What is forgiveness and should all Christians always strive to do it?

I have often written about forgiveness on this blog, because I think the Christian injunction to forgive is widely and profoundly misunderstood - and not only by non-Christians.  

The reason that Christians are called upon to forgive everybody and every-thing is that the alternative is to nurse resentment, which is bad for us - is indeed a sin, and one of the commonest (because officially encouraged) in this time-and-place. 

There is no place for resentment in Heaven; so to enter Heaven we must be prepared to give-up all our resentments; and insofar as we harbour resentments during our mortal lives, then so much the worse for us. 

Almost always, resentment harms ourselves, and does nothing whatsoever to whoever is resented. 

For example, it is common to continue resenting people long after they have died - sometimes for many generations or centuries.

Resentment is therefore on the spectrum of that worst of sins: spite - whereby the desire to harm others is more powerful than even the desire to benefit oneself. Resentment is like that. It is a willingness to orientate one's life around negative desires for another person or people. 

So, forgiveness is simply a recognition that resentment is a sin and does us harm; and repenting any resentments we feel. 

This means that forgiveness has nothing to do with remitting just punishments, nor has it anything to do with forgetting - and failing to learn from - the harms that others have done to us. 

Obviously, Christians need to learn from our experiences in life; and when other people have lied to us, stolen from us, assaulted us, tried to make us miserable or to destroy that which we most value - it would be idiotic to pretend this never happened! 

As for other people asking us for forgiveness... well they shouldn't do it; and they would not do it unless they were deceitfully trying to manipulate others for their own benefit. 

Anyone asking another human being for forgiveness is on the wrong side in the spiritual war. They should be asking God for forgiveness.

But even then, God Just Is merciful; so that forgiveness by God is a non-problem for anyone who has recognized their own sin and repented it. 

Repeatedly begging God for the forgiveness promised by Jesus Christ to all who repent, seems likely to be a problem of not-really-repenting - and then asking to have the fact ignored. 

If someone wants to repent, but somehow can't - then they should be repenting their failure to repent - and not psychologically-groveling to be forgiven despite not repenting!

Forgiveness necessary even in Heaven? Yes.

There is a point of view that regards the requirement for forgiveness as sub-optimal, in the sense that 'If God knew his business, there would be nothing to forgive'. In other words, there are some who think that life ought to be perfect, and if so then there would be no need to forgive, because nothing even sub-optimal (let alone bad) would ever happen. 

And some people see Heaven that way. As a place of always-perfection. With zero need for forgiveness.

 

But I see Heaven as a place of Love, and Love is creative, creation (like Love) is dynamic - and if heaven is a dynamic situation, a place of doing; then it does not make sense to regard Heaven as the kind of perfection that is unvarying, unchanging.  

That ends-up with something more like a blissful/ static 'Nirvana' than Christian Heaven - which is made by a personal and loving God for his divine children - who remain persons (and are resurrected, presumably with unique bodies). 

 

My understanding of Heaven is that our main 'work' there (which is also the highest form of play) is to participate in God's on-going loving-creation. Thus Heaven is a place where there are many creators, in addition to God; each an unique person. 

This means that all these individual creators need to be brought into harmony; or else there would be a clash and opposition of creative activities - as there is on earth. 

My understanding is that this Heavenly harmony of multiple creation is quite naturally achieved by Love. If we have experience of a loving family, we already know that the individuals are continually - quite naturally and spontaneously - making their (creative) contributions to family living within this imperative of Love. So the many acts of many individuals are, over time, harmonised by Love. 

But at any given moment-in-time, there are dissonant aspects. 

Individuals are motivated by Love - nonetheless, the distal consequences of their love-motivated actions are not wholly predictable - and things may turn out worse than intended, errors will be made; there is need for compensatory correction. 

 

Here in mortal life on earth; our creations are temporary, because every-thing is temporary. So many mistakes and errors of creation just disappear over time. But in Heaven, all the creation is eternal. What then happens to the inevitable errors? 

Well, in Heaven errors cannot be erased - but they are compensated. I believe that compensation must be a divine principle. 

Of course, compensation is important here on earth as well. As a family member, we may do something, and it turns out badly - we have made an error. Often this cannot be undone, and so we do our best to compensate for it. 

 

That - I assume - is the nature of creation. Creation is full of errors, and full of conpensations. 

Over time, mistakes are compensated - but they are still present. Still woven into the fabric of reality... 

And this is the reason why forgiveness is vital for Christians.  

 

Love does not lead to perfection, Love cannot prevent all errors. Therefore we can, should - and in Heaven we Do - compentate for our errors (repentance in action!). 

Yet those errors remain, and therefore need to be forgiven. 

Forgiveness is integral to the functioning of Heaven - Forgiveness is, indeed, integral to Love. 

 

The same happens here in mortal life on earth. There are no 'perfect' parents, siblings or children - and we should not want any such nonsense. But there are (within earthly constraints) Loving family. 

(If you must have perfection; then 'the perfect family' is simply a perfectly-loving family.) 

Loving parents, sibs or kids will make mistakes - they surely will... 

And therefore these mistakes must be forgiven if Family Living is to be maintained - on earth as it is in Heaven. 

Indeed loving errors are forgiven, quite naturally and spontaneously, when Love is present and effective. It is only the incomplete and transient nature of love in this earthly life that causes problems. In Heaven, we shall be resurrected to eternal life, with a permanent commitment to Love. 

Eternal Love between all persons is what makes Heaven heavenly - and forgiveness is just one of the many consequences. 

What is Christian forgiveness?

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Forgiveness is close to the core of Christianity, to forgive is mandatory - the implication is that we will be forgiven in the same manner and to the same extent that we ourselves forgive - yet I have found it very difficult to understand the concept.

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What happens when we forgive?

In normal terms forgiveness seems much like forgetting, 'not thinking about' something - but that can't be correct in a heavenly perspective, because everything is 'remembered'.

Nor is forgiveness a matter of ignoring sin, or of making oneself believe that there is no difference between good and evil, or that what seemed bad was actually good (as when people always put the most optimistic and well-intentioned construction on events, regardless of the reality).

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But I feel closer to understanding forgiveness having read the first four chapters of Charles Williams He Came Down From Heaven.

I have tried to read this book many times, but this time it 'clicked' and the book strikes me as without doubt one of the most profound theological writings I have encountered - almost alongside Pascal.

In essence, and as far as I understand it, to forgive is to put events into the ultimate and heavenly perspective when even the most deliberate evil is is seen as unable wholly to escape from Good, and will become an occasion for good.

The necessity to forgive is then, perhaps, an order not to despair; an injunction to be aware that God created all things, and makes them happen; that evil can destroy but Good is primary.

At root, the injunction to forgive is a statement of the nature of reality.

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Note added: Conversely, failure to forgive - i.e. persistence of resentment, or grudge - is implicitly acceptance of the primacy of evil, the dominance of the demonic. It is denial of Christian Love as the ultimate principle. It is therefore the denial of reality.

