Bruce Charlton's Notions

I know I have said this many times over the years I have been blogging, but not all current reader have been around that long; and it is terribly important to understand!

(To see what I have previously written - word-search 'coming to a point'.)

In the public domain, the mass media, the politics-government, in education and all other major social systems we are seeing 'things coming to a point' - this process is very far advanced, continues, is apparently accelerating.

The phrase comes from That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis, which is available free online at Project Gutenberg in Canada; it means much the same as what people imply by the misuse of the word 'polarisation' - it means that Good and evil are becoming so extreme as to lose the grey areas and be starkly separated; it means that there is no neutrality and every-thing of any possible public significance is now-and-increasingly either positively/ actively/ purposively-Good or positively/ actively/ purposively-evil.

This creates all kinds of problems, suffering, hardship, But in a world such as this one, coming to a point is a Good-thing. By 'Good' I mean in a spiritual and eternal sense - not a materialist and this-worldly sense. The process is Good for our souls, even when it is bad for our minds and bodies.

It is Good because it is better than the alternative; which is more of the same as we have been getting for the past fifty years; and which has led-to, is leading to ever-more, materialism, hedonism, short-termism, hopelessness, cowardice, despair... and consequently the active-embrace-and-propagation of lies, ugliness, sin and all other forms of evil.

The news, the law, the workplace, the schools and colleges, the mainstream churches - are pushing the evil agenda more and more aggressively, extremely, and rapidly. Whether this is because they can't help themselves, or because they feel that all opposition has now been crushed - or whether they fear that people might wake-up and push back (or from some blend of these) doesn't really matter: It Is Happening.  

Because things are coming to a point, it gets easier to notice and understand what is happening; and this a Good because it is something that each individual can only do For Himself. If he does not do it For Himself, then it merely passive, therefore it has Not Actually Happened.

Of course, so far, things have been coming to a point, Good and evil are ever-more-clearly distinct - and people have been choosing evil en masse. So be it. People have agency, people can choose evil, and they are apparently doing so in very large numbers. If so, they have made their choice and Will live with that choice (unless or until they repent it, which usually gets harder with time).

This is a test for everyone: it is a test for Christians. Christians are confronted with worldly-expediency versus spiritual virtue again and again, every day and in multiple situations; and their response (I mean their response in their own thinking) will necessarily go one way, or the other way.

Our true motivation is recurrently being tested, hence refined and strengthened.

This is Good and we ought to be grateful; because this is exactly theosis; it is how we grow in divinity (or the opposite).

**

Excerpt from Chapter 4 of That Hideous Strength, giving the origin of the concept of 'Things coming to a point':

"Have you ever noticed," said Dimble, "that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?"

His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them.

"I mean this," said Dimble, in answer to the question she had not asked. "If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family--anything you like--at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow-room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder. Like in the poem about Heaven and Hell eating into merry Middle Earth from opposite sides . . . how does it go? Something about 'eat every day . . . till all is somethinged away.' It can't be eaten, that wouldn't scan. My memory has failed dreadfully these last few years. Do you know the bit, Margery?"

"What you were saying reminded me more of the bit in the Bible about the winnowing fan. Separating the wheat and the chaff. Or like Browning's line: 'Life's business being just the terrible choice.'"

"Exactly! Perhaps the whole time-process means just that and nothing else. But it's not only in questions of moral choice. Everything is getting more itself and more different from everything else all the time. Evolution means species getting less and less like one another. Minds get more and more spiritual, matter more and more material. Even in literature, poetry and prose draw further and further apart."

Mrs. Dimble with the ease born of long practice averted the danger, ever present in her house, of a merely literary turn being given to the conversation.

"Yes," she said. "Spirit and matter, certainly. That explains why people like the Studdocks find it so difficult to be happily married."

"The Studdocks?" said Dimble, looking at her rather vaguely. The domestic problems of that young couple had occupied his mind a good deal less than they had occupied his wife's. "Oh, I see! Yes. I dare say that has something to do with it. But about Merlin: what it comes to, as far as I can make out, is this. There were still possibilities for a man of that age which there aren't for a man of ours. The earth itself was more like an animal in those days. And mental processes were much more like physical actions. And there were--well, Neutrals, knocking about."

"Neutrals?"

"I don't mean, of course, that anything can be a real neutral. A conscious being is either obeying God or disobeying Him. But there might be things neutral in relation to us."

"You mean eldils--angels?"

