"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. 

Time to die

When is it right to die? And how do we know this?

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The secular, modern view of death seems to be based on an argument at the level of: ‘I can choose which car or house I buy. But dying is (even) more important than buying houses and cars; so why should I not also be able to choose how and when I die?”

Clearly, this is wrong.

There is a gulf between (on the one hand) wanting to understand the nature of things in order that we may be in harmony with the nature of things; and (on the other hand) wanting to impose our *will* upon the nature of things.

It is the difference between essential humility and essential pride.

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To feel in some (mysterious and intuitive) way that it is now right to die, and then to let go one’s grip on life; seems utterly, existentially opposed to the secular and modern idea that when our ‘quality of life’ drops below a certain point, we should make a decision to die and then be assisted to kill ourselves (or should be able to request to be killed by accredited and regulated experts).

It is the difference between hoping to *know* when it is right to die, and wanting to *control* the time and manner of our death.

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For wisdom I often turn to JRR Tolkien. In this instance his myth of Numenor.

As a reward for their many generations of valour against Morgoth, some of the Men of Middle Earth were rewarded by the gods with enhanced powers and a safe and beautiful island to dwell upon.

Among these powers were greater height and strength, greater intelligence and aesthetic sensitivity, a life free from illness and disease, and a life span about treble that of normal Men.

So, the Men of Numenor were mortal, ‘doomed’ to die, but lived a vigorous and healthily life (without any significant degeneration) until about 200 years old, at which point they died.

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But another gift was that when the Numenoreans reached the point at which their life was ending, they were able to be aware of this, and to voluntarily accept their death and (within a leeway of a few days or weeks) to choose the moment of their death – the point at which they ‘let go’ their hold on life.

And this was exactly what was done by the early generations of Numenoreans. However, the later generations began to envy the immortality of the elves and to ‘cling’ to life. Instead of letting-go at the appointed time, instead of releasing themselves from life, they lived for as long as possible – and the old Numenoreans experienced decline, debility and disease until eventually their mortal nature overcome them and they were (in effect) dragged kicking and screaming into death.

Eventually, their desire for everlasting life became all-consuming, and led them to invade the land of the gods to ‘win’ immortality; at which point the supreme God intervened and the invading army was buried in rock, and the island of Numenor was drowned and utterly destroyed by a cataclysmic earthquake.

But the early, un-corrupt Numenoreans had an understanding of the real nature of mortal life which included a strong sense of when it was right, or best, to die. They knew that they _could_ live longer than this, but that it was a mark of corruption for them to do so; and that the wrongness was seen in the fact that a failure to make the choice to die was followed by the advent of debilitation, degeneration and decline.

To cling to life, therefore, would be acting against nature; and vainly, pridefully, trying to defy destiny.

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What I take from this story of Tolkien’s is that mortal life must include at some level (which may be inarticulate, a sense or instinct) an answer to the question of when it is right or best to die. And that this answer is not, cannot be, ‘at the last possible moment’ – since that would be to deny our mortal nature.

The story of Numenor represents a vision of how humans ought to live and die. The story seems to say that it would be best if we could (within limits, and these limits may be external, imposed) choose our moment of death and voluntarily let go of life.

To quote from the beautiful denouement of Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner; ideally, in their uncorrupted hearts, it seems that Men aspire to know when it is ‘time to die’ and then to die.

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It is strange that to recall this truism, to make it real again, to refresh our innate and spontaneous insight in the face of so much confusion and distraction; we sometimes need to see the reality of the human condition depicted in terms of a mythical fantasy, or spoken by a science fiction android.

The ultimate goodness of death and the temptation of mortal-immortality

Death is something nearly everyone fears and dreads - and yet it is for our benefit.

I infer that this means that there is, for each of us, a 'time-to-die' - and our challenge (everybody's challenge) is to recognize and accept this time-to-die, when it comes it us or to someone we love.

In a deep sense we are born to die - that is, dying is the primary task of our life and the one task which everybody will accomplish.

We die so that we may be resurrected and move to a higher and more divine state; so if we were not to die we would fail to reach this higher state: and that would be the greatest tragedy and suffering.

To want not to die, to yearn for immortality in this life, is thus a sin - it is a profound rejection of God's plan.

Luke 7: 28 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

This means that the least person who dies and is resurrected to salvation will be greater than the greatest Man that had lived until the time of Jesus - greater than Abraham, Moses, David or John the Baptist... than any. I extrapolate this also to suggest that the same applies to even the greatest Saints who have lived since Christ - in reference to their greatness while yet mortal Men (although not in reference to their ultimate stature in Heaven).

So it represents a really colossal error to want never to die, to crave immortality in your current incarnation - or even to want to extend life beyond the proper time-to-die. Because it can be done, and it does happen, and not infrequently - people can and do live beyond the proper time-to-die - and that is why the temptation is real.

Time to die? Don't envy those whose main aim is survival - their punishment will be if they get what they want

So often in life, the worst punishment that anyone can be given, is when they get what they want. This, because - very often, what we want derives from sinful and unrepented desires. 

If we actually get it, then we will also get the inevitable consequences - inner spiritual and outer natural - of embracing sin. 

This applies equally, and for the same basic reason, to the child who wants to live on sweets; the adolescent who wants vast quantities and variety of sex; the adult who wants high status, massive wealth, and real power. 

The global totalitarian leadership class seem most to want Giga-death for the masses, and survival for themselves (themselves, not their family descendants - of which they often have none) - indeed, some kind of this-worldly everlastingly-extended life. 

Such appears to be a major motive behind Their relentless activity; such is apparently what is planned - with some degree of secrecy. 

Since those who read this are likely to be among the planned-to-be-destroyed masses (as are most of those who regard themselves as exempted!) - it is tempting to feel jealous of those whose survival is organized. 

Maybe we even want to join Them in surviving through to Their Brave New World - but hoping to set-up a society more to our taste - in some unnoticed corner exempted from Their rule, and where They will leave us unmolested?  

A time will come to every Man when it is time to die - and when that time arrives, he will know it. 

The way things are shaping; such a time will, probably soon, come to a very large number of people over a short timescale. 

When that time comes, we ought not fight for survival; but fight to do what is right - which we will also know, at the time. 

Survival then becomes a temptation; and there will be many specious arguments as to why 'my' survival (for at least a bit longer) will seem like a good and necessary thing - despite that we know the proper time has come to put our survival as a lower priority than what is needed.  

Therefore it is a bad habit to develop a primary concern with survival. 

We all die, sooner or later, and for a follower of Christ that is a good thing, when it happens at the right time - despite the ineradicably tragic impact of mortal death. 

Most of us (me included) would do well to think more about the inevitability and ultimate rewards of death; and that therefore discerning and embracing our own time to die is a great gift, as well as a profound challenge. 

Why did Jesus die when he did?

That Jesus died was necessary - he was a mortal Man. Like you and me; Jesus could only become immortal via the portals of biological death: mortal death is necessary to immortal resurrection. 

(I cannot explain by what mechanism this is so, but it apparently is a constraint of our created reality.)  

But Jesus was fully divine in his powers before he died - we know this because he was a divine creator, able to create divinely. That is the significance of the resurrection of Lazarus in particular, but also some others of the other miracles; these demonstrate that Jesus was a primary creator. 

Being on the one hand a mortal Man, but on the other hand having this divine creative power, meant that although must die sooner-or-later, he could (in principle) often elude death here-and-now. 

And there are examples in the Fourth Gospel when Jesus does this - for instance John 8:59 "Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by."

So, sometimes - either by his behaviour, or through miraculous means, Jesus chose to delay his own death. This happened many times through the three years of his ministry, between the baptism by John and the death by crucifixion - during which Jesus was fully-divine, and had miraculous powers - but also, in general terms, he made decisions that kept him alive.

But at a certain point, Jesus stopped doing this, let events take their course, and ultimately allowed himself to be crucified. 

Ordinary mortal people may be called-upon to make a similar decision. After spending perhaps many decades trying to stay alive, keep healthy, extend life - a time may come when it is wrong to fight death and right to allow oneself to die... to allow events take their fatal course.  

