It is a shame, but pretty much as prophesied, to see that in these End Times, when things have come to a point, and demonic evil rules The West in accordance with wild mandatory incoherence, stunning lies and repellant value-inversions -- a shame that Christians are - if anything - more divided, hostile and sectarian than they were even a decade ago.
One stunner is that Roman Catholics, who used to present a united front - and often seemed to believe in their own unity; are schism-ing and schism-ing with spiraling rapidity - upping the rhetoric and scorn directed against their co-religionists...
(All very like the Protestants whom they used to taunt for the same behaviour - and for much the same kind of reasons as applied to Protestants!)
As I say, it's a shame; but something I understand and indeed fully expected as the gross corruption of mainstream traditional religion of all kinds.
And a consequence of putting church (or other externalities) first, regarding "Christianity" as absolutely secondary to external authority; and basing one's faith on fundamental assumptions that are denied to be assumptions.
These assumptions are asserted to be either an objective necessity, despite that there can be no objectivity in such matters; or "logically" entailed, despite that logic only (at best!) tells us the consequences of assumptions - but cannot tell us which assumptions are valid.
So Christians are not just declining in percentage, numbers, devoutness, and integrity; but are breaking-up into shrinking groups -- yet always staying primarily group-minded, and rejecting ultimate personal responsibility; always insisting that they are "just obeying orders" derived from their dwindling yet objectively necessary and essentially valid church...
How long can it continue?
How long before people realize what they must do - on pain of sooner-or-later de facto apostasy - and identify their primary and fundamental assumptions: fully comprehend and "own" them. Personally, taking full and final responsibility, by whatever each experiences as the bottom-line intuition.
How long before this?
Maybe it will be a long time yet, maybe not until the end; when each individual is alone in his church, yet still church-led - maybe not even then...
I can picture millions of Christians, each self-painted into his own corner, insisting - as night falls - that it must be so; that he cannot escape the constricting wall of unexamined, unacknowledged, un-owned assumptions - which is all that blocks him from the simplicity of a salvation he has long-since lost-sight-of.
After all, free agency is absolute, and salvation is opt-in: so to receive it; "in" we, personally, must opt.
4 comments:
The factionalism is the devil's gambit, the major play when it seems Christians are in danger of agreeing ... introduce a schismatic element and sit back. Salvation is simple ... those of the faith combining is near impossible.
@James - Sadly, yes. And this after 2000 years of Christianity.
To my way of thinking, this means most Christians absolutely need to go back and re-examine their basic assumptions. Surely it is obvious that something is badly wrong when so many serious Christians of different denominations Christians despise (or pity) each other.
For past decades it has been the fake-Christian "liberals" who work together; but that is only because they care little/ nothing for religion, and are primarily devoted to shared this-worldly leftist causes.
I think sectarianism is inevitable once the men who were taught by the men who were taught by Christ pass away. If we had to do it over again, my semi-serious advice is stop writing things down after the first account of Jesus Christ's life on Earth is dictated. But Christ attended temple and read the Torah and prophets, so I don't know. And there are plenty of Gospel passages that would be unclear without elaboration and cross-referencing. Christ's Apostles had to work out circumcision and dietary laws too. I'd trust St. Peter to be granted a vision of how to decide the dietary laws but really nobody else. And then there's the whole issue of liturgics. We know Christ favored weddings, baptisms and Eucharis, so somebody's got to work those forms out.
Getting to "mere Christianity" seems difficult without an organized, authoritative council, and then you get into interpersonal dynamics and fights over status.
@A-G - It seems to me you are still thinking in an institution-focused way, which leads inevitably to the same problems.
To "feel for yourself" the alternative (even just as a thought-experiment) is what I realized when reading the Fourth Gospel prior to doing Lazarus Writes. There is an imaginable alternate history of Christianity and individual (and family) based religion. So there would be no status or power fights - but also no Christian societies.
It is likely that such a thing would not have been possible for the men of 2000 years ago, since they existed communally including at the spiritual level - but it seems like the Only possibility of men of 2024 - at least in the West.
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