How is Jesus *necessary* to salvation? The process of resurrection

It is a stumbling block for potential Christians that Jesus is necessary for salvation. And, such is the essential nature of Christianity, that this is a matter which modern people find it very difficult to understand - or, at least, they find it hard to understand as something good.

Quite reasonably, people find it unacceptable that people should be pressured (indeed blackmailed) into becoming Christians by the 'or else' kind of threat represented by the idea of being 'sent to hell' if you don't. There is also a worry about the billions of people (past and present) who either know nothing about Jesus and Christianity or know only some kind of biased/ prejudiced/ selective version - or else are unable to understand it (due, for example, to being babies or young children, mentally handicapped or mentally ill/ brain damaged).

So, it seems unreasonably, and indeed wickedly, restrictive for salvation to be confined only to those who know, understand and accept Jesus. Or else eternal torment in hell...


But the other side of the coin is that salvation should not (indeed cannot), be forced upon anyone - Christianity is an opt-in kind of religion; and that opt-in needs to be conscious, deliberate, a kind of 'informed consent'. How can this be the case - given the above problems of ignorance, misinformation, incompetence, lack-of-capacity... How could everybody be given a fair chance to opt-in?


One answer might be to consider what happened with the resurrection of Jesus; and that he promised resurrection to everybody. Death is the separation of soul/ spirit from body - the body dies, and the spirit remains. Yet the spirit alone is a maimed thing, hardly self-aware, unfree, 'demented' - and this was widely recognised in ancient religions, especially before Christ; where the realm of the dead (Hades, Sheol etc) was a place of barely-sentient spirits. Not a place of torment, but a place where we lost our-selves - forever (unless there was reincarnation).

So, the process of resurrection has at least two aspects: the first is that spirit and body are reunited, we become sentient again, we regain our souls, our selves...

The other part of resurrection is the spiritual process of being re-born to eternal life. This involves a positive, conscious, deliberate choice - because what this entails is allying ourselves permanently with God's plan, his goal of a reality based on Love. Heaven is this world based on Love between persons.

We cannot be coerced to love (else it is not love) - and indeed we would not want to dwell in Heaven if we did not want to live in this world of loving relations - more exactly we cannot live in this world of loving relations if we do not, ourselves, love.

But to be able to live in such a world is not something that we can accomplish for ourselves - it is, indeed, the gift of Jesus. This is why there is no other way than by him. To live in heaven we must believe in, have trust in, Jesus - must surrender our-selves to him so we can be remade fit for heaven.

Such absolute, trusting surrender is only rational if we believe that Jesus loves us. In other words, we must believe-in Jesus - his power, goodness, love - in order to surrender utterly to him; in order to be able to participate in eternal life in Heaven.


For this to be universally available to all men and women, at all times in history and today, regardless of circumstances and place - then it must be something which occurs (or at least can occur) after death. That is; everybody must be brought, after death, to a situation in which he or she makes a fully-informed choice, with understanding of the consequences. This is 'judgment' - and it is our personal choice (although Jesus was responsible for setting-up the choice).

Those who did not (for whatever reason) repent during mortal life are able to repent after mortal death, in this fashion. That is, they can choose whether to accept the gift of Christ, or not.

Hell is what happens to people who choose not - Hell is the people who choose not to live by love, who choose not to trust Christ.


But why specifically Jesus Christ, why must we believe in him personally? Now that the system is set-up - couldn't Christ's role be discarded?

My understanding is that Life, including eternal life, is ultimately personal - not abstract. I regard this as one of the essential aspects of Christianity - because Love requires persons.

It was the work of Jesus as a person to enable us to be saved from permanent death (severance of spirit and body) by repentance, and to be resurrected to eternal life. It was (it seems) necessary for Jesus as a person to go-through what he did (incarnation, birth, life, death and resurrection), and to do so by choice, for us to receive the benefits. It was necessary for Jesus to do this in order that we (that is all men and women) can follow the same path.

Why exactly this should be so is another matter - but that it is so is central to the Christian story.


Anyway, my take-home-message here is that belief in Jesus is indeed necessary to salvation; because being saved entails a surrender of our self to Jesus; and without belief (faith, trust, love) we will not allow ourselves to be saved.

Furthermore, all men and women have been and will be presented with this choice to believe-in Jesus Christ or not - and this choice in full clarity of consciousness and sufficient comprehension of the implications - regardless of their earthly circumstances. This situation is something that is always (sooner or later) made possible and arranged by divine action and intervention.

'Mere Christian' thoughts on the baptism of infants

*

In some established, mostly Catholic, Christian societies; infant baptism has been the norm, and baptism regarded as essential to salvation - and performed as an emergency by anybody at hand if an infant was about to die.

Yet in some devout Protestant churches, baptism is something that happens (if it happens) mostly in teenage or adulthood, and is therefore implicitly regarded as optional to salvation.

*

Catholic baptism makes sociological sense in that, in an already-existing Christian society, pretty much everybody is brought up a Christian unless they opt-out.

People in such societies are not 'born again' because they have never known anything different - they are swimming in a sea of Christianity, do not need specific instruction in Christianity - it is all that they have ever known.

Thus baptism is not about choice, but a normal practice - a necessity, but also very preliminary to the real business of a Christian life.

(In such societies, the most highly religious people adopt the religious life (monasticism), and seek to become Saints.)

When baptism is of infants, and near universal, and linked with salvation; the fate of the unbaptized infant becomes a major theological concern and problem - with various proposed solutions, such as Limbo.

*

By contrast, in some Protestant societies, baptism is a matter for adults, and is therefore an opt-in.

The background assumption seems to be that people will not be Christian unless they specifically choose to become a Christian.

The religious life is conversion focused, and the convert is born-again very explicitly. There is much need for teaching, since one cannot assume that the average citizen knows what it means to be Christian.

Since baptism is not quick, or universal, and is not of young children; then the specific Catholic concern over the salvation of infants is not prominent.

(e.g. Devout English Puritan reformers of the Book of Common prayer wanted to stamp-out the practice of emergency baptism by midwives - the implicit attitude being that it was better for infants to die unbaptized than for such practices to encourage the wrong attitude to baptism.)

*

Infant baptism, and baptism generally, is therefore one of the major differences between (sincere, devout, real) Catholic and Protestant Christians.

My only observation is that the general attitude concerning children throughout the New Testament seems to suggest that the salvation of children is not a problem.

*

This is not a matter of theology, but a matter of what is suggested by the stories, and what is left-out of the theology, or is ambiguous or unclear. 

There seems to be an implicit background assumption that (young) children are innocent in practice (leaving aside the aspect of original sin) - and the salvific concern is with adults able to comprehend and choose.

This could imply that the eternal fate of children is so bound-up with, assimilated-to, that of adults (parents) such that no separate treatment of the matter is possible; or that children have 'different rules' including a free pass of some sort - perhaps that sin is an 'adult' phenomenon (with a borderline between child and adult that is necessarily imprecise).

*

This line of argument tends to support the Protestant theology, however it does not invalidate the Catholic practice of infant baptism.

On the one had it supports the Protestant idea that infant baptism is not necessary to salvation; on the other hand it does not support the (sometimes) Protestant idea that infant baptism is wrong, invalid, and should be prohibited.

*

I must admit that, although I personally was baptised as an infant and not by immersion in the Catholic-Protestant Church of England, I find it hard (in my simple-minded way) to understand why it is that adult baptism by immersion as depicted so prominently and explicitly in the New Testament has become so unusual among the major Christian denominations.

Leaving aside the consequences of not doing it; it just seems very obvious that when Baptism is done, it would be done in the manner of the New Testament accounts.

I'm not saying that differences from NT baptism practice have any particular bad consequences - at any rate, I don't see this in church history, not clearly; but I find it genuinely hard to comprehend why baptism would be changed, on the basic principle that if a church fundamentally changes baptism practice (given that baptism is so obvious and fundamental to the conversion process in the NT) then what would not be open to change?