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Incoherence in traditional concepts of sin: Understanding 'sin' as the entropic nature of this mortal world; as anything-other-than resurrected life

Ever since I began to consider the matter seriously; I have found the ways that sin and forgiveness are discussed to be incoherent. They just don't seem to add up, or hold together. 

What I think I was sensing, was a clash between the temporary and the eternal, the individual and the social -- resulting from changes in human consciousness and the concept of 'Christianity' since the time of Jesus. 

I think it likely that, when Christianity was developed as an institutional, then a state, religion; it became bound-up with the prescription and enforcement of good, pro-social, 'Christian behaviour' - and this became regarded as the pre-requisite to salvation. 

So we get the idea of 'sin' as transgression of laws, and 'forgiveness' as some mixture of punishments, penances, and wiping the slate clean of past transgressions. In practice, 'sin' was externally, socially, defined. 

Thus laws and other rules of conduct were societally developed, validated and imposed; the individual was the sinner (law-breaker); and some representative of society decided what ought to be done about it.

This pragmatic system relating to social behaviour (primarily) was then harnessed to the 'cosmic' aspects of Christianity; i.e. the fact of Jesus Christ having change created reality - made possible a new Heaven of eternal resurrected life etc. 

This was the - to me - peculiar picture from Christianity; of a reality made up of moral laws/ legal codes and the system for developing and enforcing them; which was strangely linked with a narrative of the history of everything. 

It seemed hard to grasp how - in creating - God had built-in objective morality of this social kind... I just couldn't picture how this might work. 

When I spent a year or so, reading and re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("John") - I gradually became aware of a very different way in which sin was being conceptualized. 

The IV Gospel (overall) saw sin as ultimately death; and milder sins as including sickness and others kinds of dysfunction, corruption (away from proper purpose and function), wrong attitudes towards God, expounding of false realities, and so forth. 

I gathered that Jesus's work in taking-away sin, was to take-away death; in other words to offer Men the possibility of resurrection into life everlasting. 

Miracles of healing were perhaps Jesus taking-away lesser 'sins' of disease and disability. 

'Forgiveness' is not mentioned as such in the Fourth Gospel; but in some parables and miracles, Jesus seems to be declaring something about a change of mind or heart, or a reorientation, on the part of the one who is healed - this (here-and-now) commitment to Jesus is the 'faith' that has made the miracle possible. 

But this is not necessarily an eternal transformation of behaviour. I don't think we are meant to assume that one who has had faith, and received a miracle, would 'never sin again' in the sense of never again breaking any of the Laws of morality. 

The transformation of those who encountered Jesus was not a permanent change of their behaviour; but a here-and-now change of heart, of desire, of attitude. 

It seems possible that Jesus was talking about repentance or forgiveness in terms of a person turning to Jesus as Saviour, as Good Shepherd - as recognizing that only by 'loving' and following Jesus can we have eternal resurrected life. 

This can only be guaranteed as a temporary state of affairs in this mortal life - because somebody might at first decide to follow Jesus, and then later change his mind. As a sheep might begin following the Shepherd to safety; but change his mind, stray, and fall off a precipice to his death (i.e. to choose damnation). 

Thus, concepts such as 'repentance' and more generally 'faith' may best be understood as referring to the here-and-now; to the current situation in mortal life. 

These concepts are also, at root, personal and not institutional - at least to us modern men. 

Personal and institutional were, indeed, de facto inseparable in earlier stages of Man's development of consciousness, including the time of Christ and the centuries that followed. 

It was only from the late medieval era that Western Men began mentally to distinguish the individual group his group, more and more fully, and then to experience as a fact of reality. 

So, my confusion about 'sin' (and the confusion of Christian teaching, from which my confusion derived) was - in part - a consequence of trying to combine concepts from different stages of Man's consciousness.  

My conclusion is that we have now arrived at a very different point from where Christianity arrived at after the ascension of Jesus and the rapid development of first the Church, and then the Christian State. We are, indeed, now returned to a situation much closer to that described in the Fourth Gospel, during the life of Jesus. 

'Faith' is now something-like a here-and-now determination to follow Jesus to eternal life; and 'sin' is... anything else, i.e. any other commitment or purpose than that of following Jesus to resurrection-specifically. 

'Repentance' (the word itself isn't used in the Fourth Gospel) is (perhaps) simply the renewed commitment to following Jesus; whereas 'apostasy' is, like Judas Iscariot, referring to one who once had faith, later changing his mind and deciding Not to believe or follow Jesus. 

(And then, of course, apostasy may be repented.) 

So 'sin' is ultimately choosing death - meaning not-resurrection; but choosing instead some other fate for our post-mortal soul.

Thus 'damnation' may entail something like loss of personhood, loss of agency, loss of consciousness... Or refusing to leave this mortal world, and remaining bound to the domination of entropy and death. Damnation may be many or several possibilities, because it is anything-but resurrection. 

And, from this, 'sin' is used more generally to refer to mortal life and its innate nature - this world, dominated by entropic change: corruption, disease, decay, degeneration... 

In other words: 'sin' is all of that from-which we are rescued by resurrection into eternal life. 

Forgive, but don't forget

Christians must forgive - for our own personal good, primarily. 

Unforgiveness is resentment - close-cousin to spite: to desire harm against another person or Being (harm even at the cost of our own suffering). And spite is probably the worst, most insatiable of sins. 

Failure to forgive will keep us out of Heaven, because we will not even want to dwell in Heaven - which is a place of love and without spite. Someone who prefers to sustain his own resentment - even on a single topic; and who will not accepts the cleansing grace of Jesus Christ to be purified of it at resurrection... Well, such a person has damned himself.

(Unforgiveness is not-to want-to forgive - forgiveness is the opposite.) 

Forgetting is not the same a forgiving - although forgiving (when effectual) puts an end to that grinding resentment which gnaws at the soul. When one has forgiven there is no particular reason to ruminate obsessively - therefore one may think on it less, or with less extremity... 

On the other hand, forgetting may be undesirable - we may need to learn. 

For instance; it may be right and desirable to remember when someone (or some institution) has lied to us. We ought to know liars, because (unrepentant) liars are servants of the devil; and therefore we may need to regard them differently. 

We need, for example, to recognize when someone (or some institution) is using language in order to manipulate us, and not to communicate truth. This means we are dealing with evil; and therefore it is desirable for us to remember that this is a liar. 

We must forgive the fact they have lied to us - because not to forgive means deliberately nurturing resentment - which will act on us as soul-poison. However, we should not forget the fact; because that They are 'a liar' is spiritually relevant and important.  

But what if "I can't forgive"? 

Well, that is never true - for forgiveness is the inner act of wanting to forgive - forgiveness just-is the recognition that we ought to forgive, and the willingness that we should be enabled to forgive. 

While we are on earth everything - including the human mind and body - is subject to change and mortality, and the limitations of our physical situation (the constraints of our body and mind). 

Therefore, the actual 'process' of forgiveness, which is eternal, comes only after our death - at the time of resurrection. 