"Well, the word angel rather begs the question. Even the Oyéresu aren't exactly angels in the same sense as our guardian angels are. Technically, they are Intelligences. The point is that while it may be true at the end of the world to describe every eldil either as an angel or a devil, and may even be true now, it was much less true in Merlin's time. There used to be things on this earth pursuing their own business, so to speak. They weren't ministering spirits sent to help fallen humanity, but neither were they enemies preying upon us. Even in St. Paul one gets glimpses of a population that won't exactly fit into our two columns of angels and devils. And if you go back further . . . all the gods, elves, dwarfs, water-people, fate, longaevi. You and I know too much to think they are just illusions."

"You think there are things like that?"

"I think there were. I think there was room for them then, but the universe has come more to a point. Not all rational things perhaps. Some would be mere wills inherent in matter, hardly conscious. More like animals. Others--but I don't really know. At any rate, that is the sort of situation in which one got a man like Merlin."

"It all sounds rather horrible to me."

"It was rather horrible. I mean even in Merlin's time (he came at the extreme tail end of it), though you could still use that sort of life in the universe innocently, you couldn't do it safely. The things weren't bad in themselves, but they were already bad for us. They sort of withered the man who dealt with them. Not on purpose. They couldn't help doing it. Merlinus is withered. He's quite pious and humble and all that, but something has been taken out of him. That quietness of his is just a little deadly, like the quiet of a gutted building. It's the result of having laid his mind open to something that broadens the environment just a bit too much. Like polygamy. It wasn't wrong for Abraham, but one can't help feeling that even he lost something by it."

"Cecil," said Mrs. Dimble, "do you feel quite comfortable about the Director's using a man like this? I mean, doesn't it look a little bit like fighting Belbury with its own weapons?"

"No. I had thought of that. Merlin is the reverse of Belbury. He's at the opposite extreme. He is the last vestige of an old order in which matter and spirit were, from our modern point of view, confused. For him every operation on Nature is a kind of personal contact, like coaxing a child or stroking one's horse. After him came the modern man to whom Nature is something dead--a machine to be worked, and taken to bits if it won't work the way he pleases. Finally come the Belbury people, who take over that view from the modern man unaltered and simply want to increase their power by tacking on to it the aid of spirits--extra-natural, anti-natural spirits. Of course they hoped to have it both ways. They thought the old magia of Merlin, which worked in with the spiritual qualities of Nature, loving and reverencing them and knowing them from within, could be combined with the new goeteia--the brutal surgery from without. No. In a sense, Merlin represents what we've got to get back to in some different way. Do you know that he is forbidden by the rules of his order ever to use any edged tool on any growing thing?"

As evil becomes more dominant in our world, it ceases to be subtle and strategic. In the end, evil is about motivation - so it is never happy when it has to dress-up and disguise its true motivations in a costume of good. The flimsier the excuse for evil the better - so long as people still do it.

As things come to a point, the mass of people are more corrupt, and their basic metaphysical assumptions about reality become themselves evil - so that making evil choices becomes more and more natural and spontaneous.

In such a situation; evil can afford to be relatively open about its nature - which is negative and incoherent in strategic pursuit of the destruction of Good - it attacks Good in whatever way is immediately effective. Thus - evil gathers-pace...


For example, Christian people can be mocked for their Goodness - for being dull, predictable and miserable - and also mocked for Not being Good but being in-reality depraved hypocrites - and also for being dumb-happy-clappy idiots who don't even have the wit to want evil - and also for being fiendishly-clever sinister-conspirators - for being consumed by hate, resentment, bitterness - for being grovelling cowards - and at the same time insane fanatics.  For being boring conformists and intolerable anti-Enlightenment subversives. 

This is the way evil works. Its coherence can be seen in its opposition. As for what evil actually wants as a state of affairs... well that cannot be answered; not least because each evil group and person wants the world organised around their own desires. So, when not allied in opposition, evil is a war of all against all; evil is anticohesion, intrinsically fissile (which is a feature, not a bug, for the Father of Lies).


But things coming to a point means not just that evil is more powerful, more short-termist, more clearly negative -but also that evil is more obvious.

The ultimate goal of evil is that people will choose evil because it is evil; in other words, choose evil our of a resentment against the Good, from a fear of the Good. Evil has used a debased version of Love and a battering-ram in the Sexual Revolution (Love as meaning mostly sensual gratification but still aspiring to long-termism).

But as things come to a point, even the fig-leaf of fake-Love will be discarded; and the choices confronting people will be purely a matter or their own personal gratification, here-and-now, and damn the 'consequences'.


