Supposing you believe you are a Christian, but just fail just one of the 2020 Litmus Tests - for example the commonest failure, which is the birdemic?
(But an analogous argument applies to all the other Tests, mutatis mutandis.)
But surely (you say) if I self-identify as a Christian, and I want to stay a Christian - why shouldn't I be able to do this? Surely Christianity is one thing and politics is another thing?
Well, in an abstract, reductionist and theoretical way - yes you can do this; in the sense that it is not rationally-impossible.
But here and now, as of 2021, you won't do this. If you accept the birdemic narrative, you will not stay Christian.
Firstly because in believing-in the birdemic, you are believing in The System: you are buying-into the narrative of the Global Establishment, officialdom and the mass media.
You are passively-accepting your dominant world view from Them.
Therefore you have already surrendered your conscience and your discernment.
But even if you somehow manage to negotiate this; the birdemic is tightly-integrated into - is indeed the primary rationale and justification-for, the totalitarian coup of early 2020 and its strategy of Big Lies, omni-surveillance, micro-control; its fake-response of lock-down-social-distancing-masking; its PSYOPS of fuelling compulsory untruthfulness, fear, resentment and despair; its (rotating) single issue mode of thinking where anything and everything can-and-should be sacrificed to the (Establishment defined and propagated) birdemic project.
Therefore, in actual practice (never mind the abstract logic), if you were a Christian before the birdemic; you will not be a Christian if you fail that Litmus Test.
You will not be motivated to oppose the permanent prohibition and eradication of all Christian social activities.
You will not even be able to resist supporting purposive strategic evil in your own mind - since you have placed the choice of following Jesus Christ as a lower priority than the birdemic; you have subordinated Jesus to the Establishment; and the Establishment is evil. ...
The Establishment is evil in the precise sense of being on the side of Satan against God - indeed, being dominated by Satan and the demons.
(And if you can't perceive this staggeringly obvious and explicit reality - then you are already on the dark side.)
Hence, by making the wrong political choices, by failing one or more Litmus Tests, you have already made your choice against Him.
However it may have been in the past or in other places; as of 2021 Bad Politics kills Christianity.
It's both mind-boggling and sad to see that something so obvious requires elucidation; unfortunately, it does.
ReplyDeleteThanks Bruce. You have articulated something that many people, myself included, sense on an intuitive level but can't explain as clearly as you have done here. Nowadays to be a real Christian means you must increasingly, and it is increasing all the time, be opposed to worldly good. Even neutrality is no longer an option as once it might have been.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's "moths to a flame" evil. Heck more than a litmus test, a trap.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking up politicians for local elections, the ones that had images of supporters all in face masks were the worst.
I think the birdemic has brought out already existing phobias under the surface and amplified them, rather than being a mere rational reaction to the virus itself. This irrational state of chronic fear has then been turned into a virtue.
ReplyDeleteThe compulsive will to sterilize the urban environment consolidates the health puritanism of our age. It's like the virus has suddenly threatened our 'idyllic' state of urban individualism, and quickly must be swept under the rug so that we can all "unite through separation". Hypochondria, health anxiety and OCD is quite well spread in modern society, and such latent germophobia has now come into full fruition. Now you even have the ability to feel good about it.
Corona hysteria is a petty bourgeoisie phenomenon, that is willing to let the world starve as long as the neo-feudal elites assure us of their altruism.
@DJ - *Anybody* who chooses to depict himself wearing a mask is on the dark side - it is a mark of the beast. (But the opposite is Not a reliable sign of being on God's side!)
ReplyDelete@Adil - Indeed - "This irrational state of chronic fear has then been turned into a virtue.", which is an evil value-inversion, since fear is itself actually a sin, and also an amplifier of other sins.
William and Franks - Thanks. Of course I've said it all before in a reductionist sense; but in another sense, every new way of saying - is something new.
It raises a worry, doesn't it? If believing something that doesn't directly or obviously contradict Christianity effectively puts one in the camp of the enemy (and I agree that this does happen!), how do we know that there are not other litmus tests which we have already failed? After all, each of us accepts a great deal--most of what we think we know--on faith from the establishment. I don't mean this as an argument against what you've written. I think that a degree of generalized suspicion is in fact warranted. We know we can't trust these people! Certainly anything we have learned in school or through the mainstream media which touches on this establishment's interests (as, for example, when they tell me that some faraway people of whom I know nothing are behaving villainously or being oppressed) should be held in great suspicion.