How did Jesus know, how can we know, when it is right to allow ourselves to die? 

After all, for Jesus, he was still young - just thirty-three - and presumably could have had many more years to preach and teach; and personally to lead the development of a church, built according to correct principles (if that was what he wanted). 

Why then did he die at 33? The implicit reason given in the Fourth Gospel is that Jesus had completed his ministry with the resurrection of Lazarus. 

It is a further question why it was necessary for Jesus to raise Lazarus. Many Christians believe that this miracle was not a resurrection; however, I believe that it was (and that we are told this in in the Fourth Gospel). 

Therefore, apparently, it was necessary for Jesus personally to resurrect Lazarus in order that he would (after death and ascension) be able to offer the same to all Men. And this was precisely what Jesus came to do: offer resurrection to all Men.  

A difference was that Lazarus was resurrected into his own corpse, and into this mortal earth. This was clearly a very important demonstration and teaching - but its cosmic significance was that Lazarus soon afterwards wrote the Fourth Gospel; which is our primary and most authoritative source on Jesus's mission and teaching. 

(Presumably, this interpretation of Lazarus's resurrection suggests; the resulting Fourth Gospel is more than just another historical text, with the inevitable errors and deficits of transmission, copying, tampering and translating through many centuries. Presumably there exists the possibility of its being 'received' in a qualitatively special fashion - by the assistance of the Holy Ghost. So that its message may be directly-known in a way that transcends error and distortion... Such an explanation makes sense of the distinctive nature of Lazarus's resurrection.)  

But, to return to the original question of "why did Jesus die when he did?" - this can now be understood as a more important question than the usual one of "why was Jesus crucified?"

It was necessary that Jesus died (that he allowed himself to die) when he did, but the method of death was only secondarily important. 

In the Fourth Gospel we can read of Jesus meditating, praying, consulting with his Father about whether this was the 'time to die' (or, presumably, whether there was more he needed to do first) - and being assured that Now was the time. 

To this, Jesus needed voluntarily to assent. He might in theory have resisted death for many decades longer, and done all sorts of other things... but Jesus agreed to allow death to happen Now, because his real earthly-work was finished; and it was time for his Heavenly work (as the Holy Ghost) to commence. 

A culture of suicide

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We live in a culture of suicide: a culture in which pleasure is the only good must inevitably be a culture of suicide since pleasure cannot be guaranteed - and when life has more suffering than pleasure, and the future prospect is bleak: why not suicide?

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It is ironic that when 'life' - vitality, gratification, comfort, fun - is the primary goal, then the opposite predominates.

So that the whole argument boils down to short-termism versus long-termism.

The short-termist lives on a knife edge; but usually obliterates suffering ASAP with technology or any other available distraction.

The long-termist response is that when suffering overtops pleasure, then suicide should be considered seriously, and postponed (never utterly rejected) only if the long term quantity of pleasure outweighs the short term quantity of pain.

(But why should we suppose that gratification is arithmetical?)

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"But, who knows what the future will bring... The safest thing is to die now, before there is a chance for anything bad to happen..." This sounds like parody - but surely it is precisely mainstream belief of teenage ethics, mainstream pop culture ethics, mainstream media ethics: the positive value placed on a beautiful corpse.

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Then there is the intense interest in euthanasia, when pleasure is insufficient to compensate suffering then die; indeed why not die - get yourself killed - before you get to that point, to be on the safe side.

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(Of course, it is equally insane to hold the view - which seems mainstream in the Roman Catholic Church, that it is on the one hand a duty for society to do anything and everything that the application of modern technology can devise to sustain human existence, and at the same time to regard the hastening of death - for instance by withdrawal of this modern technology - as utterly morally abhorrent.

(Apparently - by this reasoning - people must intervene technologically to prevent corporeal death, then must sustain at all or any cost whatever form of living-death may be a consequence of such intervention.

(But this is monstrous nonsense, and is indeed a variant of political correctness. A proper moral perspective on death surely entails an understanding that there is a right time and situation to die, and right level of intervention to prevent death - varying by context - and an acceptance of fate insofar as it can be discerned. And a recognition of the moral chasm between killing and letting-die.)

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What is remarkable is that suicide is not endemic.

But maybe it is endemic, in the sense that political correctness is suicide - since any self-blinding, mandatorially non-consequential reasoning is implicitly suicidal.

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[Note added - plus of course, the endemic suicide of awareness - the suicide of awareness from continuous distraction by compulsive and continuous usage of the mass media and electronic interpersonal communications, organized busyness, overwhelming pleasurable inputs including - junk food/ high cuisine, intoxicating or energizing drinks, drugs, sex, dreamy physical pleasures such as baths and sunbathing, exercise, shopping, fashion, fantasy... or whatever. Without the ability for most modern secular people most of the time to escape at will into such immersive stimuli - so abundantly provided by modern society - it is likely either that 'things would change' or else that actual physical suicide would be much commoner.)

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(The politically correct are engaged in creating a society which they, personally, would find intolerable. How do they imagine that they would cope? Answer: they won't cope. They imagine that will either let themselves die or, if that is too slow or creates too much suffering, they will take matters into their own hands.)

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I strongly suspect that a suicide fantasy lies behind the hedonism and political correctness of modern society. The idea that if, when, things don't work out - and it is time to pay the costs of recklessly self-gratifying and evasive policies, then there is a 'way out'.

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All of this depends on the belief - unique to intellectuals living under modernity - that the soul is unreal and that there is no existence after death.

A belief in the unreality of the soul is a crutch to hedonism.

Extinction after death is the 'get out of jail free' card for political correctness.

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Numenor teaches a Christian attitude to death

I am fascinated by the descriptions of Tolkien's Numenoran Men; and how one of their gifts was to know when it was that they should die. This evoked one of the most beautiful passages Tolkien ever wrote:

Then going to the House of the Kings in the Silent Street, Aragorn laid him down on the long bed that had been prepared for him. There he said farewell to Eldarion, and gave into his hands the winged crown of Gondor and the sceptre of Arnor, and then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. 

And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. "Lady Undómiel," said Aragorn, "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep. 

"I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men." 

"Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear the hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." 

"So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"

The Numenoreans had been gifted (by the Valar, the gods) with a lifespan several-fold greater than ordinary Men; and they were also immune to both illness and the degenerations of ageing. So they would (unless killed) remains healthy and vigorous until they became aware that their proper lifespan was ended; and at this recognition they - willingly, by choice - ought-to embrace death, as did Aragorn. 

If they rejected death, the Numenoerans could indeed live about a decade longer; but at the cost of rapid decline in physical health and the onset of what we would term dementia. But more significantly, by clinging to life, they had succumbed to spiritual corruption. And this corruption itself shortened their life span.  

It was when the Numenoreans, especially their Kings and Queens, began clinging to life; that the corruption of the race began to get a grip and to accelerate. Because this clinging represented their rejection of the divine will that Men (but not elves) should naturally die and their souls would then leave the circles of the world. 

I feel that there is a deep lesson in Numenor about life and death. Our life is of value, as a time of experience and learning, and for so long as this life continues it is ordained by God. Death is inevitable for men - however, the inevitability can be accepted or rebelled-against; can be embraced at the proper time, or delayed for a while. 

There will come a time when we know that Christians ought to surrender life willingly - and more with faith and hope onto the next stage. 

But - for this choice to be a real choice, it is possible to refuse to die now and move-on - and it is possible that death can be delayed. There is no guarantee of successful delaying of death, for those who choose that path - but the spiritual crux is whether we accept timely death, or whether we strive to delay it. 

We can either acknowledge that this mortal life has now fulfilled its divine purpose and that it is now best to undergo the transformations of death and resurrection... 

Or, we can refuse death, and remain alive for some while longer - but at the cost of physical and mental degeneration and spiritual corruption. 

In other words, we can - at death - align our-selves with God's purposes; or we can turn-away-from God's purposes and hold to our own.

