Since the creator is a personal and good God who loves us; it seems to make sense that we would be born into this world with the kind of assumptions (hence understanding) that is supportive (or, at least, compatible with) our salvation.
I regard this as a deep truth; and that the "animistic" consciousness of young childhood - the assumption of inhabiting a living universe of other Beings - is therefore a true understanding of reality.
Truth about reality is therefore something originally inside us, within us, something we do not need to look for elsewhere, or to "other people", to find.
In other words - if truth about reality is inborn, within, divinely implanted - then it is something we can know for ourselves, from our-selves - and therefore be sure about.
This means that much of Christian theology is false when it asserts that ultimate realities are impersonal and/or abstract in nature - or too complex to comprehend.
This is a lethal objection to Christian theology when it is asserted to be something that need to be derived second-hand, from other people or other places - a kind of hearsay - that we are supposed to obey: uncomprehendingly if necessary.
From this perspective it is also clear that "mainstream modern materialism" (which inculcates and permeates assumptions that ultimate reality is a dead, purposeless, meaningless - a matter of physical and chemical processes) is false.
(And, insofar as Christian theology tries to incorporate materialism, then to that extent it makes itself incoherent, self-subverting.)
What modern materialism and mainstream Christian theology both do to a person, is inculcate the assumption that he must get his understanding from outside himself - because both replace our innate childhood world-view, with some-other world view that we must find somewhere in our culture.
When people are looking around to "other people" or social systems to understand the world - then Satan holds most of the cards; and the Christian truth becomes just another option among many-more - lost among a much larger and constantly-changing mass of alternatives.
Even when people become Christian under such circumstances and with such an "external-seeking" mind-set - then it becomes very difficult to have strong faith - i.e. difficult to have sureness and confidence in the rightness of our particular world-view...
Once we leave behind the innate - and God given! - perspective that the true understanding has been built-into us; then any and every world-view that comes from outside is a threat to our present conviction.
In a world where truth is not-innate, where truth is said to be (or may be) external, abstract, impersonal, hyper-complex - then we find ourselves trying to cling to a particular and second-hand/ adopted understanding...
And constantly being offered alternative external views: constantly under attack from external world views: constantly needing to defend and justify our specific choices.
No wonder Christian faith is so feeble! - when we have built it under the assumption that our childhood knowledge is something that is merely immature, and needs to be set-aside; such that we Must derive Truth about Reality from sources outside ourselves, from among the many, Many alternative offered by people and by culture!
We can never really believe "other people" sufficiently to have a strong faith - unless, perhaps, all of those other-people are saying the same thing - which nowadays they certainly never are; not even within the strictest of churches!
All too often - Christianity succeeds in subverting our natural childhood assumptions with abstract and complex theological dogmas - and succeeds only in enfeebling the consequent faith.
As was made blazingly evident in 2020.
I conclude that (from here-and-now) the truth of Christianity "must" (if Christian faith is to be strong) therefore be such that it can simply be added-onto the innate and spontaneous assumptions about reality with which God provided us on entering incarnation; and with which we are (apparently) all born.
2 comments:
This is a crucial theme, one upon which Christianity hinges.
If we reject the reality of "innate and spontaneous assumptions about reality" that God implanted within us before incarnation, then we are forever at the mercy of external, forced, calculated, and pre-determined theologies and ideologies that will inevitably imprint themselves upon us after we are born.
And we must pause and ask ourselves, is such imprinting really what God wants for us?
There is a source of truth within us, and we can communicate with this source of truth if we know it to be real, but very few Christians accept the presence of such an internal source of truth. The mere thought terrifies them to the core.
They are content to remain in the X-Files, "the truth is out there" mode of Christianity -- a mode which requires them to seriously entertain, give the benefit of the doubt to, and be optimistic/hopeful about all sorts of "out-there" phenomena that should instead be rejected and/or repented outright (meaning if they can't reject whatever it is, they should at least recognize it as sinful and repent).
On a side note, the "outsourcing" of assumptions approach has had a terrible track record over the past decade or so. No one is right about things all the time, but the "the truth is out there" gang has been so consistently wide of the mark about everything over the past ten years or so that it's becoming increasingly discomforting and painful to watch.
Yet they continue to scoff at any suggestion that a little "in-sourcing" may be in order.
@Frank - Good comment.
"scoff at any suggestion that a little "in-sourcing" may be in order."
I think this is because so many Christians (so many people) are seeking a complete package.
We have a limited conceptualization of what Christianity actually is, and this is primarily a chosen post-mortal state. Such a concept sits happily with an internal source for fundamental beliefs, and personal responsibility for them.
But those with a traditional concept of Christianity, envisage that it should regulate many or all aspects of societal life - their Christianity is indeed a social religion - primarily.
And such a religion cannot tolerate primarily an internal source, because this may (indeed will) vary between people, and with no way of arbitrating.
In other words these aspects seem to go together. If Christianity really is what the churches have asserted, then it must (at least in practice) be socially imposed in accordance with "objective" (ie. consensus and "out-there") factors.
This is illustrated by the history of the Mormon church (CJCLDS) as a highly standardized, socially regulatory, top-down defined religion - compared with its theology and origins in the personal revelations of Joseph Smith, and the emphasis on the primary of personal revelation.
It seems to be a choice and decision about what Jesus actually did, what he accomplished in cosmic terms, and how it was to be implemented.
Was Christianity a religion - a social and external phenomenon, administered by an institution in accordance with would be and external criteria?...
Or was "following Jesus" something that was intended to operate an an individual and inner way?
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