Until then, what matters is our recognition and willingness.

Recognize that you must forgive and be willing to forgive - but do not try to forget matters of spiritual importance. 

Resurrection - Love versus Resentment, and the role of Forgiveness

What of us gets resurrected? 

The answer, I think, is essentially 'that of us which is love'. 

In other words, a person who has led a loving life will have plenty to resurrect (plenty from-which to re-create his immortal self); and by contrast, someone who is incapable of love, or has rejected it - cannot be resurrected, because there is nothing to resurrect. 

The 'opposite' of love - that sin which is most opposed to the essential-master virtue of love - seems to be 'resentment' (which is more usually called 'pride' - but I think resentment captures the essence better). 

Resentment cannot be carried into Heaven - so by repentance we must consent to its being stripped-away in the process of resurrection. 

But this means that every aspect of us which is dominated by resentment will be (must be) removed before we can enter Heaven. A Man who has, though his life, built up a mass of personal resentments, will therefore lose a great deal of himself in salvation. 

Hence the vital importance of forgiveness; because if we hold-onto a resentment directed against someone or some-institution; we are maiming our-selves now, and maiming the potential of our resurrected selves. 

But if we choose to discard this resentment (if we 'forgive') then there is more of us that can be resurrected - we will be a larger person after resurrection. 

Thus - the positive benefit from forgiveness is actually for the forgiver, not the forgiven. 

One who nurses his resentment (a 'resenter') is often operating under the spite-full (and demonic) belief (or fantasy) that his sustaining of resentment harms its subject - which harm he desires; and therefore he refuses to forgive. 

But at the worst extreme, the 'resenter' realizes that he cannot harm the subject of his resentment (either because they are in Heaven, or are no-more); and then a refusal to forgive becomes wholly negative, and necessarily spiritually self-harming. 

This is why resentment (or 'pride') is often regarded as the worst of all sins, and why it can be understood as the opposite of the Christian injunction to love. 

When indulged, when forgiveness is rejected; resentment can become the core of self-identity to the point where damnation is chosen.

Such is the situation of Satan; and such the incipient situation of those many Men for whom a resentment (and their own commensurate 'victim status') has been made their core value. 

The nature of repentance

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Repentance is hard for us moderns to understand - and in fact repentance is typically grossly misunderstood.

What happens is that repentance - which is primarily between one person and God - gets mixed up with emotions such as regret, and more-or-less well-meaning and perhaps helpful inter-human (or 'social') actions such as apology and restitution.

I would say that:

Repentance is the acknowledgement that I have sinned; which includes understanding that what I have done is indeed a sin; and the asking of God's forgiveness for my sins with a contrite and sorrowful heart.

In the above circumstances, this forgiveness will always be forthcoming.

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What repentance is NOT includes the emotion of regret for what I have done, focused on wishing I had not done it; nor is it to apologize to someone for what I have done - nor is it to ask another person to forgive me  - nor is repentance about trying to undo what I have done, to set things right or repair the damage, nor is it to striving to make amends for what I have done.

All these may be (and often are) good things to do in and of themselves, but they are not repentance.

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Repentance is essentially between myself and God; and God's forgiveness is a washing-clean, to allow a fresh start - but a spiritual fresh start; and not a fresh start in this-worldly matters, because - sin can never be undone.

God cannot ever make it as if there never had been sin.

But what God can and does do - what repentance can and does do - is to heal us from the effects of sin.

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Forgiveness, Mercy and Repentance (Gandalf, Frodo and Saruman)

I have always been troubled about the attitude shown toward Saruman by first Gandalf then Frodo, at the end of the Lord of the Rings.

Saruman is a corrupted wizard (a goodie turned baddie) who is the second most important villain in LotR. He is defeated by a combination of the Riders of Rohan and the Ents; and, after being offered and refusing a chance to repent and reform, he is imprisoned by the Ents in the tower of Orthanc.

However, after only a few weeks (and after the prime evil leader Sauron has been defeated and destroyed) Saruman is allowed by the chief Ent (Treebeard) to leave the tower and wander free.

In other words, Treebeard shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and lifts his punishment.

When Gandalf discovers that Saruman has been released, he believes that Treebeard has been hoodwinked by Saruman's almost magical rhetorical skills; and that releasing him was a mistake.

However, when Gandalf and a group of the Fellowship accidentally meet Saruman later in the journey, Gandalf does not make any attempt to recapture Saruman; but allows him to continue his wanderings.

In other words, Gandalf shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and lifts his punishment.

Saruman goes to the Shire and accelerates the process of enslavement, torture, killing, looting and environmental destruction which he had set into action shortly after Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin had left on their quest. When the four hobbits return to the Shire they need to fight and defeat Saruman and his gangs of ruffians; and in doing so several hobbits are killed and others injured.

So, Gandalf's mercy has by this point led to considerable death among hobbits and destruction of the Shire (plus even more death among the ruffians - who are first offered and refuse a chance to repent, surrender and leave without molestation).

Even after all this, Frodo offers Saruman a further chance to repent, which he refuses. Then Frodo shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and does not impose punishment.

Saruman then stabs and tries but fails to kill Frodo, after which Frodo again shows the unrepentant Saruman mercy, and does not impose any punishment.

Eventually Saruman is killed by his servant Wormtongue, who is slain by the other hobbits before Frodo could stop this.

The result of Frodo’s last acts of mercy was the death of both the unrepentant Saruman, and the on-the-verge-of-repenting Wormtongue.

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My feeling is that while Gandalf and Frodo are obviously just in offering Saruman repeated opportunities to repent, and that in their hearts it is right that they forgive Saruman; they are both at fault for showing Saruman a mercy (a reprieve from just punishment) which he did not deserve and which led to great harm. I mean, Gandalf and Frodo's repeated acts of mercy led to harm to others, although not to Gandalf and Frodo.

I am also troubled that Saruman - unlike his mass-slaughtered and mass-imprisoned minions (which included men, as well as orcs, wolves and other perhaps intrinsically-evil creatures) - was hardly punished for his wicked deeds.

Such punishment would have been deserved, and it could perhaps also have brought Saruman towards a realization of his wickedness. To let him wander free did none of this.

I wonder how these acts of mercy would have seemed to the men of Rohan, for example. Saruman simply walking free at the end of these terrible wars; having lied, betrayed, corrupted - not to mention having unleashed orcs on women and children... and so on!

Why should Saruman *not* be punished?

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My interpretation is that Gandalf and Frodo were - understandably - exhausted; and for that reason behaved wrongly in showing mercy to Saruman.

They had both, in fact, from perfectly understandable exhaustion lapsed into a lazy and immoral attitude of pacifism - which is at root a kind of pride, pride in one's own superiority, a reluctance (born of exhaustion) to go through the psychological struggles and compromises of judgment, punishment etc).

Indeed, it was wrong for Gandalf and Frodo to have taken it upon themselves to judge in this matter - since both were (at this point in the story) merely biding their time and settling their affairs prior to leaving Middle Earth. Both had done their duty, succeeded in their primary tasks, and neither had an eye to the future of Middle Earth.