 

When I talk of willing embrace of death at the right time, I mean more than a stoic acceptance of the inevitability of death; and more than the acceptance of death as the least-worst of alternatives - for someone worn-down by pain and weariness. In other words, the willing embrace of death means more than death as analgesia, sleep and rest. 

Death should go beyond mere passive acceptance to a voluntary and positive choice. When a Christian follows Jesus through death to resurrected life eternal; this is an active and conscious matter - which entails repentance (recognizing and discarding the sins that are incompatible with Heaven).   

The willing embrace of death was modelled by Jesus in the Gospel accounts; but it follows naturally from a desire for salvation - which can only come via death.  

It may be of vital importance to know the point at which the price of life becomes too great. 

A Man may find himself confronted with the possibility of 'clinging to life' at the cost of doing, saying or thinking some-thing that he knows to be a deep and damning sin. At such a point; a Christian needs to be able to recognize that this is the time to die. 

Such a situation may become more frequent in the world as it has become. In this totalitarian world of surveillance and control, ruled by powers of evil; more and more Men are in a position analogous to the slave of a wicked master. 

Ultimately a slave may be compelled to do his master's will, or else die: there may be no other alternatives.

Therefore, we need to be prepared to die, prepared willingly to accept death; when what we are being asked to do is would destroy our own capacity for repentance. 

Each Man will know when this point is reached (God will make sure of this) - although he may, of course, choose to pretend that he does not know. 

Obedience and death-delayed; or refusal and death-now... 

The devil delights in presenting such a choice when he feels confident of the outcome; and he must surely be confident that most modern Men would do or destroy literally anything when they believe it may delay their own death - as the 2020 birdemic made crystal clear. 

If that choice comes to us, and when the price of obedience is damnation; a Christian needs to acknowledge the fact, and the irreversibility of the decision. To refuse martyrdom may be to embrace damnation.

It is as well to be prepared. The cost of wrong choices we can see depicted in the History of Numenor.   

Compliance is spiritual Dane-Geld

DANE-GELD

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
"We invaded you last night - we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

"We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

Rudyard Kipling - 1911

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The mainstream political Right (conservative, republican, libertarian etc.) spends far too much time and effort (in practice, all of its time and effort) on discussing and pursuing tactics - in seeking the best battle-ground, in preparing 'a hill to die on', in taking one step back in hopes of sometime later taking two steps forward.

...Short-term tactics justifiable only by long-term strategy. Dane-geld is advocated on the basis that it wins a space of relief during which there can be re-grouping and re-arming, and preparation for the big battle later.

Yet, somehow the hill-to-die-on types never quite get-round to completing their strategy: the time for for retreat is always now, the time for battle is never quite right.

The enemy is paid-off, sure; but the hoped-for re-building (supposed to happen during the negotiated peace) somehow doesn't happen...

Too much Dane-geld, too often. And in the end nothing but Dane-geld.



The trouble is that paying Dane-geld is not just losing ground, Dane-geld is a transfer: it weakens the payer and strengthens the receiver. Dane-geld is counter-productive, by adversely shifting the balance of power.

A Transfer. What You give, They receive. 

You will immediately be weakened by paying Dane-geld, and you will strengthen the enemy immediately.

And the enemy will soon be back - after all, why not? The enemy is actively motivated to do so; returning again and again, to take a bit more more and a bit more. 

But then you will be weaker, will not have had sufficient time to rebuild to where you were before the Dane-geld - never mind prepare extra defences: then you will need to pay more Dane-geld just to gain a bit more time...

It is only ever wise to pay Dane-geld when the brief space thus made is decisive, and will be used to build-up strength, and with the firm intention to seek a major and decisive battle in what is known to be a more favourable situation.

Yet delaying the confrontation until after Dane-geld has been paid will (even in this best case) involve greater sacrifice, since ground has by then been yielded - and this yielded territory was ground that the enemy chose and wants to occupy - so presumably it was valuable ground.

Surveying the mainstream Right I see nothing but Dane-geld payment all round. I see an obsession with tactics, with picking exactly the right fight (not too big, not too small), fighting exactly the correct threat (focusing energy) on exactly the right ground. 

I see tactical retreats, pragmatic compromises, tactical pacts, tactical pay-offs - horse-trading.

All based on detailed daily analysis of the political news and personalities, trends, data, logic, modelling - calculation, prediction - seeking the perfect, precise, incisive scalpel-like intervention which will win the war easily, with the minimum of pain and sacrifice.

All based, in other words, on immersion in the world of the enemy.


Worse: paying the Dane-geld both weakens physically (one has retreated, been damaged) and spiritually (one has agreed to retreat) - and the spiritual effect is the more harmful - because it saps the will to resist while encouraging the enemy. 

Attention is often given to the encroachments of the enemy in this spiritual war. But the other side of this coin is compliance: the spiritual act of Dane-geld. They ask, we give. Here there is an active intent of yielding to that which is unjust, greedy, evil, an act of compliance. 

This, of itself, would be spiritually harmful enough; but after all - we all sin, all the time; so why focus on this specific sin?

What compounds this particular evil many-fold is the denial that compliance to the requests of evil was indeed evil; therefore there is no repentance but its opposite: doubling-down on sin. 

Unrepented compliance to the global totalitarian agenda is a positive act to promote that agenda: it is taking the side of Satan. 

Each compliance unrepented, strengthens evil even as it weakens the cause of good: and that is the case whether for each obscure individual person such as you and me; for influential or powerful people; for all mega-corporations, and institutions - and of course 'Christian' churches and their leaders.

This is not a difficult discernment! 

And it is a discernment we each of us absolutely need to make. 

Note: The above is substantially adapted from a post of 2011

Tolkien's ‘The Marring of Men’

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Heaven and the Human Condition in ‘The Marring of Men’ (‘The debate of Finrod and Andreth’)

Bruce G Charlton. The Chronicle of the Oxford University C.S. Lewis Society, 2008; Vol 5, Issue 3: 20-29


The Argument from Desire

One of C.S. Lewis’s most famous arguments in support of Christianity is that the instinctive but otherworldly yearning emotion of ‘joy’ (in German, Sehnsucht) implies that there exists some means of satisfying this urge; otherwise humans would not experience it.

This is sometimes termed the ‘argument from desire’. In brief, it states that because humans profoundly and spontaneously desire something not of this world, the experience suggests the reality of the supernatural. Lewis used the argument in many of his best known Christian writings. In Mere Christianity, he argues that ‘[i]f I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world’. In ‘The Weight of Glory’, he notes that ‘we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy’. And in the autobiographical Surprised by Joy, he comments that ‘[i]n a sense, the central story of [his] life is about nothing else’.

But Lewis is not the only among his friends to formulate an argument from desire. Perhaps the idea’s most powerful and compelling exposition can be found in a little-known and recently-published (1993) story by Lewis’ great friend J.R.R. Tolkien; a tale which was written in about 1959 and appears in the middle of Volume X of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien and published in twelve volumes between 1983 and 1996 [1]. Since The History of Middle-earth is read only by Tolkien scholars and enthusiasts, this wonderful dialogue is at present little known or discussed.

It is, of course, no coincidence that both Lewis and Tolkien should write of the argument from desire, since Lewis’s own conversion to Christianity was shaped by this argument: both Tolkien and Hugo Dyson used it in the famous late night conversation of September 1929 on Addison’s Walk in Magdalen College – an event which was recorded by both Lewis and Tolkien. Tolkien’s epistolary poem ‘Mythopoeia’ (addressed to Lewis) outflanks the counter-argument that this is mere wishful thinking or day-dreaming by asking the question: ‘Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream?’ And Tolkien used the argument again in a letter to his son Christopher dated 30 January 1945, in reference to the human yearning for the Garden of Eden:

…certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’ [2].

But in ‘The Marring of Men’, Tolkien makes the argument from desire the basis of a fiction – and, as so often, Tolkien’s most personal concerns are most powerfully expressed in the terms of the mythic ‘secondary world’ he created.


