Friday 4 June 2021

Actively extracting knowledge (not passively absorbing it)

The idea that Christians not only can but should absorb their faith (absorb from authoritative sources, of course - which begs the question of who decides what counts as authoritative before faith has been absorbed...); the idea that (for instance) we should surrender to priestly authority, to scripture, to tradition... This general attitude by which we are passive towards the divine (and its manifestations) is becoming not just undesirable but impossible.  

I find that my residual capacity passively, submissively to absorb faith from authority, has been shaken to the roots by the capitulation of all church authorities to the birdemic/ peck agenda, antiracism and/or 'carbon environmentalism'. 

As far as I am concerned; the 'Christian' church authorities have publicly and explicitly chosen to subordinate themselves to the totalitarian, leftist, atheist, anti-Christian) worldly powers - and have therefore surrendered all spiritual authority. 


Ultimately, there can be no absorption of knowledge, because all understanding is conceptual - and we personally must bring to life the concepts by which we understand life. 

This has always been the case, but in the past our concepts were widely shared - indeed, 'telepathically' shared - in the sense that individual consciousness was not fully differentiated from group consciousness.

Well it is now - and the group consciousness has been externalized to the mass media; so instead of the spiritual community of ancient times, we now have virtual reality.

As individuals we confront this manufactured and materialist virtual reality from our selves - and (looking out from our selves) we see that what were Christian authorities are now an integrated part of this global virtual reality. 


So - as Christians (or would-be Christians) we need to approach all sources actively, bringing our explicit ultimate-basic (metaphysical) assumptions to bear upon extracting the knowledge we need. 

This sounds (to the materialistic mind) exactly like wishful thinking, an 'echo chamber', and self-confirmation bias - and therefore no better than simply surrendering our souls to the overwhelming power of the totalitarian System (which is what the materialists have done - and which is the most short-term expedient tactic). 

But the difference is motivation. This is not something we need to (or should even try to) prove to others; but something that originates from our real and divine self. 

If we are personally motivated to know reality and to align our-selves with God's creation; then, as reality gets its meaning from our ultimate goal of resurrected life in Heaven, this attitude makes possible the active process of grasping truth from a vast mass of stimuli.


Therefore, we should not be seeking-out wholly pure, wholly true, wholly reliable, wholly trust-worthy sources - because in one sense they obviously do not exist; while in another sense this goal leaves-out that half of the process which we personally must bring to understanding. 

Instead we should approach people, institutions and media in an active spirit - selecting, focusing, extracting, analyzing, understanding, and applying to our own situation. 

We might watch, read, or speak-with almost any-thing towards which we feel drawn - and no matter what its overall tendency or most obvious attributes - we may get spiritual nourishment from it...


Or we may Not - it may do us harm! 

In which case we know this by our own response, by our own intuitive sense of negative evaluations; and we recognize the evil and stop the engagement.  

And try again. 


Because we are In this mortal life on earth; and providence will (sooner or later) bring us the experiences we need. 

We must - we ought to - engage with this world; in order to learn from our time here on earth. 

Of course, worldliness comes naturally to most people - and the problem is over-engagement, indiscriminate engagement, and harm-full engagement. But the answer is not dis-engagement - even as an ideal.  

We need the world - it is there for our spiritual benefit. But not as something in which we bathe and wallow, and from-which we absorb passively whatever it supplies. Rather we approach the world (each day, each hour) in a spirit of active and selective engagement; following our motivations and in a spirit of whatever enjoyment, excitement, curiosity we have in us. 


By my understanding, God is our Heavenly Parents; and God does not want their beloved children to trudge miserably through their lives as if they were nothing but an ordeal and a test. 

Our world (i.e. the world as we personally know it) is, overall, made for our benefit; and should (where possible) by approached with an attitude appropriate to the fact that it was created for us personally, and that we chose to participate in it. 

The world-at-large is indeed a place of evil triumphant; and therefore evil permeates all social institutions, inescapably. We depend on an evil System (a system of Evil Lies) for our very existence!

But a Christian who has an active faith in God as creator, and who knows himself a beloved child of God; has no reason to fear or be oppressed by this reality - because the only reality that ultimately concerns him is the reality of his own situation. 

For as long as God has chosen to maintain the life of a Christian, we can be sure that the Christian is in a situation from which he can benefit personally in the timescale of eternal resurrected life. 

Ultimately; all that any Christian ever needs to do, is to discern and learn-from his actual situation. 

That enormous fact ought to be enough rationally to sustain a basically positive, hope-full and care-free approach to daily reality.  


3 comments:

Jackie Pratt said...

Thank you.
Active and resolute discernment is always tough. It seems as though present circumstances are making it even tougher. But then I didn't live through a world war or one of the real plagues.

Lucinda said...

I really liked this post

Regarding the faltering of churches, embracing "selflessness" was a serious error, and obviously self-serving to a certain type of person!

I like this part: "Instead we should approach people, institutions and media in an active spirit - selecting, focusing, extracting, analyzing, understanding, and applying to our own situation.

We might watch, read, or speak-with almost any-thing towards which we feel drawn - and no matter what its overall tendency or most obvious attributes - we may get spiritual nourishment from it..."

This is part of how I'm finding resolution to the apparent contradiction that arises from the evil-tendency of fearing evil.

Bruce Charlton said...

Part of the impulse to write this came from the recognition that essentially all cultural products are now net-evil. Are we then to try and isolate ourselves? Surely not - God keeps us alive here for reasons. Therefore we need (I think) a way of engaging with communications that are intended to be evil; acknowledging this fact - but learning from them (by this active approach) in a way that contributes to God's work.