Should we be spiritually engaged at all times and in all situations? Or stick to a schedule?

From the classical and Medieval eras, during which Christianity was established, the ideal was an overall religious basis for society, with a religiously approved monarch - but in practice life was divided between religious and secular activities.

In essence; there was a prescribed (minimum) ritual and ceremonial religious life; and the rest of a personal and community time was de facto engaged in all the other necessities of living. The proportions of secular and sacred varied, but the division was necessarily present (in practice) even in monasteries. 

This division was also (usually) reflected in terms of individual subjective experience. In general, people strove, and were perhaps often able, to achieve a properly spiritual, devotional attitude during daily prayer and formal church services and the like; but accepted that this level was impossible to sustain.

And indeed, from whatever combination of character and circumstances, it was often impossible to be spiritual at all. The main thing was to "do it" in the prescribed times and places. 

Indeed, as the centuries passed, it seems that even the minimum frequency of experienced religious participation was increasingly difficult to achieve. People could conform to all requirements in "the letter", yet "the spirit" became feebler...

More and more often, "the spirit" was altogether absent. 

Against this backdrop of enfeebled faith and increasing apostasy; were those (from the late 1700s, but much more so later) who advocated (and sometimes claimed to achieve) a continuous and unbroken spiritual life. 

They claimed, indeed, to strive for what they saw as the real possibility of living all life (from waking to sleeping, and ultimately even during sleep) in a state of devotion, spiritual awareness, religion. Conversely, they poured scorn on the ideal and reality of "Sunday Christians" - who switched-off religion, in between their required church attendances. 

Such people included Christian revivalists of various kinds  - and often these claimants were not Christian. Often enough they were atheists (spiritual but not religious), or neo-pagans of a wide range of types. For instance a serious Buddhist told me that a Zen Masters' whole life was one of continual spirituality, even when doing the most routing chores. More generally, it was claimed that this could happen by the continuous and habitual effect of prayer (i.e. a "mantra": this is also one of the expressed ideals of the Jesus Prayer.) 

As of now, in The West, these two religious ideals still dominate:

On the one hand, a Medievally-rooted ideal that aims at serious spiritual participation in relation to a finite series of discrete and pre-specified practices, times, and places; usually of a formal and prescribed nature. 

And, on the other hand, an ideal of qualitative "enlightenment": the idea that a person can break-through to a permanently transformed nature; a life that is always and everywhere spiritual. 

My belief is that neither of these ideals actually work - for different reasons...

But that they don't work just seems a fact of observation. 

Therefore we ought to seek for something that does work. 

We need another ideal for our spiritual life. 

One might be that we try various possibilities, and do more of whatever works for us... Meanwhile monitoring the situation for how things are progressing (with an awareness that any activity or plan may do us - personally - harm, as well as perhaps good). 

Another notion is that we strive for a higher self-awareness, and by this aim to recognize and "seize the moment" for spiritual activities - not to put them off. 

And also we might strive to hold-onto the insight that - whatever we do in this mortal life - it cannot be sufficient; because this mortal life is not, and is not intended to be, The Whole Thing. 

If we are (as I believe) eternal Beings, then we lived (as spirits, IMO) before this incarnated mortality; and also we will continue to exist (in some form, about which we have a choice) after we die mortally. 

This life is therefore a finite phase between eternities. 

Therefore, instead of deluding ourselves that there is any possibility at all of an ideal life during this mortality; our best bet is to regard our task as trying to have the right kind of helpful experiences; and learning the right kind of lessons from whatever actual experiences come our way. 

This mortal life is intended to be transformative; but the intended (and perhaps, in significant ways although not completely,  achieved) transformation is not for this mortal life; nor is eternal qualitative spiritual transformation even possible in this world of change, of entropy and death. 

Therefore, as with any kind of intentional development, such as the following analogy of school or college work; we may realize that:

On the one hand that we cannot always be studying and practicing. And if we seriously attempt this, we will not only be wasting our time - but indeed sabotaging the possibility of that focused and intense (therefore necessarily brief) learning which really works. 

And, on the other hand; that one secret of effective learning is to be aware of any moments when the opportunity for some really special experience has arrived. 

When that moment is here; we should be able to set-aside the routines, plans and programs devised to get us through dull-dry times; and, seizing the opportunity, take the chance, here-and-now.

And learn from it that which is divinely-intended for our benefit. 

If at all possible.  

Traditional Christianity damns marriage by dubious comparisons, faint praise, and pragmatic functionality

In a world where marriage has been, over several generations; purposively and systematically weakened, subverted, and finally rendered meaningless; it is tempting to yearn for the comparative situation of traditional Christian marriage - for its legal clarity and moral strictness.  

Yet the Christian churches (excepting the CJCLDS) have, in my opinion, seriously trivialized the spiritual potential of marriage.  

And for a very long time. 

I take my example from The Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England Solemnization of Marriage: 

DEARLY beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church;

This is absurd! To justify marriage between two individual persons in terms of a (to my mind) exceedingly dubious and opaque comparison with a supposed "mystical union" between Christ and "his Church"! 

This is to "explain" the simple with the complex; the experiential with abstraction; the clear with the opaque.  

I cannot imagine that anybody who was doubtful about the validity or necessity of marriage would be persuaded by this - or would even understand what was meant by it. The analogy merely opens a can of worms rather than explaining anything. 

After all; what is this supposed mystical union of Christ and Church (which does not feature in the Fourth Gospel)? Exactly who is the MU between - I mean, what counts as "his" Church, and what is excluded? To be specific, which actual people of which particular Church can confidently be asserted to be parts of this mystical union? 

And given the gross corruption and dissent of all the Christian churches - who and what self-identified Christian institutions, and which parts of which institutions - ought to be ignored, and in what respects? 

...which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; 

This is bizarre. Is it seriously suggested that the institutions of marriage is justified because Jesus attended a wedding, and there performed a miracle? 

Using such an argument, all sorts of things might be justified. 

..and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: 

Commended by St Paul? Well, if at all, only in the most grudging and negative way. Paul regards celibacy as the highest state, and did not allow marriage any positive spiritual value.

and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained. 

Prudent advice, and nothing to disagree with here, but it would apply to life in general (e.g. eating and drinking) and any major life decisions (like choosing a job or purchasing a house) - and does not help explain why marriage might be "a good thing"

First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name. 

The difficulty is that this is first a biological justification merely; and secondly a sociological one - and alternative arrangements for procreation and raising children might be (and indeed are) proposed. 

Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body. 

See above. This is an appalling non-justification - and contains the assumption that the avoiding sin (double negative theology) ought to be our primary motivations. 

If this were true - ultimately, it were better not to have been born, or to die before having the chance to sin.   

Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

Unobjectionable, so far as it goes; but nothing spiritual about it - merely a matter of expediency; nothing to do with salvation or theosis. 

I regard such feeble advocacy and rationalization of marriage as a symptom of very deep and widespread spiritual problems. 

This represents a pitiful and significant inability to explain or advocate a thing that has been so obviously, to for so many people, as one of the most wonderfully positive and desirable things in human existence. 

It strikes me as evidence of a grossly inadequate theology that (even) rigorous and honest traditional Christian churches at their best have failed so badly to make explicit the spiritual value and desirability of something that has often been directly experienced and known.  

The significance of Good Friday

For me, the significance of Good Friday is that this was when Jesus died; which he needed to do in order to fulfil, to complete, his core mission. 

He did not need to die in the way he did, because any mode of death would suffice; and death was inevitable one way or another, sooner or later, for Jesus as for all mortal Men...

But Jesus did need to die; in order to resurrect, and ascend to Heaven. 

I believe that Heaven as a state-of-being already existed before Jesus died, and that Lazarus was probably its first inhabitant - albeit Lazarus returned to dwell on earth, for a while. 

But in order for "everybody" who thenceforth desired resurrection and eternal life to be able to achieve these; Jesus himself needed to die, be resurrected, ascend. 

That salvation for "everybody" includes those who had died before the time of Jesus - and who resided as spirits in Sheol/ Hades, or had reincarnated, or were ghosts, or even demons who were not fully corrupted...

Which is what "the harrowing of Hell" on Easter Saturday, represents in a symbolic but distorted fashion. 

Was the Omni-God concept a consequence of the development of human consciousness?

It is interesting to speculate how the incoherent and mass-apostasy-inducing Omni-God concept arose and came to dominate Christian (and some other) theologies and Priesthoods. 

One God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and created everything from nothing - i.e. the officially mandatory nature of God according to mainstream Christianity; is an idea literally inconceivable to simple people and children. 