‘The Marring of Men’

Tolkien’s story was never formally named – but probably the most compelling of its alternative titles was ‘The Marring of Men’ which I have adopted here . In the History of Middle-earth, the story is given its Elven name, ‘Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth’, translated as ‘The Debate of Finrod and Andreth’. The text of J.R.R. Tolkien’s story is about twenty pages long, with a further forty pages of notes and supplementary material compiled from other writings by J.R.R. Tolkien and notes by Christopher Tolkien.

‘The Marring of Men’ is part of the Silmarillion body of texts, which were composed over many decades, from Tolkien’s young adulthood during World War I right up until his death in 1973. This body of texts is sometimes referred to in its totality as Tolkien’s ‘Legendarium’, to distinguish it from the single volume Silmarillion selected by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son Christopher, and published in 1978.

The situation in ‘The Marring of Men’ is that of a conversation between Andreth, a mortal human woman, and Finrod Felagund, an immortal Noldo, a ‘High’ Elf. The explicit subject of their conversation is the nature and meaning of mortality, and its implications for the human condition – a subject which is probably the most fundamental of all religious topics, and which is certainly the single main interest and underlying theme of most of Tolkien’s fiction, including The Lord of the Rings. The implicit subject of the conversation is original sin and the fallen nature of Man – which is why the title ‘The Marring of Men’ seems appropriate.

But the conversation between Andreth and Finrod is not simply an abstract philosophical debate: It is fuelled both by world events and by personal experiences. The protagonists are aware of the imminent prospect of Middle-earth being irrevocably overrun and permanently destroyed by Morgoth. (The selfishness and assertive pride of Morgoth, the corrupt Vala or ‘fallen angel’ analogous to the Christian devil, are the primary origin of evil in Tolkien’s world.)

The personal element comes from the fact that the now middle-aged woman Andreth had fallen mutually in love with Finrod’s brother Aegnor in her youth, and had wished to marry the immortal Elf; but she was ultimately rejected by the Elf, who left to follow the call of duty and fight in the (believed hopeless) wars against Morgoth. It emerges during the conversation that Aegnor’s most compelling reason for rejecting Andreth was that he did not want love to turn to pity at her advancing age, infirmity and ultimate mortality – but (in Elven fashion) wished to preserve a memory of perfect love unstained by pity.

The ‘marring’ referred to in the title is mortality. The first question is whether Men were created mortal, or whether Men were originally immortal but lapsed into mortality due to some event analogous to original sin.


Immortal Elves and Mortal Men

While mortality is a universal feature of the human condition as we know it in the primary world, the Elven presence in Tolkien’s secondary world brings to this debate a contrast unavailable in human history. Tolkien asks in which ways the issue of mortality would be sharpened and made inescapable if mortal Men found themselves living alongside immortal Elves – creatures who, while they can be killed, do not die of age or sickness, and, if killed, can be reincarnated or remain as spirits within the world.

Tolkien’s Elves are fundamentally the same species as Men – both are human in the biological sense that Men and Elves can intermarry and reproduce to have viable offspring (who are then offered the choice whether to become immortal Elves or mortal Men). Elves are also religious kin to Men in that both are ‘children’ of the one God (Elves having been created first). But Elves seem, at the time of this story, to be superior to Men, in that Elves are immortal in the sense defined above. Elves do not suffer illness; they are more intelligent (‘wise’) than men, more beautiful, more knowledgeable and more artistic; Elves also have a much more vivid, lasting and accurate memory than Men.

The question arises in the secondary world: If Elves are immortal and generally superior in abilities, what is the function of Men? Why did Eru (the ‘One’ God) create mortal Men at all, when he had already created immortal Elves? Implicitly, Tolkien is also asking the primary world question why God created mortal and imperfect Men when he could have created more perfect humans – like the immortal Elves?

Tolkien’s answer is subtle and indirect, but seems to be related to the single key area in which the greatest mortal Men are superior to Elves: courage. Most of the ‘heroes’ in Tolkien’s world, those who have changed the direction of history, are mortal Men (or indeed Hobbits, who are close kin to mortal Men); and there seems to be a kind of courage possible for mortals which is either impossible for, or at least much rarer among, Elves. Elves have (especially as they grow older) a tendency to despondency, detachment and the avoidance of confrontation. On a related note, Tolkien hints that Men are free in a way in which Elves are not, and that this freedom is integral to the ultimate purpose of Men in Tolkien’s world – and by implication also in the real world.

C.S. Lewis once stated (albeit from the pen of a fictional devil!) that courage was the fundamental human virtue, because it underpinned all other virtues: Without courage other virtues would be abandoned as soon as this became expedient:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky." [3]

At any rate, courage seems to be one virtue in which the best of Tolkien’s mortal Men seem to excel.


The Fall of Men

The first question is whether Tolkien’s One God ‘Eru’ originally created immortal Men, who had been ‘marred’ and made mortal by the time of Andreth (and, by implication, our time). This is Andreth’s first view – the mortal woman suspects that Men were meant to be immortal but have been punished with mortality:

‘[T]he Wise among men say: “We were not made for death, nor born ever to die. Death was imposed upon us.” And behold! the fear of it is with us always, and we flee from it ever as the hart from the hunter’ [4].

‘We may have been mortal when first we met the Elves far away, or maybe we were not.... But already we had our lore, and needed none from the Elves: we knew that in our beginning we had been born never to die. And by that, my lord, we meant: born to life everlasting, without any shadow of an end’ [5].

Naturally, this prompts the Christian reader to think of parallels with the Fall of Man and original sin; and this analogy is clearly intended by Tolkien.

Andreth talks of a rumour she has heard from the wise men and women among her ancestors, that perhaps in the past Men committed a terrible but undefined act which was the cause of this marring. The implication, never made fully clear, is that Men in their freedom may have deviated from their original role as conceived by ‘the One’, and been corrupted or intimidated into worshipping Morgoth, or at least into doing his will and in some way serving his purposes. This, it is suggested, may be the cause of Men’s mortality as such, along with a progressive shortening of their lifespan and a permanent dissatisfaction and alienation from the world they inhabit and even their own bodies. In the dialogue, Finrod asks:

‘[W]hat did ye do, ye men, long ago in the dark? How did ye anger Eru?... Will you not say what you know or have heard?’

‘I will not’, said Andreth. ‘We do not speak of this to those of other race. But indeed the Wise are uncertain and speak with contrary voices; for whatever happened long ago, we have fled from it; we have tried to forget, and so long we have tried that now we cannot remember any time when we were not as we are’ [6].


Men’s Lifespan

By contrast to their uncertainty about the origin of mortality, the decline in mortal lifespan caused by Morgoth’s corruption of the world seems certain to both Andreth and Finrod. Later in Tolkien’s history, those Men who help defeat Morgoth are rewarded with a lifespan of about three times Men’s usual maximum, i.e. about 300 years; greater strength, intelligence and height; and a safe island off the coast of Middle-earth on which to dwell (Numenor, Tolkien’s Atlantis).

It seems possible that the enhancements of ‘Numenorean’ Men are simply a restoration of the original condition of Men. Or it may be that these enhancements are compensations of Elvenness, rendering Men more Elven (though still mortal), perhaps with the ultimate aim of a unification of Elves and Men. At any rate, the majority of Numenoreans eventually succumb to corruption and evil, and are destroyed by Eru in a massive reshaping of the world, which drowns the island and the vast Numenorian navy that is landing on the shores of the undying lands.

For Tolkien, it is a characteristic sin of Men to cling to life, and it is this clinging which corrupts the mortal but long-lived Numenoreans who try to invade the undying lands – either in the mistaken belief that they will become immortal by dwelling there, or with the intention to compel the Valar to grant them immortal life.

While Men are characteristically tempted to elude mortality – to stop change in themselves – the almost-unchanging Elves are tempted to try to stop change in the world – to embalm beauty in perfection. This Elven sin is related to the first tragedy of the Silmarillion, when ultimate beauty – the light of the primordial trees – is captured in three jewels; and it later leads to the creation of the Rings of Power, which are able to slow time almost to a stop, and thereby to arrest the pollution and wearing-down of Middle-earth.