In sum, when things have come to a point - life-choices will be substantially (this can never be absolute, due to our mixed-nature and mixed-motives) simple, dichotomous and direct. The choices will be between God, Love, Beauty, Truth, Virtue, Harmony... and the negation of these.

Once we have people choosing against-Good, against God, consciously and with their eyes wide-open; then that will also be the situation when people will choose eternal damnation in preference to the gift of salvation and eternal life as Sons and Daughters of God - they will reject Heaven and choose to reign in their own personal Hell.

This is the end game; yet we can see that this must be carefully prepared if the situation is not to 'backfire' from the perspective of evil...

The clearer that choices become, the more likely that the mass of distracted, cloudy-minded, muddled, partly conscious and not-yet-fully-corrupted people will perceive the situation and choose Good.


So - a world of things coming to a point is also a world in which it is easier to discern Good. Much easier...

The iron fist has emerged from its velvet glove; the wolf has shrugged of his sheep's clothing. Strategic deception becomes a thing of the past.

For Men of Good intent - life becomes clear and simple - right choices are easy to recognise.

After that - it is up-to-us, each as individuals.

*

"If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family–anything you like–at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous.

Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.

The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder...”

(That Hideous Strength - by C.S. Lewis - p. 283)

*

Over the past few weeks, things certainly are coming to a point in the Church of England: the gloves are coming off, the wolves are discarding their sheeps' clothing, and the Christian and Anti-christian sides are revealing themselves with ever-greater lucidity.

**

On one side is Giles Fraser, sometime Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, London and a hero/ martyr of the radical Left establishment in the Church of England.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/why-gay-bishops-have-to-lie


And on the other side, the Archbishop of Uganda:

http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2013/01/07/archbishop-stanley-ntagali-responds-to-decision-of-church-of-england-to-allow-gay-bishops/

It is very discouraging to hear that the Church of England, which once brought the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Uganda, has taken such a significant step away from that very gospel that brought life, light, and hope to us.

The recent decision of the House of Bishops to allow clergy in civil partnerships to be eligible to become Bishops is really no different from allowing gay Bishops.  This decision violates our Biblical faith and agreements within the Anglican Communion.

When the American Church made this decision in 2003 it tore the fabric of the Anglican Communion at its deepest level. This decision only makes the brokenness of the Communion worse and is particularly disheartening coming from the Mother Church.

We stand with those in the Church of England who continue to stand for the Biblical and historic faith and practice of the Church.

Our grief and sense of betrayal are beyond words.

What do the social conditions in the modern West tell us of the nature of souls being incarnated in this era? These are, after all, novel conditions - unique in the history of Man.

We may potentially be able to reverse engineer our features and trends; that is, we may be able to discover the spiritual functionality, on the assumption that God has designed this world for the salvation of souls.

The features include a pervasive arrested adolescence due to a refusal to grow-up spiritually. This includes an extreme of adolescent detachment from The World, self-consciousness, solipsism, sensitivity, mood instability. Alternations between hedonistic excitement and existential despair. And the usual tradition/ parent detaching adolescent rebellion perpetuated to the point of subversion and then a satanic, systematic value-inversion.


So far, so bad - and the evidence of increasing demonic domination is undeniable; but the fact that this is allowed to continue should lead us to suspect that God is 'using' the evil with the intent of turning it to some good.

Specifically, it may be that the people (that relatively small and shrinking minority of the human race) who are born into The West include many souls for whom this is a suitable environment for them to attain salvation (paradoxical though that may, at first, seem).

Here is a guess. The Modern West takes us to an historically unprecedented extreme point of driving home harsh lessons; to the point that there is No Escape. The soul is finally stripped down to a level at which Life has nothing to offer, and then the soul looks at God... Eventually, there is nowhere else to look.

This is things coming to a point - this is the point toward which things are tending.


We live in a world of increasing incoherence, and this incoherence is increasingly coerced. What might be learned from an environment of mandatory incoherence, official insanity, moral/ aesthetic and truth inversion?

The answer: to experience these, each for himself, in the fullest possible degree; to have them strike deeper and deeper; past the many and superficial facets of personality and fakery; and in towards our true and divine selves.  This is the confrontation that God (perhaps) is engineering; the starkest possible contrast between our naked self and the literally-hellish environment of The World...

A stark contrast leading to a stark choice: affirmation of that which we know (from experience) to be incoherent and nihilistic; or affirmation of God. That is, affirmation of love.