*

Theocratic Christian denominations ought to regard themselves as elite (not universal) and regard non-religionists as second-class citizens (not as evil heretics to be persecuted)

I regard theocracy as the only truly coherent (and best) form of government - by which I mean that all the various officially-approved aspects of national life ought (ideally) to be unified by the religion.

But Christianity is an opt-in kind of religion - and belief cannot be coerced  - so in practice there are always a sizable proportion of the population who will not or cannot or are not eligible to opt-into any specific Christian church. So how should a theocracy treat them, given that all public affairs will be run in accordance with the ruling religion?

This thought-experiment can be examined using a wealth of historical experience - and I think the best solution is that the ruling Christian church (or denomination) ought to regard themselves as an elite and privileged group; but not as a universal church - because even when theoretically the church is open to 'anyone' in practice there will always be (and there must always be provision for) those who for various reasons cannot or do not want to join that church - or whom the ruling church will not have as members (perhaps because they fail to reach minimal standards of observance or obedience).

No matter how minimal is the compliance required by the ruling church - there must be rules, and these rules must be enforced - so there will always be those who do not wish to opt-in, or who are excluded.

Clearly, there must be some arrangement by which the ruling church is maintained and not allowed to be subverted or corrupted - so there is no possibility of treating all religions (and no religion) equally - and indeed this has never happened anywhere (except where religion is abolished, in which situation some secular ideology - typically Communism - has replaced religion; and religious people are treated as the non-compliers).

Too many Christian theocracies have treated non-church members with an appalling (and un-Christian) harshness based on hatred rather than love. These were, I think, those churches which implicitly (and usually explicitly) regarded themselves as universal; and therefore anyone who did not join them was assumed to be hostile, evilly motivated - and therefore deserving of harsh suppression.

This was applied even to 'heresies' so microscopic and (in practice, as history showed) theologically-insignificant, that even thoughtful and informed people of that era could not understand the difference between the labelled and persecuted heresy and approved orthodoxy - as with the supposed Monophysite heresy of the Fifth century, which was persecuted by the Christian Byzantine Empire with such unrelenting viciousness that the Oriental Orthodox welcomed the advent of a particular type of non-Christian monotheism as a blessed relief. There are many analogous and equally appalling examples from Christian history - Western and Eastern Catholic, Protestant and Anglican.

So what is the answer?

That denominations should regard themselves as in-practice an elite rather than realistically-universal. The ruling denomination can then be strong in its demands on believers; without being vicious towards non-aggressive unbelievers.

I emphasize non-aggressive - no nation can for long tolerate deliberate, organized subversion of its ruling order without opening the door to collapse. Non-believers must therefore submit to the ruling order - and must refrain from intervention to subvert or attack the ruling order in the public sphere - including refraining from generalized evangelism outwith their own group.

But it follows that non-believers must, in practice be treated as in some significant respects second class citizens - because the positions of leadership and authority must (as a matter of basic order and cohesion) be reserved for those in good standing with the ruling church.

Conversely, those who do not or cannot join the ruling church must accept that they are indeed second class citizens, who will inevitably (at least under normal circumstances) be excluded from power; as the price of not being persecuted for their discordant beliefs and their freedom from established church authority.

An example of what I am talking about was the theocratic Mormon state under Brigham Young (which I regard as having been potentially-sustainable - although in practice suppressed by the USA).

Of course, this situation is not optimal for everybody - because being a second class citizen excluded from significant privileges is not ideal for those people. On the other hand, being a constrained and second class citizen it is better than being coerced into conformity with the sanction of unbridled persecution for refusing - which has been the usual situation for most societies for most of history; and remains so.

(Ask the Copts of Egypt, or the millions of other Christians in the Middle East who have, in the past couple of decades, gone from being second class citizens able to practice their religion under constraints for more than 1000 years; to almost-all being forcibly converted, perpetually tormented and tortured, dead or expelled.)

A religious/ ideological free-for-all is not sustainable - so need not be considered as realistic.

One implication of this is that - in my opinion - Christian denominations should in practice (even when not in theory) regard themselves as an elite of the most devout of the potentially-saved, rather than themselves as the only path to salvation and everyone else as actively evil hence necessarily-damned.

How does salvation-damnation work? A choice of The Moment - described by CS Lewis

From Surprised by Joy The Moment with a choice of salvation: 

The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armour or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, "I chose," yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do."

From That Hideous Strength - The Moment with a choice of damnation:

Still not asking what he would do, or why, Frost went to the garage. The whole place was silent and empty; the snow was thick on the ground by this. He came up with as many petrol tins as he could carry. He piled all the inflammables he could think of together in the Objective Room. Then he locked himself in by locking the outer door of the ante-room. Whatever it was that dictated his actions then compelled him to push the key into the speaking-tube which communicated with the passage. When he had pushed it as far in as his fingers could reach, he took a pencil from his pocket and pushed with that. Presently he heard the clink of the key falling on the passage floor outside. That tiresome illusion, his consciousness, was screaming in protest: his body, even had he wished, had no power to attend to those screams. Like the clockwork figure he had chosen to be, his stiff body, now terribly cold, walked back into the Objective Room, poured out the petrol and threw a lighted match into the pile. Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul--nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was hardly fiercer than his hatred of that. With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes trolls and turns them into unchangeable stone.

From this blog - The Moment occuring after biological death:

Heaven is a choice, a decision, an act, an opt-in - and salvation therefore happens only through faith - that is love, trust of Jesus. To understand this requires recalling the fate of the soul after the death of the body, and before the resurrection of Jesus - the soul was a witless, demented thing of little intelligence, little memory, little judgement, no free will... incapable of helping itself... (This, at least, is how both the ancient Hebrews (with Sheol) and ancient Greeks (with Hades) regarded life after death - and other variants may be understood similarly. The soul after death was a damaged, incomplete, incapable thing - eternal life was merely eternal existence.) I regard the Good Shepherd parable as providing the key to understanding salvation - which is that while the soul is always resurrected, resurrected Man cannot find his own way to Heaven. The resurrected soul must be led to Heaven; that is, Man must choose to follow the guidance of the Good Shepherd. This following is not imposed, it is chosen. This was made newly possible by Jesus because the resurrected soul has greater capability than the discarnate souls destined for Sheol/ Hades; the resurrected soul has sufficient capability to recognise Jesus, to know him; it has the capacity and necessity to choose whether to follow the Good Shepherd, or not. Why would the resurrected soul follow the Good Shepherd to Heaven, except that the soul loved and trusted the Good Shepherd? That is the need for faith.


Note:  It might be asked why there needs to be a permanent and irreversible decision on salvation versus damnation. Why can't people change their minds?

There are a couple of aspects to this. First is that all decisions are irreversible - in the sense that they have permanent consequences. This is because Time is real, sequential, and linear. Every decision changes the sequence, changes the future; and Time cannot be rewound - because that is its nature. We know this; albeit are inclined to wish it away and that we might undo our mistakes of the past.

Second is that Heaven would not be possible unless Men were able to make a permanent positive commitment to it; a permanent commitment to Love, God, The Good and God's work of Creation. Therefore, salvation must, at some point before we go to Heaven, be irreversible.

The same need not logically apply to damnation - which is (broadly considered) the negative decision to reject Heaven; because in principle that decision might be reversed.

But in practice - as we know from the experiences of our mortal life - there is a strong tendency for choices in favour of evil to lead to further corruption, to further evil choices... and the tendency is for a choice for Good to become harder and harder, less and less likely.

This is a matter of 'psychology' rather than logic; but I think we can see from the example of Frost in That Hideous Strength how unlikely it would be that someone who has seen reality and then chosen damnation, would later reverse that decision.
     

Why I am Not a universalist with respect to salvation

The basic reason is that I have an extremely different understanding of ultimate, metaphysical reality from that which underlies the belief in universal salvation.

Universalists tend to regard Heaven as the only place of happiness and therefore a place where everybody - sooner or later - wants to go, and God as gatekeeper to this place. A loving God would - on this model - want all of his children to be happy, and would not bar the door to the place of happiness to anybody who wanted to enter.
 
In other words, universalists are unable to conceive of anybody who would not want to be in Heaven, rather than the alternatives.