And inconceivable to people of the past, and up to the life of Jesus; because I see nothing explicit to suggest that the authors of Old Testament, the Gospels, or Epistles conceptualized God in this way. 

The Omni idea seems to have emerged - off the record - in the generations after the ascension of Jesus and deaths of the Apostles; until we see it behind the Christology schisms and disputes, concerning the divine and/or human nature of Christ; that tore-apart the nascent church in its early centuries. 

Such disputes were (and are) inevitable when Jesus was assumed to have been incarnated into the creation of an Omni-God, since the Omni definition of God excludes the possibility of Jesus being a second creator-deity; and indeed removes any possible reason or purpose for a further manifestation of deity. 

(If God is supposed to be able to do everything, know everything, be everywhere etc - then there is no necessity for Jesus Christ to be incarnated, live, die, be resurrected, ascend to Heaven etc. The Omni-God can - by definition - do everything that is doable, so Jesus is superfluous.) 

Yet if Jesus Christ is not a truly divine creator God; then Jesus is "just" a teacher, prophet etc - and we either assume Jesus was a false teacher and revert to Judaism; or assume Jesus was a valid teacher as with Islam. 

But if Jesus is not divine, he is not unique; and there is no reason to build a religion around following him. 

So how and why did such a strange and destructive idea emerge? 

My best guess of how, is that the Omni-God was synthesized from the ancient Hebrew idea of a single dominating personal God to whom all other Gods were inferior and subservient; and to whom all worship and obedience was due. 

This "monotheism" was combined with Greek philosophical ideas - and religious ideas - probably from  elite and initiatory mystery religions; such as Neo-Platonists and Gnostics); of a universal but impersonal abstract-deity that was everything (pantheism), was the ultimate cause of everything, was perfect hence time-less etc.

(Much like some Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concepts of deity.) 

 

But why did the Omni idea happen at all? 

My understanding is that this was part of the development of human consciousness; and the increasing inner sense of separation of the individual from the group. 

Before the Omni-God concept; human consciousness was naturally, spontaneously, and largely un-consciously very much immersed in the group consciousness - and this group consciousness included the realms of spirits and the divine. 

Because people experienced relationships with so many other Beings (such as animals, trees, landscape, the dead, angels, demons, and gods); there was no subjective "problem" of creation as being incoherent.

There was no need to "explain" how it was that the universe held-together and had purpose - because this coherence was simply a matter of experience. Men knew that things cohered. 

This was, and still is, how young children experience reality even nowadays; and perhaps some tribal peoples as well. 

In other words, in ancient times there was no felt-problem of incoherence that the Omni concept was needed to solve. 

There was no need or reason to explain why all the different aspects of reality held-together and had an overall purpose. 

And no reason to explain why there were real values - a real and universal morality... Since such things were obvious.  

It was when Man's consciousness began (and continued) to become ever more self-aware and separated from the group consciousness; and from awareness of the dead, spirits of many kinds, and the divine - that Men sought an explicit explanation of the "unity" of all things...

That intellectuals came-up with the Omni-God explanation. 

This does not explain why the early Christian church seized upon the Omni-God concept and made it mandatory, despite all the problems it has caused ever since. 

But I think that ultimately such reasons are social rather than philosophical: to do with the church as an institution, rather than Christianity as a theoretical construct.  

The Omni-God concept is popular in all the major monotheisms, I think because it is interpreted to make the specific religion both universal and mandatory; it is used to insert the religion and its church into the ultimate creation and operation of absolutely every-thing. 

Omni-God removes choice from religion; and religion becomes a matter of acknowledging one truth for everything...

Or else the act of rejecting that church and religion gets conceptualized as rejecting... absolutely everything, and all possibility of anything.

So, with Omni-God; not be be a member of the church and religion is therefore conceptualized as a wholly irrational and incoherent act - an embrace of absolute nothingness.  

If it is broadly correct that the Omni-God emerged after Jesus and in the early centuries AD; driven from-within by changes in Mens' consciousness; then we can also see that a genuine, living, motivating belief in Omni-God has become impossible in the modern era.

Shoals of people have left the Christian church, and/or had their faith reduced to the feebleness of a lifestyle-choice, by the insistence of Christian theology on the Omni-God combined with the gross incoherence of the concept - which incoherence has now become spontaneously obvious even to those of low intelligence. 

(The two obvious problems about a Christianity rooted in the Omni-God concept and a Good God; are an inability to explain genuine evil and extreme and undeserved suffering and death; and also an inability to explain human agency or "freedom".)  

In replying to a basic question of "who was Jesus?": mystery-word-spells about Jesus being simultaneously wholly-Man and wholly-God seem like meaningless or devious abstractions; when materialism is built-into the modern perspective. 

In replying to what did Jesus do?": kick-the-can pseudo-explanations about Jesus being necessary to save Mankind from the blame attached to an "original sin" leading to a "fall" that occurred in prehistory; make no sense (and seem grossly unjust)...

When Man's consciousness has become so spontaneously separated from the group/ spirit/ divine that the choices and events of putative ancient ancestors is experienced as utterly irrelevant to me-here-now.

If the Omni-God was not original to Christianity but instead the contingent artefact of a particular stage in Man's historical consciousness and the rhetorical requirements of the ancient church...

And since the O-G concept currently stands in the path of any possibility of explaining (clearly and simply) the nature of Jesus and what he did...

Then Christians really need to go back and re-examine and reject this Omni-God dogma... 

And then we need to replace the obsolete and harmful Omni-God with a conceptualization of God that makes explanatory-sense to us each, here, and now; and which clearly and simply explains the necessity of Jesus Christ for those who desire salvation.  

It's time to think about death...

William Wildblood has published an excellent post about a subject that almost nobody (in Western civilization) thinks about, except when compelled: death, and how we ought (yes ought) to prepare for it throughout our mortal lives.  

And by death, I don't mean dying. 

Dying - and especially the fear of suffering when dying - is a subject that almost obsesses our society, albeit usually in a covert sort of way. Not that dying is unimportant, of course it is (potentially) important; but that the fear of dying seems to block consideration of the overwhelming importance of what happens afterwards, and forever.   

The embarrassed evasiveness that greets any attempt to discuss death, would strike our ancestors (or probably most non-Western people) as utterly bizarre. Yet I was exactly like that myself, for most of my life. 

Western mainstream public discourse is (by no accident, I presume) restricted to a forced-choice between either an exaggeratedly childish and sentimental fairy-tale depiction of life after death; or else Nothing At All. 

Modern people have, apparently, really convinced themselves that the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible that death is utter annihilation - and that to think hard about, or to discuss, what happens afterwards - is either a morbid psychopathology, shallowly-idiotic self-deception, or some kind of selfish and dishonest mental manipulation. 

Yet, at the same time - and in mainstream public discourse (prestige mass media, corporate communications, officialdom etc) we see the strong encouragement of exactly morbid psychopathology, self-deception and blatant emotional manipulation when it comes to encouraging and exploiting people's fear of dying...

Fear of what suffering might happen, what it (supposedly) might be like, and how suffering may (supposedly) be avoided. These are recurrent themes in the mass media. 

Returning to William Wildblood's post: 

The everyday has its place... it is wrong to dismiss it as nothing. But that place stands in relation to the spiritual which is primary. And therefore since the spiritual will only fully come into view after death, you must start taking death seriously. 

Not in a way that makes earthly life futile for earthly life must be lived and lived properly. At the same time, death is the goal of life, the goal not just the end of it, and you must see it as in a sense the crowning achievement of your life.

That the great majority of people in the contemporary West do not see it like that may be one reason for the widespread dementia that afflicts much of the elderly population. 

The obvious reason for that is that people are just living longer, kept going by modern medicine. However, there could be an underlying spiritual purpose behind this too or accompanying it...

It could be that dementia strips away the resistance to the spiritual and leaves its victims on some level more open to the next world. An atheist has by definition erected barriers in his mind. Old age in general and dementia in particular might help to dismantle these barriers...

These are fascinating ideas - and similar thoughts have also occurred to me. 

I agree with William that "advances in medicine" and better living conditions (warmer houses, more food) are relevant - but they don't altogether explain the tremendous extension of life among the very severely incapacitated elderly. 

As a strong generalization: Dying is easy - it is staying alive that is difficult. 

However, many people nowadays live many years longer than they say they want to live, and in a extremely debilitated state. 

Yet traditionally, until recent decades; doctors and nurses with extensive experience of elderly people usually said that when someone loses the will to live (for example after the death of a spouse), and are ready to die: then they will soon die - and it used to happen despite even strenuous medical interventions. 

This no longer seems to happen. 

Of course, it is a matter of specific individual persons; but what often happens is, I think, consistent with what William suggests. 

