The problem of self-justifying ethical systems

It is a matter of frequent observation that during the era of modernity - i.e. for the past several hundred years - that there has been a continual pressure to change ("reform") generally-applicable religious moral systems in ways that conform to a need for people to justify their own personal and specific desires and pleasures.

Most often the impulse is sexual. 

I could not count the number of twentieth century political figures, intellectuals, and authors; whose anti-Christian atheism has been (more or less explicitly) motivated by their desire to have systemic-justification for their own sexual desires. 

(The same applies to other, non-sexual, preferences. It is quite normal and unremarked, for people to argue from their own preferences to the conclusion that everybody and everything be organized-around their gratification. But sex and sexuality is the commonest and most obvious example.)

At first this was a desire for extra-marital sex, then for (a lot of) promiscuous sex, later for same sex relationship, then for changing sex and all the rest of it. But whatever the personal desire happened to be in an individual - this was linked to a general demand that social/ civilizational ethical codes and moral values be altered to endorse it positively. 

This kind of systemic self-justifying morality is so "normal" in our era, that it seems (somehow) admirable to the modern mind (as well as supposedly inevitable) that people will advocate and propagandize to encourage society to allow/ encourage/ subsidize their personal sexual aspirations. 

This powerful desire for societal - indeed civilizational- ethical systems to permit/ approve/ enforce one's personal sexual (or other) preferences has become the almost unquestioned basis for a good deal of organized radical politics for many decades. 

And yet; such an attitude is both very unusual in world historical terms. 

It is also, and  would have thought very obviously, an incoherent and unsustainable way of developing social ethical frameworks! 

In the past it seems to have been normal for those who devised societal ethical systems to construct them on the basis of what they supposed to be "the general good" - albeit that the "general" was typically restrictively defined, to almost entirely the ruling class, priestly class, or whoever had greatest influence on societal morality. 

Individual desires were (at least among the powerful) accommodated by "hypocrisy" - in other words, those who gratified desires deemed unethical by the general system; nonetheless supported the general system - on the simple basis that: the general morality was best for most of the people (i.e. people who mattered) for most of the time and over the longer run.  

But here-and-now, it is usual and normative for an individual person - but particularly the intellectual class - to reason that because he personally has a particular sexual desire; therefore society ought to be restructured to accommodate and enforce the fulfilment of that desire. 

Personal preference is projected into the demand for social norms to be built-around it. 

This goes with a fanatical hatred of hypocrisy, regarded as The Worst of ethical transgressions - which increasingly permeates literature and the arts from the late 19th century. 

Such that it is now regarded as much better for someone to be openly and explicitly cynical, selfish, even evil - and explicitly to advocate a low standard (or even inverted) morality; than to express belief in the rightness of high moral values, but then fail to achieve them. 

Consequently the anti-hero, a selfish, cynical (but charismatic) villain who does whatever he desires and takes whatever he fancies - is the admired character in modern cultural productions. 

Whereas anyone who espouses high moral standards (higher standards than he personally can achieve) will be portrayed as boring, coercively-authoritarian, coldly cruel - and he invariably gets exposed as a vile hypocrite before the end. 

Such has been the inversional-denouement of most mainstream, popular, and (especially) critically-admired TV, movies and novels for several generations. 

It is a bizarre but stark reality of Western Civilization here-and-now that the primacy of general morality over personal gratification has become so very enfeebled as to be almost ineffectual. 

And instead the dominant societal ethic has become one in which it is explicitly argued that gratification of individual sexual desires (of one sort or another) ought necessarily and always to be the basis for general, societal, ethical systems*. 

However... Does it really need to be pointed-out that maximizing a multitude of selfish short-termist sexual desires is - and surely obviously? - a reliable recipe for social annihilation?  

Self-justifying ethical systems are clearly a blueprint for cumulative moral destruction. 

Yet it is remarkable how seldom that surely-destructive consequences of self-justifying ethical systems have been noticed or acknowledged by the most influential commentators of the past few generations...

On the other hand; sex is very far from being the only example when obviously and necessarily destructive consequences of their moral projects are invisible to mainstream intellectuals!  

Which facts tell me that the the mass of the most prestigious and powerful intellectuals of The West, have been (for a long time, and continuing) actively promoting degenerative social destruction, and are therefore (whether witting or unwitting) allies and servants of the demonic party.

This blind or wilful mass servitude to the agenda against God, Divine Creation and The Good; is something we ought continually to bear in mind when we consume the outputs of officialdom, mass media, news, science, the arts, education - and everywhere else that intellectuals are employed.

Especially whenever we suspect that general moral systems are being pushed on the basis of self-justification. 

Because I think the problem lies with a rather specific moral weakness of intellectuals as a class; which is a burning desire for ethical self-justification - at almost any cost.  

*I am here pointing out the evil of self-justifying ethical systems. But this destructive fallacy would not have arisen to dominate had it altogether lacked moral appeal; had there not been significant and oppressive evils in the previously-existing justifications and implementations of group morality - sufficient that these could seem intolerable. 

Such that a return from where-we-now-are to pre-modern morality is not just unattainable but undesirable. 

As so often; both alternatives presented by modern culture for our choice are bad; although the pre-modern is certainly the lesser evil. 

My inference is therefore that we are each required to discover a third - and genuinely good - alternative; and I observe that society does not offer us any genuine alternative ready-made. 

Therefore; moral exploration and discernment is something that each must do for himself. 

Why the biggest Western civilizational strategies have Zero validity? A multi-level explanation

It is an interesting aspect of the most recent giga-dollar projects, schemes, and strategies (characteristic, especially, of Western civilization in its end-stage) - that they consist almost entirely of coloured lights, smoke and mirrors, vapour and blank-assertion. 

Among currently active projects of colossal size, scope and expense; there is the climate scam, the birdemic/peck scam, the antiracism scam, the AI scam, and the war-everywhere scam... 

These all share:

1. An absence of mass and grass-roots origins or support. Such projects are imposed top-down, multi-nationally. By simultaneously coordinating the many functional specializations, and integrated goals and bureaucratic-media methods, of the global totalitarian system. 

2. An absence of coherent reality in terms of need. Ends and means are alike invisible to personal experience. The rationale for these projects is wholly manufactured, and disseminated by "research" and mass media propaganda. 

3. An absence of rational credibility for the effectiveness of the vast schemes of "intervention". 

No demand, no coherence - no genuine need, no potential effectiveness...

There must be some reason why nothing-burgher projects are consistently chosen, in preference to schemes addressing real needs by valid measures?

In fact there are many reasons and at many levels by which to understand why strategy is rooted-in and aimed-at Nothing, rather than... something.

At the deepest (spiritual evil) level it seems obvious that to organize the world on the basis of nothing, fits with the nihilistic - anti divine creation - stance of the demonic motivation. Insofar as creation is subverted by incoherence and lies; the anti-God alliance is winning. 

At the level of the most powerful human leadership class; a strategy based on nothing, is - once established and launched - impossible to refute. Nothingness cannot be critiqued on the basis of either data or individual human experiences. 

At the level of the puppet-leadership class - those heading the nations, major corporations and most significant institutions - the only requirement is that strategies be backed-up by the largest possible and longest sustainable infusions of money and other resources; so that multiple forms of (mostly-legal) corruption can redirect benefits to their pockets. 

And when the entire project is phony, then such vampirism is less noticeable and less likely to be suppressed than would be the case if there was a real problem being addressed by a potentially valid solution. 

(Consider CO2 climate strategies or the Birdemic-Peck... When the whole vast theoretical scheme is shaped from nothing and lies, then nobody really expects anything to work - and they wouldn't know if it did.) 

In consequence; nihilistic indifference prevails; and nothing is done to prevent, limit, or punish the overwhelming incidence of tyrannical self-enrichment, expedient policy contradictions, and obscenely flagrant hypocrisy,   

At the level of senior and mid-level bureaucrats/ managers/ intellectuals - these types are indifferent to content, and wholly focused on proximate matters such as careers and status. They will willingly say and do anything required of them by their bureaucratic superiors - so long as this aligns with incentives; and will eagerly manufacture the necessary rationale or obfuscate the obvious: on demand.

At the level below the middle-managerial-myrmidons of evil - it does not matter what the masses think about these projects. The schemes are done-to such people; whose only job is to do the needful stuff and provide the necessities of living. The masses are the despised host; whose existence merely enables the thriving of an extractive parasitic superstructure.      

In sum, there are many reasons, from up-front and proximate to long-term and ultimate; why it suits the totalitarian system to prefer ruling the world on the basis of nothing, rather than something. 