In this sense, universalists regard all humans as being fundamentally alike in their nature and aspirations.

I, by contrast, see humans as having fundamental differences in their nature, and differences in what they want, from the beginning. I regard some people as having always been evil, in the sense of being opposed to Good (and Good derives its meaning from God's creation - so that to be evil is to oppose creation, and favour its destruction - to want to prevent the possibility of Good).

I presume that some souls have always been - by their nature, and for many possible - opposed to the idea of joining God's creation. This is not necessarily evil - because Heaven is an optional opt-in; a positive option.

So throughout eternity, there have been souls that preferred (for many reasons) not to join the creative and loving endeavour that is Heaven. Only some of these are the fallen pre-mortal spirits that we call demons. Others might have chosen permanent solitude, others might have chosen destruction of the Self and permanent bliss. Such choices are not necessarily irrational. 

There is also a difference in the understanding of freedom. Universalists see that any choice other than Heaven is a failure of freedom; that Heaven is the only rational choice for every person - or, that every choice other-than Heaven must be based on ignorance which, and when (sooner or later) eventually ignorance is cured - then the decision to reject Heaven would certainly be revised. And then God would (being loving) accept them into Heaven.

In sum; I believe there are some people whose nature is such that they have rational grounds for rejecting Heaven, and there are also some people whose evil opposition to creation, whose desire to see other people suffer, to inflict pain etc. is a trait they have possessed from their origins.

My understanding is that God, as our loving Father, keeps open the possibility of redemption for these people as long as possible, But a vital part of freedom is the freedom to make permanent commitments - for Good and also for evil. Indeed, this freedom seems to me vital for the existence of Heaven.

Heaven is only possible because people can make a permanent commitment to live in love, and work in participation with God's creation, with the other inhabitants - for eternity.

And the 'flipside' of this is that it must also be possible to make permanent commitments in the other direction, in the directions that involve choices other-than Heaven (some of which are actively evil, others of which are more of a passive opt-out).

So, I am not a universalist - nor do I regard universalism as evidence of God's goodness. But I can understand why, for those who accept the 'standard Christian metaphysics' of who reality is set-up, they can be led into universalism - because God's love is indeed his one essential characteristic.

However, universalism is not - long term - and in a church setting, a sustainable answer. Because when universalism is inserted within a traditional Christian framework introduces a kind of fatal flaw that tends to destroy the institutional system.

But perhaps this is itself an inevitable and necessary phase? Because if churches rely on God being seen to exclude people from Heaven who want to be there, than perhaps such a gross distortion to the essence of Christianity is so great that it invalidates any particular instantiation of the religion that depends too heavily upon it?

Explaining the 'mechanism' of salvation and the necessity of Jesus (from the Fourth Gospel)

The beginning of the Fourth Gospel tells us that it was Jesus, The Word, who made this world; and it is this work of creation which enabled Jesus (and only Jesus) to be our saviour.

*

Having made this world; Jesus was then incarnated-into the world he had created; that is, he was incarnated from his creation, using the stuff of his own creation. This world has that primal and fundamental unity - of being created by Jesus - everything is inter-related and mutually-affecting, by kinship of shared origin.

So we too are all incarnated from this world, from the creation of Jesus. 

When Jesus died and was resurrected; this was the death and resurrection of the creator of this world, Jesus's mortal body and his resurrected body were both of this world (which Jesus himself had made).

We are incarnate from this world, Jesus became incarnate from this world (which he had made); we and Jesus are both Men; and therefore Jesus's death and resurrection had universal significance for Men. 

This it was, that made it possible for other Men to follow Jesus into resurrected life everlasting; and why only Jesus is our saviour.

*

Why then do we need to have faith in Jesus? Why doesn't salvation just-happen?

Because there are two things Jesus gave us; the first is 'physical' resurrection to eternal life, the second is 'dwelling' in Heaven (life 'everlasting', and life qualitatively greater - not merely unending existence...).

Resurrection just-happens, and it happens to all men. Instead of remaining as a severed soul - as was the case for all Men before Jesus; since the resurrection of Jesus, all Men (including those from before the time of Jesus) are resurrected.

Resurrection is not a choice - it 'just happens' - it is something like a change in physical reality; a change in what happens to the soul after death.

*

But Heaven is a choice, a decision, an act, an opt-in - and salvation therefore happens only through faith - that is love, trust of Jesus.

To understand this requires recalling the fate of the soul after the death of the body, and before the resurrection of Jesus - the soul was a witless, demented thing of little intelligence, little memory, little judgement, no free will... incapable of helping itself...

(This, at least, is how both the ancient Hebrews (with Sheol) and ancient Greeks (with Hades) regarded life after death - and other variants may be understood similarly. The soul after death was a damaged, incomplete, incapable thing - eternal life was merely eternal existence.)

I regard the Good Shepherd parable as providing the key to understanding salvation - which is that while the soul is always resurrected, resurrected Man cannot find his own way to Heaven.

The resurrected soul must be led to Heaven; that is, Man must choose to follow the guidance of the Good Shepherd. This following is not imposed, it is chosen.  

This was made newly possible by Jesus because the resurrected soul has greater capability than the discarnate souls destined for Sheol/ Hades; the resurrected soul has sufficient capability to recognise Jesus, to know him; it has the capacity and necessity to choose whether to follow the Good Shepherd, or not.

Why would the resurrected soul follow the Good Shepherd to Heaven, except that the soul loved and trusted the Good Shepherd?

That is the need for faith.

*

Thus Jesus was necessary to our salvation, only Jesus could give us salvation, only faith in Jesus can lead us to salvation.

 

The Fall - what does it mean?

The Fall can only be understood in terms of the purpose of mortal life - including the question of whether there is a purpose to mortal life. That must be sorted-out first - and only then can there be an understanding of what is meant by The Fall in Christian scripture and theology.

My understanding of mortal life is that it comes between a spiritual pre-mortal life, and a resurrected post-mortal life (this is standard Mormon theology). The purpose of this incarnated mortal existence has been clarified for me by the work of William Arkle - and is that God (in fact our Heavenly Parents) is aiming to nurture and educate other gods like himself, to raise up Men to the same level as himself; or rather, to allow Men the experiences necessary to educate him to fuller divinity - if each Man chooses that path for himself.

All this is motivated by love - and the ultimate aim is a society of divine persons related (but not united) by love. Because the aim is love, this is an opt-in situation - we cannot be compelled to love.

So the purpose of our mortal and incarnated life is related to this long term goal. We began as immaterial spirits, and at that point were were 'immersed' in God's love. Our aim for the future is to be incarnated immortals each of whom is fully divine, and not immersed in God's love but participating in a fully loving relationship.

The Fall is related to the fact that we move from immersion to relationship via a state of separation from God. First we come out of the immersion of our pre-mortal state, and we are separated from God - then we much choose to develop towards a full loving relationship with God - not inside love but as a love between two autonomous divine beings. It is indeed a Fall out of Love - and therefore, because Love is the primary Good of reality, it is a Fall from a better state to a worse. But it is a necessary transition if the higher form of relational love is desired. .

The Fall represents this separation from God - which is en route to a higher divinity but is a hazardous situation because we are both free (we have agency, we have choice, we can act from within ourselves uncaused) and separate from God. Therefore we can choose not to continue towards divinity, and the fact of separation enables us to deny the reality and goodness of this divine scheme of life - we can choose to deny that the goal of loving divine entities (a perfect family in Heaven) is true, or we can deny that it is good, or we can choose to reject it.

So The Fall is necessary to spiritual progression beyond that of our pre-mortal selves, it is necessary to move from a passive immersion in love to an active, chosen love between full free divinities - but mortal life creates the possibility of getting 'stuck' in the state of separation, and the danger of rejecting God's plan.

Indeed, this situation is almost inevitable given the conditions of mortal life - it is almost inevitable that we would fail to make the right choices to make the necessary spiritual progression, it is almost inevitable that we would end up rejecting the aim of a fully divine loving relationship in the post-mortal life.