A hammered-home knowledge of meaninglessness, purposelessness and utter isolation in a dead world of materialism; and then, a direct knowing of creation, Being, and the friendship of Jesus Christ.


Things are brought to a point where the experiential knowledge confronts our divine self, by virtue of being children of God; our true self with its innate and hereditary knowledge of the divine. And this need not be taught - it is a fact, spontaneously knowable.  

If we further assume that many or most people born into the modern West are souls who were, before incarnation and from our pre-mortal spiritual existence, exceptionally beset with sins... then this extreme harshness of experience may be necessary for there to be the best chance of salvation. These are souls so short-termist and selfish that these sins must be stripped-away by despair to leave-behind what may be a small residual core of divine goodness.

In other words, the consequences of the sins are allowed the fullest operation to provide the harshest spiritual outcomes in order that their true nature may become as obvious as may be contrived; such that at the moment of choice the starkest possible contrast with salvation will become apparent to the densest and most recalcitrant of selfish hedonic natures (such as seem to prevail here and now).


Of course, Men are free agents and there is always the possibility of denial - every Man can deny God the creator of the universe (it was his prideful intoxication by this astonishing fact that seemed to corrupt the Lucifer, and many others). Yet we can imagine that at the 'moment' of death, that 'moment' can be concertinaed-out - much as we experience in a dream - so that the full consequences of Life may be surveyed fully and the choice made.

And not just our own life is relevant, not a person's residual love; but also the love of others will (at that expansile 'moment') be known as experienced reality.

Those whom we love, those who love us; this goes into the balance at the moment of choice, and tends to draw us to choose salvation and the Heaven where such love may be sustained and increased for eternity.


Thus evil is used against itself. The worse the evil, the deeper and more considered the evil, the more sustained and systematic the evil - the greater the incoherence and despair at the last - and the more complete the stripping away to reveal the residuum of the true self in its nakedness.

So long as there is indeed love, there is a chance. But those souls that lack love have nothing to set against the evil. They have nothing to weigh in the balance; and their choice is highly likely to be for damnation, where their sins are retained, and the 'promise' is that they may be indulged without restraint. What would such people want with a Heaven that is eternal loving creation?

But God cannot see-into our divine self to know whether there is, or is not, love. The conclusion of our time of choice cannot be foreseen. And this is exactly why the earthly experiences and trails are necessary; why - in our current extreme - the situation is engineered that things are brought to a point of maximum contrast and clarity.


Our time is one by which love will be revealed no matter how small and feeble: if love is there, somewhere, hidden, buried deep and covered-over by sins... by superficial materialism, short-termism, selfishness, hedonism; no matter how distorted by value inversion and lusts for sex, power, status...

The conditions of modernity are well-suited to bring those who most need it to a clear recognition of the nature of good and evil, the distinction and difference between them - and to the making of a final choice based upon the malign experience of sin that is intense, painful; and very hard (but not impossible) to deny.

Things are coming to a point, such that Good and evil are becoming more clearly distinguished, and grey areas are fading.

But this may be misunderstood to mean that people are polarising into Good and bad - with Good people more Good and evil people more evil - but this interpretation would be an error. 

Certainly we do Not, nowadays, see more Good people, better people on average, more and greater Saints, an increase in morally exemplary persons. No we don't see that.

What is happening with things coming to a point is that the Good side and the evil side are becoming easier to distinguish - with a sharp bright line between them; Good and evil are becoming purer and less-mixed in actual practice.

The Good side are those who support the goals of God's creation, and who hope to join with God in the eternal work of creation - the evil side are those who oppose this.


Things coming to a point mean that it is becoming ever-more clear cut whether we choose the Good side or the evil. There is less blurring, less chance of confusion. Our choices, therefore, cluster - since the Goodness and evil are so clear and separated; when we choose, therefore, we know what we are doing.

Our choices are more conscious, more deliberate - more significant.

So even one evil choice is, in practice, marker of a disposition to choose evil. Since it marks a disposition, one evil choice is evidence of a person that is on the side of evil.


And since things have come to a point - being on the side of evil (even - apparently - on a single issue) is nowadays increasingly likely to be conclusive of a deliberate decision to oppose Good/ God/ creation.

Individuals are always a dynamic and evolving mixture of virtues and vices, good behaviours and bad; and modern fighters on the side of Good may well be notably flawed in terms of feebleness of virtue, proneness to sin, and selfish short-termism of behaviour... yet (thanks to the 'infinite' power of repentance) they may still be on the side of Good.