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" - Satan's favourite slogan. And why there are so many Litmus Test fails

Every time the demon-serving Establishment come up with a new Litmus Test for The West, there are a lot of new fails that follow a standard pattern of self-justification by a this-worldly-expedient, materialist, Satanic trope of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". 

We saw it with the Birdemic: the lockdowns, social distancing, masking, pecking policies - were seen as backed by the entirety of the Establishment, therefore irresistible in this-world, inevitable here-and-now...

And the inference was drawn that since these seemed inevitable; "therefore" on "pragmatic" grounds we "might as well" accept these policies...

Argument was apparently pointless "therefore" we should make the best of things and go-along with them without (probably) self-harming argument or fuss...

So (in the end) we might-as-well approve these policies, and make the best of the situation for ourselves - since there was "nothing we could do about it" in practice.  

If we leave aside the arguments about probabilities and practicalities - what is truly inevitable; and also leave aside the question of lack of courage, and merely making excuses for cowardice...

Then we can focus on the deep issue at stake for Christians; which is that by focusing on this-world, "effectiveness", and pragmatism in the here-and-now - they have ended-up supporting the wrong side. 

They have switched sides in the spiritual war: they have taken the side of purposive evil - they have become advocates on behalf of Satan's strategies*.  

This happened again in relation to the self-styled "AI" that was suddenly (at the end of 2022) world policy, top-down implemented, and emanating from the Establishment institutions of global totalitarian 

This is a Litmus test issue that has (so far, apparently) been failed by some of those who had passed previous Litmus Tests including the Birdemic-Peck and the Fire-Nation War; who now engage-with, explore, and advertise what they say are the possibilities of AI for "Good": for spiritual and/or Christian purposes...

This superficially seems bizarre - since the evil nature of AI ought to be obvious from its provenance (i.e. who developed and is pushing it), and the focus and nature and stated goals of propaganda in its favour. 

Yet the usual pattern of spiritual corruption is evident - and with same-old usual "can't beat 'em. join 'em" justifications.  

The root of this repeated pattern of failed discernment; Christian apostasy; and changing sides from God to anti-God, from Christ to Antichrist in the spiritual war of this world - is failure to understand and live by the fact that the kingdom of Jesus Christ really and truly is Not of this world.  

What this means (or should mean) is the practicalities and probabilities of this world should mean Nothing when it comes to discerning Good from evil, and choosing our sides. 

Ultimately; who cares what you or I feel about what is and is not possible in particular circumstances? Who cares whether we are courageous or cowardly. 

(Jesus came to save sinners - and cowards certainly are that - but it does not matter to salvation.)  

The point is that salvation is not about what is practical or possible in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and neither does it depend on exceptional personal qualities. 

But salvation does depend on wanting what is good, on wanting salvation - which is everlasting resurrected life in a heaven that is wholly good, and which excludes all evil.

Salvation does depend on knowing and choosing The Right Side. 

Therefore, when we fail a Litmus Test and as a result end-up by innerly supporting the side of evil; then we have made an actual choice against salvation - and this inner decision is typically very evident from the perspective of those who have made the choice for salvation. 

People start-out by trying to calculate this-world expediency; and end-up by picking their spiritual alignment on that basis. 

The Litmus Test fail has actually merely unveiled an un-Christian mind-set. 

It does not matter what are the (real or guessed) worldly probabilities and practicalities - if we are choosing our spiritual alignment on a this-worldly basis, then we are behaving un-Christianly. 

What we should do is clear, simple, and within the capacity of everybody in all possible circumstances. 

(Jesus opened an achievable path to salvation for everyone.)  

We should discern Good from evil - which in the case of Litmus tests is easy - as easy as such discernments ever have been. 

(Evil here-and-now is as obvious as evil ever gets.) 

Then by inward act; we choose the side of Good, recognize and reject the side of evil. 

That's it, that is all! - yet little as it seems; it's too much for most people to do. And that is because their eyes and minds and aspirations are overwhelmingly and ultimately fixed on this world, and not the next. 

 +++

 *NOTE: It has always seemed clear to me that advocating sin is much worse than practising sin. This, because we cannot help but be sinners - that is, unaligned with divine creation - and almost all the time. While to act as an advocate for some sin is voluntary and purposive. 

(This also entails that "hypocrisy", in the sense of pretending to be something we are not, or better than we really are, is of itself less-bad than defending and arguing in favour of a sin. The main evil of hypocrisy is, in fact, simple dishonesty.)

How is it that successful, feted, mainstream Establishment people nonetheless regard themselves as "radicals"?

The phenomenon by which people who (perhaps) began life as cynical radicals or supposed-revolutionaries; later become successful and highly rewarded and decorated bureaucrats, managers, executives, politicians, and committee people - yet still regard themselves as radical - has been noticed (and sometimes mocked) for many decades. 

It was first apparent after those who had engaged in activism (demonstrations, sit-ins, etc) as students; later went on to join the Establishment, to gather prestigious jobs and positions, money, power, awards and medals (and, in the UK, titles such as Sir/ Dame/ Lord/ Lady)  - but often maintained their younger styles of self-presentation (hair, clothes, sexual lifestyle and the like); but always trumpeting their self-image as anti-Establishment, radical, leftist, altruistic, engaged etc. 

This is now so normal and near-universal as to be expected and largely unremarked. 

It is now so usual for Heads of Corporations, Professors and Presidents, doctors, lawyers, teachers, executives and managers express themselves as radical and leftist - that this has become mandatory and monitored; part of job applications and promotion procedures, and compulsory training...

Anyone who is not explicitly radical and anti-Establishment is indeed intentionally excluded from positions of high status, fame, power and wealth. 

As I said, when this is noticed it is usually to mock, or else to point-out the hypocrisy. 

Yet this phenomenon is, in truth, quite extraordinary and historically unprecedented; therefore we are dealing with a fundamental and significant phenomenon which demands a structural explanation.

To be clear: in the past Establishment people supported the Establishment. 

It is very strange indeed that in The West, now and for many decades Establishment people desire - and are indeed required - to subvert, destroy, and invert the Establishment (starting always with whatever is most good, or most functional, about the Establishment)!

This at first seems like a paradox or contradiction, for people to be destroying the basis of their own success; but it can be explained quite simply at a motivational level.  

If you imagine that you are a member of an alien civilization, "an alien", who is motivated by resentment against another civilization "the Establishment". 

Then it makes perfect sense for the alien to both do the best for himself here-and-now, within the Establishment, and also to do so in a way that tends to weaken and destroy the Establishment. 

Personal success is achieved by strategic destruction. 

If you regard yourself as an alien to the civilization that is your "host" which you fear and despise, then the best strategic route through life is to behave as a parasite that feeds-off the host. 

Although successful parasites weaken their host, and tend to destroy their own niche, and kill themselves; but if the parasite can evolve faster than the host and has foresight; then each parasite can be continually seeking new niches to exploit. 

For example, a path to success as a manager is to suck the blood from one organization to ones own advantage, then - just before the institution expires - move-on to vampirise another. 

That is precisely how the modern Establishment operates: both subjectively, in terms of their motivations - and also objectively in terms of the way that society has become structured as ruled by a managerial bureaucracy-mass media. 

(This is what lies behind the so-called "long march through the institutions" of the New Left. It was not achieved by tens of millions of middle class people all over the world following the blueprint of an obscure theoretician; but is the natural and inevitable consequence of implementing the inner motivations of the niche-seeking, parasitic post-1960s Establishment.)   

Such an explanation makes perfect sense of the self-image and actions of the Western ruling class. 

So, in what sense are the Western Establishment actual and conscious parasitic aliens - given that we are talking here about a large segment of the population?

My answer is, in the sense that the Establishment are atheist, materialist and hedonic in their fundamental nature and motivations - which means they are opposed to God, Divine Creation and Jesus Christ in the spiritual war of this world. 

In simple terms: by adopting ultimate assumptions about reality that are materialist/ spirit denying, creation-denying, god-rejecting, utilitarian - almost the entirety of the ruling class have joined the Devil's Party, adopted the world-view of demons, and are therefore quite naturally doing the work of Satan.   

The odd, superficially hypocritical and risible, apparently paradoxical, way in which cynical radicals develop into pillars of the Establishment while retaining their self-image and lifestyle as cynical radicals -- is actually a diagnostic symptom of the takeover of the West by those who are affiliated to the powers of purposive evil.  

It is from understanding things in this way that I conclude these are the most evil times in the history of the world. 

Some Romantic Christian "don'ts" about courtship and marriage

I find the "manosphere" - including the "Christian" sub-type - always and increasingly wrong-headed - and indeed harmful. 

So I thought I'd add my two-penn'orth in a way that is intended to be a negative corrective to some of the most blatantly false attitudes and aims. 