As well as having an increased lifespan, Numenoreans surrender their lives voluntarily at the appropriate time, and before suffering the extreme degenerative changes of age. This voluntary death (or transition) at the end of a long life is described in the most moving of the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, when Aragorn (the last true Numenorean) yields his life at will to move on to another world. His wife Arwen pleads with him to hold on to life for a while longer to keep her company in this world; however Aragorn kindly but firmly refuses her request:

‘Let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!’ [7]

Arwen’s fate is tragic, because she is one of the ‘half-elven’ who may choose whether to become Man or Elf; she chooses to become mortal in order to marry Aragorn and share his fate. However, her resolve to accept mortality at the proper time is undermined by her ‘lack of faith’ in Man’s destiny of life after death. In the appendix, she is portrayed as regretting becoming a mortal instead of an Elf; and as having succumbed to the sin of clinging to mortal life rather than accepting mortality and trusting that there is life after death.

"…and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter than comes without a star." [8]

The half-elven Arwen has failed to embrace the mortal need for courage to underpin all other virtues; and one possible interpretation of this passage is that this has consequences for her fate in the next world.


At Home in the World, or Exiled?

For Tolkien (and Lewis), the sense of exile is a ‘desire’ which implies the possibility of its gratification; in other words, it reflects the fact that Men have indeed been ‘exiled’ from somewhere other than this world.

Finrod makes clear that Elves, by contrast, feel fully at home in the world to which they are tied:

‘Each of our kindreds perceives Arda differently, and appraises its beauties in different mode and degree. How shall I say it? To me the difference seems like that between one who visits a strange country, and abides there a while (but need not), and one who has lived in that land always (and must)’. [9]

‘Were you and I to go together to your ancient homes east away I should recognize the things there as part of my home, but I should see in your eyes the same wonder and comparison as I see in the eyes of Men in Beleriand who were born here’. [10]

Elves therefore care for the world more than Men, and do not exploit nature as Men do, but nurture and enhance the world. And indeed Elves are not truly immortal, since when the world eventually ends, they will die; and to Finrod it seems likely that this death will mean utter annihilation:

"You see us...still in the first ages of being, and the end is far off.... But the end will come. That we all know. And then we must die; we must perish utterly, it seems, because we belong to Arda (in [body] and in [spirit]). And beyond that what? The going out to no return, as you say; the uttermost end, the irremediable loss?" [11]

Partly because of this prospect, the almost-unchanging Elves become increasingly grieved by the ravages of time upon the world, and cumulatively overcome by weariness with their extended lives. Hence the characteristically Elven temptation to try to stop time, to arrest change.

By contrast, Men seem to Finrod like ‘guests’, always comparing the actual world of Middle-earth to some other situation. This opens up the question of Tolkien’s version of ‘the argument from desire’. Finrod thinks that Men have an inborn, instinctive knowledge of another and better world. Hence, he thinks that they never were immortal, but have always known death as a transition to another, more perfect world – not as the prospect of annihilation which Elves face. Thus, he considers the possibility that Men’s ‘mortality’ is ultimately preferable to Elven ‘immortality’.

But even in this world Finrod suspects that the destiny of Men may eventually be higher than that of Elves. He acknowledges that at the time of his debate with Andreth the Elves are the superior race in most respects; but he can envisage a time when mortal Men will attain leadership, and the Elves will be valued mainly for the scholarly and artistic abilities fostered by their more accurate and vivid memories. This projected role of Men will be related to the healing of the world from the evil that was permeated through it by Morgoth.

One possible interpretation of this is that Elves cannot heal the marred world because they are tied to, part of, that world; but that mortal Men may be able to heal it because, although they themselves share the marring of the world, they are ultimately free from that world through death.


Tolkien’s Vision of Heaven

Building on hints by Andreth, Finrod intuits that if things had gone according to Eru’s original plan, there would have been no need for Men. The first-born, immortal Elves would have been the best inhabitants and custodians of an unmarred world, because their very existence was tied to it.

But since the demiurgic Morgoth infused creation with evil at a very early stage, Eru made a second race of mortals – Men – who lived in the world for a while, then passed on to another condition. Because mortals were not tied to the world, they had the freedom to act upon the world in a way that Elves did not. This freedom of Men could be misused to exploit the world short-sightedly; but it could also be used to heal the world, to the benefit of both mortals and immortals alike.

[Finrod]: ‘This then, I propound, was the errand of Men, not the followers but the heirs and fulfillers of all: to heal the marring of Arda’.

Indeed, Finrod perceives that to clarify this insight may be the main reason for their discussion: so that Andreth may learn the meaning of mortality from Finrod, and pass this knowledge on to other Men, to save them from despair and encourage them in hope.

[Finrod]: ‘Maybe it was ordained that we [Elves], and you [Men], ere the world grows old, should meet and bring news to one another, and so we should learn of the Hope from you; ordained, indeed, that thou and I, Andreth, should sit here and speak together, across the gulf that divides our kindreds’. [12]

Andreth suggests that Eru himself may intervene for this hope.

[Andreth]: How or when shall healing come?…To such questions only those of the Old Hope (as they call themselves) have any guess of an answer.… [T]hey say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end’.[13]

Finrod cannot at first understand how this could be, and Andreth herself seems to regard it as highly implausible – a wishful dream. But on reflection, Finrod argues:

‘Eru will surely not suffer [Morgoth] to turn the world to his own will and to triumph in the end. Yet there is no power conceivable greater than [Morgoth] save Eru only. Therefore, Eru, if he will not relinquish His work to [Morgoth], who must else proceed to mastery, then Eru must come in to conquer him’. [14]

The Christian parallels are obvious. Indeed, ‘The Marring of Men’ can be seen as part of Tolkien’s lifelong endeavour to make his legendarium (originally conceptualized as a ‘mythology for England’) broadly compatible with known human history, particularly Christian history [15].

Andreth’s hints inspire Finrod to a vision which offers ultimate hope to the immortal but finite Elves as well as to mortal Men:

‘Suddenly I beheld a vision of Arda Remade; and there the [High Elves] completed but not ended could abide in the present forever, and there could walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps’.

‘We should tell you tales of the Past and of Arda that was Before, of the perils and great deeds and the making of the Silmarils. We were the lordly ones then! But ye, ye would then be at home, looking at all things intently, as your own. Ye would be the lordly ones’. [16]

This, then, is Tolkien’s vision of Heaven, pictured in the context of Arda, his sub-created world.


Myth and reality

The conversation of Andreth and Finrod occurs during a lull before the storm of war breaks upon Middle-earth; and Finrod foresees that the next stage of war will claim the life of his brother Elf Aegnor, whom the mortal woman Andreth loved in her youth and loves still. The fragment ends with Finrod bidding Andreth farewell by reaffirming, ‘you are not for Arda. Whither you go you may find light. Await us there, my brother – and me’. Andreth’s destiny lies beyond the world, and Finrod dares to hope that this is true for the Elves also.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, loss or transmission of knowledge is always a matter of concern. The message we take away from ‘the Marring of Men’ is hopeful. We are called to infer that this conversation has ‘come down’ to us today: that it was remembered, recorded, and has survived the vicissitudes of history, possibly because we modern readers need or are meant to know this.

Just as Morgoth’s marring of the World and of Men is analogous to the Christian account of the Fall of Satan and of original sin, Finrod and Andreth’s intuitions and hopes, Tolkien implies, were vindicated in real history by the coming of Jesus Christ. And Tolkien’s sub-creative vision of heaven, as explicated by Finrod, is meant to be taken seriously as an image of true heaven, in which Tolkien believed as a Christian. It is entirely characteristic that Tolkien’s heaven should have a place for Elves as well as for Men.

Tolkien’s story ‘The Marring of Men’ – though so brief a tale – seems to me one of his most beautiful and profound: a product of deep thought and visionary inspiration. It encapsulates nothing less than Tolkien’s mature understanding of the human condition and the meaning of life. Scholars and admirers of C.S. Lewis, who are unfamiliar with Tolkien’s legendarium, may find a way into his magnificent fantasy by reading it as complementary to Lewis’s great idea of ‘joy’ and his characteristic ‘argument from desire’: Tolkien engaged in developing and completing themes which underpin much of his old friend’s best and most serious work.