While, on the other side - the side of evil; individuals may have considerable virtues, and display considerable altruism and steadiness of purpose... yet these positive factors serve, in the end, merely to increase their dangerousness to the cause of Good.

Conscious and conscientious servants to the project of evil are more dangerous - because more effectively anti-Good - than impulsive, self-centred hedonists.

In CS Lewis's famous phrase from That Hideous Strength, which has become something of a 'meme' on this blog: Things are coming to a point.

https://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coming+to+a+point

This means that more and more people are being tested, being asked to make a choice; and if this has not yet happened to you, then it is more likely to happen this year than ever before:

http://meetingthemasters.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/the-test-of-today.html

Almost certainly you are already deeply morally compromised, probably by dishonesty (by having engaged in deniable but deliberate misleading) - we all are compromised - but when things come to a point, you personally will be asked actively and explicitly to give support to something that you know to be wrong.

This (whatever it is) is not trivial (nothing is trivial). If you can get into trouble for not doing it, then it is important.

(You don't get to choose the battle ground. Your choice is simply whether to surrender, as usual, to go-with-the-flow. Or not-to-surrender. To refuse. That is as much as most people are given to 'fight' over. Nothing glamourous - simply saying 'no, I won't'. It is enough - it is everything.)

This moment, this choice and decision, will change you one way or the other - that is the test; that indeed, is exactly why you have been put into the position.

Probably, this is a decision which you will face existentially isolated, and in making the right choice and doing the right thing - if that is what you do - there will probably be little or no visible support from those with power and influence (that is the nature of our modern condition in The West).

The issues, your motives, and your position will be lyingly misrepresented to other people; your character will be slandered; and the lies and slanders will (on the whole) be believed and repeated.

Be Ready.

Think through this situation in advance. Inhabit it imaginatively.

I am not advising you how to 'fight' in the public arena; because that can't be done - also, you are almost certain to make errors. You will also be likely to say or do things that actually help your enemies and worsen your situation (whatever they most want you to do, advise you to do, will almost certainly be bad for your situation - and it may not be possible to find out what would be the best tactical alternative).

Repentance

One thing I would emphasise - which I think has been neglected - is therefore the infinite power of repentance.

1. You are already morally compromised by your decisions and behaviours of the past - consistency suggests that you 'might as well' continue as you have done... But repentance wipes the slate clean and gives you a fresh start.

2. You will make mistakes in understanding your situation - you know something is wrong, something is going on, that you have reached a point of decision; but it is likely that you misunderstand things due to ignorance and inability - your first, second. third etc attempt to formulate your situation is wrong or badly emphasised... It doesn't matter! - in an ultimate sense: simply repent your errors as they emerge, and try again to the best of your ability. 

3. Just as you will misunderstand your situation, so you will make mistakes in action: you will say the wrong thing, do the wrong things, trust the wrong people and doubt those who are on your side. You will be foolish - people will mock you, you will feel ashamed... So be it. Repent your mistakes and foolishness, and bounce back.

I repeat: Christian repentance is a weapon of infinite power that cannot be defeated. No matter if it feels like You against The World - with repentance you cannot lose.

You Cannot Lose.


(Note - If you don't already know what is repentance; then you need to find-out. If you are not already a Christian; then you should make it a priority as of this very moment. It is, after all, the work of an instant to become a Christian; and the status is open to everybody, without exception, at any time or place. Nobody and nothing can stop you. And if you don't understand how that is possible - then you need to find-out.)

*

If, as CS Lewis said in That Hideous Strength, history has been things coming to a point, with Good and evil being more and more obviously different - this may explain what seems to me the insanity of much contemporary life.

Selfishness and laziness are understandable, but what I see is futile, industrious, meddling self-harm with its origins in the Western elites.

*

I'm thinking of international affairs such as military and political action in the Middle East and legal and economic action in the European Union; I am thinking of personal activities at the level of how people treat their bodies, dress and spend their leisure.

I cannot make sense of these - sure, I can read or myself can spin master theories, but what it really looks like is the chaotic mass effect of individual instability.

What it looks like is a world gone mad - in some new kind of madness, far removed from traditional causes of conflict based in selfishness and short-termism.

*

If things are coming to a point, then there is less and less of a neutral or grey area in-between the sides of Good and evil - and this applies to everything.

The good is rare, difficult and always comes with a up-front cost - so anything else will in fact be evil.

Anything without an up-front cost will be evil.

(Of course, this principle is not reversible.)

*

I am not talking about people being purely good or evil, that would be nonsense because everybody is mixed.