ReplyDelete@Bonald - I think it would be an error to make this into (as it were) a 'general argument' (a rational argument) that might apply to all times and places.
ReplyDeleteThis is very much about here and now. Indeed, I don't think it was always thus.
It's part of this 'things come to a point' phenomenon - something about our specific situation. It certainly *used to be* possible to hold bad political views and be a good Christian - but it *isn't any more*.
As for their being other litmus tests that we have failed, hidden tests - again, I think it is a thing about our times that the tests themselves be really obvious, upfront, clear and In Your Face: that is, indeed, exactly why they Are tests!
There can be no compromise.
ReplyDeleteIt's so clever of "them" to force people to buy their own masks, and get people to therefore literally "buy into it."
If the gov't really cared about our welfare, and this whole evil agenda were not just an evil agenda, wouldn't the gov't send us all masks in the mail?
Wouldn't they send everyone vitamin D and C pills, since those would alone do more for our health than masks and vaccines combined?
What puzzles me is how little thinking on such lines people do. They don't question evil that is transparent, and therefore reject it.
Most people's sense of right and wrong seems to come from what other people do, not from any principles, or logic, or religious dogma.
Most people have no defense.
Which is why non-comformity on the part of the minority of us who do think, or have faith, or understand it so important.
The light of a human smile and face is now so rare, that it burns even more brightly than usual.
@Jake - Well, there is cleverness at work - long term planning; but it's easy to be clever when you are just trying to destroy. Creation is much more difficult.
ReplyDeleteAnd, it is easy to be cleverer than modern people who have no God, no centre, no solid convictions, very little courage; refuse to reason and refuse to learn from their own experience. When one has decided that life has no meaning or purpose except to avoid inconvenience and suffering, then expediency is always the strongest preference.
To manipulate modern man is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
"And, it is easy to be cleverer than modern people who have no God, no centre, no solid convictions, very little courage..."
ReplyDeleteDon't these shortcomings also apply to the manipulators? Or do you think that the people "at the top" (for lack of a better way to put it) have some sort of evil surrogate for God that they derive their conviction from?
Now that I have actually typed that out, I would say they probably do but the exact nature of what drives them eludes me.
@TonguelessYoungMan Your question is for Bruce and I look forward to his answer, but here are a few thoughts from me for what they're worth:
ReplyDelete1) Yes, these people have some sort of evil surrogate for God. But it may not be so much an entity (Satan) as a wave/flood/flow. Bruce talking about the 3 types of evil: Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic (lustful-tormenting, systemic-bureaucratic, and negative-destructive) is interesting. I think the manipulators and their helpers get swept up, voluntarily or involuntarily, in evil.
2) "Don't the manipulators also have these shortcomings?" Yes, they are materialistic, they have no God, no centre, no solid convictions, very little courage. BUT, they also have many (evil) ADVANTAGES relative to their manipulated victims:
a) They are less atomized. They are part of various networks that give them some sense of belonging.
b) They are bolder, they lie and steal boldy, they "do what thou wilt," they lack "middle class morality" and see the world as a Darwinian exploitation fest. The highest status among them are the most rapacious, so they all act rapacious, greedy, parasitical, destructive without shame.
c) While some of them get high on their own supply, many don't. Many of these people are making money and connections and plotting and creating propaganda while we the manipulated are numbing ourselves out with booze and junk media (that they produce and sell us). Power is their drug. Their senses are dulled less of the time.
d) The hierarchy of "this world" is more clear to them than to us. They are undistracted by what they see as quaint notions of religion or morality or neighborliness. They see which way the establishment winds are blowing, and they immediately lean in the same direction, both to serve their masters and for personal gain.
e) All that said, many of the manipulators ARE just like us manipulated ones. Many of the lower level ones further the coronascam, for example, out of fear and ignorance and conformity. In the same way that neighbors don't want to upset each other by not wearing masks, the schoolboard doesn't want to upset the governor by opening the schools.
So, those are a few thoughts. I guess I'd sum it up by saying that while yes the manipulators have lots of shortcomings, they are more focused than we are, and therefore more (destructively) effective in this world. And second that it's all shades of gray separating people. Some of the manipulators have thought processes very much like the thought processes of the "good-behaving," "well-meaning" mask enforcers among the manipulated.