments at school)... 

Then this-week's main character rising from an old wooden music box (music boxes are a sure-fire way to evoke nostalgia in me); with its gorgeous aspiring melody, apparently played on two mandolins.

No wonder I still remember it.

How did Jesus accomplish the Second Creation (Resurrection and Heaven)?

Jesus Christ's work came naturally to him - he was not acting upon instructions. 

When he awoke to his divine creativity, Jesus knew what needed to be done - because he was a Man (as well as perfectly aligned-with God's creation); and he spontaneously realized that what Men needed to live wholly by, for and from Love; was eternal Heavenly life - that is, to be saved from evil, entropy and death. 

Jesus knew this for himself, and from himself. But partial notions of the idea were also (apparently, according to some historians) implicit in some of the ideas of his time and place; found in places such as the Hebrew, Greek and Roman religions. These may have been confirmation or a clarification, but were not the origin. 

All humans who grow up into the dawn of consciousness know implicitly what is needed for the purity and completion of our mortal lives; and so did Jesus - but Jesus knew it explicitly. 

And because Jesus was wholly-aligned with divine creation (this happened at the time of his Baptism by John), and motivated solely by love of God and fellow Men; what Jesus knew and willed, was thereby created. 

That is how divine creation works - without intermediary. 

(Indeed all true creation works that way. Once created it is directly - intuitively - available to all of good will, aside from communication.)

For Jesus; to know what is good, is to desire and make it possible.

Jesus began to teach that eternal resurrected life was now possible for Men who chose it, but to attain the perfection of Love eternally, they must die and be "born again". 

(And they must want to live by love, above all else.) 

However, it was not necessary that Men be told of resurrection in order for them to choose it. 

The soul after death had always moved to various states of Being after leaving behind the dead body (destinations such as reincarnations, or underworlds, or demonic affiliations), as hinted by the various recorded ancient religions. 

The Second Creation by Jesus now became available to the soul after death, including those who had previously died; as a new possibility - as a possible choice. 

(A choice never previously available until the work of Jesus; impossible to God the primary creator, and only possible to a mortal Man who attained complete alignment with God's Primary Creation.)

    

Resurrection to eternal Heavenly life thereby "immediately" became possible after its creative conception (without need for Jesus himself to die and be resurrected); as was shown by the resurrection of his "beloved disciple" Lazarus. 

Jesus then demonstrated how things could be, by his own resurrection and his temporary return to work among his disciples, and many other people. 

But the Second Creation was made for all the Beings of the First Creation who desired and chose it, post-mortally - not just those Beings who had heard about it, and not just human beings.  

We all were born with an innate "archetype" of the real nature of God the Creator

Because God is the Creator, and our loving parents, God has ensured that we innately have everything we need in terms of understanding God and our proper relationship with God. 

(If this was not innate, then it could not be depended-upon; and obviously God wants to Make Sure that every one of their children will come into this world equipped with everything required for attaining salvation and theosis.) 

Therefore; we have innately the true "archetype" of God; and that archetype is "good parents". 

We already-know (and not from experience, but from-within, because it is built-in) what is the ideal of Good Parents - and that this is the nature of God.

This naturally and spontaneously leads to a relationship with God that is based upon Love and Trust. 

But many children develop and mature and will choose their beliefs about God (or that God is not real) and the relationship with God. And many children grow in social situations that actively encourage (and incentivize) children and adolescents to change, and often invert, their innate knowledge. 

Thus our innate understanding of the Creator God as Good Parents is usurped by one, or several, other archetype/s: Such as God the King, God the Judge, God the Totalitarian Tyrant, and/or God the Deity of philosophical abstractions. 

These other kinds of not-parental God do not lead to a relationship of Love and Trust; but to very different attitudes. If God is King then we feel like subjects. If God is Judge we feel like defendants. If God is a Totalitarian Tyrant our attitude is one of superstitious and fear-based propitiation. 

And if God is an abstract deity known philosophically; then God Just Is, Creation Just Is, and our life Just Is, and the attitude is one of fatalism. 

When we move away from our innate and archetypal understanding, we lose the ability to experience a relationship with God. 

The non-parental Gods are not personally, individually, knowable nor understandable; therefore they all open a path for human exploitation; for instance by individuals or groups claiming special expertise to know what God demands from each us. 

Furthermore, in moving away from what is spontaneous and intuitive, the alternatives feel arbitrary and incoherent; therefore belief often becomes a mixture of mutual contradictions - as when people strive to combined God and Judge or King with God as Heavenly Father; or when they strive to comprehend how God the Totalitarian Tyrant can also "love" us. 

Such contradictions lead to abstract solutions that conceal their own incoherence behind incomprehension. 

So that the proper way to "love" an incomprehensible God; necessarily becomes a special, abstract and incomprehensible kind of "love" - that is then stated to be superior to the interpersonal love of parents that we all innately do understand.   

We are born into this world with an understanding of the nature of God the Creator, and our properly loving and trusting relationship with Heavenly Parents. 

We find ourselves very far away from this reality - far away in several possible directions, and perhaps confusingly alternating between them. 

Our task is - by conscious choice - to return to that original knowledge. 

  

The AI ("Artificial Intelligence") agenda: Evil works mainly by doing things to people's *minds* - not their bodies

An AI-generated image of "nice AI versus evil AI" - 

naturally, necessarily, both AI images are clearly (and seductively) evil

I am not saying, because it is not true - that our bodies and the physical material world are irrelevant to the workings of evil. 

On the contrary; the material is always spiritual (but not vice-versa). However the workings of evil are primarily on the mind, not the body - because evil is primarily engaged in a spiritual war on God and creation. 