So, it was necessary for Jesus Christ to intervene in this scheme in order to undo the ill effects of The Fall, so that we can get the benefits of The Fall without the lethal drawback - if we so choose. I understand the Atonement of Christ as being the creation of a situation of default theosis - that mortal life provides benefits of experience which are retained, and the harms of mortal life are simply left behind at death - then we are offered, as a gift, the perfected life as basis for post-mortal existence.

Because we are free agents, we must choose to accept this gift - but that is all we have to do. The gift is handed-us, we merely need to accept it. Rejection of the gift is an active process of pushing it away, or of turning away - a chosen refusal to accept.

So mortal life was made a fail-safe experience, by the work of Christ. However, even though it is fail-safe - mortal life is still risky, and still requires a choice to accept 'salvation' - and since we are separated from God and are in an in-between state, some are likely to deny and/ or reject the gift. Some apparently (as with Eastern religions) take a look at the incarnate life and reject it, preferring to return (for at least a while) to the psychological state of pre-mortal spirit life: immersion in the love of God.

Others - and we see this all around us - reject the reality of God's creation; deny that there was a creation; deny the reality of God; deny the goodness of God's plan; deny the primacy of Love... and so on. They are free to do this - and they will (presumably) opt-out after their death - will not participate in the loving relationship of post-mortal life. They prefer to remain in the state of separation - without moving on to the state of relationships. In other words they reject salvation and choose what is termed damnation.

Since Men are free this choice cannot be prevented, It is what such people want - and although they are mistaken, they get what they want. So for these people, The Fall is a permanent separation from God and a permanent exile from Love.

So, by his incarnation, death and resurrection - Jesus undid The Fall in its bad aspects, and thereby we are enabled to achieve a higher state than we had before The Fall - all the advantages, and the disadvantages made merely temporary.

However, we currently live with these disadvantages - in our mortal lives.

The hierarchy of evil seen in the Birdemic/Peck and current wars

CS Lewis's demonic supervisor Screwtape is depicted as being strategically-motivated by damnation of humans; while the junior demon Wormwood is mostly just a sadist - enjoying the infliction of human suffering. 

There is a hierarchy of evil (or "lowerarchy", as CS Lewis terms it in The Screwtape Letters) - by which I mean there are degrees of evilness. 

This was evident in the Birdemic of 2020 and the (allegedly preventive) Peck which followed later; and is evident in the ongoing West-provoked/ escalated/sustained global wars. 

The three main levels of the hierarchy of evil can be defined in terms of motivation; and are, in ascending order of evilness of motives:

1. Profit and Pleasure

2. Sadism

3. Damnation

1. Profit and Pleasure 

These are those humans (and lower-status demonic beings) whose motives are essentially selfish and short-termist. 

They cause, continue and use events like the Birdemic to get pleasure and to avoid suffering. For instance; they aim to make money, and to get rich/ famous/ powerful/ popular. 

As example: the people who got massively wealthy from manufacturing and distributing "personal protection" products and the Peck during the Birdemic. Or in wars; the corporate types who manufacture and trade armaments, the politicians and journalists who benefit from bribery and other corruptions. 

This kind of evil is widely acknowledged as a real factor in the world; indeed for most modern people selfish short-termism is in the only kind of evil they acknowledge. They will use it to to explain everything that happens and which they dislike.   

2. Sadism

These are those whose motives are sadistic and destructive. Their main gratification is spiteful: to enjoy the suffering of others, especially when they are involved in inflicting it. 

Such a motive isn't rare; and often finds expression in resentment-fantasy, gloating and Schadenfreude. 

It can be recognized as dominant when people will sacrifice their own profit and pleasure in order to try and damage and destroy those people and entities (e.g. religions, institutions, nations) they most dislike. 

In the Birdemic the sadism-motivated were evident in their eager and sustained support of "face-coverings" and the variety of "social distancing" policies. The resulting loneliness, illness, decline and despair of the coercively-isolated was their primary satisfaction.   

In war, they are recognizable by their tenacious support of policies that have (and are, by them, intended to have) the opposite effect to that claimed. Such as "sanctions" that damage everybody, but mainly those doing the sanctioning. Or military "aid" that leads to the progressive annihilation of the people and society being supplied with aid. 

 

3. Damnation

At the highest level of evil (or more exactly, the highest level at which evil-intent coheres, and remains capable of some cooperation and a degree long-termism in aim - there is a level beyond) - the motivation is to work for the damnation of others. 

In other words, the aim is spiritual. It is to oppose God and divine creation in all ways possible, and in particular to deter or prevent people from choosing to accept the gift of Jesus Christ (i.e. resurrection to eternal Heavenly life). 

Since salvation is a matter of spiritual choice (an "opt-in"); this level of evil works on trying to shape and manipulate what people want.-

To ensure damnation of souls; it is not enough to have people Do evil stuff, they must ultimately Want evil stuff. 

In the Birdemic we saw this in the propaganda that tried to make people accept, demand, and celebrate the measures that were designed to harm them spiritually (as well as physically). 

Many people were induced to desire the escalation and permanence of lock-downs, masking, social distancing; and to advertise positively their own compliance with the Peck (IRL as well as in social media). 

It wasn't just that these things harmed them; but that they wanted the harm - they agreed to being harmed, and sought more of the same. 

And we currently see this damnation motivation among those who use untruthfulness (distortion, selection, outright lying) and knowingly-false interpretations; to depicts their actually-evil-intending (anti-Good-motivated) wars as an ideological/ spiritual conflict with the worse side presented as the better. 

Among those (many) who express such sentiments - and we may infer that these such persons have potentially embraced their own damnation as a personal ideal.  

This is the ultimate success of the demonic powers - to induce people not merely to seek their own pleasure and profit; and not only to enjoy the infliction of pain and destruction - but to hate God/ Creation? Jesus and reject the hope of salvation. 

Instead; to adopt and practice value-inversion... understanding and rejecting Good as evil, and adopting evil as the highest Good.

Because value-inversion (commonplace and official in the modern West) is the surest path to damnation - as by it, the divine is mocked, despised and hated, while the demonic is regarded as heroic, fun and "cool".

And, thereby, the people shall positively affiliate themselves with the demonic agenda of damnation - to become active agents for propagating their own miserable fate.

From the highest levels of the hierarchy of evil, such was-and-is the intent and triumph of 2020; and of the subsequent and ongoing global wars.  

Note added: In case the above induces a feeling of helpless and incipient despair in face of the vast power and influence of evil in the world (and especially the West) - it may be worth reminding oneself that this is a spiritual war I am describing. So that explicitly recognizing the relevant evil motivation for oneself, and inwardly rejecting it; counts as a personal spiritual triumph; and this is exactly the kind of spiritual learning-from-experience that is such a vital aspect of our mortal lives - one of the reasons we are here, and now.  

The Creator's POV: God, Jesus, and the overcoming of entropy

'We will come', said Imrahil; and they parted with courteous words. 

'That is a fair lord and a great captain of men,' said Legolas. 'If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising'. 

'And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building,' said Gimli. 'It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.' 

'Yet seldom do they fail of their seed,' said Legolas. 'And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli.' 

'And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess,' said the Dwarf. 

'To that the Elves know not the answer,' said Legolas.

The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien

I have always found the above to be a particularly deep and resonant passage; and so do many others. 

At one level, the difference between short-lived, distractible but procreative Men; and the Elves and Dwarves who are (especially Elves) potentially relatively longaevus - seems to be profound. Elves and Dwarves are both capable of greater works of arts and crafts, better able to work on long 'projects' without losing interest...

Yet this is only a relative difference, and sooner or later, all the achievements - all the 'stone work' - of Middle Earth, will decay, and be destroyed. 

The rate of change can be diminished by better work, by steadier and more focused effort - but, it seems, only by a 'slowing' of existence. 

Dwarves and Elves have a longer time horizon, but this goes-with a lower rate of procreation, a lesser focus on reproduction - which stands-for and is symptomatic-of a tendency towards desiring to slow life, trying to hold-things static, attempting to prevent decay by 'crystallizing' achievement... 

But, this has a price; being bound-up with a tendency against life.  