Therefore, the right thing for Gandalf to have done would have been to step aside for Aragorn to make a judgment (or to send Saruman back to the King Aragorn for this purpose); the right thing for Frodo to have done was to step aside for Sam, Merry and Pippin to make a judgment - or perhaps also to refer the matter to King Aragorn (imprisoning Saruman and Wormtongue in the meanwhile).

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The whole business illustrates for me a confusion between forgiveness and mercy which is very common.

People seem to assume that to forgive somebody also entails showing them mercy - such that a person who is forgiven is not punished.

This is surely completely and utterly wrong!

Universal forgiveness is quite simply a duty, which everyone must strive to achieve - but universal mercy would be wicked, catastrophically wicked.

It is a gross misunderstanding to imagine that wrong deeds ought never to be punished, and that punishment is only done from resentment.

What should have happened (surely?) is that Gandalf, and Frodo, and the Riders of Rohan and everyone should ideally have forgiven Saruman; but that Saruman should have been punished - and punished severely, up-to and perhaps including execution of his earthly body (as an angelic spirit Sauman's soul was presumably immortal within the life of the world).

In my opinion, the repeated mercy that Gandalf and Frodo showed towards Saruman was at best inappropriate soft-heartedness and at worst a kind of 'aristocratic' lenience - whereby rulers are (from a sense of solidarity) more considerate and merciful towards each other than they are to the common people.

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Did Tolkien intend to imply this kind of interpretation?

I am not at all sure - but I would not be *too* surprised if he did; wanting, at some level, to show us mistaken mercy borne of exhaustion as being yet another of the many ill effects of the war of the ring.

Why must we love our neighbours? Why must we forgive?

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Because we are in it together.

To fail to love and to fail to forgive are part of the same thing, which is rejection of reality - the reality that we are called-upon to choose salvation and not just for ourselves; but by participating in the web of love, to accept the gift for mankind.

To love and to forgive is precisely this participation in active and consenting aspects.

(Always remembering that love of neighbour must be second or subordinate to love of God, which enables it; and forgiveness is an attribute of our own humility before God. Yet for many, perhaps most, love of God is attained via love of another, or some others - and the same for humility and forgiveness. The particular opens out into the general - seldom vice versa.)

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What to do when forced to be corrupt

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If you are a teacher in a situation as described below, a situation where the methods of evaluation (exams) allow cheating and consequently there is a lot of cheating of various levels and types:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/02/dishonesty-breeds-dishonesty-example-of.html

If you are in this situation which strongly encourages lying, and rewards clever lying - and hence is evil, then...

What should you actually do?

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The most obvious responses are

1. to go along with things and join in the usual excuses.

This is obviously the major means by which moderns are corrupted - people are made complicit with corruption, and given the title of hypocrite unless they adjust their ideals to fit what they actually do.

So corrupt people simple deny that what they do, what they are coerced to do, is corruption.  

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Or 2. The 'obvious' alternative is to fight every step of the way through the system - to pick up the most inept examples of cheating and try and impose exemplary punishments as a deterrent (recognising that you will be fought every inch of the way).

But in reality the second is on the one hand futile - a diversion of potentially productive effort into Quixotic behaviour, and on the other hand a false reassurance which in fact has the opposite effect.

However, the situation of dishonesty within bureaucracies, institutions, organisations, corporations etc. is simply another instance of the basic, fallen human condition; in which we cannot stop from sinning.

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We cannot stop sinning, but what we must do is:

1. Acknowledge and Repent our sins, ask Forgiveness.

2. Do not defend sins: acknowledge the situation, do not excuse the situation, do not promote the sinful situation.

If you are being coerced, the acknowledge to yourself and others that you are being coerced and (without exaggerating) the scope and nature of that coercion - so that it is clear to yourself and others what was your 'price'.

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When asked why we do this, why we go-along-with that - we ought to reply, we believe it is wrong because we are being forced to do such, or bribed to do such.

But we should not ever defend the wrong that we have been forced or bribed to do. 

And we should do no more than we have to do.

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Aside from Saints, we all have a price, and it may be a low one - but being bullied or bought-off need not threaten salvation if it is honestly acknowledged, repented - if we state our weakness and ask forgiveness for our weakness.

But that is a very different matter from the usual business of serving evil, excusing evil, covering-up for evil, pretending that we like evil and that it really is Good...

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Humility versus submission

For Christians, repentance is a first step on a short path to forgiveness; but modern secular leftist guilt has no answer.

Repentance and forgiveness versus perpetual guilt - a big difference.

While a Christian aims for humility before God, modern secular leftists can only settle for submission to those people who make them feel guilty.

Humility before God versus submission to Man - a big difference.

Groups of people (e.g. a particular sex, religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class) are never the root of The Problem

A good deal of human discourse is - and maybe always has been - ranged around arguments over which group of people are most at fault for the state of things? 

That group-at-fault may be very large - one of the sexes, for instance; or may be variously small - a particular religion, empire, nation, ethnicity, or social class. 

The thing is, there are so many candidate groups; and loads of evidence for all of them as being a problem, or even a Big problem - so there is constant and unresolvable dispute about which particular group is the worst.

What this amounts to is a search for the source of the major problems of the world; that special group which is the origin of the problems caused by most or all the other groups across the spread of history.

The point of this search for the origin, is the hope that when the source is known, then a solution will become possible... If the Big Problem can be located, then maybe it can be isolated, and its threat eliminated? 

So alluring is this prospect, that the project to discover the root-evil group continues; despite many generations of futility and failure - and no solid example of successful positive transformation consequent upon elimination of a particular group. 

Some of these problem groups are nonsensical projections, others are identifying a real and serious problem - by which I mean a real spiritual problem. It is a major aspect of the extremity of spiritual evil in these times that large groups have been (and are being) made evil by the sin of resentment. 

Many groups have been corrupted by resentment, to the point that resentment becomes the primary (or even sole) cause of their group-cohesion and motivation. 

Indeed, there may be nothing in common between the group members, except for the shared focus of their resentment. That is indeed the nature of The Left as of 2025: leftism has become nothing-but a collection of shared resentments. 

And, once a resentment-based group has been created, then there is the further spiritual problem that it leads not just to counter-measures, but to counter-resentment; such that a resentment-fuelled groups leads to the development of another group who "resent the resenters"*. 

And thus the problem compounds, and the search for an original group source of The Problem, and a remedy; instead spirals into a maelstrom of increasing mutual resentment.  

Why does this happen, and why does it happen so much here-and-now? 

It happens because ultimately humans are being manipulated by demons - because a world of humans that cohere by resentment is one that spiritually benefits only the Satanic strategy of human damnation - no matter what the (temporary) material outcome of inter-group conflict might be. 

And humans are more easily manipulated by demons here-and-now because we have (as a civilization) excluded the spiritual perspective from public discourse; including having denied the reality of the demonic - so that only human causes are regarded as permissible explanations for human problems.