In other words, among those (apparently a majority) who have lived by dogmatic materialism and in utter exclusion of the spirit; and who approach the end of life with the expectation, and even desire for, eternal spirit-annihilation. 

Through the effects of ageing and disease; such people may experience a return towards the simple and instinctive world-view akin to that of early childhood; a time of life when the spirit was a matter of spontaneous everyday experience - but in old age an analogous way of thinking is perhaps manifested as impaired cognition, delirium, and psychosis. 

If this is going-on (and surely it will not always be the case in everyone of extreme old age or dementia), such persons are perhaps being given an extra chance - by God - to reconsider their choice of death. 

Maybe they are offered a further opportunity to re-evaluate their long-standing choice of rejecting even the possibility of God, angels, spirits, life-after-death... and resurrection? 

We are always free, and the decision of salvation cannot be compelled: second, third and further chances to recognize spiritual realities may well be rejected. 

But when the inner barriers of willed-materialism have been dissolved by illness - then, what were regarded as idiocies and absurdities may become recognized as real possibilities that could be chosen... if that is indeed what we most want for our-selves.

 

Transformation and Translation: "Born Again" into the "Second Creation"

Joining-up a couple of dots from what I've said; when Jesus met Nicodemus and told him that Men need to be "born again" - Jesus meant that we must die first, in order to attain resurrected eternal life. 

And, if we follow Jesus; this second birth will be into the Second Creation;  the creation by Jesus - which is Heaven. 

We must be born again, by resurrection into Heaven: which involves both personal transformation (resurrection); and personal translation (moving from mortal Earth to Heaven). 

** 

John.3 [1] There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: [2] The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. [3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. [4] Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? [5] Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

"A chain of loving relationships" - How Christians may help those they love to get to Heaven

I am impressed and convinced by the way that the Fourth Gospel always describes Jesus's love in terms of specific and inter-personal loving relationships.

(This is a very different definition from the more usual understanding of Christian love as ideally having such attributes as unconditional, altruistic, even impersonal.) 

Given that I believe we choose to accept or reject Jesus's gift of resurrected eternal life after our death; this interpersonal understanding of Christian love has helped me to grasp how it is that our love during this mortal life, may help others whom we love to choose Heaven. 

It works as a chain of loving relationships.

In brief; once one person has chosen resurrected eternal life; so long as that dweller in Heaven has had loving relationships with others during his mortal life; then that first person to be saved sets-up a chain of positive influences for those who die afterwards. 

Salvation is always an absolutely free and autonomous personal choice, that can neither be compelled nor prevented.

But if we have had a loving relationship during mortal life with someone who has already attained salvation before we die; then after death, and at the time when we must choose whether or not to accept resurrection, that beloved person will "visit" us - will come into contact with our post-mortal spirit.    

It seems to me that Mormons are correct in their teaching that:

The most powerful incentive for Christian salvation is the desire to continue personal relationships beyond death with those we have loved during mortal life. 

So, when it comes to deciding whether to accept salvation, anyone whom we loved in mortal life (potentially more than one person - but one person is enough) can assure us of the reality of eternal life, its nature, and the presence of those with whom we might to continue relationships. 

There will always be a free choice; but my point is that knowing there is already some particular person whom we have loved that has made the choice of Heaven and who already dwells in that state - could be a positive and decisive influence in favour of accepting salvation.   

As an illustrative example, suppose there was a woman (a grandmother) who was exceptionally loving during her mortal life; loving her husband, children, sons- and daughters-in-law, and grandchildren - and that she accepted Christ's salvation. 

As her husband, children, grandchildren etc. died; she would be able to visit and assure them of what was possible beyond death; of how the loving relationships of mortal life could be continued, and could continue to develop eternally, post-mortally. 

The effectiveness of this influence, would presumably depend substantially on the strength of interpersonal love, during life - and this strength would perhaps (usually) be diluted with succeeding generations, and would cease after two or three generations.

This is where the "chain" aspect comes-in... If the grandmother firstly influenced her daughter to accept salvation; then the daughter would provide her own children with a (potentially more direct) influence of a mother's love (rather than grandmother's), when the time came for the grandchildren to die - and so on down the generations. 

The chain would also potentially branch, with loved husbands and wives - if the one who dies-first accepts salvation, then a loving spousal relationship could provide a link to Heaven.  

Once the "system" had been going for a few generations, it might resemble a web or network, rather than a chain - which would provide (potentially) more robust because multiple possibility of positive personal-loving influences; by which a recently deceased post-mortal spirit may be encouraged or convinced to choose resurrected Heavenly life.

   

Life Hacks and Bucket Lists are symptoms of profound spiritual degeneracy

Get them while they're young...

Sometimes the massive popularization of a term is symptomatic* of deep civilizational disorder: two instances are Life Hack and Bucket List.  

Superficially these are harmless diversions - trivial rather than deadly. 

The problem is in what lies underneath the pervasive chatter; the assumptions upon-which these terms are built. 

A Life Hack is an instant, easy, short-cut or cheat; to deal-with some everyday problem of living. 

The assumption of which this is a surface symptom, is that this is how Life ought to be dealt with. 

A profound but concealed assumption of Life Hacking is that human Life consists of a multitude of discrete, immediate problems; and our job is to find the most efficient way to deal with these problems. 

The implication is that our actual Life will incrementally and qualitatively be improved (ie. made more pleasurable, with less suffering) by implementing more and ever-more such Life Hacks. 

The degenerate quality of Life Hacks; is that Life is the kind of thing for which we ought to be seeking quick and easy tricks - that Life is ultimately a set of problems of living that we need to solve.

So the best way to approach Life is to be armed with plenty of Hacks - applicable to the widest possible range of "challenges".

Life Hack attitudes and methods have, it seems, already taken-over student attitudes in formal education. Learning is just too slow, inefficient, and hard work. "Education" is now seen as a set of immediate problems, Tasks; for which the most effective approach is to have a tool-kit quick, easy short-cuts. 

Also academic attitudes in "science". What gets called science nowadays has nothing to do with seeking or speaking truth. "Research" is all about Hacks to get funding, get the necessary results, get published, get cited and invited - get personal security, status and salary.  

And Life Hacks are open-endedly extendible: For instance much Self Help, spiritual teaching of a New Age type, and including the "Manosphere"; is Life Hack thinking applied to human relationships, to love, marriage, family and friendship. 

The same can be seen in discussions of religion.  The Birdemic response of mainstream churches was that their religion was reducible to efficient and convenient Life Hacks; such as live-streamed and recorded "services" or sermons; and no-travel-required online interactions. 

The best ending to a well-lived Life, as depicted by two civilizational role-models

Bucket Lists derive from the idea that somebody is about to die - i.e. "kick the bucket"; and consists of a list of the things I most wish I had-done before I die. 

As if someone is on the deathbed, looking back - and gaining satisfaction or plagued by regret over his accomplishments. 

The underlying idea is that death is annihilation; and/but "therefore" a Good life is one in which we have done as many things that we "really want" to do, before the curtains come down. 

A Bucket List is meant to be a public thing too; so that we can get status (and provoke conversations) by making public a Bucket List - preferably one that is suitably impressive to other people.

And then adverting via social media - or mass media if you are a "celebrity" - our progress in working-through that List. 

You win the game by having an impressive-to-other-people List and completing the List: this is implicitly "to have had a Good Life".

Alternatively; people are invited to feel "sad" with you if, for some reason, you cannot or do not tick of an item - it terminal cancer prevents that bungee jumping, if an insufficiently supported "Kickstarter"-funding prevents you taking that African Safari... 

This is implicitly to have had a "tragic" life.    

Life Hacks and Bucket Lists are both degenerate fads because of their strategic dishonesty. And implicit evil!

Life Hacks are instrumental thinking. 

They are predicated on "using" the world and other people for our own short-term ends, to fulfil our current desires. 

If Life was the kind of thing susceptible to Life Hacks - Life would consist essentially of individuals efforts at learning tricks to exploit each-other; to get satisfaction at their expense.

Life would not be worth living. 

And if Death was the kind of problem that could be In Any Genuine Way ameliorated by the successful completion of Bucket Lists, then death would not be final - death could not be an annihilation. 

Because if Death is the end, then what we have done or not done in life makes no difference.

How we happen to feel about our previous Life, on our death bed, just about to die, looking-back -- would be utterly irrelevant;  because dying would be just one temporary blip of emotion, among multi-millions of others - doomed to nothingness. 

I

f after Death we will be gone utterly - then it cannot possibly matter either way whether or not we watched the sun rise, or set, off the Florida Keys.  