(I do not feel it would be right - would indeed be absurd! - for me to offer positive advice of a "what to do" kind; and indeed that would be counter-productive to the desired attitudes and aims.)

This is from a broadly Romantic Christian perspective (implicit in everything that follows) - which means it is rooted in my own intuition and experience for which I take personal responsibility; which implies that I will not "defend" my convictions, nor argue with those who disagree - because public "facts" and "evidence" depend on prior assumptions; and all logic and reason can do is infer the consequences of assumptions. 

One assumption, behind all this, ought not to need stating to Christians - but, of course, does (we are all sinners); and this is that Love is By Far the most important thing in marriage; as it is in this mortal life and in Heaven. 

(And Love is dyadic - as I have recently tried to explain.) 

If Love is not the underpinning of marriage, then we will be dealing with a public institution; and that means - in The West, now - marriage will be subject to a System that is evil overall and by intent. 

(Context: There are no guarantees in this mortal life; and your life is probably not "about" what you currently suppose it is about. We live in a divine creation - therefore (over the timescale of mortality - which is seldom in the immediate short-term) probabilities are not relevant to those fundamental matters crucial to the real purpose of your life; I mean, concerning matters where God would be expected to "intervene". In short; God will make happen what needs to happen.) 

Courtship begins with adolescence, and - as of this time and place - we all start-out from an adolescence characterized by intense self-consciousness and alienated consciousness: a situation of bad faith, hypocrisy and fantasy. 

We are hyper-aware of our-selves - but that "self" is compounded largely of fantasy (what we think we would like to be, what we want other people to be like). It is very seldom our real or true "primal self" indeed it is often an opposition or even inversion of that real self. 

We need to learn from this original situation, and work towards something better; which is:

Making our public persona a genuine manifestation of our real self. 

The other characteristic of modern adolescence, is also a consequence of our alienation. This is our conscious experience of being cut-off from spontaneous participation in the consciousness of other people; which means we tend to experience others (including women) in an un-real fashion - rather like characters in a novel, movie or play. 

Too often; because our the standard modern set-up of consciousness and culture: we engage our own fantasies our our-selves, with other-people's own fantasies of themselves (including women); and this must be overcome as much as possible. 

Furthermore; the above leads to the familiar situation in which relationships are reduced to a hypocritical war of attempted manipulations. 

(e.g. We attempt to project our fantasy persona (of what we think we want to be like) to manipulate a woman who may be doing the same: the "winner" is the one who succeeds in fooling the other into accepting the projected persona, and thereby successfully manipulating him or her. Meanwhile, the primal self is cut out-of-the-loop altogether.) 

For a Christian to accept that adolescent and alienated situation and work with it, rather than against it - and to claim this as Christian; is in bad faith - as well as hypocritical, dishonest, psychopathic (i.e objectivizing others and attempting to use them for gratification). 

It also prevents us learning from the experience of our actual situation in this mortal life. 

More explicitly, a marriage built on projection and manipulations is a marriage based on a lie. Furthermore, the lie intrinsic to a projected persona will tend to attract a woman who is attracted to that persona - which is not our real self: any resulting marriage will probably be rooted in dishonesty and deception.  

One very small positive suggestion to round-off: if you succeed in making your public persona a genuine manifestation of your primal self; then a woman (and you are only seeking one woman, a single wife) who is attracted to marry you on that basis (or something near to it, tending towards it) - will be more likely to love you for your real nature. 

If you hope for that marriage to be strong, lasting, loving - a basis in truth is surely for the best?

Note: To any new readers; check-out the guide to would-be commenters in the sidebar. 

Why are the commonest sins neglected? Because they are socially-approved

The spiritual war is fought in public over whether the 'sins' of mainstream, totalitarian leftist-materialism ought to be regarded as primary (e.g. racism, sexism' climate- or peck-denialism...); or whether instead the traditional Christian sins such as adultery, fornication, drunkenness etc.) ought to be the major focus. 

(The mainstream has the advantage in this dispute because they deny that the Christian sins are sinful at all, but rather virtues; while the self-identified Christians usually agree with the totalitarian left that attitudes such as racism, sexism, and -denialism are indeed sins - and will, for example - routinely and officially exclude leaders who disagree with any of the mainstream leftist definitions of 'sin'.) 

My usual list of the most dominating sins of this time and place includes fear, resentment, dishonesty and despair. 

But these are - at best - almost completely neglected by Christian teaching - which continues to focus on more traditional (and spectacular!) sins of a sexual nature; or sins that are (at least officially) still against the law: things like murder, rape, theft etc. 

Such a focus has the unfortunate (but probably deliberate) effect of creating and sustaining "Pharisaism" among Christians, which I would here define as the belief that sin can be avoided - with enough effort. 

Well, yes! Spectacular sins can indeed be avoided. And avoiding these is made much easier by the fact that they are socially dis-approved, and if detected they will be punished. 

But my understanding is that Jesus said this was not only insufficient, but a harmful attitude to life. 

Sin, as such, is so pervasive in the human condition as to be unavoidable; and the belief that sin can be avoided leads to what Jesus termed 'hypocrisy' - that is, to assumptions of purity and authority on the basis of being (at least publicly) able to avoid a few extreme and spectacular sins; while neglecting the far more frequent, but equally in need of repentance, sins of everyday life - such as dishonesty.

Did you murder anyone yesterday? Probably not. And, if you did, you probably repent it. 

But were you dishonest yesterday? Yes You Were! And probably dozens, maybe hundreds of times; especially if you are a manager or a professional or any kind of leader. 

Indeed, most middle class people are dishonest as an essential (and growing) element of their job: they are strategically, calculatedly dishonest for-a-living.  

Did you repent these dishonesties - did you even notice them at all? Even worse - do you regard yourself as a truthful person, and deny that you were and are dishonest? 

Sins such as dishonesty are un-noticed and therefore un-repented because they are socially-approved, and often socially rewarded: 

Back in 2020-2021; we were all socially expected to fear the birdemic - and anyone who did not express sufficient fear was regarded as a danger to public health. 

Resentment is the motivational basis of antiracism, feminism, socialism and many other leftist ideologies (and several actually-left but supposedly-right ideologies such as nationalism); and nowadays such resentment (whether personal, or vicariously expressed 'on behalf of' the 'oppressed') is mandatory in public discourse. 

A manager and a politician is rewarded for dishonesty (e.g. calculated misleading, untruthfulness and indeed lying - if lies effective and deniable); and will be sacked if he refuses. Much the same applies to scientists, doctors, lawyers, church leaders, economists, the police and military... essentially it applies everybody in leadership or 'expert' positions in major social institutions. 

My point here - which I think was also Jesus's point in His teaching - is that we sin all the time, and deliberately - and we have no intention of ceasing to sin when those sins are socially-allowed/ mandatory; because to do so would put us out of a job, and exclude us from human society. 

Fortunately (!); Jesus came to save sinners, and not those (non-existent) persons who are sin-less.  

Jesus asks 'merely' that we acknowledge that we sin all the time, and cannot (indeed we do not wish to) stop sinning: and 'yet' these and we are exactly those who Jesus can and will save... So long as we are prepared to acknowledge and repent the fact.  

How does this fit with salvation? Well, in the Fourth Gospel ("John") the word "sin" is mostly used to mean "death" - that is, death without resurrection, death without salvation. 

Resurrection (i.e. eternal life, instead of death) depends on what we can call repentance, not on ceasing to sin. 

And repentance is necessary to salvation because resurrection requires that we are prepared to acknowledge sin as sin, and leave it behind us before we can proceed to eternal life in Heaven. After all, Heaven would not be Heaven if sin was still present - there can be no sin in Heaven; but we are all sinful, nearly all the time; therefore we must reject All sin before we can be resurrected into Heaven.

Repentance can therefore be thought of as the firm intent to leave-behind all sin (spectacular and unnoticed) when the choice and chance of resurrection comes to us (presumably, after death), and when all such sins shall be brought to our attention*. 

To "follow Jesus" means to repent all our sins. And it is those sins that are socially un-recognized, denied, or rewarded which are far less likely to be repented than the big and obvious sins on which nearly-everybody is agreed.   

*We cannot, of course, recognize all our individual sins during this mortal life - there are too many, and we lack sufficient discernment! But we can avoid falling into the damnation-trap of denying sin, especially when it is brought to our awareness. That way, when we come to the point of decision, we will not be held back from salvation by our habitual, ingrained and calculated unwillingness to let-go of 'the least of' our sins. For instance; someone who has spent forty years 'justifying' his own deliberate dishonesties in the workplace; may find it very difficult to acknowledge that dishonesty Must utterly and forever be repudiated in Heaven. 