Men, by comparison, are more alive, do more stuff (good and bad, careful and slapdash); just keep on trying different things; bounce-back after defeats and start again - have kids, rebuild the ruins, make another new civilization... 

But Men never seem to get very far with anything they attempt; and they each soon die, and their best civilizations are brief. 

So; in this mortal world, in all we know of this material universe, entropy will always win in the end - whether sooner or later; it will prevail. 

If we imaginatively identify with the perspective of God the Creator, take his Point of View (POV); then this continual dismantling of creation by entropy is unsatisfactory. 

Of course, we (as God) can keep-on creating forever and without limit; yet this is always going to be a matter of patching-together repairs and not a restoration to a pre-entropic state. We can continually compensate for the damage of entropy - a bridge collapses, so we build a new one; a Man dies and another is born - yet whatever we do, entropy accumulates. 

More familiarly for Christians, a closely analogous situation occurs with Sin (which may be understood as an aspect of entropy). God can compensate for the effect of Sin, can repair the consequences, can provide the world with help from Angels and Saints... but, nonetheless, Sin accumulates. 

The way out from this unsatisfactory situation was for God to create another and secondary world from this-one; by using this-one. 

In other words: God's creative plan was two-stage (which is why Jesus was necessary - for the second stage). 

While the first creation is mandatory; the second creation is discretionary: optional, opt-in, for those who choose it. 

The second creation is a 'world' without entropy, a world in which the tendency for destruction and sin has been left-behind. 

I am talking about Heaven, of course. 

And Heaven did not arise until after Jesus Christ.

The reason that Jesus Christ is an essential aspect of salvation; is that He was what made it possible for Heaven to exist, for Heaven to be populated... 

To put it bluntly; God the primary creator needed Jesus Christ in order to make possible the second - and final - creation that is Heaven. 

Jesus Christ came from within the prime creation, lived within the world of entropy - and died; but did so in perfect alignment with the values, aims, love, of God the prime creator. 

In other (more familiar) words; Jesus was a mortal Man who was fully divine. Mortal in body and by living in the primary creation, divine in terms of wholly Good and on the side of God; knowing and being in complete-harmony-with God's creative plans.

Thus Jesus was unique: nobody-else could have done the job (not even God the prime creator) because Jesus knew - experientially, from living fully in both worlds - 'how' to guide Men from this primary and entropic-mortal creation to the secondary and eternal-immortal creation that is Heaven.

       

Sins and repentance - (properly understood) an easy problem, and simply solvable

The main problem of the modern West is the inversion of sin; which is that the traditional sins (especially sexual, but also pride, envy, greed etc.) are not sins, but instead virtues. 

And the reciprocal invention of new "deadly sins" that are not sins, such as (the actual current usage of) racism (seemingly now regarded as the sin of sins - unless the recognition of traditional sexual sins as sin, is even worse). 

But value-inversion is made worse by a legalistic understanding of sin, in terms of categorical lists with operational definitions. This is literal rending of sins is necessary if any "sin" is to be made the basis of our totalitarian System.  

For example; the not-sin of racism is a specific concept referenced in bureaucratic strategies, regulations and laws - operationally defined in measureable terms; such as specific words, or percentages of personnel (pre-divided into good/ disapproved and bad/ being-promoted races); and by mandatory active participation in defined antiracist initiatives and actions (e.g. mass genuflecting, parades and speeches, display of posters and flags etc.). 

So, although the not-sin of racism is supposed to be a thought-crime, a wicked motivation; in practice it gets operationalized in quasi-objective terms: you are guilty of racism by saying or writing this taboo, or by failing to join with that ritual, or in terms of percentage "representation". 

In strategic spiritual terms; this legalism and literalism represents the reduction of (imperceptible) spiritual conceptualizations of sin, into a controllable material manifestation; in a world where official and public discourse recognizes only "the material" as real and significant. 

By the sustained operations of actual social reality; the populace are trained to regard the legal and bureaucratic definitions of detectable and measurable material manifestations of sin, asif they Just Are the sins themselves. 

In other words; because society treats sin legalistically and objectively in categories; that is how people habitually, unthinkingly, moralistically regard the reality of sin. 

 

Of course; what I have described as the current materialist-totalitarian reality of values; is a simple inversion of the old religious system of values, which was dominant from the medieval era until recently - which also regards sin in a legalistic and categorical way. 

Sins were conceptualized in terms of categorical lists of behaviours that would send someone to hell, unless he specifically repented each of them. Repentance was often understood as going through the entire list of one's sins, and repenting them each and specifically - before being allowed-into Heaven. 

(I find it bizarre to suppose that the whole world of creation and our-selves can thus be cut-up into discrete chunks, some of which are sins! My understanding is instead that reality is only validly divided into separable Beings; but sins are part of the continuous field of divine creation - they can be distinguished in terms of emphasis, but cannot ultimately be separated and divided.)  

Such a linear and sequential procedure of repentance might need to be done during mortal life (e.g. by confession and absolution) or afterwards (for instance in a Roman Catholic purgatory, or the "toll-booths" of Eastern Orthodoxy).

In practice; such a way of thinking and behaving was so dominant that people also came to believe that only these categories of official sins were real or significant sins. 

Consequently; many of the besetting sins of modernity - such as dishonesty, existential fear, and resentment - became invisible, ignored, denied. 

So that habitual and expedient exponents of untruthfulness (such as nearly-all modern managers, politicians, bureaucrats; and professionals such as teachers, doctors, lawyers, the police and military, and church leaders); will mislead, be dishonest, and outright lie systematically and for-a-living - on a daily, or even hourly, basis - while having a clear conscience! While regarding themselves as good-people, including Good and exemplary Christians. 

One side-effect of this categorical way of thinking about sin has been that people come to regard themselves and others as not-sinners (and other people as sinners) - the world of Mankind being divided into sinners and the Good. 

Such people regard themselves as basically good human beings; so long as they refrain from the listed sins (or the worst of them, at least) - or else repent them specifically. This leads to a sense of self-righteousness that is a gross distortion of the realities of our mortal life. 

On the other hand; the ubiquity of some of the listed sins can lead to a sense of despair and helplessness; and other people react-against this by asserting that if a sin is universal, or very common - then it can't really be a sin! - and is simply being used by religion to control the population. 

This also applies to modern value-inversion - for instance when white people are officially regarded and regard themselves as inescapably racist, and therefore experience inescapable white guilt - rendering them demoralized and obedient to those who offer rituals of expiation.

  

My point is that - from the Fourth Gospel Christian perspective which I believe is true - legalism and categorical description is a basically mistaken and itself-sinful way of thinking about and conceptualizing sin. 

From Jesus's teaching, we are all sinners all of the time; because we are not wholly-and-always motivated by Love. We are thereby misaligned with God's creative will, hence all of us (as we are) are utterly unsuited to dwell in Heaven. 

But this is Not a cause for demoralization, demotivation or despair; because Jesus has said that all who follow Him shall be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven.

The best way to think of sin is very generally; as whatever would prevent us (as individuals) from accepting the gift of everlasting life. 

We may each have one or more besetting sins that we find difficult (or impossible) to give-up in order to enter Heaven - but this is ultimately a matter of not loving Jesus enough, not wanting Heaven enough. 

If we love and desire above all to follow Jesus Christ; if we take the side of God and divine creation in the spiritual war, and wish to participate in creation eternally - then quite naturally we will repent, shed, leave-behind any and all sins (named or unnamed) in order to attain our deepest desire. 

If we desire to be re-made (i.e. resurrected) such that we become motivated only and always by love eternally - then sin is just the name for anything and everything which would prevent that process of re-making. 

Repentance is the word for our agreement to having stripped-away and left-behind all that would otherwise prevent resurrection into Heaven.  

It is really very simple. 

Christianity is a positive (not double-negative) religion; it is opt-in (not a matter of passing a test); God is our loving parents (not a judge administering laws), Christianity is a family (not a monarchy). 

We are not meant to worry over sin! Jesus came to save sinners - we need to focus primarily on the saving, not the sins: we will know the sins in consequence of our desire for salvation. 