Yet, if Death is not really the end; and we will survive in some form, to be affected in some way by our completion (or not) of Bucket Lists...

Then Life after Death is something that needs explicitly to be acknowledged, and its implications explored. 

 

So yes; at one level these are trivial fads; "just" a harmless way of passing the time or having something to gossip about... Yet Life Hacks and Bucket lists are evidence of the deep, unacknowledged, and contradictory malaise of our civilization: of the ways in which we persistently refuse to think-through implications. 

*A symptom is produced by the underlying pathology (in this instance, spiritual degeneracy); but a symptom is not conclusive evidence for the underlying pathology. So, you can have the pathology without the symptom, and vice versa. 

Why do long-term great leaders inevitably lose their grip, then need replacing ASAP?

My understanding is that we can perhaps see (currently) an example of the only great national leader of this world era having lost-grip; such that removal and replacement (which will, inevitably, be with someone less great, because greatness is so very rare) is apparently both necessary and indeed inevitable. 

I have observed the same in sport; which is one of the last remaining aspects of Western life in which good, and sometimes great, leadership can be observed. My sport is cricket, especially the England team; and I have seen two outstanding England coaches - Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower (both, interestingly, born in Rhodesia). 

Both took England to the rare pinnacle of winning the Ashes, and Flower managed this more than once, including in Australia. 

But both "went off" at the end of their tenure; making strange and bad errors of player selection and strategy - strange, because "everybody" could see what needed to be done except for the once-great leader.  

The same kind of thing nearly always happens to great leaders, sooner or later - unless they die or are compelled to retire (e.g. by illness or external removal) before this phase is reached. 

(Leaders of all kinds, including the greatest, very seldom or never seem to recognize their own decline and resign at the optimal time - probably because a personality inclined to such doubts would prevent good leadership in the first place.)  

And the removal of the once-great leader who has "lost it" is usually delayed to a damaging extent - exactly because of their prior greatness, and awareness that any replacement will be lesser in stature. 

This is presumably one reason why the "reign" of a great leader is so often followed by a slump of decline. 

This happens, not just from the lesser quality of men who follow; but also from the damage done to those-led, during this inept and misguided "terminal phase" of leadership.    

Why then do great leaders "always" decline? 

Well, there are of course many specific negative reasons - of which the change in personal character and ability inevitable with advancing age is surely one. 

(This is, after all, fundamentally and unavoidably an entropic world; and eternal life and creation can be found only post-mortally, in Heaven.) 

But I suspect that these are all secondary to the fact that any ability is a positive achievement, and the highest levels of human attainment always require multiple positive attributes to be present at the highest level and in a mutually-sustaining balance. 

Such high level of abilities and their harmonious alignment is extremely rare, and of course vulnerable. 

In other words, we ought to be grateful and delighted when great leadership emerges; but we ought not to be surprised that it cannot be sustained for long periods - and we should expect that sooner or later there will be a significant decline.  

Another example is creative writing, for example novels or dramas; in which there are many instances of an author who produce just one great work, and whose subsequent works never match their earlier pinnacle.

(What is rare, is an great author who produces many great works. So that, among English language dramatists of the past 500 years there is only Shakespeare and Shaw who reside solidly in this category.)  

The proper attitude is to be pleased that everything aligned optimally for long enough that the one great work was produced - but not to feel it necessary to "explain" why further great works did not emerge. 

Great artists are not factory assembly lines, which - once optimised - can churn out more-of-the-same quality of item, unless broken; and the same applies to great leaders.

Instead; with great leaders we may observe that for a while, there is a remarkable confluence of abilities with opportunities - and great leadership eventuates while such conditions prevail. 

But it is the confluence, the synergistic alignment, of all necessities at once which is remarkable - not the fact that such supreme coincidence of qualities cannot last forever; nor indeed (usually) for very long.  

The divine "purpose" for individual persons: God gives us what we need (but Not Only what we need)

Each person's life has "meaning" - and that meaning is related to divine purpose. 

I think this is quite clear, if you know what to look for - in your own life, and the lives of those you know and love. 

I mean that people always (sooner or later) get the experience/s they most need for spiritual development. 

However, that does not mean that every individual "automatically" learns from each such experience -- Indeed, very often, it seems that people do not learn from personal experiences that could be of great personal benefit. 

Or else people learn something wrong and contrary to divine purpose, from experiences; they choose to lean a lesson contrary to God's hope and intentions. 

For instance; when some adverse experience that could be corrective if properly understood; is instead used as an excuse or rationale for doubling-down on some sin; such as fear, resentment, or despair. 

But what makes all this less obvious is that not all of life is related to divine purpose. 

It is the nature of this life and world we are currently experiencing that there is entropy/ death and there is evil. 

What this means is that things happen that are Not part of the divine purpose. 

What God the Creator can do and does; is make the best of these things. 

So that if some-thing happens to a person that is simply the result of entropy (some degenerative phenomenon or disease for example*); or a consequence of evil motivation or service to evil; then consequently God will create - such as later to enable something to be gained (or salvaged) from this adverse occurrence.   

All of this points at the need for discernment, because understanding and learning are inevitably confused and clouded by the nature of ourselves and this world; the process of discerning and learning is one requiring active participation and culminating in freedom to choose how to be, and where to go next. 

We must be able to discern which experiences are God given, and which are not. We must and inevitably do also work from our state of freedom. 

Creation is not something done-to-us. Divine purpose is that we participate in creation. 

And when an experience was not a part of divine purpose, we may need to be able to discern at what point God has (later) been able to present us with the possibility of deriving Good from evil. 

We make such discernments partly from that which is divine within-us; and partly (since the time of Jesus Christ) by guidance from the Holy Ghost... 

In other words, the capacity for true discernment is innate, and does not need to be derived from external sources - although, of course, external sources of guidance may be helpful in true discernment - just as external guidance is (here and now) more usually harmful. 

So much for this world we live-in, this mixed-world, this world that mixes divine creation and purpose with entropy and evil...

A further thing that God purposes that we learn is that this mixed world (the Primary Creation) may be escaped after death and the separation of our spirit from our incarnate form; because after death (and only after death) we may follow Jesus Christ through resurrection with eternal life; and into a Second Creation that is Heaven. 

Therefore, there will be divinely purposed experiences in this mortal life of ours (assuming we live long enough) that may be understood (if we are prepared to learn) as pointing towards the possibility of Resurrection and Heaven beyond death. 

i.e. Experiences that may (if we discern aright) be understood as pointing towards Salvation. 

Yet if, for whatever reason, we do not get such experiences during this mortal life (perhaps we die in the womb, or as infants) then such experiences as we need to be enabled to choose Heaven; will surely be provided after death. But again we are free to learn from them or not, and to choose Heaven or not. 

In sum: there is a divine purpose (or more than one purpose) for each person incarnated into this world; and this purpose is related to learning a lesson, or several lessons, during our life. 

Each person's purpose will be unique, because each person is unique - because each person had a pre-mortal spirit life before human incarnation  - which is why people are unique individuals from before birth. 

Because our purpose is unique, and because this world is a mixture of divinely created purpose with entropy and evil; discernment is required. We must recognize when we are being divinely taught; and when not...

But even when our life's happenings are due to evil Beings, or due to the innately entropic nature of this world - we should be alert to the ways in which divine creation can shape subsequent events, sooner-or-later to present us with possibilities for learning important life lessons.

Meaning and purpose are not "given": they need to be discerned...

We need to learn from them, and that is our job: we also need to learn the right (i.e. divinely intended) lessons from them.  

*Or death. The Fourth Gospel strongly suggests that death was regarded as The Number One Main Problem of life as-is-on-earth. Death is the problem that Jesus for which usually claims to be offering a solution. 

The change of human consciousness throughout my life-span

We all begin our lives in the state of immersive, spontaneous, initially un-conscious Original Participation - which was, pretty much, the consciousness of mature adults in the earliest (e.g. hunter gatherer) phase of human history - a state of mind when we are in direct contact with an animistic (living, purposive, aware) universe of beings/ spirits, gods. 

The Medieval Consciousness (aka Intellectual Soul) is that of the great span of recorded human history, of agricultural society, of civilization - the "axial age" when religions were developed; changing through the Ancient Egyptian (for example), Ancient Greek, Roman and into the Medieval era. 

During this era, spirituality was largely communal, and contact with the world of spirit (experience of the spirit within us) was via intermediaries such as church structures, priests, symbolism and ritual. 

For Christians this type of consciousness reached a peak in the Byzantine and Holy Russian societies of Orthodox Catholicism; and for Westerners it peaked in the Medieval times with Roman Catholicism in Western Europe. 

