Like Son, unlike Father: King Henry the Eighth, versus Henry the Seventh

Henry VII and VIII - These two portraits express well their differences

It is a sad reflection on the English that Henry VIII continues to get continual attention, and a kind of sneaking admiration, for his (unsurpassed except by except by William I) rapacious brutality in the Disillusion of the Monasteries; together with his "achievement"of having six wives. 

Yet Henry the Eighth left England far weaker, poorer and more internally conflicted than he found the nation. 

By contrast, Henry the Eighth's father, Henry Tudor, was one of the best of English Monarchs, the last King of Merrie England. 

This is not recognized for various reasons. Henry Tudor's character was shrewd and compassionate - he was not "larger than life" like his son. 

Also, English people have forgotten the colossal destructiveness of "the Wars of the Roses", decades of selfish and self-destructive civil war between Lancastrian and Yorkist aristocrats; to which Henry VII put an end. 

As a measure of destructiveness; when the English population was only about 2-3 million, the Roses wars were a terrible drain on the fittest and most productive of the national population. For instance, the Battle of Towton (hardly known by anyone, nowadays) probably killed something like 4% or more of the military-age and physically able men (ie. something like 25,000) in a single horrific day of mutual slaughter.  

But the saddest reflection on our national memory is related to the marriage question. 

While Henry VIII married six times (plus mistresses, and illegitimate children) of which he killed two, and "divorced" (technically had-annulled) another two - in contrast, his father Henry Tudor had what has been described as perhaps the most genuinely loving Royal Marriage in English history. 

This, despite that the marriage was originally a "political" alliance between the houses of Lancaster (Henry) and York (his wife Elizabeth). 

Henry seems, indeed, to have been that most unusual thing among monarchs - a loving husband and father. The husband and wife were devastated by the premature death of his first son and heir Arthur, Prince of Wales at age 15; and then Henry was even more affected by the death of his wife - after which he was never the same again. 

Nonetheless, and despite the fault of a somewhat miserly greed in his final widowed years; Henry VII left England a stronger, richer, more peaceful, unified and powerful nation; and the English monarch probably the most secure and dominant leader in Europe. 

Most of which achievement (except domestic power) his son then exploited and dissipated for personal gratification - with adverse consequences that extended for several generations.   

If nations usually get the monarchs they deserve; then the relative English reputations of these two Henry's may partly explain how this happens. 

Are explanations really necessary? Must we personally seek understanding?

It's often been recommended that we should cease to seek explanations (which are, anyway, always wrong by ultimate standards); and should instead just accept what is. 

It is said: We should acknowledge that we cannot know, and strop striving for something unattainable, and very probably misleading. 

Indeed, it is often asserted, that searching for explanations is just a waste of time, because it will fail to find anything with which we can be contented.

Sooner or later; we will give-up the quest - so why not do it sooner?  

Another way of saying the same thing is that it is the activity and process of seeking which justifies the exercise. For instance, this is a common New Age-y suggestion - the ideal of being be a perpetual "spiritual seeker". However, on examination this advice reduces to meaning that seeking explanations - discovering, trying-out, then dropping one after the other -  is justified merely because it passes the time before death fairly-pleasantly, and relatively-harmlessly. It reduces spirituality from a matter of primary human concern, to the level of a hobby.  

Even since I became a Christian; I have often tried to stop myself seeking explanations; tried to be contented with some kind of simple faith. 

I have tried this with more than one Christian denomination/church. Tried to stop myself questioning and trying to understand - on the basis that such activity was futile at best, destructive of faith at worst - because it never seemed to reach an end point. 

Yet - especially - the events of 2020 hammered-home why - in a world such as that we inhabit; which is a world where public discourse is near-monopolistically dominated by evil-affiliated powers - the seeking of explanations and personal understanding is now almost essential for Christians --- if Christians are not to be led away from salvation and into voluntarily embracing damnation. 

I have noticed again and again that the attempt (here and now I mean - and I note that it was not always and everywhere thus) to be "content without explanations", to seek to "rest upon "the mystery" of existence", are attitudes that have long-since been weaponised as a tool of Satan. 

It seems to be a psycho-social fact that the only matters upon which people Actually Do cease to seek understanding, and are contented without explanation, on which they rest-comfortably as if upon the ultimate mysteriousness of existence... 

In practice, the only much matters are those where knowledge/ ideas/theories/facts are supported by the civilizational, media, official, bureaucratic, institutional consensus. 

In practice, therefore; the advice to cease seeking personal understanding is equivalent to recommending that we live in accordance with the dominant social consensus. 

There are man theoretical possibilities for conducting our spiritual lives, but in practice it seems that the only alternative to accepting social consensus, is personally to keep seeking understanding and a satisfactory explanation. 

So, I would remind myself - and suggest to others - that in the situation of a Modern Man of 2025 it is a snare to cease striving for understanding.

And that we ought instead to discover for ourselves, and to our personal satisfaction, explanations for every aspect of existence that we regard as important. 

Of course (as always) such a search must strive to be completely honest, and must Christianly-motivated; because if we seek (whether consciously or unconsciously) any this-worldly and hedonic outcome such as comfort or convenience, therapy or thrills - then our "explanations" will be expedient merely, and we shall not achieve solid understanding. 

The only real alternative to a personal quest for explaining and understanding the essentials of our faith; is to accept spiritually lethal rule by consensus external values -- which is embrace the side of damnation in the spiritual war of this world. 

For the record: I Was Wrong, with my recent geopolitical prediction

Just to note that my recent geopolitical prediction that there would, before March, be a massive Fake Pennant atrocity to justify massive Western intervention in the Middle East - was wrong.