It is one of the many deceptions of evil to induce people to take the common attitude of focusing on the physical and material aims and consequences of evil - rationalizing this by emphasizing that it is the most urgent thing that is needed to fix...

The excuse being that after people are "safe" from such-and-such a threat (war, mass immigration, economic destruction, poisoning of food and environment etc), then will be the proper time to transfer our attention and efforts towards the spirit. 

Yet this is wrong and fatally mistaken. Not just because the time of safety will, in practice, never come - and we will instead struggle from one engineered existential material threat to the next, and the next...

But also because the material threats cannot, and will not, be dealt with until after the endemic spiritual disease of Western Civilization has been identified, acknowledged, and self-treated.

Spirit must come first, or else the desired material changes will not come at-all. 

As many people have often noted; it is not usually (in principle) difficult to deal with the physical threats of evil - it is known how to do this; and the problem is that we do not actually do what would work. 

However; how this situation arose and prevails (i.e the situation that we do not, in practice, solve soluble-problems) is regarded as a superficial and trivial matter (to be dealt with after the potentially-lethal problems have, somehow, been dealt-with)  - when in reality it is the pointer towards the very essence of our civilizational malaise. 

Consequently we see such insane absurdities as the vast, colossal, genuinely titanic levels of analysis, discussion, prediction, guidance... with respect to campaigning and voting in the US Presidential election, including among people who purport (and suppose themselves) to be first-and-foremost spiritually motivated!

Likewise, when it comes to commentary on the Establishment drive towards implementing AI (artificial Intelligence) in ever more domains of everyday life and socio-economic functioning; the focus is entirely on evaluating the validity of claims, and the material consequences in terms of unemployment and effective administration. 

Yet, behind the Establishment puppets and dupes who do all this implementing, and who devise the oceanic AI-related propaganda in novels, movies, plays, computer games etc; are demonic spirits for whom this agenda is primarily spiritual - not physical, not material, not civilizational. 

We need to focus on the strategy behind (or below) all the huge, persisting, multi-pronged tsunami of AI... The soft-sell of awareness-raising, arts and media depictions, the profit-luring, and the hard managerial compulsion - beneath this lies a whole underworld of demonic scheming that intends to corrupt human Minds - not just control or destroy human bodies. 

Unless this evil purpose of mental shaping with respect to AI is acknowledged and identified - then human beings are just mind-putty for the agenda of evil. 

"They" can rationally subvert all concepts: except individual Beings - the "AI"/ transhumanist agenda is about the illegitimate subversion of Beings

It has become a standard trope of the last couple of centuries plus; for radicals and The Establishment (i.e. the affiliates of evil, as we may now recognize them) to subvert all those concepts that were at one time responsible for societal cohesion, purpose and meaning.

All kinds of law, for example, have been subverted: whether legal system laws, scientific laws or the laws of religion. Most people have long since been persuaded that - at the very bottom line and ultimately - these and other "laws" are Man-made, contingent, labile, and expedient. 

They cannot be a fundamental basis for life - because they are not fundamental.   

Such subversion has been possible because it is true - so that even when the motives for subversion are evil, and the motives for retaining the "reality" of laws are good - this does not matter over time and in the end; because the laws just aren't really real. 

What then, is really-real? 

The answer is what I call Beings*. Those entities of which we are an example, and so is God, Jesus Christ, every person, animal, plant and mineral... All are either A Being in their own right, or else a component part of a Being. (As a strand of molecules may be a component of a plant or animal Being.) 

By my understanding, Beings are the irreducible entities of reality. 

As irreducible and fundamental, Beings cannot be defined; although we can list some of their attributes - such as aliveness, consciousness, the capacity for growth/ development/ self-reproduction, purposiveness. 

So although "They" might legitimately (logically, rationally, truly) be able to subvert most things and reveal them to be contingent - They cannot legitimately subvert Beings. 

Beings are the primary reality, hence indestructible. 

But of course They are trying illegitimately to subvert Beings! i.e. By falsehoods to persuade people that Beings are not the irreducible components of reality - but that Beings are really just "things" that can be manufactured, programmed, replaced or destroyed. 

That's what the long-term and strategic AI/Transhumanism strategy is ultimately about - all those fictions and philosophical "thought experiments" and bureaucratic assumptions - that robots can be like people - including empathic and loving; those movies that show computers can be intelligent, make judgments, have purposes; that minds can be downloaded; that Men are optional elements of a society (which might be a simulation) - and so on. 

But because Beings really are the bottom line reality - all of this agenda is false. It is based on exclusionary definitions, on calculated reductionism - and on sheer lies! 

It is designed to persuade, to brainwash actually, people into regarding themselves as not-Beings; into behaving as not-Beings; into treating each-other as not-Beings - ultimately, into thinking and experiencing as not-Beings. 

This is a huge business in the world here-and-now: not merely the process of dehumanizing, but actually to convince people that all Beings are contingent and replaceable. 

Furthermore; a fair bit of religion and spirituality is part of this projects! 

Of course we all know otherwise. We have innate knowledge otherwise. God can reveal to us otherwise The Holy Ghost will guide us otherwise. 

Yet many/ most people ignore all this. 

Such people have decided that they actively want their own not-Being. 

Their strategy of subverting Beingness can only succeed if we actively invite it into our hearts. 

Unless we do Their work for them - they cannot convince us we are not-Beings. 

But They will keep on trying, 24/7, attacking from all sides simultaneously! 

Because for Them:- to induce people really to believe we are contingent abstractions and so are those whom we love, is the ultimate triumph of evil. 

**

*Note Added: It may be worth clarifying (for newcomers?) that all Beings are primarily spiritual; only secondarily (and only sometimes) material. The material is always spiritual; but the spiritual is not always material. 