Modern Consciousness - in which man is alienated from God, the gods, the world of spirits, and other beings; began to emerge with the Renaissance and Reformation (as traditional forms and symbols began to lose their objectivity and power) - and accelerated through the Industrial Revolution up to now. 

So that now it seems obvious common sense that this is a purposeless, meaningless, dead universe - going nowhere, and in which we humans and individual persons are irrelevant; such that our "morality" is merely maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering until we die and are annihilated. 

Looking back; it now seems that I experienced the dying residuum of the Medieval Consciousness; which, although relatively feeble and only among a minority, was behind the radicalism of the counter-cultural desire for a simple, "natural", agrarian - and essentially modified-Medieval - life and society. 

My point is that until the late 1970s a restoration of Medieval Cosnciousness actually seemed a realistic possibility; such that alternative living and self-sufficiency were topics of mainstream social discussion and aspiration. The revival of folk music and arts, and even "hippie" styles of dress and fashion - all seemed to presage this. 

It really seemed possible then that we might "go back" to a village-based and agricultural society - on lines described earlier by William Cobbett, and depicted fictionally by William Morris. 

Much of the mass youth interest in Tolkien was related to the hope aroused by his work that a Middle Earth kind of life might yet be genuinely possible. 

And for some (but not me, at that time), this included an expectation that Christianity would again have a central and pervasive influence on society: a Chesterton/ Belloc type Distributism.  

But through my life span the Medieval Consciousness has faded in objectivity and power; until now it is not regarded as a realistic possibility - or only except in a remote, abstract, wishful and as-if kind of fashion. 

This can be seen in the disintegration, decline and corruption of all the major Christian churches; and their extreme alienation and giving up of shaping spiritual experience.

But the most significant decline of Medieval Consciousness (and the cause of church changes) is in the minds of Men - an inexorable dwindling which I have both experienced and observed. 

This is where we find ourselves. I regard these changes in consciousness as objective, as causal, and as irreversible. 

So it is from here that we ought to regard the future.

Since we cannot go back, and (further) my experience and observations suggest that trying to revert ourselves and society to Medievalism of consciousness is not just ineffective; but actually spiritually harmful... That, any rate, is how I read the various "utopian" experiments in back-to-the-land, communal and Alternative living. 

Since what we have now is so dominated by the powers of evil, and so devoid of both purpose and meaning and hope - it seems to me that it is imperative we actively and consciously attempt to move our consciousness, and consequently our lives, forward into nigh unprecedented territory. 

**

NOTE: It may sound, from the above, as if I regarded Original Participation and Medieval Consciousness as taboo, necessarily harmful and to-be-shunned; but this is not the case. For many people, in many situations, both still have much to offer in the way of "therapy", encouragement, and even guidance. However the point I wish to emphasize is that they are not enough. They are both too feeble for what is necessary in our world, and both are harmful if made a strategy. They cannot suffice. There is no future in them. 

Necessity does not obviate the requirement for repentance

As Jesus apparently tried to make clear; following Him to resurrection ought to be about repentance of all sin; not the literal impossibility of ceasing from sin, nor even the (salvific) irrelevance of ceasing from some list of particular sins. 

Because they have the idea that Christians are supposed to stop sinning, or at lease reduce it considerably; self-identified Christians are too-often very concerned to explain that most of their sins are trivial, that it would be unreasonable to expect that they be ceased; or that this kind of sin is necessary - that it is unavoidable to sin in some particular way. 

(The subtext often seems to be that because sins are trivial, coerced, needed - then they are "not really" sins, and don't really count. Not so long as Big Sins - murder etc. - are avoided.) 

It's not that this is false (in a way) but that such arguments are essentially beside-the-point.  

The truth is that mortal beings on this earth, in the actual situations they/we find ourselves, just aren't aligned with God's will, with divine creation; and that is sin. 

We can't validly enumerate sins, because life isn't divided-up in that way - thoughts, speech, actions etc are linked, there aren't qualitative separations between sins, or between sin and virtue. 

This is because the underlying reality is motivation - motivation to be on God's side in the spiritual war - and nobody can be on God's side all of the time in all situations. 

What we are required to repent is "all the ways" in which we diverge from living wholly by love... The idea that we need to avoid (or strive to avoid) some particular list of sins is wrong. And the idea that someone who avoids the worst sins is set up for salvation is likewise a mistake. It doesn't matter how good we are relatively to others - in the ultimate and vital sense, we are all sinners. 

All that isn't fatal to salvation, because Jesus came "to save sinners" - which is another way of saying he came to save potentially all men who "follow" Jesus, acknowledge that they are sinners, and know what would be needful not to be sinners.  

But while we live, while God maintains us alive; we must have useful work to do. 

That work isn't stopping sinning; but part of it is discerning, acknowledging, and repenting sin - whenever possible. 

This is just a by-product of knowing what we ought to think, say, do - and knowing that we aren't doing it - and that we would do it it that were possible. 

This is particularly important when it comes to the sinning that we are incentivized, coerced or even compelled to do. For instance (my favourite example) untruthfulness - dishonesty, lying; deliberate misleading of others by repetition, hype and spin, and by selective omissions. 

Nearly everybody does this a lot of the time, and the leadership class and most professional class people (including priests, pastors, ministers and the like) do it for a living. They do it much of the time, and the must keep doing it if they want to get and keep their jobs. 

Indeed; calculated and systemic untruthfulness is essential to much modern work, mandatory for employment; necessary to obtain and retain one's position, and get prestige and promotion. A very large slice of the modern population therefore "lie for a living". 

These are sins that are active, purposive, obtrude into our consciousness many times every day. 

People do them, and have zero intentions of stopping doing them. Indeed, they could not stop doing them without abandoning their responsibilities. Without "giving up". 

And even then, they would still be sinning in innumerable other ways - and would very likely be required to commit more of other kinds of sin. 

(In practice, stopping one sin very often entails ramping up other sins - and the balance between decrease and increase is often unclear even when not negative.) 

The first thing to acknowledge is that there is no way out of this - as we actually are, on this mortal earth!

The second thing to realize that the many and various excuses of why we "have to do sins", do not make any difference to salvation even when they are perfectly true! 

What we should do about all this is quite simple, and described in the Fourth Gospel! 

We start with our commitment to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal Heavenly life. 

And recognize that this will require us to be remade and transformed into "beings of love"; which also (negatively) means becoming without sin. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus, is only possible on the other side of death: we must die and then be born-again.  

Therefore, one of the most significant things we can do, here-and-now, in this mortal life; is to notice and acknowledge when we are actually sinning.

This is important for our salvation, and the state of our souls, to acknowledge this actual sinning; much more more important than to focus and expend our finite efforts and attention in (Oh So Admirably!) diminishing one or a few selective sins - in what Jesus might have called the Pharisee Strategy. 

Showing off about one's (supposed) immunity to this or that temptation or sin may be an effective way of manipulating other people - it might (less often) even be a good thing for particular or overall social functioning. 

But is not the way to learn spiritually, to improve one's soul - and it has almost nothing to do with salvation. 

If the requirement for repentance is regarded in this way, then we will all find that there is no shortage of material for learning! 

If we are not much tempted by one kind of sin, there are plenty of other sins which we are doing some or most of the time - and which we have (for whatever reason, good or bad) have no intention of stopping. 

And there are sins that because of our nature, and/or circumstances; we cannot stop, we do not have the ability to stop. 

Jesus Christ did not ask the impossible of us; indeed he made salvation possible for anybody capable of love. 

Ultimately, those who attain resurrected eternal life need to desire themselves to be remade wholly good, without sin. 

We can't do this on this side of death; but can always and everywhere be learning what that will entail. 

This is time well spent. 

Each and every recognition and repentance of our sin is both an affirmation and strengthening of our ultimate commitment to follow Jesus after death; and also a (small but significant) proximate betterment of our souls as they now are, and shall be carried forward into eternal life.

Reversing death, or resurrection? What Jesus did with Lazarus wasn't "a miracle"

Jesus was a prolific miracle worker - but far from unique in that. He was also a remarkable healer, but far from unique in that. 

Most accounts of Jesus's miracles put the raising of Lazarus at the pinnacle of achievement and note that it was this action which brought upon him the implacable hostility of the official Jewish priesthood. 

But most accounts fail to understand the qualitative distinction between miracles of healing, food production etc - and what happened to Lazarus. 

This is missed because the raising of Lazarus is presented as if it was "merely" a reversal of a recent death - which might be framed as an extreme form of miracle; whereas it was instead the first example and public demonstration of resurrection. 

Nobody had ever resurrected anyone before, because it was something that only Jesus could do. 

