It is striking (to me) how the ideal values of worship and obedient service have declined to feebleness - or else to a legalism of worship and obedient service that disguises a pleasure-seeking/ fear-motivated loyal conformity to societal power.
Worship-of and obedience-to God are the Old Testament ideal that permeate much of the Bible; including much of the New Testament such as the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
And this was (in most stable and effective Christian societies) transferred to a monarch (whether temporal and/or spiritual - or both) who would himself be motivated by the same ideal.
If I think back about thirty and plus years; this broad framework of W and O was still, sometimes and somewhat but in a valued way, working for me - although on in rather specific times and places and occasions.
What characterized such a situation was a sense of magical enchantment - a positive connection to past, place, instituion, and others present.
But it was already clear that this ideal had not just lost its appeal to most people, most of the time; who were simply bored by such things.
And there was indeed a reaction against it; such that an atmosphere of scornful mockery and embarrassment was becoming dominant whenever worship and obedient service was apparent or advocated - or against those who were more that way inclined.
Also; those who most vehemently advocated that worship and obedience was a good, or essential, basis for the Good Life; were nearly-always being dishonest - they were just using this value-system for their own (and often sordid) self-gratification and benefit.
Of course this decline and inversion is in some (important and valuable) ways a subtraction from life. This is why people like me fought against it.
Yet it is also a fact of life that needs to be acknowledged; as is the requirement that something is needed to replace it as a source of motivation and enchantment -- if not of social cohesion...
Because it seems increasingly clear that appeals to (or enforcement of) social cohesion nowadays is rooted in negative and evil purposes - for instance when prepping nations and institutions for pursuit of an evil war, or an evil strategy
In other words appeals to (de facto) worship and obedience, whether in religion or in secular life - the seeking of increased energy and motivation for societal groupings - is used for the purposes of Lawful Evil.
This seem inevitable when the people involved have themselves and en masse rejected the reality of the Christian God and divine creation.
How can people be corralled into pursuing a truly Good purpose, when they deny the very reality of Good purpose in the universe?
And yet and yet... we must have something.
If not worship and obedience then... something else: because the alternative is despair.
And then either an obedience based on mere coping and survivalism (chosen slavery), or else here-and-now selfishness and indifference to consequences (psychopathy).
Surely this is an unavoidable task for everyone?
And a task where objective external assistance from a societal source cannot be expected - and where whatever "answer" we may find will inevitably be partial, temporary, and perhaps private and personal?
For me, vital clues are the insight that God most desires of us is Not worship and obedience; but Instead a chosen, committed, and loving "friendship" type of relationship; analogous to that which forms the basis of a shared and harmonious, purposive living; and (sometimes, temporarily, and imaginably) characterizes the best of family life and marriage.
However, the reassurance we have as Christians is that whatever we actually achieve is less important than knowing what we most need.
Sincerely-attempting not successfully-accomplishing our ideals, is actually the basis of good-living now, and salvation to come.
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