What if the absence of "Christian slaves" shows that "slavery" is no longer enforceable? - Guest post from commenter Serhei

Author: Commenter Serhei; aka Arakawa

An optimistic (possibly) thought following to on my prior comment on 'How does the blanket mind-control system work?'. Trying to make sense of the latest 'mind control' post and my ongoing bafflement at the "weakest persecution of all time" in 2021 also being all-too-effective. 

Bruce Charlton has often lamented how modern people seem to have 'lost' the ability to act as 'Christian slaves' i.e. to acquiesce in some policy (because 'forced') while repenting it inwardly. Physical-acquiescence is almost-always paired with subsequent utter spiritual submission. 

A tongue-in-cheek thought came to me that we may be getting the causation entirely-backwards.

Supposing that consciousness has evolved to the extent that people are more-able to choose their state of being and unrelentingly translate their Desires into Reality... it would follow that nowadays a Christian-slave who genuinely does not wish to be a slave, who genuinely-Desires to be free... will almost-always find a way to act on that desire and smash his chains with the cooperation of other Beings that share his desire for freedom. This is unlike past eras where a Christian-slave may be stuck in this suboptimal state for a much longer time. Now, attaining freedom may not be a pleasant process -- but by undergoing moderate or intense hardship the Christian-slave proves that his desire is stronger than mere 'incentives'.

Those who are left-behind in chains are increasingly, not always, but ever-more, those who chose and continue to choose their chains, which makes it seem like physical- and spiritual-submission beget one another. 

This seems, in some ways, like a cruel doctrine ("you are only oppressed because you chose to be"). 

In other ways, it seems like a sign of increased responsibility and power of choice in the modern era. Any coercive-tactic that meets with spiritual-rejection will fail, which is why the recent persecutions are remarkable for their 'voluntary' character, why there is so much emphasis on demanding gestures of obedience, apology, etc., and so much hatred when those gestures are not offered. Why the System feels so much more need for mind-control, and puts more emphasis on totalitarian (we dictate what you may think) rather than authoritarian (we dictate what you may do) ideologies. It is increasingly not possible to enforce measures on people who do not agree to them. Which is why the birdemic measures reversed so rapidly and every authority went looking for a new, not-yet-worn-out fear for people to enslave themselves to.

Perhaps that’s a reason why things have not yet collapsed to-the-extent that they 'ought' to? Plenty of people want to drown-in-destruction, but not enough; the public is still being sold on the idea. It occurs to me that even things like "weather-pattern-change" are sold primarily on the paradoxical idea that people ought to simultaneously hate and consciously wish-for and desire a "weather-pattern-catastrophe" to manifest itself to, I don't know, spite the hypocrisy of civilization or something...

Rather than judging how this may apply to others: 

Makes me wonder what other forms of Ahrimanic obeisance I have been acquiescing to, am still acquiescing to, where there is no real consequence to defiance, where I could just stop... 

***

Note from Bruce G Charlton: 

The above post strikes me as a very important and exciting insight - which is why I asked Serhei if I could publish it as a guest essay. 

If you didn't catch the full impact at first shot; I recommend re-reading and pondering its implications. 

The weight of tradition - our task

These extraordinary times are made the more so by the stunning inability to see what is plain. We are living through the end of a great tradition and long history of Western Civilization; rooted in Greek and Rome, and, for some 1700 years, the Christian church - in its various forms. 

Insofar as this reality is known at all; it is experienced as a weight; and that weight can be felt either as an astonishing (but intimidating!) litany of unsurpassed achievements in human endeavor - or as, just, an oppression. 

On the one hand, such a long and astonishing tradition is stunningly impressive; yet on the other hand it has been overcome. 

Has been... This overcoming of Western Christian Civilization has already happened, and we stand at a point when the implications are being worked-out. Our world has moved from a long phase of collapsing, into its current phase of active destruction. 

Western civilization has-been overcome; yet the ideology that overcame it, which hates that heritage (of Classicism, but even more so of Christianity) does not acknowledge this fact - and indeed, with the right hand, presents itself as both steward and patron of exactly that civilization which, with its left hand, it is destroying as fast as possible.  

If there is a dominant ideological mode by 2022; that mode is untruthfulness, dishonesty, misrepresentation, lies - our world is built from lies, and by lies. 

The spirit of negation has triumphed over the spirit of creation; and (such is this mortal life) negation has the purer and clearer motivation, feels itself the more justified. 

The long history of Western civilization has greatness of creative achievement; and also greatness of horror - its motives always mixed, its triumphs always disputed. (Such is mortal life.)

But the spirit of negation which has, as a matter of fact, brought-down Western civilization, operates from a baseline assumption of absolute purity and coherence of motive; it demands nothing less than absolute perfection - and when it fails to find this, it destroys. 

Such is the ideology of negation - it is able to be and demand purity and perfection exactly because its sanction is destruction. 

The world has changed sides; everybody with power, status, influence is (more-or-less so, but always) of the party of negation*; hence (most of the time) nobody is questioning where this is going, what the destruction is supposed to achieve. 

Recent attempts to describe the goal of the party of destruction - the nature of the world being-aimed-at - are risible, and largely ignored. Nobody asks the ultimate purpose, everybody is engaged in the proximate work of 'clearing the ground' under the (vague) assumption that something not just better but perfect will spontaneously grow to occupy the ruins of The West; will (presumably) grow from the pure seeds of motivation possessed by the destroyers...  

When such 'where?' questions are being-asked; the right hand briefly brings-forward and points-at some goal of the Old West - like science, education, art - and the powers of negation briefly masquerade as steward and patron, guardian and sustainers of all that is good. 

They have, after all, long since taken-over all institutions (bureaucracies, corporations, organizations), all the social functions. Whatever remains of the long tradition of Western Christian Civilization is in their 'care'...

Yet as soon as the discourse moves-on, the directionless work of destruction recommences.

The world now stands-within this ideology of negation. 

Looking outwards from it at the collapsing ruins of tradition; it sees nothing but oppression, hypocrisy, failure. Against such a litany of injustice and disaster, their task is obvious - the necessity of destruction is clear. 

And no matter how much has been destroyed, there is (so far) always more yet to do; the spirits of negation feel that little or no progress has been made, since so much of Western Civilization, of tradition, still stands.

Hence the raging impatience, the urgency that characterizes those on the side of negation!  

So this is the shape of our times. A defeated civilization, the achieved triumph of negation, the zeal of destruction. 

Our choice would seem to be a broken tradition versus nihilism. 

But neither will do. The one is terminally ill and living in a hospice administered by those who would murder it; the other, the mass majority, are destroyers - fuelled by a morality of opposition and inversion. 

Against such a world, each of us can bring the alliance of our-selves with God. 

We can oppose both senility of civilization and the nihilism of negation by taking the side of divine creation, and a providence that works from individual souls rather than from the crumbling sweep of history or the accumulations of negative, oppositional, destructive power.

This can happen only if the base of activity is withdrawn from the arena, and if the mode of operation is lifted above the material. 

Its 'effectiveness', as a life-strategy, depends on our capacity to align with the divine, which depends on our motivation to do so. 

Success (or failure) we must discern and evaluate for our-selves - mindful that this-world is on the one hand 'only' the means to an end; yet on the other hand, so long as we personally remain alive, we have something of potentially eternal value to achieve. 

Since God is the creator - maker of this world, and our loving Father; we need not seek for this personal task:

Life will bring our work to-us. 

Our job (yours, mine) is 'merely' to recognize that task; then to choose well.

*Note - 'The party of negation' is more commonly known as Leftism - but it must be understood that as of 2022 all parties are Leftist; including not just all socialist, liberal, progressive parties, but all centre, moderate, right-wing, libertarian and officially-religious (including 'Christian' church) parties. This because Leftism is rooted in the anti-spiritual/ anti-Christian metaphysics of materialism/ positivism/ scientism and reductionism - which assumptions pervade and dominate the entirety of public discourse. 

The failure of the ethical - a need for the 'cosmic' perspective

For most people 'religion' is about ethics - indeed it is about nothing-but ethics... Ethical principles and rules, ethical behaviour... 

It seems that everybody in the world is obsessed with ethics - governments, bureaucrats, corporate executives, the mass media, doctors, scientists, advertisers, soldiers and the police all speak publicly on ethical issues, and on all issues, in an ethical fashion... endlessly. 

Implicitly, our world is ruled on the basis that The Establishment are ethical authorities - who tell us what is good, and make us do it. 

Plus, of course, priests and pastors - their sermons and lectures are nearly always about ethical matters. 

A Man's attitude to Christianity tends to be a product of pre-existing ethics. 