Jesus's Father, i.e. God the primary creator, did not and could not resurrect anybody ever; which was why Jesus's incarnation and work was necessary if Heaven was to be possible. 

A miracle is something done to the world; but the raising of Lazarus was something Jesus did with him. 

Lazarus could be resurrected because he loved Jesus, knew Jesus was divine; and therefore was led by Jesus through death to life everlasting.

Lazarus was the first Man to die who fulfilled the conditions that Jesus described* as necessary for resurrected eternal life.  

The distinction is between a Lazarus brought back to mortal life, temporarily - but destined to die like everybody else...

Or on the other hand, a Lazarus who has died mortally and desired to be transformed to eternal resurrected life; to become fully a Son of God, and the first potential inhabitant of Heaven. 

The first inhabitant of Heaven was Jesus himself, he made Heaven possible and then actual. But after his resurrection Lazarus was ready and able to ascend to Heaven, at any time.  

So the raising of Lazarus ought not to be considered "a miracle" - rather it was a public demonstration of what Jesus came to do for all Men who desired resurrection and who loved and followed him.  

*From the IV Gospel: As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name... God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned... He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life...  I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die... That ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

Why Right Men are wrong - or, Learning from experience is more important than making the right decisions

I have often thought about the Christian reason for continuing living - what it is that we live for - given that Heaven is on the other side of death. 

I conclude that there is no compelling reason for living in many religious or for mainstream materialistic atheism (which is why so many people are so keen to die by "assisted suicide"). 

For Christians it is two assumptions that make the experiences of this mortal life valuable: 

Firstly, faith in a loving creator God - who would not sustain us alive without good reason;

Secondly, the prospect of resurrected eternal life - which means that we shall personally carry through to the after-life, whatever valuable things we have learned in mortal life. 

In sum: salvation is the aim of this mortal life; and spiritual learning is its meaning. 

One consequence is that:

It is more important for us to learn the spiritual lessons of our life-experiences than it is to make the right decisions in life. 

This is fortunate (!) because we all make wrong decisions - and very frequently; and this is not going to stop.

In an ultimate sense, there is not much virtue in making the right choices in life! There are many possible reasons for making right choices (e.g. heredity, family, external pressures etc) that do not reflect personal virtue.

And, on the flip side, we can see that people who boast about their own right-choices, and who thereby claim special merit (and there are many such online), are among the most odious of pseudo-Christian hypocrites and Pharisees! 

Such people are primarily concerned to assert that they are always right about everything; and this prevents them learning the spiritual lessons of mortal life. 

They are "Right Men" (even if a woman). 

People who take pride in having made the right choices are therefore sometimes people who are more concerned about being right (and bragging about it) than learning from experience - indeed, their attitude of not-making-mistakes means that they cannot ever learn*. 

So why are Right Men sustained alive by God? 

I think because God hopes that, before they die, they will set aside their compulsion to asserted themselves as right; and will discover that repentance is ultimately and spiritually more important than "good behaviour"...

Because, after all, even the best of good human behaviour is no more than relative; and the rightest of Right Men is inevitably wrong about many things, for much of the time. 

*This also applies to the Litmus Tests. What is vital about the Birdemic, for example, is Not that we got it right first time, and immediately understood it to be a fake rationale for totalitarian evil - but rather that we learned from the experience. That we came to recognize from our personal experiences (e.g.) the mass manipulations, gross and systemic lying, incoherence of policy that served an agenda of surveillance and control, strategic misrepresentation and felt encouragements to sin... It is the failure to learn-from, and repent, personal actual experience that has been so damaging; and much more so that any initial failure to discern rightly.  

If God is already and necessarily triumphant, and everything is alright already - then what are we waiting for?

There is a strong thread in religion of several kinds that asserts everything is alright already - e.g. because God is good and God is omnipotent therefore good is triumphant: here, now, already.

To which the obvious rejoinder is: In that case, what are we waiting for? 

If we are already living in a world of good-triumphant, why isn't this made obvious and explicit? Why doesn't everybody realize it? 

(And as we don't experience things as always good - then surely that of itself means that God is not really triumphant?)

Among some Christians, this triumph is asserted as having been the work of Jesus Christ. Asserted that what Jesus did made the triumph of God complete, or at least inevitable: that by Jesus God has "already" won. And the devil has already lost - but will not admit it. 

There are similar assertions (or so I see them) from oneness spiritualties - assertions that everything is beautiful, virtuous and true - the only problem is that we fail to recognize it. 

For instance, New Age type people often favourably cite the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas: 117 [113]. 

His disciples said to him: "On what day will the kingdom come?" "It will not come when it is expected. No one will say: 'See, it is here!' or: 'Look, it is there!' but the Kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it."   

That is; we already live in God's Kingdom - but don't recognize the fact. 

But such assertions leave us exactly where they find us - or, rather, someplace worse.

Because, if this-world-now (including entropy, death, evil) really is the triumph of Good/ Paradise/ Heaven and already "the best of all possible worlds"; then we are surely utterly depraved creatures. We Must Be - as evidenced by yours and mine and humanity's universal and chronic inability always and under all circumstances to recognize and live-by this fact. 

Yet it is hard to see how this-world-now can really be good, if Men are not. 

It is pretty extraordinary to imagine the Christian God creating a good world to be inhabited by evil Men... (Especially when these Men are made such as to fail to recognize the goodness of the world.)

Of course, such contradictions and incoherences may be explained-away by stunning and confusing people with soaring abstractions, especially about Time... 

Stuff about things being imperfect for creatures like us living in Time, while past-present-future are perfect for the creator God who is outside of Time (when past, present, future are simultaneous)... 

But surely, as "explanations", these just kick the can regarding why a God asserted to be good and also capable of creating perfection chose Not to, and instead chose to design gross imperfection and evil-proneness - and consign creatures to illusion, decay, death, and evil*.

Either such a God would be not-truly-Omni- or not-truly-Good; yet for such Christians, God is defined as both Omni- and Good. Hence the need for so much ultra-complex and abstract hand-waving... 

I can see the short-term and immediate psychological appeal of these kinds of "all actually is well" assertion. 

They provide a kind of confidence, of being on The Inevitably Winning Side - even though we will personally lose - i.e. we are actually sin-full, and shall suffer evil, get sick, die. 

And I can see that some of this is a kind of garbled understanding of the reality of Heaven 

But really, it's nonsense! Heaven is real, and anyone who wants it can have it, by following Jesus - but Heaven is on the other side of death. 

As for this world; God is the creator, but God is not triumphant here and now, in mortal life, on this earth... 

Obviously God is Not triumphant! If He was triumphant, there would be nothing to discuss. 

That's why Jesus Christ was needed, and why his message was of resurrection.

And Jesus was a Man, who lived (like all that lives) In Time and in a place - so Time is real.

And it is because God is not triumphant in this mortal world and never can be; that we needed Jesus, and why Jesus's message and gift was one of eternal resurrected life. 

To recap: The defects of this mortal life are not illusory, nor can they be removed by adopting a different attitude or making contradictory assertions. 

In sum; the defects of this mortal life are ineradicable.

...Which is why Jesus Christ was needed, why Heaven lies in our future, and why Heaven is on the other side of death and resurrection. 

*I feel that this kind of argument applies to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus's Mother. If God could make a Mary without sin, and if she could attain eternal Heavenly life without dying and resurrecting; surely such a God would the same for all Men? - thereby eliminating the need for Jesus Christ's life and work. The Immaculate Conception refutes the necessity of Jesus. yet I think I can see "what it is getting at" - which is that there really is a divine feminine creator; God really does include woman.

NOTE: The above arguments are what I personally find compelling, or even decisive - but I recognize that they will not work that way for others - especially when fundamental assumptions are not shared. So I am stating how I see things, not really trying to persuade others to agree. 

What prevents "war in Heaven"? Or, the necessity for death and resurrection

The phrase war in Heaven is common enough, sometimes used to describe a rebellion of Lucifer and the demons against God, and a subsequent war among spiritual beings with Michael the Archangel leading the forces on God's side*. 

Yet, if we really think about it, "war in Heaven" is nonsense, an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. 

Because - if there is war, then it isn't Heaven. And if there is a Heaven, then there cannot be war in it, nor even the possibility of war. 

*(If the war of God and angels versus demonic rebels did indeed happen in the time before Christ; and I believe something of that sort did happen, albeit it was and still is probably continuous, rather than a finite war - then it was not a war in Heaven. It was/is a war in the First Creation which was not and cannot be Heaven - not a war in Jesus Christ's Second Creation.)  

Heaven did not exist, and was not even claimed to exist, until Jesus Christ. It was Jesus that "made" Heaven, and made Heaven a possible destination for Men.  