1. J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth’s Ring: The History of Middle-Earth, Volume X, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2002[1993]), pp. 301-366.
2. Humphrey Carpenter (ed.), Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), p110.
3. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p148.
4. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 309.
5. Ibid., p. 314.
6. Ibid., p. 313.
7. The Return of the King (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 309.
8. Ibid., p. 309.
9. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 315.
10. Ibid., p. 316.
11. Ibid., p. 312.
12. Ibid., p. 323.
13. Ibid., p. 321.
14. Ibid., p. 322.
15. This is the subject of Verlyn Flieger’s book Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2005).
16. Morgoth’s Ring, p. 319.

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Christ's work - a complex answer to several problems

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There are several (orthodox) Christian explanations of Christ's work including the atonement - and an explanation is not the doctrine, or belief - an explanation is not necessary.

Nonetheless, this is a problem which - it seems - won't leave me alone; not least because I find the standard formulations to be either meaningless or actively-misleading.

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The difficulty is that Christ's incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection and Lordship is a very complicated and 'roundabout' and linear series of 'answers' - indicating that whatever the problem/s they solved were several-fold, and also that there was 'no other way' for them effectively and completely to be addressed.

So there is no short and simple explanation for what Christ did, but only an answer which includes - or at least assumes - multiple needs and constraints.

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Christ got us everlasting life, so we would not die - which is necessary for life to be meaningful; but what is everlasting life contrasted with?

The context is one where souls (or spirits) are already (and necessarily) everlasting (and also, I believe, we had a pre-mortal spirit existence).

Thus, 'everlasting life' apparently means specifically an everlasting incarnated life - life with a soul in a body such as we have now.

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But then the kind of everlasting life we get is one when we must first die in the sense that our body must die, and the soul will (for a while at least) be severed from the body; and it was obtained for us by Christ Himself dying.

If we were to die without Christ's work, we would have an eternity as a severed soul (this, I infer, is what is described as the demented, witless state of spirits in Sheol, Hades or the Northern pagan Hel); and this is not the same state as our pre-mortal spirit life (and not the same as the spirit life of a never-incarnated angel).

It seems that to have been incarnated and then to die means that the soul or spirit will be maimed/ incomplete eternally (whereas never to have been incarnated seems to be okay).

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So incarnation - if it is to have any point to it - must be in one sense potentially better than to have a pre-mortal spirit life; yet the post-death spirit life is worse than the pre-mortal spirit life.

And also, it seems that eternal (endless) life without first dying is not a blessing - but that it is best we should first die.

What is needed is resurrection - but resurrection cannot simply be either not dying, nor can it be a coming back to life (like Lazarus). The reason is that we are so very flawed, so very corrupted by sin that an eternity of living as we are now would be a torment.

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So, to be fitted for resurrection into eternal life we must first be purified and perfected; this is the specific function of Christ's atonement.

By Christ's work of atonement we can be perfected and purified so as to be able to live forever with great happiness; but this requires that:

1. first we die and are resurrected, and

2. during this process, in-between death and resurrection, we are purified and perfected.

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So, this clarifies, or narrows-down, what the atonement does and where it is located in terms of death and resurrection.

But how it is done remains obscure to us - as if we were very young children to whom an advanced scientific or technical process was being described - something like the functioning of a nuclear reactor, or fractional distillation.

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Things happened as they must happen - the complex 'rigmarole' described in the Bible was the only way that the necessary could be achieved.

Time just is linear and sequential - therefore for Christ to enable us to die and be resurrected (apparently) required that Christ himself (Lord and maker of this earth) Himself become incarnated, died and was resurrected over Time and in human history.

And required also that Christ performed that act of atonement whereby He took upon Himself the sins and corruptions which we necessarily accumulate through mortal life with free agency and the reality of purposive evil.

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And even this rather complicated answer to explain what Christ did remains seriously incomplete, because it leaves out Christ's teaching ministry, the role of the church, the role of scripture - and many other vital matters.

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Why can't we remember our pre-mortal existence? - Why are we out-of-contact with Heaven?

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We lived pre-mortally as body-less spirits in the presence of God and chose our mortal incarnate lives on earth - that is, we chose to be born with bodies, live where we live, and we chose to die.

https://www.lds.org/manual/the-plan-of-salvation?lang=eng

So, why can't we remember our pre-mortal existence - and why are we out-of-contact with Heaven?

The short answer is that we are not: we do remember that we had pre-mortal existence, and contact with Heaven does happen.

But the memories are imprecise and the contact imperfect.

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Why? Why are memories unclear, why is contact unclear?

Because of the necessary qualitative difference between earth and heaven, and between spiritual beings and incarnate beings; necessary difference, due to the function of earth and incarnate life and mortal death.

If we are to have a chance (a chance; not certainty) of spiritual progression beyond what was possible in out pre-mortal life, discarnate, spirit-life; then we must be incarnate, and we must live here (and therefore not in Heaven), and we must die; and all of these were and are choices - for incarnate mortal earthly life to 'work' then we must continue to choose it.

(Even death. If we do not willingly choose to die when it is our time to die - and we will know this time - then by that failure to accept death as both necessary and good, we will be rejecting our destiny.)

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But earthly, mortal, incarnate life is qualitatively different from Heavenly, spiritual life (whether pre- or post-mortal); and to communicate across this difference is necessarily imperfect.

It is (analogously) like the imperfect communication between an adult and a three-year-old child; or trying to understand a related but different language (like a modern American person listening to Old English/Anglo Saxon); or like trying to understand a tape recording slowed down a hundred-fold.

So, time runs differently for us, space has a different quality, and in our lives there is noise and distraction, and our bad choices, to contend-with.

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So there are memories and there is communication; but these are necessarily difficult.

Necessary not because the difficulties are in and of themselves necessary (clearly, God wants us to remember and to communicate - and his revelations are full of reminders and advice on communications such as prayer); but necessary because of the necessary nature and quality of this earthly, mortal, incarnate life - which we chose - and the necessary difficulties of which we accepted.

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Real learning, and the reality of Time

It is an error, a self-deception, to harp-on about Time: to use concepts of Time as an-always-present, simultaneous, reversible, meaningless... Or that Time is No Time, All Time, Arbitrary Time...

I have read a great deal of Christian and New Age writing that uses some non-common-sense version of Time as the core explanatory concept. These are 'explaining' phenomena and spiritual ideas in terms that Time is Not (as it seems) linear and sequential and irreversible - but instead Time is actually something else... Such as every moment always present, Time is an illusion of mortal life, that the future creates the present, that the past can be changed - and so forth.


I know from my own case; that such Time talk may produce a bewildered and disorientated frisson of 'enlightenment', 'insight', spiruality'...  It temporality provides an aura of mystery and magic. But I also know that it goes nowhere. Time talk paralyses life if taken seriously - and if not taken seriously it dissipates and diverts proper effort.

People have been harping about Time in the mainstream for more than a century, and if one examines the results - they are not impressive. The very mode by which people describe their Time ideas tends towards extreme abstraction, the mathematical, bureaucratic; it is dull, life-less.

It Doesn't Work.


Okay - we may agree on what does Not work, and we can stop doing Those Things. Yet that knowledge is of little value unless we know what to do instead: as always it's a case of: If Not - Then What?

Well, we should accept that we live in Time, amd that time is linear, sequential, irreversible - albeit it may run at different speeds for different persons and in different places. And this is especially the case for Christians; because Christianity is about a Saviour born at a particular point in Time, who changes reality from that Time; and whose gift is a resurrection to Heaven that may happen to either or both of us in the future, but has not happened yet.

We need, I suggest, to avoid Time as an abstraction; and also abstraction and sytematisation in general: no schemes, no models, no lists, no bullet points...

For Christians we start with Love; and that means from actually-existing Love. Start from where we are, as particular persons - Not starting from what we 'ought' to love, but from what we do love. And we shouldn't expect, strive for, hope-for permanence in the things of this mortal life; we should not aim at progress in the transient things of our life on this earth.