Plenty of people who endorse Christianity, do so because they believe it validates, encourages and enforces good ethical behaviour. While those who dislike it and want rid of it, do so on  the same qualitative grounds of ethics - but with the difference the dislikers believe Christianity is Bad for ethics: that it purveys false ethics, encourages immorality etc... 

Whatever we approve or disapprove of - it always seems to be argued on ethical grounds. 

It seems that our basic understanding of reality is nowadays ethical! 

I can remember when I was an atheist puzzling over the mismatch between my own ethical focus and the fact that I officially believed in a wholly mechanical and non-ethical universe. I seemed to see these vast, swirling structures of 'ethics' floating around like coloured gas - but without being linked to anything real that was happening!

God was obviously absurd, because how could ethics be built-into The Big Bang?

It seemed that all mankind was living in a delusional system; enmeshed in absorbing and spouting ethical-stuff, 24/7 - and yet (with another part of the mind) knowing that it was all arbitrary, made-up, and without bearing on anything real.  

Mankind had, it seemed, a compulsion to be ethical always and about everything - yet, in an ultimate sense, in a cosmic sense - it was all utterly futile! 

It now strikes me that it has been a colossal civilizational error to try and base our religion, our society, our lives - on ethics. 

An error because if ethics is not really the bottom line, then building structures which rest upon ethics Will Not Work: and experience shows that they don't work! 

Vast, officially-endorsed - but free-floating, un-rooted - ethical 'structures' like the United Nations Universal (!) Declaration of Human Rights - or any other of ever-multiplying 'rights'; are deviously made and used by evil-motivated persons for the manipulation of the masses into new and greater evils.

The expansion and diffusion of ethical discourse has been, In Fact, a major instrument of evil. 

Thus the rise of ethical discourse to colonize all of public (and much of private) life, has been accompanied by a commensurate rise in unprincipled power and short-termist hedonism. The endless ethical discourse apparently serves merely as a smokescreen for hypocrisy and selfishness on a scale which would have been impossible in 'less ethical' times!

Well OK. But If Not, then What? 

If I am saying that we ought Not to put ethics as primary, then What should we instead put as primary? 

I think it ought to be what I sometimes think of as the 'cosmic' perspective... 'Cosmic' being a more exciting way of describing 'metaphysics' - which sounds unutterably dreary to most people!

Our fundamental way of thinking ought to be a matter of imagining and picturing our-selves in a cosmic perspective - where we came from, where we are going; what are the real and eternal things and how do we personally relate to them. 

Of course at first a cosmic perspective will probably fall-into that image we have passively absorbed for popular science - of ourselves as microscopic sparks briefly illuminating an infinitely large, empty, dead universe... 

Well, it is a start! 

And if we stay with it; continue to encourage ourselves to dwell imaginatively in whatever reality we regard as ultimate; and continue to ask ourselves what we really regard as really-real...

Then we may reach a properly 'cosmic' understanding of our-selves, reality and our lives; in time and in eternity. 

And that is a much better basis for things than endless ethics-talk!

Note: The cosmic perspective is also the level at which Jesus Christ's teaching is primarily directed. He was not primarily an ethical teacher, nor was his work an ethical work. Jesus Christ came to enable us to receive eternal resurrected life in heaven; and Jesus's concept of sin was mostly death. Sin was primarily death - not ethics; and Jesus came to save us from death - not immorality. Until we can - this time consciously and by choice - recover that 'cosmic' attitude; it seems that Christ's message and offer will continue to fall on deaf ears; or merely be translated into  the feeble and cowardly 'pseudo-faith' we see dominant among the leadership of all the major 'Christian' churches. 

The genius of Enid Blyton (and her Goodness)

Enid Blyton was on the side of Good, a writer of genius, and (genuinely, not faked) a Great Woman: so of course she has-been and is a prime target for the totalitarian Establishment

Over the years I have written a couple of posts about my admiration for Enid Blyton. 

In 2013 I discussed why it was that the British intellectual classes always failed to perceive Blyton's unmatched quality as a writer for the youngest children. 

Then - a couple of years ago - I amplified and confirmed the aspect that what 'They' really hate, hate, hate about Blyton is that she was effectively and explicitly on the side of Good in her writings: she aimed to be, and was, a Good Influence on children (Good, by Christian standards). 

This, combined with her unmatched popularity, makes Blyton very dangerous to those who have taken the side against God in the spiritual war of this world. 

I am also very interested in Enid Blyton the woman, since she was a true genius (as defined in my Genius Famine book). 

Most real women geniuses are literary, and usually worked in prose - and in literature Women have had a highly significant effect; although no woman has matched the supreme heights of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe. 

Thus Jane Austen and George Eliot are among the most important of novelists; and modern children's literature (a very significant genre) was mostly a product of women like Frances Hodgson Burnett and Edith Nesbit. This continues with JK Rowling. 

However, it is a fact that women geniuses are often, even more often than men geniuses, subject to 'mental pathology' - neuroticism, instability, self-destructiveness (including sexually). 

And Enid Blyton was - despite her almost superhuman efficiency as a writer, or perhaps related to it - was no exception. Her two marriages and divorce were apparently driven by a calculated selfishness; while a short period of (apparent) mid-life sexual promiscuity had a reckless and self-destructive quality.  

This makes Blyton what modern leftists mean by 'a hypocrite'; in other words, her moral values were higher than her own behaviour. Also she kept this information out of public knowledge - where, if known, it would surely have been harmful to her reputation and sales. 

And there was of course a further 'hypocrisy' to the extent that Blyton presented herself as dedicated mother; when being the most prolific published author ever, and running a business empire, and sustaining contact with a huge fan base - naturally meant that the time spent on mothering was inevitably considerably sub-optimal. 

But - thanks to Jesus Christ - we are not judged by our sinful behavior but by our choices: by 'what side we take' in the spiritual war between God and Satan. And Blyton was solidly On God's Side - which is exactly why she is so hated by the left.  

If Enid Blyton had been a subversive writer, whose public persona and work encouraged immorality; then she would have been a poster girl for the left. If she had flaunted her bad behaviour and justified it by saying it was Good - she would have been admired and praised. 

If, instead of promoting truth-telling, beauty and honesty - Blyton's writings had subtly advocated sly-selfishness, under-age promiscuity, divorce and destruction - she would have been the darling of the intellectuals - and would have been taught in colleges, featured on bank-notes and stamps, and held-up as an exemplary Strong and Successful Woman (which she certainly was). 

So Enid Blyton has always been attacked, denigrated, bowdlerized and suppressed by the mainstream Left and this continues; while her enduring fame and influence (despite this) is almost wholly a bottom-up phenomenon: driven by generations and multitudes of young children who love reading her; and of ordinary parents who are glad that they do!  

Chaos, Creation, Entropy, Evil

Things began with chaos, among-which were Beings. Beings are self-sustaining - from Beings come the energies that shape chaos into creation. 

As soon as creation had begun, there was entropy - which is the tendency for the created to revert back to chaos. 

In this current stage of creation (which we also inhabit) creation must always be-overcoming entropy; by the self-sustaining energies of Beings. 

The reversion of creation to entropy releases 'energy'.

Therefore evil Beings, those who hate God and creation, encourage the reversion of creation to chaos. They do this partly in order to destroy creation, and partly to use the released 'energy' for their own purposes. 

Luciferic-evil Beings reduce creation intending to feed-upon the released energies. 

Luciferic evil is thus parasitic in nature - a Luciferically evil Being will feed-upon the energies of creation, as he destroys it.

 

Ahrimanic-evil Beings destroy creation by opposing chaos with 'order'. 

Creation becomes confined within The Global Bureaucracy, The System, The Matrix: the Black Iron Prison (BIP). 

Dynamic self-sustaining creation is held in stasis - thus the energies of creative life are squeezed out from the imprisoned Beings. 

After taking a tithe for vampiric (Luciferic) self-reward; these energies are used to maintain, extend and reinforce the prison: to extend the BIP globally, to include all Men; and to eliminate all perception and awareness of any-thing at all beyond the prison.

(Actually not all Men; because Ahrimanic evil entails a sharp distinction between prison inmates and warders; between the Beings who are-processed and the Beings who-do-the-processing - between Us and Them.) 

The death-factory is constructed and fueled by the energies released from its destruction of life. Ahrimanic evil is thus an entropy-factory, a processing plant; it takes living creation and reduces it to dead matter: creation to chaos. 

Ultimately, Ahrimanic evil turns creation against itself; uses life to crush life. 

Sorathic Beings are saboteurs - they were supposed to be warders sustaining the BIP, but they have begun smashing the buildings, wrecking the machines, and torturing the inmates. 