But the "trouble" was and still is, that Jesus made Heaven on the other side of death; Jesus insisted that Men must die (as did he) and be "born-again" in order to dwell in Heaven. 

This has never been popular! 

People do not want to wait until after death. They want Heaven here and now! - or as soon as possible. They want to dwell in Heaven as they are, and not as they become after death. They want Heaven on Earth. 

Why then did Jesus insist that Men must die? Why not abolish death? 

Well, if we assume Jesus was both good and competent; then we must assume that death was necessary for Heaven: necessary for Heaven to exist; necessary for Men to live-forever and go to Heaven; necessary in order that Heaven actually be Heaven. 

And this can be understood by considering how war in Heaven is prevented. 

While some kind of powerful government could suppress dissent, detect and punish rebels etc - this would not be Heaven. (Being a thwarted, or brainwashed, rebel is not a Heavenly state!)

War in Heaven can only be ruled-out eternally if not a single one of the denizens of Heaven ever want war - and this situation must be eternal.  

In other words; the inhabitants of Heaven must - of their very nature, spontaneously, by their own fundamental desires and motivations - always and forever desire to live in love and harmony with God, and with each other. 

The "problem" was how to arrive at this situation; given that Men (and all other Beings) just-are free agents? 

The problem is: How can free agents become eternally good?

And my answer is that Men need to be able to make permanent their commitments, their choices, their deepest desires. 

Here on earth we cannot stick to our commitments, cannot stick to our choices. 

New Years resolutions get broken! The grandiose hopes of qualitative self-reform and betterment in a new Christian convert, never work-out. The "Old Adam" is ineradicable, as the Apostle Paul famously complained.  

We may passionately want to do this or that, or to be good, loving persons; but always we get distracted, or sick or older; our motives or mood change; circumstances change - and over-and-again we want something different, and end by doing something else altogether. 

Even/especially the greatest Saints are self-acknowledged to be great - almost continuous - sinners (by the truest standards of sin; sin as something-like deviation from the loving nature of divine creation).  

For there to be a Heaven, Men need to be able to choose God, Divine Creation, Love and all that is Good - and to choose this-only and this-forever. 

The way this happens is resurrection. 

We can therefore consider resurrection to be the way that we are enabled to make our commitments permanent. 

And resurrection first requires death. 

Thus resurrected Beings can live forever in Heaven without war, resurrection includes a permanent choice, an eternally-binding commitment, by which Men are (thanks to Jesus Christ) now able to make for ourselves.

It will surely be asked: "But why can't we have resurrection without death?"

The only real answer is: because that is the nature of things. If we want resurrection, we must die. 

It makes sense to me that resurrection can only be after death; because it entails a kind of permission to be re-made as eternal Beings; and although resurrection is a material process as well as spiritual, the process is essentially spiritual - because the material is a sub-set of the spiritual. 

(i.e. Originally there were only spiritual Beings  the material came later in creation. All materiality is also spiritual, but there can be and is spiritual being that is not material.)

I conceive of death as a kind of dissolution, or dissolving of my beingness from its current temporarily incarnated (embodied) level of creation, back towards a primal and immaterial (only-spiritual) simplicity that is a barely-conscious mere-existence. 

I envisage resurrection as redirecting the death-process by which only-and-all of that which is Good in me is taken, retained, rebuilt into the resurrected me.

The resurrected me is still me because it is a transformation of my eternal Being; but it is only remade of that which is Good, which is Heaven-compatible and Heaven-sustaining. 

The resurrected me will be eternal because this selective process retains only that which is harmonious and loving; and leaves-behind forever all that would have potential to generate dissent, rebellion or war against that-which-makes-Heaven-heavenly. 

In other words all of my mortal self that leads to death (all evil, and all "entropy") is left-behind in the process of resurrection, therefore after resurrection creation is unopposed and life is everlasting. 

How this selection process during resurrection actually happens, I guess to be the point at which the Christian imperative of "following Jesus Christ" comes-in. It may be as if we are continually-guided-through the process of resurrection (knowing what must be retained, what must be let-go and shed) by the very simple matter of Love. 

The discernment of what to keep, what to discard; comes from that love which motivates anyone who permanently desires Heaven, and the outer direction of that love to Jesus Christ and what he offers us. 

In different words; it is the loving and personal attention of Jesus Christ towards our souls during the process of dying, that enables resurrection; and which enables Heaven to exist...

And which enables Heaven to be heavenly, including that there can never be any desire for, or possibility of, "war in Heaven".  

**

H/T - Francis Berger's comment that a possible motivation for those who insist on an Omni-God is that they fear that anything less than an Omni-God will not always and forever be able to defeat Beings that might strive to usurp creation. God therefore (supposedly) desires to retain an infinite and qualitative gulf between Himself and all created-Beings. (Or rather, this gulf just-is, and a consequence is that nobody and nothing can subvert creation.) Such a line of reasoning is, I think, just an extreme case of the much more general problem stated here: how can Heaven stay "heavenly" when its inhabitants are free agents. The above is my understanding of how this is so, and some the consequences. Once it is understood that the denizens of Heaven can, by free and irrevocable choice, permanently be fully in harmonious accord with God's creative purposes and methods - then there is no reason why Men cannot rise to a level of divinity on-a-par with God the primary creator; and join-with God as partners in the work of creation.  

Birmingham, Glasgow and the escalating attention-magnet and motivation-sinkhole of geo-politics

No matter that I have for a decade-plus been cutting-down my consumption of media (and almost eliminating mainstream mass media from my life) - the fact is that the lure continues to escalate. 

Aside from the continually escalating geopolitical crisis of multiple wars, coups, and chaos (in which the UK unerringly joins the most evil side, in a fashion that paints a target over the country); there also the brutal and reckless destructiveness of UK domestic politics to contend with. 

The mask of benignity never come-off entirely; because mass media addiction and a godless aspiritual populace incapable of learning from experience, makes even gratuitously spiteful actions facile to prosecute under the most perfunctory of pragmatic or ethical rationales. 

The UK is being purposively annihilated by multiple strategies, any one of which would do the job on its own. But I can't do anything about it; and most native British people (a very large majority) are apparently so consumed with hedonism  / cowardly/ despairing self-loathing to be either ignorant or approving of the process. 

For instance, the main current national crusade and new legislation, which is widely-approved, is for the right to be painlessly murdered when the totalitarian state deems this moral and beneficial. 

The program of UK annihilation is now openly documented. This week we learned (from mainstream media) that in the past two years - by official figures (which are underestimates) net immigration has been about 1.7 million extra people... Which is an additional load (extra housing, education, health services, doles etc.) of the population of the second and third largest UK cities (Birmingham and Glasgow) combined. The government response is extract more taxes and introduce new laws to cover this crowded island with colossal swathes of cheap housing.

This is just one of the lethal plans - on top of war, anti-environmentalism, crushing farming, breaking transportation, smashing the economy, antiracism/ DIE, pseudo-socialism, omni-surveillance, total-bureaucracy and so on and on - mandated by an alien leadership class on a docile and demotivated populace.    

So the world is being destroyed, my country is being destroyed - and I am confident that nothing effective and significant will be done to oppose either of these killer trends. 

Yet the temptation is to monitor and evaluate the situation; and that monitoring needs to be ever more frequent, and ever more complex - and I have only so much time and energy and motivation. 

If I keep tabs on this stuff, and "do my little bit" to oppose it; then this is not merely futile, but drains finite life force and will-power from what I ought to be doing. 

There is a vast amount of real and important stuff that (given our consent) has a magnetic attraction for attention; and consumes motivation like a bottomless sinkhole... 

There is a great deal of "reality"! 

But the problem is not impossible - because each of us has a destiny, and sufficient divine guidance to enable us to discover what is most important. 

Hence, we need to ignore without denying most of "reality". 

Then, it is up to each of us to do that - and not something else. 

And this is not something to feel guilty about, nor to apologize-for - we should instead reserve our contrition for those things we fail to do that we really ought to be doing. Those "spiritual" things that can really make a difference to everything - not just here and now, but forever.  

Note to commenters: In any response, please try to resist the temptation to be topical and political; don't fall into exactly the trap I am describing! 

Where did I come from? Where am I going?

Where did I come from? Where am I going?

What was I before I was born, what will happen to me when I die? 

These questions are probably spontaneous among many people - if not all people. 

They arise from a sense of trying to understand "my" situation in life, in this world.  