If we understand Jesus's teaching in the way it was intended and exemplified (and which can be confirmed here-and-now by the guidance of the Holy Ghost); 

and if we therefore base our faith on positive love and the choice of following Jesus Christ to Heaven -- 

then we know that everything important about "our sins" will be recognizable clearly and simply, and we will know what to do, and we will do it - when the time of choice arrives. 

There is good outside of Christianity - Nirvana is not an evil self-choice

Following from

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/christianity-is-opt-in-kind-of-thing.html

Not all good is within Christianity - there is good outside it.

But, because we are (and this is just how things are, the way we find ourselves) children of God; because God made us what we are and made the world as it is - then that good outside of Christianity is a personal good. It is good for ourselves only.

What I mean is that we come to consciousness to find ourselves currently in a scheme or plan which comes from God. That we have consciousness comes from God. We are invited to regard this schemes as good, and to join with it - to accept and embrace God's plan of salvation and divinization of Men and Women.

To oppose the plan, as a matter of principle - to try and persuade others not to join in... well, that is evil, because we cannot offer anything better.

However, each of us, ourselves, as individuals, may reasonably decide we do not want to join-in with the plan - that we would prefer to opt-out. And this is not itself an evil decision - it may be a personal good - apparently the best conceivable course of action for us personally; it may be well motivated albeit selfish (in the sense of someone who knows what they he himself wants but not about others).

Because in the end, salvation and divinization are about happiness (in an elevated sense of that word) - and happiness is not a thing that can or should be forced upon a person.

So I am sure that God (as our loving Father) has made good provision for those who want to opt-out, who as individuals prefer not to join in with the plan. This provision has been termed Nirvana - an eternal (or as eternal as is desired) and blissful state of absence of consciousness.

Nirvana is not evil, to want Nirvana for oneself is not evil; but to preach the ultimate desirability of Nirvana is evil; not least because to do so is incoherent - given that the motive for choosing Nirvana is, and can only be, personal.  

The dilution/ abstraction of love by Christians (and by non-Christians)

I regard love as the primary fact of God's creation - it is love that makes creation possible. Love is the opposite of chaos; and it is the love between Beings that is what 'organizes' chaos into creation.

Furthermore, it was another aspect of love that enabled the new dispensation brought-on by Jesus Christ - because Jesus enabled Men - by resurrection - to make a permanent commitment to love; such that each resurrected Man would embrace the goals and methods of God's creation and could then take his place as a Son of God - henceforth living in harmony with all other Men and with God and Jesus Christ. 

So, real (Christian) love is always personal, always directed at a 'person': a Being. There is no such thing as abstract love, and real love cannot be diluted or extended beyond the actual love of actual known Beings. 

Love is inter-personal, and requires at least two Beings - therefore real love is not comparable to a force, a field, a spirit, or any 'thing'. 

Real love is not, cannot be, and should not be universal or equal - it is individual and specific.  

Love is a choice, and cannot be imposed... Love is a choice and not a default state; which is why Heaven is an opt-in situation; and why that opt-in is dependent on love. 

Consequently Heaven cannot be entered by those who cannot, or will not, commit to love of God (this 'cannot' including both those incapable of love, and those who reject love as their over-riding priority). 

And Heaven will not be entered by those who regard love as impersonal, abstract or generalized; because such people will not want Heaven. They will instead want something else... 

Perhaps they want some kind of diffuse, impersonal state ('Nirvana'?) in which there are no persons, no selves, no inter-personality; only a generalized awareness and perhaps the experience of bliss? 

I think these realities need emphasizing because there is a tendency for Christians to abstract and dilute love towards a 'universalism' that makes no distinction between the followers of Jesus and everyone else. 

And this abstraction/ dilution is met by a tendency among non-Christians to misinterpret Christianity in the same impersonal and abstract fashion so that it becomes just one among many possible paths to the same destination. 

But the truth of Christianity - as it may be known from the Fourth Gospel and by intuition - is that Christian love is the basis of the Christian religion; and Christian love is personal/ interpersonal - and it must consciously be chosen. 

Christian salvation is to love and follow Jesus to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven - this happens after biological death. To be a Christian - here and now in this earthly mortal life - is to make a decision to accept Jesus's gift of resurrected life; to make that our highest priority which happens by loving Jesus. 

And, as with all real love; love of Jesus Christ is both a choice and a desire from deep within; it begins with our deepest yearnings and motivations, and is completed by our conscious decision. 

 

There are many other things a Man might want or decide, and many other possible priorities - but these are not Christianity  

Are traditionalist-orthodox Christians contented Not To Know how salvation works for the massive majority of (outside of the church) foetuses, children, non-Christians?

I am much more confident of the goodness of God the Creator; than I am of any theology; such that it seems obvious that Christians ought to fit theology around the goodness of God, and not vice versa. 

I am also much more confident that Jesus was the Son of God, God was his Father, spoke with God person to person; and taught that we can and do know God by knowing Jesus - than I am confident about metaphysical assumptions regarding the nature and operations of "the Trinity". 

Put together: I am much more confident that God the Creator's goodness is fundamentally like Jesus's goodness, and like the goodness of Men (when we are good) - much more confident of this recognition and knowledge of God's goodness; than I am confident of the theological explanations that posit a God whose "goodness" is alien and incomprehensible to me, and therefore a God whose "goodness" has the human appearances of evil. 

(Thus I solidly believe that God is good; not that good is God.) 

From this perspective I perceive that most Christian theologians have always seen things the other way around to myself. 

They insist on trying (and failing) to explain the goodness of God in terms of (what seem to be prior and extra-Christian concepts of) monotheistic oneness, and dogmas concerning the "omni" attributes of the Creator.  

And consequently, they insist upon their inference of the utter unbridgeable difference between God and Men, and the unknowable nature of so infinitely-different a being as their God is from ourselves. 

This, I believe, lies behind the problem of the possibility of salvation "outside of the church" - which has apparently plagued thoughtful orthodox Christians as far back as there are records, and still does. 

On the one hand; strict orthodox-mainstream Christian church theology typically excludes the possibility of salvation from those outside of the church, and/or those who die unrepentant (e.g. the Protestant idea of "as the tree falls, there it shall lie" - meaning it is the state of mind at the moment of death that determines our eternal future).  

Both of these ideas seem to imply that the mass majority of humankind through history and still today are doomed to damnation. 

Yet those who assert salvation-for-all ("universalists") deny the reality of freedom, of agency, of choice* - and/or make this mortal life a needless hazard to salvation. 

Caught between the monstrous idea that most of humankind are doomed to damnation by an inscrutable God (He must be inscrutable, because he is Not  understandably good and loving) - and the robotic- determinism of universal salvation - most Christians will affect ignorance.  

They will say some version of "we do not know, because we have not been told" (meaning told dogmatically by their church, or the Bible as interpreted by their church) what happens to that (I say it again!) massive majority of Men throughout history who died in the womb, or as young children, or in places and times when there was no Christian church. 

This affectation of ignorance concerning such a colossal question strikes me a grotesque if sincere, and wicked if insincere. 

How could so many self-identified Christians be contented Not to know what happens to most people alive or who ever have lived?

Are they really only concerned about the magic circle of people within their own chosen church or denomination? 

My point is that this is an extremely important matter, and Christians ought not to allow themselves to profess ignorance on such a vital matter. 

They need (are duty-bound) to find a coherent answer that accords with their fundamental understanding God, Jesus and what it is to be saved. 

And this further means, that they ought carefully to examine whatever answer they come-up-with and commit-to; to ensure that their answer is essentially coherent with what needs to be affirmed for Christians.

Because... most of what most churches/ denominations say on this extremely important subject is very obviously incoherent. 

* Salvation must freely be chosen, it is opt-in. This means that the Mormon idea that all children before eight years old, the year from which they regard baptism as valid, will be saved - is also incoherent. 

Is it Irrational to reject God?

There is a common line of argument in Christian theology - which is rooted in the 'omni' conceptualization of God as creating everything from nothing (ex nihilo) - which concludes that evil is necessarily irrational, i.e. evil makes no sense even from its own perspective. 

