I seem to discern a pattern of belief or motivation among some of those who oppose the mainstream totalitarian Establishment; which is that they desire to combining maximum physical self-sufficiency with maximum spiritual dependency on their chosen church.
Unfortunately, both physical self-sufficiency and spiritual dependence are so categorically impossible in the modern West that they cannot even be approximated; therefore this fantasy is delusional.
The world is the most inter-dependent it has ever been, there is unprecedented surveillance, and attempted physical detachment from The System is treated as criminal. Physical self-sufficiency cannot even be approximated.
But spiritual dependence on external church authority is likewise impossible. All the churches are so deeply corrupted that they are incoherent, their authority is internally fractured, their instructions are labile: fluctuating, contradicting, self-undermining.
This means that anyone who desires to obey his church, must in fact continually be discerning which aspect of his church he ought to obey, and which disregard or oppose.
The ideal of physical self-sufficiency and spiritual dependence is an inversion of what is unavoidable - and indeed Christianly-desirable. Physical self-sufficiency is not just impossible, but irrelevant. Spiritual dependence on the authority of a church is not just impossible, but the opposite of what Christians ought to be doing.
Christians cannot - no matter how much they may wish it - avoid discernment and live-by obedience. Since Christians do discern and choose; this ought explicitly to be directed at God and Jesus Christ - and not at any (inevitably compromised) human institution.
And, since we are - by any realistic calculation, all-but powerless in socio-political terms; we ought not to be focusing our attention on 'changing the world': nor on positively transforming and protecting one little corner of the world (as with the idea of self-sufficiency).
We are responsible only for that over which we have genuine choice and control - our inner discernments, commitments, aspirations...
In this actual world we inhabit; necessity combines with desirability to enforce a focus upon individual spiritual activity in a direct relationship with the divine.
Ultimately; the physical (including socio-political) world is something with which we must cope - and not a valid object for our life's creative work.