Mortal life is about Learning, but this is Not the learning of 'psychology', nor the learning sustained by memories - which are transient, brain-dependent, mortal things...

Real learning could be defined as experienced-experience! Learning happens when we really live and notice our experience.

Real learning is when our real-self (which is divine) has an experience.

Our real-self is eternal, and does not depend on our body: this real-self is what lived as spirit before this mortal life, and what gets resurrected after death - if we accept the gift of Jesus Christ. Therefore, anything learned by the real-self is learned forever.


No amount of shallow experience by our false, transient, 'personality' selves amounts to the learning we need...

Backpacking across the Sahara or up Everest is completely worthless unless the real-self experiences something; as should be obvious from the shallow dullness of nearly-all the breed of travellers and explorers; and the spiritual trivialisation that has increased with the range and scope of journeying in the modern world.

The real self never experiences the desert or the mountain - only the transient personalities are affected by it. "I took my fake-self through X and Y extreme and exotic experiences". In the end - who cares? It has no more profound or lasting a significance than watching tonight's 'news' on TV.

One who actually experiences, with his real-self, the act of sitting on a chair and gazing out of the window - has learned something in his life; which very probably cannot be said of another individual who walked on the moon.

Obviously!


But really-experiencing experience is (for most people) difficult, intermittent, brief. There is no obvious way that we can make such things happen: certainly methods and training have proved themselves ineffectual.

Is spiritual 'progress' then even a possibility? And what would such progress mean, in terms of the real-self? - how could we know?

Well, yes progress is possible whenever the real self has experience; and significant progress actually-happens when that experience is one that we personally need.


We are all incarnated into this mortal life with different needs from our earthly lives; and when our real-self has experiences that address those needs, then we have made spiritual progress.

Often, these needed experiences are to-do-with Love; and that is why we should look for such experiences in relation to those we Love. That is our only 'method' the only 'technique'...

In other words; if we want to make spiritual progress - we would be best advised to starts from whatever person or other entities that we now-and-already Love; and Not to start from any kind of external-generic description, prescription, formula, flow-chart... 

And when we die, our real-selves will be that-much-better from those experiences.


This can be understood as our destiny. Our destiny is those experiences that we need from this temporary incarnation, and would benefit-from. And it is a task of our life to experience those experiences in particular... Not just to have the experiences in an external and behaviouristic sense, but for the real-self to experience them. 

Can we know that this has actually happened? Well here I cannot speak for others; but it seems to me that I do know the broad nature of my spiritual progress through life by the Golden Thread of enduring and special memories.

I'm not sure what each of these experiences on the thread means; but I am sure that these experiences happened when real-learning happened.

Like all memories, these are presumably dependent on the temporarily incarnate body; but they seem to have a special quality by which they were marked-out; and which reassure me that 'progress has been made', and that my life has not been in vain.  

Surrendering life versus clinging to life

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Tolkien's Numenoreans were mortal men - but they did not suffer illness, lived about three times as long as we do, and when it came to die were able to surrender their lives of their own free will.

But when the Numenoreans later became corrupted, they would cling to life, suffer pain and misery, become senile, and eventually die anyway - unwillingly.

*

What about us? Sadly we cannot do as the old and uncorrupt Numenoreans; but is there any reason why we must cling to life like the dark Numenoreans - the one's who worshipped Morgoth?

*

How about this?

When we reach the time of life when our vitality is waning and we know it is about time to die; and when we then get sick and suffer (unlike the Numenoreans); maybe we should not take antibiotics, not have life-extending surgery, not use life support systems, not sustain our exhausted physiology with medication and mechanization, and certainly not get resuscitated?

Maybe we should just avail ourselves of painkillers and palliatives (but preferably not to the extent of clouding our consciousness - trying to keep a clear head) and 'let nature take its course'?

Be Aragorn, not Arwen.

* 

Aragorn: "At last, Lady Evenstar, fairest in this world, and most beloved, my world is fading. Lo! we have gathered; and we have spent, and now the time of payment draws near."

Arwen knew well what he intended, and long had foreseen it; nonetheless she was overborne by her grief. "Would you then, lord, before your time leave your people that live by your word?" she said.

"Not before my time," he answered. "For if I will not go now, then I must soon go perforce. And Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship." (...) 

Then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. (...)

Aragorn: "Let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound forever in the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"

"Estel, Estel!" [Arwen] cried, and with that even as he took her hand and kissed it, he fell into sleep.

Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.

But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star.

Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there alone under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn had also gone, and the land was silent.

There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by the men that come after, and elanor and nimphredil bloom no more east of the sea.


The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen

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Why did 'Hell' replace 'Sheol' in the New Testament - as a possible situation of the spirit after death of the body?

It was several years ago that commenter WmJas pointed-out that the Old Testament underworld after death - Sheol (much the same in its characteristics as the Hades of Greek religion) which was the destination for all spirits/ souls after death (the good as well as the bad) - was replaced in the New Testament with a much more polarized distinction of Heaven or Hell: Heaven being vastly better than Sheol, but Hell depicted as vastly worse.

Sheol is apparently a shadowy world inhabited be witless, demented spirits/ souls who have forgotten (or cannot hold onto their own identity (presumably, spirits maimed by having been torn apart from their bodies); whereas Hell is some kind of a place of torment.

This - on the face of it - is a rather ambiguous benefit for Jesus to have brought; and seems initially hard to square with the way that a loving father would organize things for his beloved children.

But this interpretation is, I believe, a consequence of our stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Men have agency, or 'free will', and God either will not or (I would say) cannot compel any Man to choose his ultimate destiny.

My understanding is that Sheol was merely a temporary holding-place awaiting the advent of Christ (and not experienced as having any duration by the souls who dwelt there); and we can interpret the Atonement of Jesus Christ as having led to a situation where all souls were brought out of Sheol and each Man was able to choose his own destiny.

*

To understand Christianity (or indeed anything) in this mortal life, we need to know what it is for; and my assumption is that the whole of creation was made by God (in a nutshell) so that some Men (as many as possible) could advance to deity and join The Father and The Son (and Heavenly Mother) in a loving society.

Men are made a spirit children, and incarnated as mortal children - but the point is that we are immature, extremely immature - but our destiny (if we choose it) is to mature towards greater and greater divinity.

Mortal life is designed so that 1. Men can be incarnated and have a body. And 2. Men can have experiences, make choices - including errors, and being to mature such as to make spiritual progress.

So, Jesus Christ made it such that the discarnate spirits from Sheol, and every other Man from then onwards, would be resurrected; and then, by his 'taking away the sins of the world', made it possible for Men to choose their eternal destination.

In sum, I am saying that since Christ (but not before then) Men have been able to choose Hell.

Now, it seems strange that anybody would choose Hell; and most Christians through history have regarded Hell as either the default (from which some, maybe only a few, are rescued by Christ) - but this equates Hell with Sheol which seems false.

Or, they have regarded Hell as a punishment place where those Men are sent who are wicked - whether they like it or not - and are tormented forever. Or at least for those Men who fail to keep to acceptable behaviour. But this set-up seems impossible for a loving God - no loving parent would want this for his children; and when God is envisaged this way He seems worse than some Men.

My assumption, therefore, is that Men get what they really want - and therefore Hell should be regarded as one of the things that Men want and choose for themselves - among various other imaginable alternatives, which are often seen as eternal destinations in other world religions.

*

Hell is to do with Sin - therefore we need to consider how can Sin be conceptualized?

One way is to consider Sin is that all Men are at least somewhat (and some men are very) prone to choose and do what is short-term, pleasurable, pain-avoiding and in a word expedient - rather than what leads to joyousness in an eternal time-frame. This applies to choices during mortal life, and it would presumably also apply to choices concerning destination after death in those who have followed a life of accumulating sin.

The point is that short-term expedient sin sabotages what is best for long-term joyous spiritual progression.

Well, part of the work of Christ was to expunge this accumulation of sin, and allow a fresh choice of destination.