Samuel West is "The Voice of Tolkien"...

Samuel West is "The Voice of Tolkien", according to my review of the audiobook version of The Letters of JRR Tolkien, over at the Notion Club Papers blog.

  

Francis Berger on True Freedom, and its centrality to Christianity

Francis Berger has, for some time, been writing on that vital but neglected (and discredited) subject of freedom; in particular how this is absolutely foundational to Christianity. I recommend exploring his blog on this matter - maybe starting here. 

Freedom is vital to Christians because it is an opt-in religion, and one cannot meaningfully choose without freedom. This fact has often been suppressed and distorted through Christian history (e.g. by concepts of divine omniscience, and predestination) - which is why it is so important to get clear. 

Yet the nature of freedom, what freedom is; is itself something that has been badly (and wilfully) misrepresented; such that the entire debate is typically framed in such a way as to exclude real and true answers. I mean that discussions of freedom often include built-in assumptions that exclude the possibility of freedom. 

Unless we do some serious and deep thinking for ourselves, it is unlikely that we will escape these endemic and chronic confusions. And even then it will probably take a good bit of time and effort to escape the toils of misconceptions. (It certainly did in my case!)

A proper understanding of freedom opens many doors. For example, I never could understand creativity - or indeed divine creation - until after I had understood freedom. 

Even more crucially; I never could understand God, or our relationship with God, until I had grasped freedom. 

There is no more important subject. 

How long before "Trad" Christians realize that they have picked the wrong religion?

I have observed that among traditionalist or Trad Christians online, there seems to be a constant apostasy, a leaving of the faith - whether explicitly, or implicit (i.e. by a relentless focus on this-worldly and socio-political issues - including, currently, elections). 

This saddens but does not surprise me. 

As I read Trad Christians, I constantly find the question recurring: How long can it be before they realize they have picked the wrong religion? 

For some it is the monotheistic Omni-God who created everything from nothing; and who demands submission and obedience above anything else. 

Such Christians can only find an essential and defining place for the work of Jesus Christ, by regarding him as a Trinitarian aspect of the One God: so that Jesus is asserted both to be, and not to be, simultaneously a unity with the Creator and a person separate. 

But (for Trads) God's indivisible one-ness is always regarded as primary and foundational. 

How much clearer, simpler - and more honest! - simply to assert the single, oneness of God!

(And regard Jesus Christ as ultimately-inessential.)  

For other Trads; their most viscerally compelling wish is for a particular, hierarchical and patriarchal, relationship between men and women; here-and-now - in this mortal life and world. 

This is a thing that some Trad Christians apparently desire more than anything else in the world (considering that they Never Stop writing about it). 

Yet it is a situation that has never been implemented by Christianity as strongly or as thoroughly as by an already-existing and expanding other religion.

How long will it be before before the Trads abandon Christianity altogether; and join the existing major and growing world religion that already and unambiguously provides almost-exactly what they really most-want?

High-, Intermediate-, and Low-level Evil in this world

Low-level evil is the ordinary, everyday, evil exemplified by politicians, managers, journalists, doctors, professors, lawyers etc in the modern West - and by most of the passive, irresponsible, non-thinking and manipulated masses. 

Low-level evil is atheist, materialistic (disbelieving in the realms of soul and spirit), this-worldly exclusively; and devolves towards hedonistic selfishness. 

This means that the bottom-line "morality" for Low-level evil is how "I" (currently) feel about things; and how I can feel good about myself/ people/ things, and avoid suffering - whether physical, social or psychological.

In this sense; for Low-level evil "myself" is God - or takes the place of God as the bottom-line reality, because there is nothing higher or other than how I currently perceive the situation from "my" perspective.

As I implied: this morality of self-gratification is currently the normal state of values for most people in The West; and characterizes almost-all people who have some kind of leadership role, wealth, power, and high status . 

  

A level above this in the evil-hierarchy of this world are those who exemplify Intermediate-level evil. These are a kind-of "elite" of power and wealth (or control of resources, including military and police power) - although it seems that only some of them are famous or even known about at the lower levels. 

The Intermediate level are the Satan-worshippers, the demonic practitioners. 

Satan is their god - or, at least, the patron to whom they look for protection and favours. 

Intermediate-level evil beings may or may not believe in God as the Creator - but they do believe in the spirit realm; and they believe that this world is ruled and controlled by the devil and the demons - the powers of purposive evil. 

Consequently they are focused on appeasing and pleasing Satan* - by whatever means they regard as effective. 

High-level evil is the evil of Satan and "senior" demons. 

These at the High-level know that God is real, and they know God created this reality. They are therefore theists. 

Approaching the Highest-level of evil, therefore, the goal is partly positive: to retain creation but to take-over creation and remake it in accordance with Satan's wishes: to make Satan explicitly the sole god of this-world. 

At the very Highest-level, however; the goal is to subvert, corrupt, and eventually destroy all of creation - because God is hated, and all God's work is hated. 

So; at the Low-, Medium- and High-levels of evil; we have 

1. Self-worshippers 

2. Satan-worshippers

3. God-haters  

*My best guess is that there is only one Satan at a time, at the top-of the hierarchy of evil and providing its cohesion and direction. But that there may have been more-than-one Satan through history. Indeed, I think this is likely, and that the role of Satan has probably more than once been usurped  (and the first and perhaps other Satan's deposed) - given the nature of demons.  

The futility of missionary work: The main thing in avoiding damnation is Not conversion to Christianity, but that people Want the right things

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.  

Recommending Michael Gambon as Simenon's Maigret, 1992-3, Granada TV (And a comment on how a bad man could create a good fictional character.)