But I am talking about the sides they are on: whether mixed people serve Good or serve evil is getting clearer and clearer.

*

All the moderate people are now, actually, in fact, all on the side of evil. Evil has made sure of this.

So, as a specific example, if you are appointing somebody to a job as a scientist - they will either be a real scientist (truth seeking, truth telling) or they will not be a real scientist - in which case they will serve evil, intrinsically.

Real scientists are now very obvious, they stand-out, they do not fit-in. They are very rare. All the rest, from the outright frauds to the decent, modest, respectable, pliant, pleasant mass - are in fact working against truth.

*

In government, what needs to be done is based on reality - reality is unitary.

We know reality, but we do not know it very precisely.

And reality is experienced, not abstract.

What needs to be done is usually very clear - but not very precise. What needs to be done is always an aim not a policy - and the aim is clear, and success or failure in attaining this aim is easy to evaluate.

*

A good governer will perceive reality and do what needs to be done, which will not be precise, not statistical, not moderate nor balanced - and he will do nothing else but aim at what needs to be done, because anything else is to violate the unitary relationship between reality and human experience.

The good, what ought to be done, the truth - is absolutely single, simple and exact (although specific policies do not flow from this clarity); but the alternatives to the good are unlimited, complex, balanced, nuanced... that is the property of evil in our time.

Once you have decided not to do the Good thing, the possibilities for debate and compromise are endless...

Evil is that which pretends to precision but is inexact - it is highly specific, but is unreal.

*

So matters are lucid.

The 'centre', the domain of 'decent' and 'moderate' and 'sensible' folk fitting-in - is now the major domain for the service of evil.

The Good also is lucid.

*

The genuinely complicating factor is human individuals; who remain - as always - mixed; and therefore are moving in one direction or another - towards service to the Good, or else towards service to that which opposes good.

Every choice pushes them in one or other direction.

And with every choice nowadays, it is more and obvious which is Good and which is evil: which is truth and which dishonesty, which is beauty and which ugliness, which is virtue and which is vice.

*

Thus all mainstream modern discourse operates within the domain of evil:

all mainstream modern discourse is a deliberation between shades and types of evils:

modern discourse is therefore a sequence of forced-choices between dishonesties, uglinesses and vices.

*

In modern discourse Good is 'off the table'.

Clearly there is only one proper thing to do:

Good must first be put back on the table, then Good must be chosen.

*

Regular readers will know that I have picked-up the phrase of Things Coming To A Point from CS Lewis in That Hideous Strength - it refers to the way that good and evil separate and clarify over time, until they reach the 'point' where we are faced by a very clear choice.

But that choice is the end product of what may be a prolonged and gradual process.

The statistician and Roman Catholic blogger William Briggs has encapsulated the whole business of things coming to a point in a pithy paragraph on his (invariably depressing, even when darkly-amusing) weekly roundup of contemporary insanity, culled from The News. Here it is:

If you say there is nothing wrong with, say, sodomy, then it follows that there is nothing wrong with sodomy. And if there is nothing wrong with sodomy, there is nothing wrong with teaching it to kids. One follows from the other.

That's the whole business of things coming to a point, in a nutshell. That's exactly where we are now, i.e. teaching sodomy to kids, young kids; and that's how we got here. And this situation is the challenge of our time.

On the one hand: Moral issues have never been simpler, never been easier - to those capable of basic moral discernment.

On the other hand: What we are seeing is how few modern Western people are capable of basic moral discernment.

Charlton B. A Philosophical Novel: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig Durham University Journal. 1992; 84: 111-17

One important factor in this era of things coming to a point, is the distinction between good and evil becoming ever clearer even in our own hearts - and even within Christianity. Among which, the very longstanding errors and false emphases of Christianity are being exposed mercilessly.

One such error can be seen when comparing the Fourth Gospel with Luke's and especially Matthew's Gospel's - and is related to the idea of Jesus as Messiah of this world, of being a socio-political saviour of his people. And the idea that this will be evident in terms of Jesus, and then of Christianity (and the purported institutional continuation of Jesus's mission) being a positive influence in the development of this world.

It is normal now - and has been from not long after Jesus died - to claim that Jesus made The World (this mortal life) a better place; just as it is common from the enemies of Christianity to claim the opposite. And often to claim this better world as the main 'benefit' for Christianity, the main reason why people should be Christians*.

But in our time, with our pervasive materialistic world view; the arguments for Christianity have become almost entirely this-worldly. And, to make this appealing to the mainstream masses, the effects of Jesus Christ are seen in terms of Christianity promoting the values and outcomes that are currently mainstream.