(Spiritual explanations are regarded as necessarily false, because impossible.) 

The situation is strongly encouraged by the dominant Western ideology that regards "correctly-directed" resentment (e.g. anti-nationalist-globalism, socialism, feminism, antiracism, anti-antisemitism) as a virtue, not a sin; and which encourages resentment as a core human motivation by all means possible (state propaganda, media propaganda, laws and regulations etc).

Resentment is therefore a besetting sin of this era and place - because it is a sin that has been culturally-inverted into a virtue. 

Christians absolutely need to break out of this demonic cycle of group-resentment, on the basis that it is spiritual poison. 

As I've often said before: the reasons Christians are commanded to forgive in all situation is a spiritual (not practical) imperative; rooted in the fact that the opposite of forgiveness is the sin of resentment. 

Forgiveness is not about the evils of other person, or the other group, no matter how very evil these may be; it is instead about an evil in ourselves: We forgive sins in order that we ourselves do not fall into resentment. 

+++

* Examples of this abound on the "Secular Right" i.e. the group of anti-mainstream-Left political activists and commenters; which group includes plenty of self-identified Christians whose deepest and most compulsive interest is this-worldly, hedonic, and material. So we get those whose obsessive focus of discussion and argument is ("manosphere") anti-feminism, anti-antiracism, anti-(anti-antisemitism), and so forth. As with the mainstream Left, this broad grouping of "Alt-right"/ "Neoractionaries" etc has no net-positive spiritual motivation, and is united only by their resentments**.

**Further note: If you shake free of the past few weeks of gleeful euphoria of the Secular Right at the stated-intentions/?actions of the new US President's administration - you will observe a great surge of increased resentment (gleeful spite, Schadenfreude...), and nothing at all in the way of a positive spiritual programme. This may be "natural" for people to behave like this, but it sure ain't Christian thus gratuitously and publicly to celebrate one's own sin! 

Against topical rants - Francis Berger

Continuing the recent theme against 'mass media', Francis Berger discusses the pros and cons of Christians writing 'outrage de jour' blog posts:

I have not and have never intended to make “outrage du jour” posts the focus of this blog. Nonetheless, I have indulged in a few posts of this kind over the past few months. 

The classic “outrage du jour” post is a raw reactionary rant railing against some controversy or other that has flared up in the mainstream media. Rage and disgust (often justifiable) fuel these posts. More often than not, they aim to instill rage and disgust into the reader. 

“Outrage du jour” posts serve a definite purpose – whether or not this purpose is beneficial or harmful depends on the topic addressed and the manner in which the writer has approached it. As with most things in life, outrage posts have their pros and cons. 

On the pro side, outrage posts draw attention to abuses and evildoing. Posts of this kind can be quite informative. Depending on a writer’s perspective, they can also be rather entertaining, perhaps even humorous. 

On the con side, outrage posts can breed smoldering anger, paranoia, and resentment...

Francis concludes that it is overall a bad idea to produce such topical, reactive posts - at least on a regualr basis. I concur, mostly because 'resentment' is a toxic emotion for a Christian - indeed one of the worst of sins, since it feeds upon itself and never can be assuaged.

Resentment is the opposite of forgiveness, and the point of forgiveness is primarily that it is necessary to the forgiver, not the forgiven.

My experience of topical, political blog posts is that they get the most page views - but make no difference to expanding the long-term core readership of the blog. The people who come to read and respond to a rant about the latest Leftist outrage, don't hang-around for the only possible answer: a Romantic Christian revival among Westerners in The West.

Potential problems of religious ritual and worship - by William Arkle

Edited from the chapter 'Levels of Consciousness' in William Arkle's  A Geography of Consciousness (1974) pp 122-3.

Ritual can evolve when individuals are trying hard to keep their consciousness tuned to the intuitive and ideal levels of awareness in the face of low-level attitudes which are prevalent in the world about them.

Ritualistic behaviour prevents the attention of the individual wandering onto other things such as the hundred-and-one practical issues that arise in physical level existence. The physical action of the ritual enforces the desired focus upon high ideals and does not leave room for other physical perceptions to intrude.

But that repetition of the ritual is also dangerous, for the reason that it enables the mind’s automatic systems to take over that process which lends itself perfectly to the task for which these automatic systems developed, namely, to do standard repetitive tasks. So while the adherent to ritual is closing his consciousness to outside interference, he is also prone to numb it all together; since there will be nothing for consciousness to do when the automatic systems have once got hold of the ritual.

This would all be fine if we belonged to the angelic form of evolution, because angels are meant to enjoy such repetitive behaviour; and no doubt this aspect draws them to the ritual.

But this is a complete disservice to human evolution unless it is on a very small scale, for while ritual may enable something of the angelic attitude and presence to be sensed; it does at the same time invalidate the main purpose which is to achieve self-conscious understanding of divine nature and aspiration.

A few sincerely felt moments of deep concern for this divine aspiration are therefore of far more value in the end than hours and years of partly-felt and partly-mechanical requests for help, forgiveness, undeserved benefits and ultimate safety. Thus religious ritual often degenerates into a sort of spiritual insurance scheme.

We can also see that even worship, when it is not a high and natural form of love, creates a dichotomy. For how can we consider ourselves in our own divine right while we are worshipping that right? The very basis of worship is to keep the object of our worship at a respectable distance in deference to its untouchable qualities.

We cannot therefore be expected to enter into these qualities and at the same time worship them. We can only enter into them if we self-consciously and simply love them. 

(by William Arkle) 


Note: I have changed Arkle's term 'computer' to 'automatic systems'; and his term 'entity' to 'angel' to assist clarity. By computer/ automatic systems he means the same as Colin Wilson does by 'the Robot' - that is the learning systems which tend to 'take over' any repeated skilled task and make it unconscious; for example when learning to drive a car. This is extremely useful.

But such automatic systems also take over higher and edifying activities like listening to or performing music, reading literature, and loving human relationships - and also religious worship. These then become automatic and lose their power. Life itself becomes automatic, and we become detached from it: trapped and cut off in our own consciousness (a very typical modern condition) - craving novelty and change in order to escape the automatic world - but every novelty soon becoming stale and the expectation of change becoming automatic. 

Arkle is lucid on the way in which the traditional stance of worship (as the term and activity is generally understood) can serve to prevent theosis - to prevent what is Man's primary reason for being an incarnated mortal, that is to develop towards divinity. If our task is to become more-divine, then a stance which emphasises the gulf between us and God could easily become an obstacle rather than an aid. If that gulf is felt as impossibly vast we are paralysed rather than en-couraged.

Furthermore, if (as Arkle argues elsewhere, and I believe to be true) the ultimate reason for creation is to raise some Men up to the same qualitative level with God (that is, to enable Men to choose this path and ultimate goal) such that at some point beyond death Men may 'grow up' to become divine friends and companions to God and participate in the work of creation... then the focus needs to be on similarity rather than difference - we need to learn to feel the divine in us and build upon it, rather than focusing on our deficiencies and inabilities. 