The current options in answering include the following:

1. The questions make no sense. There is no you except in this temporary life and world, a current by-product of brain activity. And indeed "you" is probably only the same thing as itself here-and-now - and was not so when you were a young child, and "you" may be obliterated before your body dies by brain pathology. This is mainstream secular atheism, as taught by Western culture.  

2. The second question: Where am I going? is a real question, and the answer is [some kind of afterlife, such as heaven]; but the first question: Where did I come from? is an illegitimate question that has no answer; because "I" did not exist until my-self/ my-soul was created from nothing, some time before it was incarnated in a body. This is the conviction of mainstream orthodox Christianity, and some other religions.   

3. The reincarnation answer, which varies in its ultimates on either side of this particular mortal life (eg, varies concerning explanations of the ultimate origin and destination of "me"); but reincarnation belief generally has the take-home message that where I came from was a previous mortal-earthly incarnation, and where I am going is another mortal-earthly incarnation. This is asserted by the likes of Hindus and Buddhists and Eastern influenced Westerners of a New Age and/or Esoteric flavour. 

Answer 2 - we came from nothing, and/but will live eternally after death - is the mainstream, orthodox Christian answer. 

I would draw attention to its intermediate position in the above list; in that it asserts that (like mainstream atheism) there was a time in the past when we did not exist. 

This mainstream-orthodox-Christian asserted non-existence in the past of some essential "self" that is me; is something contradicted intuitively in some people (including myself) - to put it simply, I (like may people) have some kind of an inner conviction of a pre-mortal existence*. 

That mainstream, orthodox Christianity decided to assert that each soul is created-from-nothing was, I believe, a very unfortunate decision. It is impossible to know how many people through history have rejected Jesus Christ because they were thereby compelled (by the churches) to reject their intuition of pre-mortal existence - but it must have been A Lot of people.

Especially unfortunate as there are many scriptural references that plausibly refer to pre-mortal existence - especially the Gospel discussion of whether John the Baptist was, or was not, another "incarnation" of one of the ancient Hebrew prophets (e.g. John 1: 21-5).

At present, the only widely known option with respect to pre-mortal life is reincarnation; but there is another possibility that seemed to go unnoticed until Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet; which is that we all existed eternally before this mortal incarnation, but as not-embodied, not-incarnate, spirit beings. This is indeed my own intuition with respect to myself. 

(i.e. The phases of life, according to Mormonism, go roughly as follows: eternal pre-mortal spirit life; temporary mortal incarnation on earth; resurrected incarnate eternal life, of some kind - whether Paradisal or Heavenly in various degrees, or Hellish**.)  

But I see no Christian grounds for excluding the possibility of reincarnations preceding this mortal life. I just don't feel this is true for me.

I wish that more people knew of, and had seriously considered, the Mormon idea of eternal, pre-mortal, spirit existence because, well... I think the idea has "a lot going for it!" 

In other words, I think it is true that I lived a a spirit before this incarnation - so the idea is true at least for people like myself: those whose intuitive sense, direct knowledge, or memory rejects both creation from nothing, and (multiple) prior incarnations - but is convinced of prior existence. 

However, looking forwards from this mortal life, I think that a Christian will - almost by definition - not desire further reincarnation, nor a return to spirit existence; but the Christian will instead desire to attain resurrection to eternal Heavenly life. 

Of course, in principle, a Christian might feel he was not ready for resurrection, and therefore needed further reincarnations to prepare for the final choice of resurrection. 

However; I think that resurrection is not the kind of thing that can be delayed in such a fashion; because from here-and-now (now that Jesus Christ has made this possible) future reincarnation actually involves rejecting the chance and possibility of resurrection after we end this mortal life - which doesn't seem to me like something a Christian would want to do...     

But that's just me!

* Mainstream Orthodox Christians find themselves in the difficult position of having to argue that our soul is immortal going forwards, but not going backwards. Such Christians must argue that it does not make sense to suppose our souls can be annihilated into nothingness after death; but that is does make sense to suppose that the soul emerged from nothingness before birth. I say this is difficult to argue - it is not of course impossible! Yet such arguments very rapidly become extremely complex and abstract, and thereby (for most people) are not compelling.

**This is the orthodox Mormon understanding. My own is broadly similar in terms of phases, but somewhat different in terms of detail in that I believe reincarnation is a pre-mortal possibility; and that resurrection to eternal incarnation is only for those who choose Heaven, so that other (not-Heaven) choices will to remain post-mortal spirits.

"They" Want Us Dead - but dead too-late, too soon, and dying in fear and/or despair

The subject of death is becoming mainstream in modern materialistic culture - but, of course, death is framed by our evil-motivated Leadership class in ways that (if the frames are accepted) with induce us to choose damnation instead of salvation, and such as to corrupt as as much as possible. 

There are many aspects to death. One is that, in this entropic world, we will die. Another is that we dwell in God's continuing-creation, and God therefore can influence the way we die. And then there is our own freedom. 

I therefore assume that God (by his creative work) engineers the best "time to die" for us; within the constraints of entropy and the freedom of other beings (including, but not only, human beings). The best death is when - from our freedom, we willingly agree that this is the time to die - at which point, the process of death (which happens in time) will begin. 

But this best way to die is precisely what the weight of modern culture attempts (on the whole very successfully) to thwart - by two main means (although there are many others). 

The first is to induce us all to cling to life, for as long as possible - so that we will not consent to die when it is "our time" (and God will do everything possible to ensure that we - and those we love - know it is time). Hence the clichés such as "stay with me" that present dying as always a failure of will, a giving-up in despair. 

A good deal of modern health services are built on exactly this assumption - that everybody ought to want to stay alive, at whatever cost, for as long as possible -  hence the truly vast expenditure of health and social care in sustaining human life far beyond its biological span. 

But the vital thing to remember is that this artificial sustaining of life is only possible because that is what so many modern people are choosing. It is not difficult to die, and people will die when they are ready - when, at the deepest level, they have chosen to die. 

The other corruption is to regard death as something that ought to be done with the minimum of suffering, and therefore - to be on the safe side - we need to arrange to be murdered (assisted dying) before there is "too much" suffering. 

This discourse is rooted in extreme and chronic (existential) fear - the fear of what might happen to us...

Combined with such an extremity of fear of suffering that even a few minutes of pain (such as might result from actual suicide) is intolerable to contemplate... 

Ancient Romans used (apparently calmly) to kill themselves with a sword or knife - but modern Man demands (literally demands, as a human right) painlessly to be murdered by someone else, with legal approval, by some technological contrivance that is claimed to eliminate suffering. 

In the materialist culture of the mainstream West, there can be no conceptualization of faith and trust in God; not even trust that God will ameliorate our subjective experience of suffering at the time of death (as seems to happen in so many animals). 

Neither do we trust God to know when it is our "time to die" and will provide us with that knowledge when the time comes. 

Consequently there seem to be a lot of "bad deaths". One is the death of someone who is clinging to life for every last moment until overwhelmed by entropy - and total body failure supervenes - and whose soul is, presumably, dragged "kicking and screaming" into the after-life state. Which seems like a very bed preparation for the choices to be made at that phase of our lives. 

Another bad death is one who mistrusts God, or more the reality of God, and dies in a despair so profound that he cannot summon the courage to anticipate enduring even a few moments or minutes of suffering en route to the after-life.  

Another bad death is suicide; which is death too early - before the "time to die" - which happens when suicide is motivated by sin - sins such as fear, despair, or resentment ("that will show them!") 

A common things seems to be the death of those who have rejected their "time to die" and who have chosen to live on in a state of what must therefore be unrepented, hence probably cumulative, sin. In other words, who have (for weeks, month, perhaps many years) been progressively corrupted in soul by their embracing of fear and despair; such that when they eventually die they are significantly worse people than if they had died when God believed that they should best die. 

If such a corrupted soul accepts salvations in the after-life - which opportunity is, of course, open to all - they they will take much less of themselves through resurrection to eternal life. 

What I mean is that we can only take-forward what is good in us, and must leave-behind what is not-good. So those who die later will need to repent more and therefore shall take-forward less than if they had accepted death when God chose was the best time. 

(In other words; if there is a best time to die; then dying later than that time will be worse; when best and worse are judged by post-mortal and Heavenly standards.)

If we accept this idea of there being, for each person and spiritually-speaking, a time to die - and that this time is known by God; then it is indeed obvious that there is vast current propaganda otherwise. 

A denial of there being a time to die. 

And the colossal cultural effort to persuade people that their time of dying is an event to be decided by anything-other-than God: e.g. by "individual choice" of mortals who have accepted/ chosen annihilation after death (i.e. choice in context of materialist metaphysics); or chosen and administered by The System in some combination of Global Establishment/ State/ Law/ Media/ and Health (or Death) Services.