(I will leave aside whether this choice of destination is permanent - but I cannot see why permanence would be enforced: I think the tendency to permanence in long-term destination is due to the self-reinforcing nature of choices, rather than being due to God preventing any resurrected soul from changing his mind.)

From what we know of men and women in the world today, we can see that not everybody want to dwell in Heaven. And, by and large, people will be given what they want - and those who don't want Heaven but instead want something else will have it.

Heaven (a variety of Heavens, in fact) is the destination of choice for those who want to live in loving relationships with their (perhaps several, overlapping) families and loved ones. The highest heaven is for those who wish to become mature, deified 'adults'  - and dwell in contact with deity; and lower heavens for those who want to stay as children, or do not want to grow-up towards divinity - or, at least, not yet.

*

For example, some people do not want to grow-up - but prefer to remain as (immature) children of God. They are allowed to remain as children (maybe they can change their minds again later?).

If you want to lose consciousness, to lose the sense of self, to cease to be aware - to be-absorbed back into divinity, living in a perpetual present of bliss (i.e. the state of Nirvana) then that is allowed.

Perhaps the commonest desire (or belief) among modern Western people is that when they die they will be utterly unconscious - not in Nirvana but simply the extinction of all awareness, as if deeply anaesthetized. If they really want this, that is what they will get.

(Although maybe a merciful God will awaken then form time to time, to see if they want to change their minds? But if they have been utterly unconscious, it is hard to imagine what could happen to make them change their minds...)

Many modern people seem to dislike their birth families, and do not wish to have their own families; they seem not to want to live in a web of loving and responsible relationships - well such people would not want to live in Heaven. What such people seem to want is some kind of shallow, serial, mutually-exploitative (or 'reciprocal') relationships based upon immediate pleasure. I can imagine an after-death world where such people might be allowed to live this kind of life.

This would correspond to the Paradise which is the aimed-at state for some religions; in which the after-life is envisaged as a perfected form of sensuous (indeed sensual) earthly life - a life of pleasure rather than joy; a human-level life, minus the physical suffering. Life as a cycle, without progression, each day much like the one before - pleasant, but going-nowhere.  

The problem is that exploitation is seldom equal - one gets more than the other, some people tend to give more than they get - would they be happy with this in the long-run? Is such a system sustainable? This contrasts with love, which enhances both parties; and is sustainable for that reason. But there are some social circles on earth - for example among hyper-promiscuous people - which seem to be based on mutual exploitation, novelty and rotation of personnel. If that is what people want - presumably some provision is made for them.

The problem is those who want to impose their will upon others, to exploit them unilaterally and selfishly - habitual murderers, rapists, torturers, con-men, gold-diggers, psychopaths and the like. Now, clearly such people cannot be supplied with the unwilling victims that they crave - however, they utterly reject loving and responsible relationships of any kind. The question is whether such individuals are prepared to acknowledge their objective wrongness, and repent their wicked desire to exploit and impose?

If such individuals will give-up all claim to have what has been their primary desire through life; then they will not go to Hell because Christ has made repentance wholly effectual; but if they will not give-up their core sin, then they will prefer solitude and the torment of perpetual frustration to being cleansed of that sin.

And if that scenario of chosen Hell seems implausible to you - it does not seem implausible to me; since I have seen individuals in an analogous situation in human life - living utterly miserable lives due to their choices, yet refusing always to repent these choices and repelling all chances at loving society; indeed loathing and despising and wanting to make-suffer those who live in loving society.

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In sum, all after-death states including Hell can be seen as a loving Father giving his children what they want - so long as this does not infringe the consent of his other children. And this explains why Christ brought Hell, as well as Heaven.

Explaining demonic spirits and the damned souls; as the consequence of choices related to love, mortal incarnate life/ entropy/ death, and resurrection

We must die in order to be remade - to be resurrected. 

This is salvation. 

Damnation is the other choice: to reject salvation. 

We must be resurrected to enter that state called Heaven*; because for Heaven to be 'heavenly' - all within it must have-been remade, wholly-good - without disposition to evil. 

Or, to enter Heaven, we must make a permanent commitment to repent and repudiate all sin - all evil, all that opposes divine harmony - and the way that this permanent commitment is made is by resurrection -- in which all that is Good (God-harmonious) in us is retained; while all that is not is left-behind and discarded.

Such a permanent commitment is made from love; and therefore must freely be chosen - cannot be compelled; and can only be made by those capable of love who choose to make love their eternal foundational principle. 

(Only thus can Heaven be a place that is wholly Good (a place without any evil-motivation) and also wholly-free - inhabited by beings with divine powers of creation; who will always and spontaneously use their godly-powers harmoniously with God and other Heavenly beings.)  

The need for death is true for men and women - and for all other beings. 

Which is why this incarnated mortal life on earth is dominated by entropy: because every-"thing" must die, if there is to be a possibility of resurrection. 

In other words: If every being on earth is to have a chance of attaining and choosing Heaven - they all must die, sooner or later. 

Pre-mortal spirit life, although wholly-good, is very imperfect - especially in terms of freedom, of agency. 

The harmony and goodness of pre-mortal life is dependent on the passivity and obedience of spirits; because pre-mortal beings are not innately wholly good (in the way that God is wholly-good, or resurrected beings are wholly good). 

Because pre-mortal spirits are not-wholly-good, the harmony of goodness in pre-mortal life is attained top-down, by the direction and control of God. 

In effect, so far as pre-mortal spirit life goes; God is the wholly-good parents of a mixed bunch of children - some mostly-good, some mostly-evil - none wholly good. It is only by the obedience of these children that goodness prevails. 

But pre-mortal spirits mature, they grow-up, they change... Sooner or later, they get to a point where they must throw-off the passive goodness of obedience to parental authority and control. 

Then these pre-mortal spirits have a choice...

Either the spirits can incarnate on earth - some time afterwards to die, and make the choice of resurrection, or not. 

(This is God's plan - because God wishes to make and inhabit Heaven with resurrected (incarnated everlasting) beings, who have have by their choice of resurrection made an eternal commitment to live in harmony with divine creation.)

Or else those pre-mortal spirits who do not want to die and be resurrected; or who simply do not want to die - and those who reject the divine plan for an harmonious Heaven of free-beings who have chosen to be remade without evil... 

These spirits can escape their previous state of obedience to divine goodness, and enter the sphere of earth while still spirits - and therefore immortal. 

These are the demons. 

(This explains why demons are spirits - not embodied; and why they are immortal. They are spirits because they have refused temporary mortal incarnation, and are immortal because they are spirits, and unaffected by 'entropy'.)

If the pre-mortal spirits choose mortal life on earth, they must choose temporary incarnation and death (as necessary pre-requisites for resurrection); but if they reject this package, then such spirits have rejected even the possibility of Heaven.

This is why all demons are evil, and why demons are worse than incarnated Men - because demons, by their rejection of mortal incarnation, have all chosen to reject the possibility of that death which makes salvation possible. 

(If demons changed their minds and repented, and wished to prepare for the choice of Heaven; they would need first to incarnate and die. Whether this this is possible or ever actually happens I do not know.) 

So - demons have rejected the passive ('secondhand') good of pre-mortal spirit life under the parental influence of God; and they have also rejected that mortal life on earth which is a necessary stage to prepare for remaking-by-resurrection, and Heaven.   

The ruling principle of creation (that which makes creation cohere) is love; and love is the reason why the dead choose resurrection and heaven.  

The essential reason why demons have rejected mortal incarnation, and why some dead mortal Men reject the offer of resurrection into Heaven and instead choose damnation; is that demons and the damned are either incapable of love, or have rejected love as the basis of life and chosen... something else.    

Differently phrased: Demons are those never-incarnated beings who have rejected living under the domination of entropy (i.e. mortal earthly life); and by doing so rejected God's plan of salvation. 

The damned are those who chose to live and die as mortal incarnate Men on earth, and have become dis-carnated beings (i.e. souls severed from their bodies); and who die and then reject resurrection and Heaven; instead choosing some other fate.

*Note: Why our final God-destined state-of-being is embodied, incarnate - rather than spirits - is a topic I have considered elsewhere.