The basic stance of human life is supposed to be positive, active, creative - with full but secondary acknowledgement of our incapacity and tendency to sin and err. We are meant to strive cheerfully, in a care-free and indomitable manner; try and fail and repent, then strive and fail again; learning and growing spiritually in the process. 

We need to think of God as our Father (with us as his children) more than as our King (with us as servants or slaves); in the sense that Men are not trapped in a divine caste system, but we are assured we can grow-up to be like him, as Jesus did - blazing the trail for us.  

Insofar as ritual and worship helps this awakening and developing, it is good overall; insofar as ritual and worship numbs, demoralises and paralyses - it is bad. 

The extreme depravity of modern Western leaders

*

I was suddenly struck by an awareness of the unprecedented extremity of evil among Western leaders - at all levels, but the higher the level the greater average depravity; the fewer exceptions.

*

When King Henry II of England had Thomas Becket (Archbishop of Canterbury) killed for reasons of expediency; he was stricken by overwhelming remorse, and performed extravagant penances which served as a public demonstration of his error. It is inconceivable that anything of that sort could happen among today's leadership.

*

We are ruled by the Men Without Chests of Lewis or the Hollow Men of Eliot - or the Voldemort types who have deliberately fragmented their souls, or Mouths of Sauron who simply channel evil.

They plot and scheme to subvert, invert and destroy all virtue; they prosecute truth as oppression; and propagandize deliberate, sickening ugliness as the highest aesthetic.

*

Yet they are utterly without awareness of their own depravity; regard themselves as the cutting edge of goodness.

*

They have constructed a world in which their own planned and systematic promotion of evil counts for nothing against them; and where their restraint from following-through their evil ethic to its extreme conclusions in absolute selfish short-termism seems to them to imply an almost super-human innate virtue+.

*

They have all this reflected-back at them in the media world that is their headquarters and which dominates and permeates their lives; a world in which traditional evaluations of truth, beauty and virtue have been abolished except to be inverted: the venom in excluding from this world, suppressing, misrepresenting, punishing the expression of Goodness is by now something extraordinary.

*

This is, indeed, the most depraved ruling elite that there ever has been in the history of the world - precisely because it seems so impossible that they could ever come to awareness of their own depravity.

*

For such people to repent would, of course, be a truly cataclysmic event in their lives; to perceive the sheer mass of their own efforts on behalf of depravity would be of soul-crushing force; it would be so agonizing that only Christian forgiveness could rescue them from utter despair - yet that was the very first possibility they eliminated, several generations since.

*

The absence of nobility from public life; the shallowness of the people; the cowardice both individually and collectively - all these are aspects of this situation: the extreme depravity of our leadership, so extreme that their evil is almost unrecognizable.

These are such pathetic remnants of humans that we barely recognize the possibility of responsible choice - yet we know it is there.

In the vastly inflated balloons of conceit and artifice which are modern leaders; in some corner, hidden away, there is a pathetic whimpering child still capable of agency; and still choosing - day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment - to sustain the monstrous falsity of their empty lives.

*

+ There are many examples in the realm of sexual ethics - when multiple serial monogamy is regarded as virtue compared with multiple simultaneous promiscuity; or among the multiply simultaneously promiscuous when being open and 'honest' about infidelity is regarded as virtue compared with concealment; or when multiply simultaneously concealed promiscuity is disciplined by some restraint as regards classes of acceptable partners (age limits, no orgies etc)... Every depraved individual draws a circle around, makes an ethical imperative of, their own limits to depravity - then feels spontaneously self-disciplined, relatively virtuous, superior to (some) others. Mutatis mutandis wrt dishonesty etc. - for instance, there is little to compare with the incredulous moral indignation of the systematically dishonest administrator, manager or journalist whose entire professional life is spent misleading by selection and distortion of the truth - when they are accused of actual lying! 

*

Religious *and* spiritual: Prejudicial hostility to non-normal states of consciousness, mysticism, magic, 'the occult' etc among (real) Christians

Many modern Christians, including real Christians, have a reflexive and inflexible hostility to 'Religious Experience' - that is, to anything like mysticism, magic or what they term the occult.

Such attitudes come-out, for example, in the visceral hostility to JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and Harry Potter as being demonically-inspired and/ or tending to lead people into evil preoccupations and practices - such as conjuring spirits.

This particular mind set is associated with Low Church, Charismatic type Protestants (especially in the USA). Such people claim to be able to draw a sharp line between Religious Experience (such as speaking in tongues or faith healings: good) and Magic (bad), usually defined on the presence of key words or practices such as wizard, witch, divination and spells. 

Similar - albeit 'less extreme' attitudes are also prevalent in a mind-set to be found among Western and Eastern Catholics of a Traditionalist type, and the more traditionalist, scriptural Protestant churches.

What this amounts-to is the belief that normal everyday consciousness is the only 'safe' way to be - and any form of altered consciousness - such as is associated with mystical, magical and occult experiences or knowledge - is to be avoided, absolutely (or rejected if it happens) as being likely to be of demonic origin.

In a nutshell, such people are real Christians - and yet they are solidly against Religious Experiences, in the modern world; because these may be evil in origin or effect. 

Such traditionalists will acknowledge that in theory Religious and mystical experiences may also be of divine or angelic origin (as is amply attested in The Bible, the early church, among Christian Saints of the past etc.). This might be taken to imply a middle path - of approving mystical experience but with caution; and indeed that is my own view of things.

But in practice, Traditionalists are prejudiced against Religious Experiences - by which I mean they pre-judge all claims of mysticism to be fraudulent or deluded unless-proven-otherwise; and in practice there never-can-be objective, public proof otherwise.

Such people will never actually be convinced of any proof of or evidence for the validity of mystical experience - at least not when mystical claims are made by people or groups they dislike - which amounts to people outwith their own denomination +/- a shortlist of other approved churches.

(Part of this is that they typically have an unexamined assumption that true Religious Experiences only happen to those of exceptional sanctity; and such people are extremely rare, especially in the modern world. Where they get this assumption, given the vast number of Biblical and real-life counter-examples - and the fact that Jesus came, and Christianity was founded, explicity for sinners - I can't imagine: but they clearly do assume it.)   

I am sure that the Fundamentalist or Traditionalist prejudices against Religious Experience/ magic and mysticism is a very major error of modern Christianity; because Christianity is essentially a mystical religion, and if mystical aspects (whether they are labelled magic, occult or whatever) are excluded; then the faith is dead - becomes a mere matter of obedience to a bureaucracy or set or rules.

(Obedience to legitimate authority is a virtue - true; but I see not the slightest sign that Jesus regarded it as the primary virtue!)

Particularly damaging is that this prejudice against Religious Experiences implicitly consigns modern Christianity to operate within Modern Consciousness - which is of its nature materialist, reductionist and positivist. Indeed Modern Consciousness is a truly horrible thing; which drains contemporary life of felt meaning and purpose; so that the Christian who lives within it can have a faith only 'in theory' - because any validating mystical experiences will be rejected as demonic.