I've recently watched the two series of adaptations from Georges Simenon's Maigret stories; released in 1992-3 by the British ITV company Granada; and starring Michael Gambon as the eponymous detective.

I found these extremely enjoyable. They are excellently constructed TV plays, with good teams of actors; and Maigret as depicted by Gambon was a very decent, likeable, and impressive detective - which is (for me) a vital aspect in the enjoyment of any such series. 

The setting of 1950s Paris was strikingly convincing (although it wasn't actually Paris!); and (being made more than thirty years ago - unlike these woke-preachy times!) the characters also fit their appropriate time-and-place in terms of motives and behaviour; so that I got the feeling of being transported to another world. 

**

Somewhat aside; I found it interesting that Simenon was able convincingly to create such a basically good man as Maigret - given that he was not himself such a person: at least not overall.

(...This negative evaluation of Simenon is from what I have gathered, and indeed it seems to be a general belief - I leave it to readers to explore this issue for themselves. By contrast; the goodness of Miss Marple is easily understood as exemplifying Agatha Christie's fine personality*.)

How is it that a mostly-bad man (as I think Simenon was) can write an essentially-good man like Maigret? 

One answer is presumably that Simenon was, like everyone, a mixture of good and bad motivations; and he wrote Maigret from that which was good in himself - from the better part of himself. 

Another aspect is that Maigret mysteries are light literature, in a minor genre - and do not attempt to tackle the greatest or deepest matters such as the conflict of spiritual good and evil, or the nature and implications of death.

It would - I think - be impossible for Simenon to write great literature. To attain greatness an author must draw upon his deepest nature, and for his vision of reality to be essentially good, would entail that he himself was personally committed to goodness.

In other words: the work cannot be greater than the man.  

(The greatness of The Lord of the Rings is necessarily a product of Tolkien's greatness as a man; etc.) 

But a man who was fundamentally petty, greedy, dishonest, unprincipled, selfish or the like - and one who was affiliated to such values - cannot produce genuinely great work - try as he might. 

**

Note: Of course, an author or other creative artist may be good when producing a masterpiece of greatness; yet may change, may become corrupted, later - and I suggest he would then become incapable of greatness. 

Something of this kind has, I think, been the case for JK Rowling - whose Harry Potter series I regard as great (although at a lower level than Lord of the Rings). 

The Potter books (especially "Deathly Hallows") were written when she was committed to Christian metaphysics and values. 

But Rowling later rejected her former ultimately spiritual perspective; instead embracing and advocating this-worldly secular leftist values. Her post-Potter work is consequently (it seems to me) at a very much lower level. 

*This difference between Simenon and Christie - deriving from their authors - could be encapsulated by saying that Maigret is a good policeman; while Miss Marple is a good person. 

The strategy of evil - and how (in principle) it can be "defeated"

Evil is strategic, it has long-term plans - and these are long-term because behind evil are demons, they spirit beings, who are not mortal, and who don't need sleep. Therefore; behind evil are wills that are active 24/7 and across a timespan greater than human lives. In other words, evil can be unrelenting - when it wants to be; in a way that is impossible for humans. 

Modern Western people are materialist hence cannot understand evil, and don't believe that demons are real or possible. This is a disadvantage when it comes to understanding life, and therefore living one's life as it should be lived.   

Humans don't behave strategically, or only seldom and partially. Most people, most of the time, simply adjust to (take for granted) whatever strategy is governing their lives. They look to be successful, happy or whatever within... whatever context is given. 

For instance; nearly all modern Western people are unaware of, indifferent to, or lazily misinterpret their leaders' recent and current activity of long-term, step-by-step, purposively engineering a global and maximally-annihilative war to include their own nations. People may be very concerned by micro-issues (such as the "climate-destroying" usage of a plastic covering to laminate paper notices) - but unconcerned or disbelieving that the contextual, ongoing, strategic intent is to unleash mass destruction in their direction ASAP. 

Modern people have been systematically degraded on multiple fronts - by alienation; passivity of expectations; PSYOPS confusions, contradictory ideology and statements; by praising and encouraging negative, destructive and sinful motivations; and maximizing addiction to mass and social media - and many other things. We are unhealthy; damaged, disordered, distorted, disorientated... all to an unprecedented degree. 

The means operate in support of the ultimate end of corruption; which is at the deepest level of false and destructive metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality, themselves, and the relationship - the purpose and meaning of life.  

All this (and more could be said) seems to make evil so powerful that our situation is hopeless... 

Yet Christians know that - in principle, from first assumptions - this cannot be true; because God is the Creator, and we are each a beloved child of God. 

So, we can be sure that our life will have potential for ultimate salvation, and potential for positive learning - for as long as we are sustained alive.  

But how can this work - given the vast and sleepless strategies of evil? 

It seems hopeless only in terms of the double-negative life purpose of resisting evil.  

My current best answer is therefore to frame the question in positive terns: asking what is the basis within each of us, from-which we can each pursue good?

And we can then assume that we each have within us a core self, untouchable and uncorrupted, with sufficient innate divine nature (being God's children), and sufficient capacity for receiving divine guidance (from the Holy Ghost - who is Jesus Christ). 

We cope with evil by comparing and evaluating whatever The World throws at us, with the ongoing transcendent purposes of this core self. 

When the core is (overall) orientated towards good; then the quantity, strength and variety of evil is a nuisance, maybe a horror; but cannot drive us off-course for long, or in the end. 

So long as we locate our aspirations within this self, and no matter our many and inevitable sins, errors and lapses; and because God is creating from love of us -- when we have chosen to be on God's side then nothing can touch us - not even the world-dominating power of sleepless strategic evil. 