(This is sometimes extended into asserting that - therefore, sooner or later - all Men will 'come to their senses' and choose salvation; even those who initially choose hell or are sent to hell.)  

But I regard this as mistaken: partly because its premises (omni-God and creation ex nihilo) are wrong; partly because it fails to acknowledge a core aspect of Christianity - specifically, which is that it is an 'opt-in' and chosen religion; and partly because it fails to grasp the potential rational appeal of evil. 

To be Good is to affiliate oneself with God's will and creation; evil is to oppose this. 

To be Good is to desire to live in harmony with God and God's wishes and with other Beings who have made the same choice; to be evil is to set oneself against creation (and, usually, of other Beings). 

But why oppose creation? There might be several reasons that are rational - one is to resent the fact that God created thus, and not otherwise - and with these aims and not others.

Such resentment comes from our-selves as free agents, as (eternal) Beings who have our own wills and creative potential. Evil may therefore be rooted in a conviction that 'I' personally disagree with God, 'I' dislike Gods plans and methods; and 'I' therefore refuse to affiliate-myself with God's work. 

Such resentment amounts to a preference for 'myself' over God (despite that this is God's created reality - indeed perhaps exactly because 'I' am compelled to dwell in God's created reality). 

Consider: whatever the nature of my disagreement may be, the disagree-er nonetheless finds-himself already-within God's creation. 

Evil amounts to a preference of myself (and my desires and motivations) above God and this world he made, including the changes God made to me - without asking for my agreement!

Thus evil is correctly described as a form of pride - of regarding oneself as The Being who ought-to-be God. 

So far this might be a purely private 'preference', as leading merely to opting-out of God's creation. In theory a Man might disagree with God's reality, and simply desire not to be a part of it...

But in practice, much evil is also fuelled by resentment against God. 

Because he cannot do what God has done; because he cannot' replace God - the evil Man (or other Being) develops an active dislike of God and divine creation... 

Because he knows that he cannot replace God, he reacts by the desire to destroy creation: the desire to destroy all that God has done and is doing; simply because it is not what he personally would have chosen to do. 

To be Good is to desire to live in harmony with God's creation and the other Beings who themselves have chosen to live in harmony with God's creation. 

To be evil is rooted in disagreement with this ideal of harmony; and to take up an attitude of opposition to God and creation - mostly including an attitude to other Beings that regards them as instruments of this opposition (because there is no reason to desire harmony with them), and the desire that other beings with will enlisted to one's own assertion as the legitimate creator. 

(Hence the manipulative and exploitative - 'means to the end of destruction' - attitude to other Beings that is characteristic of evil - albeit perhaps not universal... I could imagine an evil that was group-based, rooted in an arbitrary preference for a particular group of Beings - who then manipulate and exploit the other Beings) 

I infer from this way of understanding; that evil is, at root, a personal response to the facts of God and creation; and that evil therefore need not be irrational, nor need it be self-correcting.  

I assume that some Beings (i.e. Men, Angels/ Demons, and indeed any other of the many Beings of which reality is constituted) may choose to adopt evil as their basic stance concerning God and divine creation.

This ultimate choice to oppose God may be based on a genuine understanding of reality; and evil may therefore be an irreducible preference and choice of perspective - which means that such evil is both rational, and also potentially eternal. 

Christians are at each other's throats (metaphorically speaking) because of undeclared assumptions

It is a shame, but pretty much as prophesied, to see that in these End Times, when things have come to a point, and demonic evil rules The West in accordance with wild mandatory incoherence, stunning lies and repellant value-inversions -- a shame that Christians are - if anything - more divided, hostile and sectarian than they were even a decade ago. 

One stunner is that Roman Catholics, who used to present a united front - and often seemed to believe in their own unity; are schism-ing and schism-ing with spiraling rapidity - upping the rhetoric and scorn directed against their co-religionists... 

(All very like the Protestants whom they used to taunt for the same behaviour - and for much the same kind of reasons as applied to Protestants!) 

As I say, it's a shame; but something I understand and indeed fully expected as the gross corruption of mainstream traditional religion of all kinds. 

And a consequence of putting church (or other externalities) first, regarding "Christianity" as absolutely secondary to external authority; and basing one's faith on fundamental assumptions that are denied to be assumptions.

These assumptions are asserted to be either an objective necessity, despite that there can be no objectivity in such matters; or "logically" entailed, despite that logic only (at best!) tells us the consequences of assumptions - but cannot tell us which assumptions are valid.  

So Christians are not just declining in percentage, numbers, devoutness, and integrity; but are breaking-up into shrinking groups -- yet always staying primarily group-minded, and rejecting ultimate personal responsibility; always insisting that they are "just obeying orders" derived from their dwindling yet objectively necessary and essentially valid church...

How long can it continue? 

How long before people realize what they must do - on pain of sooner-or-later de facto apostasy - and identify their primary and fundamental assumptions: fully comprehend and "own" them. Personally, taking full and final responsibility, by whatever each experiences as the bottom-line intuition. 

How long before this? 

Maybe it will be a long time yet, maybe not until the end; when each individual is alone in his church, yet still church-led - maybe not even then... 

I can picture millions of Christians, each self-painted into his own corner, insisting - as night falls - that it must be so; that he cannot escape the constricting wall of unexamined, unacknowledged, un-owned assumptions - which is all that blocks him from the simplicity of a salvation he has long-since lost-sight-of. 

After all, free agency is absolute, and salvation is opt-in: so to receive it; "in" we, personally, must opt. 

Traditional/ Orthodox Church-led Christianity is now impossible - and people are (literally) fooling-themselves to think otherwise

When I became a Christian; I following CS Lewis's advice and went to the nearest branch of the tradition into-which I had been baptised. This rapidly unravelled as I realised that the Church of England was split and at-war, and my local branch was firmly on the wrong side.

After a while of trying to find a (not dying and spiritually-helpful) place in the Anglican communion and Roman Catholic Church - and failing to escape endemic debate and fighting; I tried to avoid this whole arena of dispute by trying to become Eastern Orthodox, which I understood to be based on Tradition. I just wanted to believe and do what the church said - and leave myself out of it...

However, I found exactly the same bitter division and dispute going right through Orthodoxy, wherever I looked. I was driven to use personal discernment again and again...

And gradually I realised that we moderns cannot be orthodox or traditional - for us to live in mere obedience to The Church is impossible - because there is no The Church (without first discerning what that is...), there are only layers upon layers of dispute and disagreement. In All churches and without exception.

We simply cannot escape the requirement to use our own personal discernment again and again...

Then I thought - if this is indeed the situation everywhere and for everybody, there must be a reason. God must have made things this way (he would not leave us bereft). And the reason seems to be that this is our task and duty - we are bred as individuals, and we must be Christians as individuals whether we like it or not.

Orthodoxy and Tradition and self-effacing obedience are only possible when they are taken for granted. Here and Now they are Not taken for granted - and therefore we need to live as Christians by our own discernment, taking responsibility for our own salvation and theosis.

We have-to do this, and we are doing it - all of us. 

And we therefore need to be honest and clear about the fact - and do it well and openly, rather than covertly and in a state of self-denial.

Orthodoxy/ Tradition/ Obedience are not just impossible - they are not even optimal. They have not been possible or optimal since about 1800 - but man has failed to grasp the necessity to remain Christian, and really-real Christian; while becoming a new kind of Christian.

This is Not liberalisation, because it is not an excuse to ditch Christianity and replace it with Radical/ Leftist politics and the Sexual Revolution as life priorities.

We must be Christianly-motivated - honestly so; and we must take personal responsibility for the individual discernment that (anyway) we cannot avoid making: so we should make it a focus, make it explicit, make discernment clear to ourselves: that discernment is the basis of any and all possible Christain lives, here-and-now.

There is no other honest alternative.
 