If ever there was a playing into Satan's hands, and doing just exactly what he wants: then this is it! - A Christianity which (from a secular perspective) has all the disadvantages of an absurdly magical foundation; yet vehemently rejects all possible experiential advantages of a magical consciousness!

So we get the weird spectacle of the adherents of a magical religion, with a magically validated organisation (i.e. a church), who spend their time reading and discussing magical events (in the Bible, lives of Saints etc), and performing magical rituals such as the Eucharist and Prayer... yet living within a distinctively modern and rootedly anti-magical discourse which expends great energy in distancing itself from any people who actually experience magic in the here and now and strive to live in a more expanded and sensitive consciousness than that of a modern bureaucracy!

In sum Christianity need to be spiritual as well as religious; and must not be squeamish or prejudiced against mysticism, magic, the occult.

Yes, this is a risk; but Life is a risk: intrinsically (Christianity takes a middle-way about pretty much everything except Love, Repentance and Forgiveness) - and the opposite risk of promoting a dry, legalistic, merely doctrinal Christianity is to advocate a mere corpse of Christianity.

Mysticism is, simply, a risk we have to take.

The asymmetry of Heavenly Good and hellish evil

Asymmetry is usual - especially when it comes to Good and evil; because Good is (roughly speaking) taking the side of God and creation - which is a positive commitment towards the divine destiny; while evil is to be opposed to these - which is negative, oppositional. 

So to become permanently Good is different from becoming permanently evil - in each case 'permanent' has a qualitatively different meaning. 

 

As I understand it; the choice to follow Jesus Christ leads through resurrection to Heaven. It is, therefore, a transformation - a transformation from this transitional, temporary, mortal embodied life, to a final, permanent, eternal embodied life.  

The resurrected life entails that we are prepared to make a permanent commitment to God's creation. 

 

The idea of eternity and permanence should not be thought to mean that Heavenly existence is some kind of unchanging stasis. I think it is better understood in the above terms as a final transformation. 

After resurrection there is no further transformation: the resurrected Man is qualitatively final in form - although he can develop further, towards creative divinity. 

 

In the resurrected condition this eternal commitment is possible in a way that is not possible on earth. 

Earthly life is 'entropic', change cannot be prevented, and change tends to be degenerative (towards chaos)...

But Heavenly life is eternally self-generating - there is no entropic tendency, but instead creation is the dominant reality. 

 

Anyway; the path to salvation is by following Jesus to Heaven; and once that has been accomplished, that situation is irrevocable. 

The resurrected man has made a free and conscious choice to make a permanent, positive commitment, and that commitment is - from then onwards - permanent! 

We could say (just as a model summary) that there is something like a special provision made that such a permanent commitment to Good is possible; or we could simply say that if permanent commitment to Good was not possible, then Heaven would be impossible - since (across eternity) members would all be prone to lapse and reverse; and Heaven might become hell...  

The situation for evil is different. There is no 'special provision' that enables any individual to make a permanent commitment to evil. Therefore, all commitment to evil is ultimately contingent; there is no 'philosophically principled' reason that actively prevents any individual (up to and including Satan) from repenting.

But it would be an error to infer from this that repentance is in practice possible for everyone. What prevents repentance is essentially Not Wanting to Repent. 

With evil, there is a kind of spiral of probabilities against wanting to repent. Unprepented sin leads to more unrepented sin (as we see from everyday observation); so that individuals get deeper then deeper into evil; and the desire to repent and live in Heavenly harmony with God's creation gets less and less - while opposition to God and creation gets more habitual and stronger. 

 

As a person becomes more evil; he develops stronger habits of untruthfulness (lying is intrinsic to evil); he practices moral inversion - such that all possible 'evidence' is understood as confirming his existing evil assumptions.

For example, other peoples' moral concern and forgiveness is interpreted as stupidity and weakness; the misery and pain of others leads to positively-reinforcing feelings of excitement, power, sexual arousal; successful dominance leads to despising those dominated; but defeat and failure leads to resentment and plans for revenge - etc. 

Whatever happens, it only serves to fuel the commitment to evil, the oppositional goals. 

 

We talk of an evil person 'selling his soul' to Satan - but this is a process, rather than a one-off transformation like salvation. 

A Man chooses to enter a path of evil; and every further choice to continue the path gets easier - while repentance (while still always theoretically possible) inflicts higher and higher costs in terms of unpleasant/ crippling feelings of remorse. 

It is always easier to become more evil, and it gets more and more difficult to repent.    

Thus, permanent Good is asymmetrical with permanent evil: the decision permanently to choose the side of Good being qualitatively irrevocable; while the decision to choose evil is a matter of becoming more-and-more quantitatively irrevocable - more-and-more permanent; in a positive feedback fashion: with each deviation leading to further deviation in the same direction. 

Become as little children: accept adoption by God

*

Matthew 18:3 Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

*

One of the most tedious and frustrating things about being an intellectual is that one only comes to the obvious via a tortuous and roundabout route; and what is worse, having seen and rejected the obvious on many previous occasions.

Which is why, for a Great Awakening to occur in the West, I believe that we must become as little children again - cast aside the layers upon layers of pseudo-sophisticated deceptions and distortions which have accreted since childhood; and again perceive things as a child sees them.

*

Thus yesterday I came across, discovered, in a book chapter by J.I Packer (Knowing God, 1973; Chapter 19 'Sons of God) - his great and shattering recovered insight that 'adoption' is the core of Christianity.

http://jameslau88.com/a_christian_is_one_who_has_god_as_his_father.html

*

You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator.

In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father.

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.

If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God.

'Father' is the Christian name for God.

[JI Packer, Knowing God, Page 182]

*

The idea is that the highest and greatest Christian 'offer' is not to be forgiven sin by Christ (although this is vital) nor even to be delivered from death; but for me personally to be adopted as a Son of God, to have God as my Father, Jesus as my Brother, and all other Christians as my Brothers - as these things shall be in Heaven.
This is so obvious and 'in your face' that it is explicitly contained in the first lines of the Lord's Prayer - yet somehow I didn't get it.

*

To put it briefly the Old Testament is about the greatness, awefullness, majesty, and Holiness of God; the astonishing good news of the New Testament is that this exact same God has given us the offer of adoptive Sonship - allowed all Christians to join His family.

*

This is of crucial importance to modern evangelism because modern people are post-Pagan and therefore do not believe in the reality of sin, and see no need for forgiveness; and they do not allow themselves to think about death or else regard death as merely a going to sleep forever; so traditional Christian evangelism has nothing to work on.

Yet if there is one psychological problem characteristic of modernity, that problem is alienation: the sense of being isolated, detached from reality, without any personal relationship to the world of people or of nature - thus life as purposeless and meaningless.

What moderns crave above all is to be put back into personal relation with the world: to feel at home in the world.

*

And this is precisely what Christianity offers as its Heaven: to be again at home in the world, at home in the universe, as a loved and loving member of God's family.