Evil is a preference: a choice - and so is Good (contra- or pro-creation)

Many Christians have for many centuries wanted to be able to argue that evil was an insane unjustifiable irrationality. That it made no sense. That the only thing which did make sense was to live in obedience, and conform to the single reality that is God's creation - in the strongest possible sense that there is nothing else but God's creation. So, to be evil is to reject the only reality. 

One important half-truth behind the "relativistic" ideology of the dominant West-Globalist secular Leftism, relates to its rejection of this traditional "objective" Western Christian conceptualization of good and evil as reality versus anti-reality. 

For traditional Christianity - as (I understand) for Judaism and Islam - Good was theologically conceptualized as bound-up with God as the sole source of creation (God created everything from nothing); therefore Evil was conceptualized as objectively irrational, because it is against everything. 

Good was therefore conceptualized primarily in terms of conformity to God. 

With this scheme, there was no positive role for Man's freedom and agency except to submit to the divine order; because there is nothing except the divine order. 

There is only one coherent choice for each Man, for each Beings, in such a scheme - which is to choose allegiance to God - thus all evil is necessarily incoherent and insane*. 

Against this the false-half-truth ideology of secular Leftism proposes some version of "relativism", of the non-objectivity of values -- which is calibrated against the bottom line "hedonic" assumption that mortal life is the only life, and that the values of mortal life are therefore (merely) means towards the end of maximizing happiness and/or minimizing suffering. 

In other words, by this account, truth is whatever happens to make me most happy (or those I care about) over some timescale that I prefer - whether immediate happiness, or some kind of predictive happiness ranged over some future span. 

The more recent conceptualization that swaps happiness for the double negative-freedom-from-suffering , works the same way. Truth is just expediency with respect to minimizing suffering on a timescale from now, to some variably longer span. 

But relativism is itself incoherent for many reasons, as has been known since antiquity. It has no basis for asserting its own validity. 

And, after all, why is it assumed to be better to experience happiness and avoid suffering? Supposing I, or somebody else, says the opposite - then that is as true or untrue; and the choice between inverses depends on some utilitarian prediction of the consequences. In practice it is facile to argue that suffering now leads to happiness later - or the opposite; and the wrangling never stops unless coercively imposed!

If there are no objective values and all opinions are equally valid; then this assumption, and all other values, can be inverted - for any reason, or for no reason.

Yet relativism - in a soft and short-termist sense - clearly has some kind of powerful and lasting appeal when measured (as it is) against the "traditional Christian" version of values as objective, impersonal, and therefore a matter of submissive obedience to what is asserted to be the nature of reality. 

I think the element of truth in relativism is embedded in an individual intuition that a moral system which utterly downgrades "my" individual conscious human to (near-) irrelevance, cannot be right. 

When morality is made utterly objective, nothing to do with me - it becomes simple tyranny. 

Surely real, spiritually-compelling, mortality must be something that is in each of us, from each of us - and not just a thing "out there"? 

Surely we must be able to choose our values, or else they aren't values? 

And surely our choice depends on what each of us is by nature and wants most; on what each of us regards as good - and surely this is the primary moral act? 

We are confronted by reality - and (on the basis of our specific personal nature) we must and shall choose what will be our overall attitude to that reality?  

From this perspective, good does not feel like a wholly external reality, and evil does not feel irrational or incoherent; but both and either a choice rooted in what we personally most want among various possibilities. 

Then; whether we want it here-and-now, or want it in the long-term (a long-term that potentially might extend to eternity).  

So - In mainstream culture, we are apparently confronted with two incoherent and therefore false alternatives: the "Christian" supposedly being an objective and impersonal morality in which individual discernment has no positive function. 

Or there is a nihilistic fatalism where there are no values, but only an unbounded choices between arbitrary individual preferences - presumably based on the fluctuations of current feelings and emotions. In practice, the choice between-relativistic moralities seems to hinge on relative differences in the power to coerce and deceive, desire to belong to particular groups, and the like.    

My conclusion is that both alternatives should be rejected because incoherent hence false; and the truth needs to be sought in some other scheme of things. 

The truth embedded in relativism is that it is possible, rational and coherent that some people (and other beings) can and would choose to reject God and divine creation; would choose Not to affiliate to God's hopes and plans. 

And that rejection is the essence of evil. 

This rejection is a choice rooted in the fact that although we all are created Beings, are indeed Children of God; we are not entirely so - and we each and all "contain" aspects of that primordial self from-which we were created - and these primordial selves are each unique. 

Some primordial selves are less able (or perhaps unable) to love, or maybe the love is present but very weak and a low priority compared with other desires. 

Therefore, when confronted by God's creation which is rooted in love and aims at a reality of love; there are some beings who reject that vision - and who are therefore evil.

(So, I am defining good and evil by either affiliation to God's creative will and plans - rooted in love - or else the active rejection of that, for any reason. 

(There is also, I believe, a theoretical possibility of a wholly passive and personal declining to join the work of creation - a simple opting-out; without any attack on creation or any attempt to persuade others to reject God. Just a cosmic "no thanks" and a reversion to unconscious unawareness in isolation. If this happened, we would not know anything about it except that a being would "disappear" from creation.) 

As I said, some Christians (and others) want to be able to state that this rejection is incoherent, irrational, illogical - and that evil is objectively-impersonally wrong. 

They want to say that evil is: Just wrong without reference to any consciousness of any Being. 

But I would say that the objectivity of the wrongness of evil derives from the fact that by rejecting actual divine creation rooted in love, an evil Being ultimately places itself against creation as such. 

To be against creation is not relativistic; it is an objective fact about a Being's relationship with God and divine creation. 

Thus values are not subjective, nor are they objective - values are about a relationship. 

Evil is not a "mistake" of itself; but is a choice. There may be a mistake in terms of an evil Being wrongly predicting the consequences of rejecting God, rejecting love, rejecting creation...

