I just stumbled across a post of mine from 2018 on the (now stale) subject of Jordan Peterson; in which I described him as an Antichrist figure.
The idea of an Antichrist is not really of any general and public use for discernment, because of the mass and institutional breakdown in truthful consensus.
Nonetheless it is a subject to which I find I recur, because so many individual people remain spiritually wedded to external authority, and in a totalitarian "System-" world, that means that almost all self-identified Christians are following Antichrists.
The question I ask is: will such people follow their Antichrist to self-chosen damnation, or at what point will they realize what is happening to them?
(Luckily for Mankind, by my understanding; this point of recognition and repentance can be post-mortal.)
The current AI-dolatry (i.e. the positive embrace, and in-practice promotion, of the "AI"-agenda) is evidently motivated by evil-intent when advocated by mainstream left-materialist ideologues; but the phenomenon takes-on an Antichrist role and quality when found among self-identified Christians.
What I see is Christians who support (and spiritually I am inferring an inner support) an actually overall- and net-evil strategy; on the basis that they see in such a strategy the possibilities for a selective, partial, "if-only" possibility of Good.
IMO, this rationale is how people justify to themselves an inner subordination to external authority.
Because when all actual external authorities (all formal and public institutions; including all the churches) are actually integrated-within the System of global totalitarianism - then this just-is the Antichrist phenomenon, as I understand it.
I mean; people choose to subordinate themselves spiritually (and therefore psychologically) to a powerful and influential entity (i.e. The System), even when that entity is net-evil; by an argument that there are aspects of The System that may be turned to good...
Which "may" be good understanding, then gets transformed to an assertion that it "will" be good... in my hands, the way that I will use it...
So the world is (apparently) full of Christians who support one or more of the primary agenda items of global totalitarianism (such as "AI", a foreign war, the Birdemic-Peck, CO2-climatology, sexual revolution...); because they have convinced themselves that they have nuanced these strategies into specific pro-Christian activities.
From overall-evil intent, they finesse particular Good Works, "Christian" works; of one kind or another. And claim that this particulars are then the main thing: that they personally can nuance the particular Goods, without spiritual-complicity in the overall evils.
The reason why this kind of reasoning has become so massively-dominant is exactly that The System is everywhere, and inescapable - we are all sustained-by-it and work-for-it.
Therefore - in this-worldly terms - as a brute fact we are all of us deeply-complicit in strategic evil, in this-world.
Which means that - to do good works in this world, to be "practical"; we can only work with The System: we can only "make this world a better place" (including better for ourselves, and those about whom we care) by accepting The System in some overall fashion, and despite specific dissent.
This brute fact of a self-identified Christian - in-practice and inescapably - supporting the large-scale demonic agenda; becomes a potentially agonizing "cognitive dissonance" insofar as Christianity is regarded as a this-worldly religion - i.e. a religion that "makes this world a better place".
It is to avoid this cognitive dissonance, indeed stark contradiction! - that so many Christians end by choosing spiritual-subordination to the the ubiquity of global totalitarianism, while asserting an officially-propagated false and virtual understanding of the world.
Thus, most Christians - including serious Christians - are engaged in whitewashing the actuality of global totalitarian evil: either they deny its reality as an existing fact, or else they falsely construct a fantasy of the fundamental, coherent, and purposive evil of The System of global totalitarianism - as if it were instead a drama of good versus evil Establishment people and institutions.
As if minor distinctions between greater and lesser evil purposes somehow included the operations of purposive good; as if a mass of competing negations could eventuate in positive values...
Things have come to a point; compromise is no longer validly possible; we are compelled to choose between clear and distinct alternatives of evil and Good.
Either we recognize that Christianity is, and (deep down) always was; a next-worldly and individual religion - i.e. a faith that does not depend on practical obedience to the authority of any specific institution/s - or else we will be following one or another of the many Antichrist phenomena that constitute The System.
Either we are rooted in this-world, in which case we shall be in truth supporters of "The Antichrist; or else we locate our faith and hope in post-mortal resurrected eternal life, in Heaven.
I don't agree with you about Jordan Peterson. I think the attitude of Christians towards him has generally been: he's not a Christian, his ideas must be treated with caution, but he's a healthy development and an ally. I think he has made a huge difference. He practically took us out of the era of the New Atheism single-handedly. Surely there's a danger of becoming so suspicious that we look a gift horse in the mouth (although, come to think of it, the Trojans probably should have done that).
ReplyDeleteOf course, I don't share your views on institutional Christianity-- I think that no institutional Christianity very quickly translates to no Christianity of any kind. So that might account for our different views. People are going back to church because of Jordan Peterson and that matters to me.
And I don't support any of the instruments of global totalitarianism you mention, although I think the foreign war is a terrible mistake by an otherwise laudable administration.
@Mal - It rather sounds like you have not been keeping up with what has happened with JP over the past few years, or I don't think you could argue thus.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you don't seem to have engaged with the definition or meaning of an Antichrist phenomenon. The point of Antichrist is that the essence becomes vital, and surface appearances are deceptions.
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As for Christianity and churches - it seems already and increasingly obvious that what used to work and be good - just is not any more.
It seems quite clear to me, that every single modern Western Christian to claims to be *primarily* obedient to any church, is - as a fact - personally choosing whom to obey in general and many specific ways. And this choosing is compelled and unavoidable by the nature of society and the churches.
This is a qualitatively different situation from how things used to be. And once choice is unavoidable, then it goes all the way down from first assumptions, to observations, to interpretations, to facts.