We live in a world of systems - of interlinked formal institutions, organizations, corporations etc - so this is a fact of life... "inevitable", at least at present.
But these modern systems - or indeed the overall System - is scientistic, physicalist, materialist in its assumptions; and leaves-out the reality of the spirit at the level of our thinking.
Systems thinking just-is mundane in its nature; and mundane thinking has no space for God or Jesus Christ (except falsely, as supposed means to materialist and this-worldly ends).
This means that what would have been regarded in the past as spiritual, supernatural, divine knowledge and experiences; are nowadays excluded. The world of spirit is not noticed, or it is explained-away as the product of immaturity, stupidity, gullibility, manipulations and lying, or mental illness.
In the past it was accepted that religion meant a church; and church meant a system by which the spiritual was achieved. The church was very complex; and consisted of approved knowledge - facts and interpretations; and narrative, symbolism, and rituals etc...
Each Christian got from his church a strategy for life - almost a blueprint... What to do and what to expect from doing it.
There was a plan, methods, and procedures: a causality of do this, and that will be the result.
A church was a Spiritual System.
But Men changed, human consciousness changed, and the world changed.
From the later 1700s in England and Germany, people began to notice: Church Systems had ceased to lead to the spirit - the cause and effect of do-this and get-that was broken.
And this experience, or insight, or reality; spread throughout the West, and the world.
And, from this point, the System of a church would overall and normally serve to block spiritual contact and experiences, instead of helping them.
Because the churches maintained all or most of their canonical information, procedures and interpretations - but these had lost their positive and beneficial effect of leading to the spirit.
Leaving (increasingly) empty forms and structures and actions - that were nonetheless asserted to be essential.
Instead of providing a plan-of-action leading to the spirit; the churches (inevitably, by their nature as social institutions) retained a pre-determined, objectified, materialist framework - into-which all possible individual spiritual experience must be "slotted".
And having been slotted-into the already-existing church System, spiritual experience was thereby linked with the other social systems (politics, law, economics, science etc) - which total-system explained it away as not-really-real (perhaps with the church-added spin of being due to some sin such as spiritual pride, disobedience etc).
By their very existence as social institutions and therefore, necessarily, part of The System (aka globalist, leftist, totalitarianism) - the Christian churches went from (often) doing net-spiritual-good, to constituting a barrier, perhaps a blockage, to the individual Christians ability directly to experience spiritual reality.
So long as Modern men remain primarily committed to System, God cannot get at us.
Because whatever God does to contact or guide us; we can - and usually will - explain it away.
And the churches are complicit in this reality-distortion.
Of course, the churches often assert that outside their walls lies chaos at best, and unopposed demonic control as most likely.
Yet all of these are within the walls of the churches, and often dominant; operating at the level of what makes any church an institution in the world as it now is.
The churches are on average and predominantly this-worldly in orientation, and mundane in discourse.
The spirit is allowed only if confined to predetermined slots in a dysfunctional (because no longer spiritual) System.
Christians must therefore (and I think the "must" is justified) have faith that God can and will operate outwith churches and by a direct and personal relationship with each Christian.
So long as God is honestly sought...
And have faith that Jesus Christ's gift of resurrected eternal Heavenly life is available to every person who genuinely desires and actively-seeks it - (ultimately) regardless of human institutions, and of the circumstances of mortal life on earth.
We should have faith (confirmable by personal spiritual knowledge) that God the Creator, our loving Father, will have set up the world so that salvation is available and possible always and everywhere, and for everybody.
4 comments:
Those who would dispute this undeniable (really, it is) fact will point to the authority of the church and say it God-given. Perhaps it was but times change (really, they do) and human beings change with them. The womb protects the growing embryo but would suffocate the child. No doubt, when freed from the authority of the official institutions, people will make mistakes and be led astray by their egos but that is a stage they need to go through like children becoming adolescents before they are adults.
the Lord gives it and the Lord takes it away. why would that not apply to church authority.
@Laeth - Well, indeed - if one, the other is presumably implied. And God would not take away without providing an alternative.
@William - My reflections were stimulated by further consideration of the Magical Battle of Britain, and surrounding events. It seems that this period of about a year (1939 - 40) may have been the last time when England's group soul was active and overall positive - and in a Christian way.
The national spirit was of course also stimulated by double negative values - resistance to attack; but I think it is evident that there was also a sense of individuals sharing in an awakening and motivating group-good, at that point - something which people remembered for many decades afterwards.
But it seems that by late 1941 - as the imminent threat of invasion et passed - this moment had passed; and a reversion, a kind of corruption of motivation, began to build up.
And the positive and coherent group spiritual values have never happened since. It was probably the last time (here) when it was possible to do good by obedience and service to a group ideal.
@Bruce, yes, indeed, but i meant not 'church authority' as in whatever churches existed or exist. but church authority as such. a new paradigm. i was just agreeing with you really.
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