Sorathaic Beings are defectors from the Ahrimanic plan - because they have come to regard the Ahriminic factory as too slow, too dull, too unrewarding, too conjectural in effect. They want to destroy creation Now, directly, indiscriminately. 

Sorathic Beings perceive the contradiction of creating a Black Iron Prison as a means to destroy creation - when the base motivation of evil is to destroy all of creation (including BIPs). Pure evil cannot postpone universal destruction when it can be started already. 

Thus, Sorathic Beings will burn the death factory, along with its inmates and the warders; will return every-thing to chaos without attempting to harness or use the energies for any purpose. 

The motivation is not pleasure (like the Luciferics), nor mass effectiveness (like the Ahrimanic) - but a spite-driven, burning-zeal for pure destruction of all - here and now. 

Sorathic evil is born of a distrust of complex, long-term plans and schemes, a revulsion against the hypocrisy and pretense of the Ahrimanic strategy; which poses as 'good' and continues to create, albeit justified in order to destroy.

Sorathic evil emerges and waxes when the Ahrimanic scheme is nearing completion - when it comes to be believed that There is Only the BIP - there is only a whole world of evil, inescapable, with no alternative. 

Then evil has only evil as a target - so the greater evil turns-against and consumes the lesser.

 

Most of the most-talented people are nowadays on the side of evil: We should to be able to acknowledge the fact

There are probably no world-historical geniuses nowadays - for several decades the last have been dying-out; even more minor geniuses are very rare and (mostly) obscure. 

This means that the currently most able people in the world are not geniuses, not primarily creative. 

They are not, that is, making genuinely new things from their divine self, which requires the genius to be aligned with divine creation (at least during the creative process). 

The most able modern people - especially the famous - are thus only secondarily creative; which means they are simulating creation: practicing what I have termed 'openness'-driven creation which is a kind of fake creativity. 

That is, they invent by extrapolation, interpolation, inversion and novel combinations of already-existing elements; deploying their and intelligence, quick wits and memory, upon the rich (and via computers) readily-accessible histories of past attainment. 

Therefore, the most able and apparently creative modern people are nearly all on the side of evil; simply because evil dominates the world and can ensure that able people who promote their anti-God agenda are placed in the best positions to do so; and that their work is maximally praised and promoted. 

(At the same time, the remnants of real genius are suppressed by both positively-excluding and negatively other-favouring policies.)

We should therefore expect that the most intelligent, talented, able and "creative" people (that we have ever heard-of, i.e. that have fame, power and influence bestowed upon them) are on the side of evil; and that they will therefore (sooner or later, incrementally) be drawn-into expressing and propagating evil ideas, and doing evil deeds.

And, sooner or later, these people will fall out of favour with their evil masters (which happens all the time due to the endemic inter-factional and inter-personal infighting in the nature of the demonic), so their evil deeds will be exposed in the usual hypocritical, fake-moralizing, deliberately-dishonest way of the mass media and the bureaucracies.   

When this happens (and it is happening on a weekly basis) it would not be honest to pretend that these very able and "creative" people are not among the most able and creative - because they nearly-always are. They are both genuinely-accomplished and genuinely-nasty. 

We need to be able to hold in the mind, simultaneously, that a person may be famously-talented and also evil. Because that is not unusual - but common, normal, expected...

I have personally known plenty such people - they really-are talented, and they really-are evil-aligned. 

Some very-talented folk are nice and kind and evil; but others are nasty and cruel and evil - and that is the direction in which the evil-aligned tend to move (albeit disguised by hypocrisy, concealed by habitual dishonesty, and cloaked by The System).

To repeat the point: such people are not, nowadays, geniuses - or, at least, they are not currently geniuses - even if they once were; since genius is destroyed by lies. But they remain very talented.

If, then, I was to argue or proclaim that these were not talented people because they are evil, then I would be lying (or incompetent to judge) - and would myself be falling into sin and compounding the evil. 

Most of the talented are evil even though most of the evil are untalented.  

So, we had better get used to it! 

People whose work we once greatly enjoyed, because it really was very good work; either always-were evil, or have joined the side of evil; and consequently became (bit by bit - or in a sudden collapse) seduced to a lifestyle of evil. 

Such is the nature of this world. 

Repenting our compelled obedience to Caesar (with reference to the church closures)

In this Global Totalitarian society; Caesar is becoming more powerful - and less escapable - by the day. 

Given that most people are not heroes (and never will be), it is reasonable to assume first that Caesar can, and will, compel our obedience to his dictates; and second that many of these dictates will be evil in both motivation and effect. 

What then should a (serious) Christian do, in this world where he stands alone against a vast monopoly of coercion - when, almost certainly, his church has sumitted enthusiastically to Caesar's yoke, and now lumbers towards hell? 

The answer is that we must repent; but in repenting we must be clear about the spiritual nature of repentance. We must distinguish between our actions - which can be, and are, compelled; and our spiritual discernment - which always chooses.

We may be, we actually are, compelled to obey evil laws; but we can choose to know their evil, can choose to repent our obedience to them - even as we know this state of sinning will continue. 

 

Most Christians leaders will, if pressed, advocate 'rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's'; but they are, in truth, advocating rendering unto Caesar that which is God's - with the excuse that they have No Alternative but to comply. 

What this actually means is that the (threatened) cost of non-compliance is too high for them to bear, or else they think the cost of disobedience is too high, and not worth paying. 

In sum - they are not heroes of faith. But then again - who is? But few ever, and fewer than ever now. The question is how to live in accordance with God's creation when one is Not a hero of faith.

What Christian leaders should (but do not) acknowledge, is that they have-been and are-being compelled to sin; and that sin requires repentance (and, I would add, the public sin of public figures requires public repentance). 

What they typically fail to acknowledge is that Caesar is - nowadays - on the side of Satan. That is  something they (and we) should be clear about from the start. However it may have been in Roman times; here and now, Caesar is in the business of propaganda for, and enforcement of, inverted values. Caesar serves Satan, not God.

 

Take the example of church closures during the birdemic. Any serious Christian should know by now (and indeed long since) that the birdemic is a Big Lie; and that this Big Lie is being used as a fake rationale for blocking, closing, and (ultimately) destroying all Chrstian churches. 

At this stage, anyone who cannot perceive this has de facto made a choice to join-with the Lie, and affiliate with the side of Satan and his agents. 

But let us say that a Christian leader is also a serious Christian. Unless he is a rare hero, he cannot (and most importantly he will not) resist the evil government regulations enforced upon him. This means that he has been compelled to sin. 

Very well, but this is not of itself a problem for the Christian: Jesus explicitly came to save sinners - those who sin. But this entails that the Pastor or Priest must acknowledge that by obeying Caesar - e.g by closing his church, ceasing to offer the sacraments, and ceasing his personal ministry - he is In Fact sinning. 

 

Sin must be repented - that is uncontroversial. Yet at the same time, Caesar will (in practice) nearly always be obeyed - because very few are heroes of faith. 

So this Christian pastor/ priest is in the position - common enough, indeed universal - and indeed a frequent complaint of the Apostle Paul - that he recognises sin, wants Not to sin, but continues to sin. Indeed, by collaborating with Caesar, he is actively enforcing sin.

That is, the priest/ pastor knows his church should be allowed to remain fully open and fully operative, and should prioritise the spirit above (actually fake) health issues; but in practice he obeys Caesar's rules - and closes the church and ceases to fulfil his pastoral duties. 

He knows sin, repents sin, continues to sin...

Yet surely this is just the human condition? And this is exactly what Jesus takes-account of. Jesus recognises that perfection is impossible, that we will sin, that we will continue to sin; but if we recognise our sin and continue to love and follow* Jesus - then salvation will be ours. 

In this world of 2020, we need to be much clearer about the fact that we will all, in many ways, be compelled to obey Caesar, and by this obedience we will be compelled to sin. We should not even pretend that we 'will do better in future' and will strive to 'cease sinning' because this is not true. 

We will not do better, nor will we strive to do better; instead we will carry on sinning just as we do now. However, we acknowledge and repent this.

 

What then? Well first we must repent. And a public sin - such as closing a church - ought publicly to be repented; the sin needs to be named, acknowledged, specified - else the flock are being taught a false doctrine; are being taught that sin is good. 

And this needs to be done with full recognition that the recognised sin will continue to be done. There should be no false consolation that 'in future' we are going to become heroes of faith. We aren't.

 

For instance. The priest or pastor stands up to address the congregation and informs them that he is closing the church next week; ceasing to offer Holy Communion, baptism and funeral rites; and he will not visit is flock**. 

Or, he says that - for the church to remain open; congregants must stand far apart and avoid each other, cover their faces, and refrain from human contact of all kinds. 