But the error is not a logical one. Its more a matter of getting what you asked for, but not liking it when you've got it. 

*(Why it is possible for Men, or anything, to reject the divine order? If the theology says that such a choice is incomprehensibly insane, then where could this desire comes from in the first place except from God Himself?  This logical incoherence has never been clearly explained; and indeed it cannot be made coherent. Because because if God created absolutely everything that exists, then the desire to resist God must ultimately have been created by God Himself - as must all evil. Saying that God gave men Free Will does not answer this - because agency can only operate using the materials provided by God, which must mean that God made the evil in the first place, for evil to be choose-able. Yet for Christians, specifically, God is known and said to be wholly Good - so how (for a Christian) could a wholly good God provide evil for free will to be choose-able? My answer (in brief) is that God is wholly Good, and did not make evil - because God did Not make everything from nothing; but instead created using pre-existent Beings; some/most/ all of whom were capable of evil by their primordial nature. Thus evil has always been present in reality - and God is creatively working towards Goodness.) 

Do Not reject the enemy's ideology wholesale: Seek the truth behind totalitarian-Leftist distortions

A trap devised by the powers of purposive evil is for Christians (and others) to reject the core agenda of evil, the Litmus Tests, outright and in total - and then to develop a counter-ideology on the basis of that rejection. 

(Reject? Yes: but the alternative must derive from a positive agenda - hence the rejection cannot be total, since all powerful Left agenda have some basis in good.)

This is obvious across the board, and began with economic socialism (the basis of old-style communism and Fabianism) being opposed by "libertarianism" - which turned out, in practice, to be to tool for Big Finance and Mega-Corps totalitarianism. 

Another example is when feminism is opposed by supposedly-traditional demands for the socio-political subordination of women as being qualitatively inferior beings; or an analogous counter-ideology to antiracism. 

This kind of thing is a trap because all effective Leftism contains some truth - else it would have zero traction and could not motivate support. Therefore if any effective Left agenda is wholesale rejected, then some aspect of motivated and inspiring truth will also be rejected - and the consequence must be that the counter-ideology is a significant distortion of Good: that is - significantly evil. 

This makes the anti-Left counter-ideology itself significantly false and evil; which reality is evident to any honest person, and is responsible for a sense of intuitive revulsion among sincere and honest Christians when it comes to so much that purports to be reactionary and traditionalist. 

The problem is that such distorted and dishonest outright rejection and reaction with respect to Leftist strategies, is pretty much forced-upon public resistance to Leftism; forced by the demands of rhetoric and the attempt to shape group opinion and action in the actual public realm. 

One the one hand, it is true that there is no nuance in effective politics: when politics is not simple, then it does not work... Therefore, unless counter-Leftism is a simple and total rejection, then it cannot work in the actual public realm. 

The trap is that in politics nuanced resistance is ineffectual; but simple rejection is false, hence evil. 

So much the worse for politics!

It is vital to grasp that The Left here-and-now owns and dominates the public realm; has leadership of all major social institutions of all kinds in The West (and, apparently, most of the rest of the world too). 

The Left therefore structures public discourse and group action on a large scale. To fight Leftism on those battle-grounds, is to to be located exactly where They want You to be. 

When any person or group rejects any Leftist strategy outright in the public realm, be sure that the rejecters are either being herded into a cauldron to be annihilated; or else groomed into developing a different kind of evil - in service to the demonic agenda. 

This is why the attempt to meet and defeat the globally hegemonic Leftist Totalitarianism on its own ground is both pragmatically-ineffective and (when believed) spiritually-corrupting.  

If we are to pursue a genuinely Good agenda in opposition to the ruling-evil; we need to be able to set-aside the practicalities of propaganda and public persuasion, and group organization and action; and get things clear in our own minds, as tested against the discernment of our own hearts.

Clarify our understanding, make our own commitment to God and divine creation; and discern the implications for our own actual life, and what we can do via our own life.  

This seems to require a very pure and strong faith in God's creative power: a faith that any insight of truth, any goodness, that we may learn and which God recognizes to be valid and helpful; can and will be amplified by The Creator to affect "the public" for the better - insofar as the public can positively be affected; this being done through the developments of ongoing creation. 

 It is not a problem for God, as creator, to amplify and spread any Good arrived at by any of His children. 

We need not worry about that! 

Our core concern ought to be to embody what God regards as Good.

Our job mine and yours) is to provide God with the means, the "material", for achieving his ends. 

That's all God needs. He can, and will, do the rest. 

 

Historical parallels are Not a reliable guide to action, because the present is fundamentally un-like the past

I've done it myself often enough; but nonetheless I am dismayed by the many people who currently seek guidance for present action and strategy from historical parallels. 

Including in the case of our Christian religion. 

When Ecclesiastes said "there is nothing new under the sun", he may have been right for his time and place, but he is dead wrong about here-and-now. Cherry picked, distorted and partial historical parallels are misleading. 

There has never been anything like the world now - this eight billion industrialized globalized totalitarian world - with its strategically evil, demon-affiliated multi-national rulers and their fingertip-ready capacity for military, economic, financial, legal, religious, environmental and other destructions - and their command of a colossal and coordinated mass media to which the masses are willingly addicted and from which they derive ideological and everyday guidance. 

The world is different, and people are different. 

There have never been such human beings as there are now. Anyone who knows history should be able to see that people have desires and exhibit behaviours, respond (and fail to respond) in ways that even four generations ago would have been regarded as alien and insane. 

But argument is futile. If you don't see such huge differences between here-and-now and anywhere-else at any time, then nothing I can say will persuade you. 