This can be seen in yesterday's Queen's Speech. Elizabeth II is Head of the Church of England - officially responsible for appointing the bishops who ordain the priests; so that having Christian references is normal and mandatory in her annual address; the question is: what are these Christian references, and what do they imply?

This year, the nature of these Christian references shows clearly the ways that the spirit of Antichrist is at work in this era, here and now; such that references to Jesus and to the Christian churches are framed in social terms quite alien to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel.

Of course, at the heart of the Christmas story lies the birth of a child: a seemingly small and insignificant step overlooked by many in Bethlehem. But in time, through his teaching and by his example, Jesus Christ would show the world how small steps taken in faith and in hope can overcome long-held differences and deep-seated divisions to bring harmony and understanding. As Christmas dawned, church congregations around the world joined in singing It Came Upon The Midnight Clear. Like many timeless carols, it speaks not just of the coming of Jesus Christ into a divided world, many years ago, but also of the relevance, even today, of the angel's message of peace and goodwill. It's a timely reminder of what positive things can be achieved when people set aside past differences and come together in the spirit of friendship and reconciliation.

This false idea of Jesus as primarily, essentially, the agent of overcoming differences and division, of offering a blueprint for harmony and understanding, and of instituting a society of peace and goodwill; is a modern version of the same error and distortion seen when Jesus was regarded as a Jewish political leader; whose primary mission was to inaugurate a new way of living on this earth and during this mortal life.

Whereas, in reality Jesus was essentially addressing the individual person; and any social changes were secondary to that person coming to believe-on Jesus, have faith-in and love-for him; and desiring to follow Jesus through death to resurrected life everlasting in Heaven.


The influence of Jesus, of Christianity, on this world and mortal life is therefore via the effect of transforming individual minds by the love of Jesus and the expectation of Heaven.  

The error of regarding Jesus's mission as primarily political is even more harmful now than it was at and around the time of Jesus's life; because we have (as a society) lost our ability even to acknowledge the reality of the spiritual - and this is also the attitude of the Establishment Christian leadership such as the Queen, Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis.

I call this the spirit of Antichrist, because the idea of Antichrist is to be a fake Christ who uses Christian language and concepts but whose covert motivations are evil; the spirit of those who affect to be on the side of God while operating on the side of Satan. This is done by incorporating selective aspects of Christianity with a false emphasis, and by leaving-out the essence. (Plus, of course, by lying.)


So, the actual religion of the 2019 Queen's Speech is, unsurprisingly, Leftism: we have a Leftist fake Christianity of social reform, and an overt Leftism of that modern 'climate' focused pseudo-environmentalism that has become merely an excuse for a wholesale, Global totalitarian power grab:

Since the end of the Second World War, many charities, groups and organisations have worked to promote peace and unity around the world, bringing together those who have been on opposing sides. By being willing to put past differences behind us and move forward together, we honour the freedom and democracy once won for us at so great a cost. The challenges many people face today may be different to those once faced by my generation, but I have been struck by how new generations have brought a similar sense of purpose to issues such as protecting our environment and our climate.

Here we have it, the Antichrist spirit; where it turns out that many 'charities, groups and organisations' are involved in (supposedly) promoting peace and unity around the world; with a special endorsement for that most immediately threatening evil of putting-aside-differences (ie. enforcement of sameness and elimination of borders) that is being pursued under the excuse of 'protecting our environment and our climate' [sic!]).


In sum, the Queen is explicitly making an equation between the aims of Christianity and the aims of mainstream charities, groups, organisations, environmentalists and climate change activists.

In other words, since Christianity and Leftism are being regarded as amounting to the same thing, and both are to be pursued by the same strategy of promoting peace and unity. Therefore, in practice: pursuing Leftism is claimed here also to be promoting Christianity. And the Christian message is transformed into eliminating inter-societal and inter-personal differences/ imposing uniformity of thoughts, attitudes and behaviours/ empowering international agencies with total powers of surveillance and control etc.

Thus we see the spirit of Antichrist at work. And, as always, the greatest danger is the failure to discern it; the failure to perceive that - whatever the Christian language - evil is the true motivation.