Note added: To clarify, I am Not saying that the churches are obsolete or should be discarded or that real Christians should leave their churches... I Am saying that real church-Christians actually-are using their personal discernment to evaluate their churches, and to decide what to do, what not to do, which side to take, who is to be trusted, who is a demonic infiltrator and so forth. In other words, real Christians cannot (here-and-now) simply obey The Church, cannot 'passively' be ruled-by The Church, cannot opt-out of using personal discernment again-and-again - in sum, they cannot accord The Church ultimate authority over their personal salvation and theosis. And the same applies (from a Protestant perspective) to The Bible -- personal discernment must and will be used in choosing a translation (or in learning the original language - in discerning the meaing and context of words and phrases), in understanding and interpreting The Bible in terms of history (whose history?); in deciding which scholarship is necessary, which to believe and which to ignore. So I am first making a negative point - and the positive point which follows is that we can and should have faith that our powers of discernment are adequate to this task (because our God of love and power would not leave any single one of his children bereft of true-guidance, and if guidance is not to be trusted in the social or institutional environmment (as is the case), then we can be sure that true-guidance *will* be found by each man who seeks it).

The billion-fold global die-off - when will it come?

The population of the planet has grown from (approximately) one billion maximum, through most of world history; up to (apparently) more than seven billion at present - and this has happened since the industrial revolution and mostly in the past century.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/the-modern-world-is-selecting-for-pure.html

Six billion of the population are therefore sustained by the global system of technology, organisation and trade that we call Western Civilisation - and thus includes all of the 'third world/ developing' nations where population growth is so rapid.

For example, without Western civilisation (including medicine and public health) Africa would have less than a tenth of current population.

And of course Western Civilisation is going to end, and probably quite soon - for many, many reasons not least of which is that the majority of the world, including the global establishment, are extremely hostile to it - and to that which created and sustained it.

This means that billions of people will almost-certainly die, quite soon - although exactly how many billions and how rapidly is merely a question of how long the shrinking remnant can live-off accumulated, but also shrinking, capital stores.

However; 'civilisation' is (quite rightly) nobody's priority to sustain - not least because it is a by-product rather than a strategy; and is anyway a very long-term and remote problem - so it will always be made a low priority in competition with so many others.

The big question is not If there will be a collapse of technology and trade and a colossal extinction event; but why it has not already happened - given the malign intentions of the most powerful people in the world.

The answer is simple, albeit ominous.

The Global Establishment is - grudgingly - maintaining the international system of trade and technology because they are engaged in spiritual warfare, and they are currently winning.

In a nutshell, the Global Establishment are ultimately tools of the supernatural powers of evil - and because evil is winning more and more souls to self-damnation, they want the system to continue... at least for a while longer.

Think of it this way: Billions are going to die for sure - but what is in doubt is the fate of these souls: will they accept the salvation offered by Christ, or will they choose to reject this gift and instead opt for damnation?

Everything currently indicates that more and more people (most obviously in the West - where moral inversion is official and dominant; but seemingly almost everywhere else too - by their behaviour) are motivated by fear, resentment, pride and despair.

In such a state of conviction, the mass of post-mortem souls will not want Heaven, will purposively reject salvation... Certainly they won't want it at the necessary and inevitable price of personal repentance and faith (including admitting they had been fundamentally wrong in mortal life, and then actively joining with God's eternal plan for our deification).  

What this suggests is that it is only the wickedness of the world which is keeping it going, and postponing the billion-fold die-off; and if there are strong signs of a Christian awakening in the hearts of Men, then that will be the time that the demons pull-the-plug on the vast, multiply-interdependent and therefore exquisitely fragile system that we call the global economy.

The mass death will come sooner or later, whatever happens - because its causes are probably unstoppable but in any case not being stopped - yet it may perhaps come sooner if many people do the right thing, than if they don't.

In which case there may be a stark choice between either extending this-world survival coupled with the expectation of an increased rate of eternal damnation; or alternatively accepting rapid collapse and death as the cost of saving more souls for eternal happiness...

The evilness of evil (in a pluralist universe)

*

The reason that mainstream theologians have persisted for 2000 years with monism (and an Omni- concept of God) despite the insoluble and fundamental problems these cause for Christianity is that they want to be able to say that God is necessarily good - i.e. that the goodness of God is built-into reality, part of the existence of the universe; and therefore that to oppose God is to be irrational (i.e. they want to be able to state that evil is simply irrational).

(Note: this doesn't actually work, because it makes evil into a kind of insanity rather than a deliberate choice of evil. For instance, Satan could not rationally choose to rebel against God and reject salvation, and because he is a high angel who would know for certain the terrible consequences of rebellion; this framework makes Satan into a kind of lunatic or demented creature, rather than truly-evil).

Pluralism would regard this as a mistaken purpose in theology since it makes a universe where choice is meaningless and Man is a puppet. Such a universe is incompatible with Christianity.

(i.e. Incompatible in a common sense way. But obviously if theology is allowed to get-away-with recourse to paradox and mysticism then anything is possible - and paradox and mysticism have duly been built-into mainstream intellectual Christianity since not long after the death of the Apostles - e.g. in describing the nature of Christ, the Holy Trinity and the operations of free will.)

*

As I understand it, pluralism starts with assumptions and a situation that 'just is' and cannot be (or does not need to be) explained further - and the main assumption is the God is God - He is just there.

(And, for Mormons, so is Mother in Heaven 'just there' - because reality is dyadic, male and female are two complementary and irreducible parts that together make unity. ^See note below)

God is inside the already existing universe of reality (matter or 'stuff') which is also 'just there' and has certain properties which are understood by us as the laws of nature including the principles of beauty and morality.

We Men (and other intelligences) were also 'just there' but as some kind of essence that lacked self-awareness.

*

God (and, for Mormons, Mother in Heaven) then made us into self-aware 'children of God' so that now we are all related to God and to each other - relationships (or one enormously large family with multiple sub-families) is the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves.

Therefore, 'good' is to choose to live in accordance with these relationships, as established by God; evil is to reject these relationships and aim to live as solitary and self-sufficient gods. (This is pride.)

*

So evil is a choice. It is not necessarily irrational, it is not necessarily dishonest - except that it seems always to involve a denial of the true situation and of our debt to God - but evil can be a hatred and rejection of the divine families in which we find ourselves - perhaps a hatred of God for forcing us to become self-conscious (and therefore liable to suffer) and to having saddled us with unasked-for responsibilities to our divine parents and siblings.

I think it is at least conceivable that a person might simply choose to reject self consciousness, and/or family ties  and aspire to live utterly alone. By the mercy of God this state could be made into an unselfconscious bliss; but this state too might be rejected and the person would then live in 'hell' of utter and self-imposed eternal and self-aware solitude.

The evil of this 'hell' comes from rejecting divine relationships but clinging to selfhood; rejecting gratitude and responsibility towards God but clinging to God-given powers.

*

The primary moral decision in the history of reality was therefore that God (and Mother in Heaven) unilaterally decided to 'make' us into self-conscious personages, to make us into His children. His motive for this was love and our own benefit, just as the motive of earthly parents for 'making' children should be love and the children's own benefit - nonetheless it was unilateral, and is irreversible.

Consequently, because God is loving; I think it must have been the case that God made provision for us to opt-out of this situation in which we find ourselves, and to return to primordial unawareness and unpersonhood.

This is why I believe God has made provision for 'Nirvana' i.e. what feels-like loss of self/ personhood, and reabsorption into the blissful state of His goodness.

This is not an actual stripping away of our status as Sons and Daughters of God - that is irreversible - but it does allow a non-evil choice to reject the basic situation in which we find ourselves - to reject self-awareness, incarnation, intelligence, power and everything else. 

To 'return' to original un-consciousness.

*

But these are all choices: suboptimal, sad - but self-chosen and self-inflicted. They are simply a consequence of the reality of agency/ free will.

The evilness of evil is really about the gratuitous spitefulness of trying to wreck the self-consciousness and divine family relationships which other people want and have chosen; of trying to persuade other people to inhabit 'hell' as some kind of eternal consolation for the misery of one's own choice of hell. 

*

^The other explanation for God in a pluralist universe is an infinite regress - i.e. that God the Father and Heavenly Mother are children of previous Gods, are children of previous Gods, and so on forever. But this amounts to the same thing as saying 'just there' - it is merely substituting a process which is 'just there' for entities which are 'just there'.