This difference is why - no matter how genuinely well-meaning you are (by which I mean how genuinely Christian are your aspirations); to sift through the past for traditional guidance of what to do from where we are, is doomed to failure - and likely to do harm. 

Before we can do anything good, we must first understand who we are and where we stand. 

That is possible to attain - at least in a broad sense; but not if we are determined to discover our understanding in the past, in some other civilization. 

There is no realistic alternative but to make the effort to understand things as they actually are. Perspectives derived from study of the past and other places may be helpful, may contain clues... but The Answer is not there to be found. 

We cannot get the recipe for a Good Future from what has-been. At best we may get some ingredients needed for a good answer - but it's just as likely vital ingredients may be found elsewhere (e.g. in literature, art, real-science, and from our enemies), and almost certainly some key ingredient will be new, unprecedented.   

The Answer we hope for is something that must be created - not discovered. 

I can't even hate-watch Amazon Rings of Power, second season

I perversely enjoyed watching the epochal incompetence that was Amazon's Rings of Power, Season One - mostly because it was constantly surprising and amazing me by its ludicrous ineptitude; and because it was interesting to try and understand how such a thing had come to be, and what were the global implications... 

I was, in a mean-spirited sort of way, actually looking forward to the second season. 

But I have to report I could only stomach fifteen minutes of the first episode, and shall not be returning. 

Why? Simply: to watch series two is to enter such an angry, miserable, sordid, sadistic and hate-filled world; that it makes me simultaneously bored and depressed. Just horrible. 

I am not a masochist, nor am I looking for reasons to embrace nihilistic despair as my philosophy of life; so naturally I shall not be subjecting myself to any more such stuff. 

Sorry! - if you want to know any more about the most expensive train wreck in the history of television; you will need to watch it for yourselves, this time. 

Christianity - crushed and tormented by centuries of theology

There are certain (often commonly used) Christian terms that I always have found deeply confusing, un-understandable. One is "redemption".

People have (for centuries) talked confidently about Jesus Christ redeeming mankind, of the world's need for redemption etc. They talk as if "redemption" was a clear and precise technical term, an obious thing; and as if it was axiomatic that redemption (above all!) was what Jesus did - the main thing Jesus accomplished. 

So again I read into the subject a bit, looked at the explanations of redemption suggested by various historical theologians, and at some of the various denominations, and considered what they meant by redemption; and yet again I felt as if I was being pressed down and crushed by swarms of crazed and biting insects! 

I wonder how many others have felt like this? 

On the one hand, it would seem that what Jesus did must have been simple and easy to grasp - given the broad historical facts and context. On the other hand, it seems that almost immediately after Jesus's ascension, all kinds of things were being ascribed to him that were either incomprehensibly abstract and paradoxical - or else wildly at variance with what Jesus said and did.

A word for this effect is stultifying: the effect is demoralizing. 

And it went on, and on, and on - until so much mass and inertial momentum had been accumulated, that it seems (for many/ most Christians) that there is (literally no alternative but to submit.  

The idea of redemption itself seems to have arisen as some kind of error, perhaps for different and almost opposite reasons, or from different agendas... It is as if the idea that "what Jesus did" was to redeem Mankind, and The World, was swiftly accepted as a solid and mandatory assumption, without any agreement about what redeem actually meant or implied, or how it had worked (even in the broadest terms)!   

The sense I make from this is that here, as in so many other ways, Jesus was inserted-into pre-existing philosophical and theological schemes - whether Jewish, Christian, or other. 

My conviction is that most of the people who wrote about Jesus in the early years after his ascension, made sense of Jesus in terms of what they already believed before Jesus's ministry - and these were the people who set the agenda for the various churches for centuries to come; until the quantity of commentary and contradiction has become unopposable* and appalling. 

*(i.e. It cannot be opposed, only ignored.) 

In this, as so many ways; Christianity painted itself into a corner. Only those who were able to live with a permanent state of imprecision and contradiction were able to participate in the discourse. Anyone who seriously tried to make sense of things and get at the truth - was excluded. 

It's hard for me to express (because it apparently invisible to most people!) my horror at the way Jesus Christ and what he did has been enmeshed in vast webs of other stuff. 

A new Christian may begin with a wonderful sense of simplicity and clarity; but is almost immediately confronted by enmeshing menaces wherever he turns. And the new Christian will find that such-and-such is regarded as absolutely necessary to being-a-Christian - that "being-a-Christian" is something which takes place only within these assumptions - that there is asserted to be no real way of being-a-Christian except within such assumptions...  

What's worse is that the simple and obvious truth and reality which led to becoming a Christian, somehow gets reversed, in all sorts of ways. The whole thing gets smothered by an endlessly regressing external weight of mandatory demands; which cannot be grasped and must just be accepted and obeyed. 

"Myself", as an individual, is implicitly (sometimes explicitly) regarded as utterly trivial, insignificant, of no consequence to the vast mechanism of Christianity - except in disobedience! By such an account; to be a Good Christian is to acknowledge and act as a tiny and inessential cog in a vast machine; and if the cog fails to accept this role, then he will be spat-out into the consuming void beyond the machine.

Because life in service to the machine is so utterly miserable and hope-less - the only consolation is that our reward is that we will (at some point) become so utterly changed as to find it wholly blissful. 

This is nebulous, and un-consoling - because such a transformation would be to convert me into somebody-else (or some-thing else); so in practice the main incentive is always negative...

"You may find this unsatisfying, but if you dissent then you will be actively tortured forever - so shut-up and get-on-with-it!"

(Of course, this kind of threat doesn't happen much nowadays - not for good reasons but because faith is so utterly feeble that almost nobody really believes their church - as was evident in 2020 and by lack of repentance since. But for much of history and in many places; the negative incentives of Christianity were much more strongly asserted than the positive: fear rather than hope was the major drive.)

