I keep having the experience of looking-at or thinking-of a church, or school, or job, or place... and realising that - institutionally it has gone. And that it has not been replaced.
A lovely cathedral, a college, an ancient village; some activity like teaching, farming, scholarship, law... I realise that these have gone... What remains is the shell, and the deep, universal spiritual reality - but at the practical, everyday, functional level they are all gone; they have all been replaced by bureaucracy, which is totalitarianism, which is evil.*
Of course, no evil is total because there cannot be pure evil in terms of purpose (it would revert to chaos) - but all of these are now evil (overall, as net-effect, and by intent). They all lack any core, they all serve dishonest expediency; and that is ultimately harnessed to strategic global evil - the demonic agenda.
This is what people, en masse, have chosen; by their rejection of creation, of God, of meaning and purpose, of any spiritual reality.
By their rejection of Jesus. (And this rejection applies to most, almost all, self-identified Christians.) They want other-things more, much-more - stuff, distractions, sex, power; or daydreams of these...
When there is no cohesion or reason - this is what you get, inevitably.
So far, so uncontroversial - for readers of this blog anyway. We all know that this is the case - but what next?
The other realisation that I cannot shake is that this is irreversible. Real, good, functional institutions are not coming back.
Why? Because all evil institutions are self-destroying (sooner or later) - and real institutions have been decisively rejected, even by those who suppose they support them. Essentially nobody lives by the belief that institutions are more important than individuals - least of all those who run the institutions, who have power in them.
(The people who run the institutions, who advocate their priority, in practice - therefore in reality - are merely serial parasites upon institutions; which they treat as hosts to be sucked dry for personal benefit, then discarded.)
I think that we are heading for a post-institutional future. Like it or not. Meanwhile, the remaining institutions will all be - ever-increasingly - fakes and frauds.
This is a hard teaching! Because it means that all groups, groupings and organisations will be evil; and only individuals and families and close friends will be good.
But that seems already to be the case, pretty much - and where not-yet that is always the trend.
The Good News is that, if all this is correct; God would not put us into such a situation (we would not, as pre-mortal spirits have volunteered for it) without good reason; so there must-be ways that we can and should learn from it, to our benefit.
*Note: To clarify... If we see a beautiful old church, some inspiring countryside, or contemplate a craft such as farming, or profession such as priest, doctor or scientist, or a nation such as England ... the surface may be beautiful, the depths (the myth, or deep history) may be good - but the middleground, the everyday functionality, its explicit purpose, the mission statement and policies, the procedures and processes, and the personnel... these will be already and increasingly evil-orientated and loathsome.