(We will all treat each other as the Pharisees treated lepers, and ourselves behave as lepers were required to: in future we will regard each other primarily as disease vectors; only secondarily as human persons with human needs.) 

Then the priest/ pastor must state clearly that these are evil changes, which he knows as evil and rejects; that he repents his continuing and future compliance with these evil policies - and he asks God's forgiveness for these sins. 

(He may go on to clarify that these measures are intended to drive men apart and to destroy the churches. He may advise his flock how best to cope alone, and essentially abandoned by the churches.)

But in the end the priest or pastor must be clear that he personally is sinning by his compliance with regulations, yet that he intends to continue compliance; and must repent this sinning. 

This kind of repentance ought to be almost a routine matter for all serious Christians, because this kind of sinning is routine. (Maybe that 'routine' is the trouble?) But modern secular leftist pseudo-ethics has ensured that any explicit failure to live by one's explicit belief will almost certainly be termed 'hypocrisy' (when it is, in reality, almost the opposite). 

Such behaviour may also be called cowardice, and in a sense that is a just accusation; but confessed and repented cowardice is alright. Probably nearly everybody is 'a coward', to a significant degree; especially when alone and confronted by the overwhelming powers of the Global Caesar of 2020. 

(Like all sins, cowardice is only lethal to salvation when denied. A confessed coward, one who fully acknowledges that cowardice is indeed a sin, is acceptable to God.) 

 

A priest or pastor who closes his church in obedience to Caesar's latest diktat, and for fear of the consequences of disobedience, needs to make all of this clear; needs (in some public way - whether at the pulpit, in the parish magazine, or face to face with individuals) to make clear that he is sinning; that he repents his sin, but nonetheless will continue to obey Caesar.

And we are all in exactly the same situation - to a greater or lesser extent. We all do obey unjust and evil-motivated regulations; therefore we all need to repent our continued wrong-doing, and acknowledge that we will continue to do wrong. 

(Just because an evil is universal and a matter of routine, does not prevent it being a sin. We all choose to comply with a routine - we have all chosen to sin.)

 

When we are compelled to live by lies, we must confess these lies. We must Not propagandise for these lies, must not excuse the lies, must not pretend that the lies are motivated by love of God. 

Why is it so difficult to say this? So difficult to say that we have bent the knee to Caesar, and we will in fact continue to do so; but that we know we do wrong, and we do repent and affirm our affiliation to God, and to the Good? 

Only thus can we render to God what is God's.   

*Note: 'Following' Jesus does not mean being like him - because that would be impossible, it would entail never sinning; and we do sin and cannot stop sinning. Following Jesus means something much more literal - as described in the Good Shepherd parable, and reinforced throughout the Fourth Gospel. Following Jesus is to love and trust the Good Shepherd to lead us through the portal of death to the joy of resurrected life eternal. We must follow where he leads. 

**Note added later: In general, the repentance should occur wherever and whenever the information about closures etc. is provided: whether 'live' in a service, or whether on church noticeboards, web pages, social media etc. An announcement of compliance with Caesar's evil rules is therefore accompanied by a statement that these are evil, and a statement of repentance for complying. The specific reasons for complying are not really significant, in a public forum at any rate.  

 

Motivation is (almost) everything

One of the great teachings of Jesus was that motivation counts for more than action. The Pharisee who did everything right was a vile sinner unless his behaviour was properly-motivated; the sinfully-behaving tax-collector/ collaborator might be well-motivated. The affectation of virtue was actually worse (according to Jesus's condemnation) than bad behaviour, confessed.

Salvation is by repentance, which is about motivation - about what we acknowledge to be Good and True: what we try to do. Salvation is not about what we succeed in doing...

So with the birdemic-response-crisis. What we currently do in and with our lives is less under-our-control than it has been for several generations. The contrast with what motivates us becomes ever-starker.


To live well is primarily about what motivates us in that living. Secondarily it is about our discernment concerning the motivation of others - which is a matter of judgement, of intuitive knowing (and not a matter of 'evidence'). As social beings, our discernment is an essential part of living: there can be no genuine neutrality or agnosticism in inferring motivation; any more than they can be concerning the reality of God.

Despite the cant about 'not being judgemental' (often parroted by self-styled Christians) the need for discerning the motivations of others is necessary and good, as well as unavoidable. We therefore need to discern whether the current situation has Godly-motivations, or evil. Has the totalitarian-takeover been done from altruism, or from the desire for power... We must each decide - an affected refusal to decide is, in fact, a decision.

And then, our own motivations - in this situation where we find-ourselves - need to be well-motivated. That is, to be well motivated, we each need to be motivated in alignment with God's creation and God's hopes and wishes (which also we must discern).  


There are innumerable official and media pressures to do this or that, to be seen to do this or that - and then there are own motivations for compliance or rebellion with these rules.

It matters less whether a person complies or rebels than that they are honest (with themselves) about this motivation.  One who complies due to cowardice, but who acknowledges and repent this; is a better person than one who rebels for short-termist, selfish reasons - and vice versa.

The Biblical hypocrite (and hypocrisy is a sin) is one who pretends Godly motivations for that which is done for other reasons - status, power, wealth, expedience... This is essentially identical with 'virtue-signalling' - except that the virtue-signalling hypocrite is typically advertising his support of a inverted-good=sinful behaviour or policy.


Bringing this together; I regard our current situation as arising due to evil motivations. I can see that I and other people are reacting in various ways - and some behaviours are better some worse. But I need to remind myself that it is the motivations behind these reactions that matters, in the spiritual sense that matters ultimately.

Only when our response is motivated towards God and aligned with God, and when this comes from-within from our agency - and is consciously chosen, can the response be spiritually valuable.

All the rest is just at the level of people passively responding to external pressures in specific situations; acting passively according to upbringing, social conditioning and innate disposition. Spiritually, this is equivalent to behaving like the automatic output of a computer program.

Because the sitation has been created with evil motivations - to behave passively is to serve evil.


(And this is why it is essential that we discern the motivations of those who rule, inform and advise us: politicans, officials, lawyers, 'scientists', doctors... and the mass media.)

A Text for our Time - "He that is not with me is against me" - William Wildblood explains

There are many ideas put forward as solutions to the crisis of the modern world (not Covid 19, that's just an element, albeit an important one, of something much larger), political, ideological, even spiritual of sundry sorts. But they all lack overall coherence. However, there is something that stands above them all which reconciles any good there might be in them at a higher level without including the dross, illusion and bad qualities they all contain without this thing. It can be summed up in a sentence.

That sentence is Matthew 12:30. "He that is not with me is against me". This pithy injunction means if you are not actively for the truth of Christ, you are against it. Not passively against it, actively so. According to this saying, there is no middle ground. If you are not for Christ, you oppose him. Neutrality is not an option. 

 This might seem unreasonable. Why, if you don't accept Christ, does that mean you are the enemy of Christ? Why can you not be a good, upstanding, morally decent person without acknowledging Christ? 

You can't because Christ is the embodiment of truth and if you don't recognise that then you don't recognise truth in which case you will be on the outside of truth, working against it whether that be in a greater or lesser sense. Christ is like magnetic north. If the lodestone of your being does not point to him then it is broken. You are broken. Your soul is sick.

Read the whole thing...

William goes on to say that, although this sounds harsh, it is true. It is indeed a harsh text; and harshness is appropriate. Because life is for learning from our experiences - looking towards life everlasting. Life is not meant to be unrelieved niceness. 

This applies with especial force when our society is set on a determined course to be ever-more value-inverted, shallow, smug, hedonistic and cowardly than the low-water-mark we have already achieved. And now we - as a society - are about to experience the consequences of generations of dishonesty, evasion and hypocrisy.

Our coming challenge is to meet a catastrophic situation without bitterness, fear, resentment or despair - and with that trusting confidence that comes from faith in the loving God who is our Father; looking-ahead with indestructible hope for that eternal Heavenly life promised by Jesus to any and all who choose to follow him through the transformation that is death.

Another text from Matthew that should guide us in the days, weeks and months ahead:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

Zero possibility of a rational response to corvidae

Nineteen (plus) corvids. A saner parliament than the Western Establishment

The Godless West is psychotic (as well as evil by intent) - adherent to a lunatic combination of... well hardly beliefs, but dogmatic and false assertions.

We need look no further than the trans agenda, which is proposed at the highest levels as simple biological fact. No society in history has ever had such a crazed and obvious evil systematically imposed upon it by rulers. Nor has anything so obviously crazed and evil been publicly and privately discussed, at such length, with such irrelevant and obtuse pomposity and hypocrisy.

I am therefore absolutely astonished to find people talking as if there is the slightest possibility of any Western rulers understanding the Corvid threat; and talking with the expectation that Western rulers could or would respond to any such threat in a way that was either effective or well-motivated.