To join this family now. And (as with a perfect earthly family) from that point onward never to be rejected from it whatever we do so long as we sincerely repent and try our best.

*

In sum, the family metaphors of Christianity are shown by Packer as both literal and symbolic, simple and profound, irreplaceable, and encompassing the very highest level of the Christian good news.

From this perspective many things become clearer and cohere; not least the deadly significance of that on-going strategic, multi-pronged, sustained and unrelenting assault by the secular Left on the traditional Christian family - not least by the sexual revolution (depicted as liberation from the tyrannical constraints of family).

This has succeeded to the extent that the metaphors of family have been tabooed and subverted such that they have all-but ceased to operate as what they should be: the first and best and most universal way into the Christian message.

*

However, this strategy of evil cannot be wholly effective unless all humans are destroyed; since even those who have never experienced a good family or whose ideas of family have been poisoned by many decades of Leftist propaganda (in fact especially these) nonetheless deeply and ineradicably yearn for real and perfect family and the only basis for human flourishing, and feel cut-off to the extent that they are deprived of it.

Family (like gender) can be attacked only by being defined. To mock, misrepresent, criticize and undermine actually existing, necessarily imperfect and contigent human families in public discourse; therefore serves inadvertently to amplify the private, secret and inextinguishable longing for real, perfect and eternal family.

This, I suggest, is the way into the modern secular mind - pre-armed against almost every other kind of Christian message: the heavenly Christian family as the only sure, complete and permanent cure for alienation; the only way we can feel at home in creation.

*            

Christianity, slavery and modern jobs

*

The striking lack of 'jobs worthy of respect' in modern conditions

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/only-jobs-worthy-of-respect-according.html

seems to present a challenge to Christians - thwarting their hopes of a seamless and integrated life and apparently consigning them to the active service of evil.

*

In such a situation it is worth remembering the fact that there have been many, many Christian slaves; people who were owned by others, had little or no choice over what they did, how or when they did it - and were Christian. There have been prisoners, and conscripted soldiers, in similar situations.

But a slave or prisoner does not justify their condition - their condition is taken as a misfortune, or accident.

*

Perhaps, then, the problem is that of honesty - that modern people are dishonest about their work: dishonest to others and to themselves.

In trying to gain status for themselves, to pretend they are masters of their own destiny - self-realizers - modern people use their jobs to amplify and reinforce pride.

Perhaps if people were genuinely humble about their jobs and saw them simply as accidents or misfortunes; then their jobs may not harm their souls - in the way that modern jobs clearly do harm souls: training and corrupting people into lies, and lying about their lies.

*

Jobs lead us into sin. We are therefore paid to sin. The food in our mouth is the reward of sin.

Yet we are all sinners, Christians know this; and sin is not so much the problem as what happens next.

In this world we will sin, but we must acknowledge this fact, identify the sins, and repent them.

*

Perhaps the most insidious new sin of modern life is related to spin, hype, propaganda.

A bureaucrat, a functionary, a politician does something he knows to be wrong: he does it because he is forced to do it. He sins on orders.

OK. But the true corruption comes next - when he re-frames the sin as virtue; when he makes arguments to justify the sin and say it is good...

Pretty soon he is working on a campaign or helping frame legislation to propagate sin - to induce others to sin on the basis that it is not really sin but good.

Pretty soon he is vilifying others for failing to agree that sin is virtue, prosecuting and punishing - tormenting, maybe imprisoning and killing, others because they will not agree that sin is good.

Pretty soon he believes the hype, spin and propaganda himself. He begins to believe in his heart that those who resist evil are themselves evil.

That is evil.

*

The slave, the prisoner, the conscript may be forced into evil, may be forced to go-along with evil and aid evil by his labours.

But the Christian must be clear in his own heart that that is exactly what he is doing; and must repent and ask forgiveness.

Ditto the wage slave, the prisoner of 'the system', the conscript of the forces of evil.

*

Ditto all of us.

Let not pride stand in the path of humble acknowledgement that in this world we necessarily live by and from actively doing evil.

*

Sacrifice and Worship in terms of a personal universe

*
It is a key aspect of Christianity and several other religions that revelation informs us that the universe is ultimately personal. That is: the most important thing in reality is relationships (first with God/ gods, second with other people).

This is the exact opposite of the hard-line 'Gaian' spiritual view that people are nothing-more-than a destructive infestation of the planet/ universe - therefore it could be a good outcome if the earth survived as a biosphere, but all people were eliminated from it.

*

Much has been written over the past couple of centuries about Man projecting his own attributes onto God - as being the complete explanation for belief in personal deity.

Like all effective arguments, there is some truth in this one. God may be correctly acknowledged to exist, yet the understanding of his nature, his attributes may be false: indeed I think this has been the usual situation.

That is, the usual error throughout history has not been in denying the reality of God, but in misunderstanding God - and that is where projection came in.

*

In daily life, we often observe that people assume that other people are like themselves; so a person who plots and conspires will see plots and conspiracies all around him - and so on.

So, a person who  himself lives in a social world where leaders demand sacrifices and abasement and in general 'mindless grovelling obedience' from subjects, will see God as having these attributes; especially if he himself would want such things from his subjects. 

Indeed, there have been many Fathers who treat their children as their subjects. God is seen as a King more than as a Father - or, more accurately, as a bad King who exploits his subjects; rather than God as a Good King who is Father to the Nation and who loves all His children.

*

If we see the universe ruled by a loving Father who wants us, as individuals, to grow to be more like himself - tyrannical behaviour does not make sense - except as an expedient concession to societies and individuals who simply cannot envisage anything being otherwise.

*

Yet, if we can imagine ourselves as a truly, wholly loving Father; we can ask whether (or why?) we would want such behaviours from our own children - on the assumption that we want our children to grow-up; grow-up to become autonomous, wise, free, loving friends - on as much the same level as ourselves as possible.

Our guidance on these matters comes from the revelations of scripture - which in the Old Testament show God struggling with very imperfect societies and people - and quite often being attributed the motives of a tyrant (i.e. being attributed the motives of demanding bloody sacrifice and abasing worship). But then we have the example of Jesus - who is a picture of His Father, and explicitly claims to complete and replace previous revelations - doing nothing of the kind. But in contrast working at the level of (what might be termed) friendship rather than tyranny.

*

Jesus is presumably showing us, in his own behaviour, that it was a mistake - it still is a mistake - for God's children to regard their Father like an earthly tyrant who demands sacrifice and abasing worship and abject obedience because he is primarily motivated by Power not Love; that this is an insult to God's love, an insult to His deepest motivations; and indeed it works to thwart God's deepest hopes for us.

Of course, our loving Father forgives us for this dreadful way in which we (His own children) attribute to Him all kinds of our own limitations and faults - by far the worst of which is our deficiency in Love.

But it is a sin for us to do this, and it is something that needs His forgiveness; and it is something that at some time or another we will have-to understand as mistaken and wicked, and that we will have-to repent.

*