I am trying to express here something of vital import: which is the false and evil idea that in becoming a Christian one should be subordinating oneself to a vast social and intellectual structure - one to which the proper attitude is submission (although such fear-full obedience is often praised as "humility").

My counter-assertion is that the freedom, agency, and chosen personal commitment by which somebody becomes a Christian; these are attributes that ought to be carried through into the life of faith. 

We should not just begin in freedom, but stay in freedom...

Stay in a Christian freedom dedicated to a personal quest of love, truth, virtue, beauty and other Christian values.     

A freedom that is rooted in the personal and not the abstract...

Rooted in our relations with the persons of God and Jesus Christ - certainly not defined by our obedience and service to organizations, or bodies of texts and commentaries, nor to traditions of teaching. 

To be a Christian ought not to be intimidated, crushed and suffocated by "the past" - but a joyous (because hope-full) engagement in the present quest of life - and in context of an eternal resurrected future. 

That can be so - but only when we as individuals "make it so"?

And in the face of a great mass of would-be suffocating opposition. 

War in this Planet of the Apes

A great performance by Andy Serkis (plus CGI) as Caesar

I've only watched it once, but the recentish movie War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) keeps coming to mind as I contemplate the global situation. 

In particular, the way that the film demonstrates that it can - in practice - be impossible to prevent war over the long-haul; when even just one powerful grouping on one of the sides is really determined to cause a war. 

In the movie, with its secular perspective, this outcome is unalloyed tragedy; but in this mortal life... not necessarily so. 

I believe that this the situation at present - when one powerful grouping on the "Western" side is determined to provoke escalatory wars in many places, simultaneously - and ultimately everywhere. 

It seems very likely that They will succeed in causing world war - from somewhere or another, sooner or later - because that is just the nature of people and things in this mortal world. 

And by "war"; I mean a war that however it began soon develops into an unjust war, a war of evil-aligned against evil-aligned (at best, of greater and lesser evils): 

A war with no possible winners. 

So - if futile global war is in practice and eventually unstoppable - what then? 

What difference can you, or I, or anyone make?

And the answer is that we can make all the difference. 

Since this world is essentially in a state of spiritual war; then it is the attitudes, understanding and motives of individual persons that matter essentially. 

In war as in peace; there is all the difference in the world - which is actually all the difference in creation and eternity - in any war, according to the minds of individuals who participate or contemplate that war. 

When those individuals understand the spiritual reality of that war, and align with God rather than with one or another of the "sides" - that makes a difference. 

When individuals do not despair but repent their own fear, resentment, hopelessness as it (inevitably) arises - that makes a difference.

(For Christians, sin (i.e. evil and death) are inevitable. What matters is repentance. 

(And repentance, properly understood, is a positive inner act of affirmation and allegiance.)  

When individuals look beyond the war, beyond the tragedy of mortal life - to eternal resurrected life in Heaven - that makes all the difference. 

Spiritually to learn-from experience, is what this life's about. 

There are many, many bad things that happen in this mortal life and that cannot be prevented. 

That is inevitable. 

The big question we need to settle for our-selves is - what then?

 

Resentment at creation (more on "thrownness")

At a very deep level, it seems that people (and indeed beings of all kinds) react differently to awareness of "thrownness" - react differently from finding oneself "thrown into" God's creation, and where the only possible positive purpose and meaning is to participate in (or, at least, contemplatively enjoy) this ongoing creation. 

I think that some beings react to this experience of thrownness with an attitude of existential resentment. They respond to this situation by resenting the fact that they are in "somebody else's" project.

In other words, we recognize (usually implicitly, but sometimes explicitly - as with the "I never asked to be born" feeling and complaint) that reality is something other than our-selves.  

The Being also finds that he himself is, to a significant extent, the product of creation - and may resent that also. After all, he "did not ask to be created - which is a more fundamental complaint than birth. 

It seems a fact that each Being was (to a degree) created without his consent; and finds himself in a world created without his consent, and heading towards some goal that he himself had not agreed to... 

The question is how he reacts to this situation - negatively, or positively? Is he delighted and grateful to be and inhabit a creation of meaning purpose - and love? 

Or not? 

Good, or evil.  

Our choice in response to thrownness thereby determines our alignment to one or the other side, in the spiritual war of this world.

 

Be careful what you (and me!) complain of!

The major and over-riding complaint is (or should be) that the leadership class of the Western world and multi-national organizations are evil-affiliated and evil-motivated, and all its major social institutions likewise - including politics, big corporations, mass media, law, military, police, medicine, education, science and the arts. 

But/And they - and the nations they control - are also declining... 

Declining in population, military and economic power, intellectual achievement, effectiveness, wealth, confidence, self-respect... declining in all-round competence.  

It is therefore commonplace and accurate to complain both that The West is evil, and that Nothing Works Anymore. 

However! 

If The West and its nations is indeed evil by nature and intent (which it is); then surely we ought not to complain that it is also weaker (which it is)?

After all - do we really want the Empire of Evil to be more powerful? 

Do we really want Britain (or America) to be Great again? Given what these places actually Are, Do, and Want-to-do? 

We Shouldn't! 

So, let's all of us try to be a bit more coherent about our complaining - and try to avoid bemoaning the fact that we cannot pursue our evil plans with greater effectiveness. 

Note: In practice the decline is effectiveness is a symptom of the underlying evil. So we cannot (from where we are now) have greater effectiveness without first becoming more-Good. However, that is in practice, and I am here referencing spiritual matters. To want Western nations to become more effective without first requiring them to become spiritually honest and Good - is to want an evil thing.