For you or me to talk as if the Western Establishment was able or willing to act rationally in the best interests of its citizens is simply to share in their evil insanity.

A threshold crossed and explicit, specific, official, aggressive anti-Christianity emerges in England

The biggest public event arena (11,000 capacity) in my city of Newcastle upon Tyne, under pressure from the leader of the local government heading pressure from the usual suspects, and for the usual (fake, lying) reasons; has forbidden Billy Graham's son Franklin from speaking; has illegally cancelled the booking without compensation. The same has happened at all the other large venues throughout the UK.

This feels like another threshold crossed in the UK - because now the attacks on Christianity have become explicit and specific; there is now a high profile precedent for suppression of all public Christian meetings of any kind and size.

Up until now; the specificity of preventing Christians from gathering and evangelising has been indirect; masquerading as political (not religion) suppression - as being about the promotion of the sexual revolution agenda.

But this is undeniably specifically Christian; because while Christian evangelism is crushed to uniform approval from The Establishment and its mouthpieces; other religious that advocate (from the secular perspective) exactly the same sexual morality - Judaism, Islam, Sikhism etc - are by contrast publicly celebrated, government/ charity/ educational institution subsidised.

There are many officially propagandised and paid-for mass celebrations, festivals and consciousness-raising events in favour of these other religions.

The contrast between Christianity and the others - suppression versus promotion - could scarcely be starker! (To forbid Billy Graham's ministry; in England - for Heaven's sake!) The continued hypocrisy of denying this fact could scarcely be clearer.

So officially-sancioned and officially-led and Establishment-supported anti-Christianity is here to see, for everybody with eyes to see.

The question now becomes whether one actually has eyes?... And clearly not many Britons do.

Why Father Christmas is real

 From JRR Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters

I have long had the conviction that Father Christmas is real. I stick by that - and indeed believe that Santa is getting realer with every year.

This is happening because the mainstream culture is more obviously and more intensely anti-Christmas (as part of being anti-Christian - as its core, demonic, value); so the value of Santa is ever easier to discern (this being yet another example of things coming to a point as the end times develop and good and evil separate).

Not to keep you in suspense: Father Christmas is an archetype of God*, in one of his primary aspects - as our loving and benign Father, bringer of joy, giver of gifts; and as such not only is Santa real, but one of the realest things we will ever encounter.


Here and now; Father Christmas can be real only to the extent we acknowledge (whether unconsciously or explicitly) the reality of the God of Christians - of whom he has evolved to become a specific archetype.

And to such persons, Santa may have a spontaneous reality that may powerfully overcome mistaken resistance - based upon such errors as regarding him as a pagan or demonic spirit.


This struck me as a consequence of reflecting on our cultural extremes of The Magic of Christmas versus what might be termed Christmas survivalism: the idea of Christmas as an ordeal that must be got-through best as possible.

A variant of Christmas survivalism is to subvert the magic of Christmas by explaining-it-away historically, or inverting its values, or regarding it as no-more-than an exercise in systematic self-indulgence; such as the ritualised sybaritic-hedonic-nihilistic excess of 'the office party'... In other words, to deny the reality and significance of magic, by substituting immediate pleasure for magic.


I've experienced both in myself, and can easily see that the attitude to Christmas is a barometer of spiritual well-being, of being on an upward or downward path. The analogy of Santa with God is close in terms of the Christian and the atheist inhabiting the same sensory-world; but perceiving different aspects ad drawing different conclusions.

The large and heterogeneous totality that is the phenomenon of Christmas is that which confronts us; the question is what we personally draw from that totality.

In other words; the magic is there, it is a significant part of the phenomenon that is Christmas; what varies is whether we are able and willing to experience it. And that depends - ultimately - on our basic assumptions regarding the nature of this world (i.e. metaphysics).


If we accept the mainstream Leftist socio-political ideology that this universe is dead 'physics', non-conscious, a product of chance and determinism; then all values (including truth, beauty and virtue) are arbitrary constructs of a brief-living organism...

Well, natural Christmas can have no real magic on such a basis - nothing can have magic, because magic is defined as impossible by assumption.

On the negative side Christmas is a time of a tedious obligations, commercialism and hypocrisy. The best that can be said about Christmas from such a perspective is that it can be an excuse for 'partying' to a greater extremity than is usually tolerated. 


But when our assumptions are such that we regard this world as the creation of a God who is our loving parent who made this world for our personal good...

And if, further, we regard Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus who was 'first' son of our father the creator; and who came to this earth to bring us the great gift of eternal life in heaven on the other side of death - thereby bringing permanent meaning and purpose to our mortality...

Then we will experience the magic of Christmas - we will experience what is genuine and beautiful about the season; simply leaving aside what is not. And an important part of this is knowing that Santa Claus is really-real.


*And as such, real. Because an archetype is a reality - not the totality of reality, but reality as known to a limited Being such as ourselves. Often, archetypes are, indeed, the only realities we can know.

More on the false concept of 'Holiness Spirals'

Not only do Leftists Not engage in Holiness Spirals - HSs don't exist as a phenomenon; assuming (as Christians do) there is a such a real-thing as spiritual Holiness.

There is no tendency (or, at least, it is extremely rare) for Holiness to spiral out of control. Holiness is too difficult to spiral!

The tendency goes in the opposite direction - to spiral into worldliness, not Holiness.


Of course, if Holiness is equated with hypocrisy; i.e. if all possible examples of Holiness are interpreted as being necessarily hypocritical 'virtue signalling' - then that does indeed spiral out of control, in order to cover for itself.

But if Holiness is a real and spiritual thing; then this is not so.


'Spiral' implies an innate tendency towards positive feedback; the idea that when once something has started, it will not tend to revert to the starting point (negative feedback) nor will it go to the opposite extreme (like a pendulum swing) - but will instead become more extreme with accelerating rapidity.

And indeed there is this quality about Leftism: it feeds-off-itself until...

Well what exactly?


Positive feedback mechanisms can only end by destroying themselves. Does Leftism destroy itself? In a material sense - yes; but for a Christian, the essence is spiritual. And in this spiritual sense, Leftism is a type of evil; indeed the dominant mode of evil in the modern world.

In this spiritual sense, Leftism leads to more Leftism without any necessary end-point - just as evil can always become more evil.

Neither Leftism nor evil more generally can continue to completion - because evil is purposive, and purpose has an ineradicable element of divine creation. A parasite kills itself when it consumes its host - but in the case of evil, the parasite is part of the same creation as the host. But evil can always become more evil, like an asymptotic curve.


So, Leftism may well (almost certainly will) destroy our civilisation, with the death of many billions worldwide who depend on this civilisation to sustain the seven-fold global population growth since the industrial revolution.
  
However, the spiritual harm of Leftism - the value inversion, the self-chosen damnation - could in principle just keep increasing and increasing: as evil feeds upon evil.


In sum, from a Christian (hence spiritual) perspective; Holiness is the wrong term, Spiral is actually a negative attribute; and the common assumption that Holiness Spirals are self-limiting is not necessarily true.

If there is a spiritual limit to the harm of Leftism, it comes not from intrinsic properties of Leftism; but from that which is Not Leftism: that which is Good.

God is the only antidote to Leftism.
  

Atheism is the libertarianism of spiritual ecology

Atheists and Libertarians are both on the side of the mainstream of public discourse; that is, on the side of the Global Establishment, the mass media, and the interlinked bureaucracy - with their agenda of a single, totalitarian System of value-inversion.

Taken seriously, atheist assumptions would lead to paralysing despair - perhaps as the terminus of a brief phase of psychopathic hedonism.

But atheism never is taken seriously in public discourse; because all atheists are hypocrites - at root, because that there is no such thing as the sin of hypocrisy from an atheist perspective. In sum, there are no sincere atheists.

(Any atheist that did take atheism seriously would not participate in public discourse, would - indeed - keep his atheism secret; and would soon be dead. So we would never know about him.)

This is the same as libertarianism: there are no sincere libertarians. All libertarians are either hypocritical and self-contradicting; or else (usually, nearly always) they sell-out, as soon as it is expedient for them to do so. Why not?

(Libertarianism is just a career strategy - a bit like forming a start-up company in hope that you will become successful enough to be bought-out by one of the industry giants.)  

I think these facts are widely known - but come up against the question If Not, Then What? It seems that most modern people have pre-decided the answer must be 'Anything but Christianity' then they have painted themselves into a corner.

Until they recognise that Christianity is the answer, and set about finding out just how it is the answer; they are stuck in a hopeless trap, forever.

Note: I have been both an atheist - most of my life; and a libertarian - late 90s to mid-2000s.