*Note added: Jesus came to offer the new possibility of resurrected Life Everlasting - which is the positive meaning of the double-negative theology of saving us from 'sin' - where 'sin' is being understood as 'the mortal condition', which is itself being understood primarily (but not wholly) to be death. That was what Jesus did, what his life and death was for; and Jesus succeeded completely in this objective with nothing of it left outstanding or still-to-do. And the further things that Jesus came to do are contingent; being secondary to this primary completed act of Jesus, and contingent upon the human individual and his circumstances, and to the society at that time and place. Of course, becoming a follower of Jesus necessarily affects your life and this world, but that is not the point of it. Nor can such societal effects be made into a checklist, code, blueprint or System - separable from the souls of specific Christian individuals.  

I have said, speculated, that the reason for the unique extremity and pervasiveness of evil-affiliation in these present times - especially the high prevalence and social dominance of value-inversion - is probably due to the nature of those souls being incarnated in recent generations. 

In other words, there seem to be a high number and proportion of people born who already have a tendency to reject God, and the gift of resurrection - such a tendency being part of their original makeup, and having continued in pre-mortal spirit-life. 

But why do such souls incarnate at all? 

Why allow evil-inclined souls to be incarnated; given that such souls may create and sustain the kind of world that we now inhabit: where global and national institutions and the mass media combine to be a kind-of machine for damnation...

Well, these are Not matters of predestination, because all Men have agency; any individual soul may repent and choose to join-with the side of divine creation. 

So, incarnation offers such souls a chance - and God (as creator) will engineer each life to provide experiences, learning from which may lead such souls to repentance. 

It seems that this mortal incarnate life - with its condensed consciousness providing a located-perspective on a world of constant inner and change and variation - is a better place for learning than pre-mortal spirit life. 

Indeed, I regard myself as exactly one such evil-inclined soul. 

I rejected God and became an atheist at a very early age; I think six years old - and with an eagerness and decisiveness that suggests it had 'always' been my unconscious intention to cut-loose from the solidly Christian framework within which I lived at school (although not at home). 

Without this mortal incarnate experience (if I had remained a pre-mortal spirit); I would have probably been something like a pantheistic pagan. That is, I would have rejected the opportunity to join-with God's plan to raise up Men towards divinity and a life of co-creation. 

Without this mortal experience; I would probably have 'handed back the ticket of consciousness and agency', and lapsed back towards a passive, un-personal state of mere Being: something like the ideal Nirvana of Eastern religions.  

But being incarnated, and entering-into the world as-is, also brought the hazard that my rejection of God's plan led instead to an incrementally-increasing affiliation (overall and substantial, although never whole-hearted) to the side of evil - as can be seen from many of my published writings before 2009. 

And I compounded my personal rejection of God and embrace of this-worldly evil by my writing (and teaching) - so, by the time I started to become a Christian, I was in a bad way - spiritually! 

...Not so much in terms of being a spectacular and Luciferic 'sinner' of lusts and greed - but certainly in terms of affiliation and motivations; and in my active and public support of the Ahrimanic System.  

And what of this current System of damnation, and the fact that this world is mostly ruled by evil affiliated Men who serve demonic powers? 

At an aggregate 'group level' - what is going-on from God's point of view? Why might God allow such a situation to develop and continue?

In particular; how can such an appalling general situation be of benefit to incarnated souls, many of whom are apparently - like me - disposed to reject the hopes of divine creation and the chance for eternal resurrected life? 

My best answer is the explanation of 'things coming to a point'. That Good and evil are increasingly-more separated (more polarized') and thus evil is more starkly revealed. 

Evil here-and-now is more absurd, as it becomes value-inverted, more clearly tyrannical, more obviously destructive.  

The excuses, or rationalizations, for evil have become thinner, more perfunctory, more labile and self-contradictory.

Of course, despite all this, most people still don't see through to what is really happening! 

Yet, if we accept the premise that the world is populated by especially evil-inclined souls; souls that are unusually (in historical terms) unusually hardened and fixed in their rejection of divine creation...

Then, from this point of view; we can regard the contemporary world as allowed by God because it represents extreme rescue measures; a spiritual shock designed to startle souls thrawn to evil into a sudden appalled recognition of what horrible things they are thinking, saying, believing...

 

Mortal incarnation is therefore a high risk business... 

Because it is a chance for learning: it is thereby a chance for learning evil, as well as Good. 

It is a chance for evil-inclined, God-indifferent souls to get spiritually worse, as well as to get better. 

This world we inhabit is a world planned and controlled by evil-inclined souls; so it cannot really be good of itself and overall. But, nonetheless; God has made use of the world's evil to provide an environment in which the spiritual war has been brought close to the surface; a world that serves the function of providing extreme learning conditions. 

Perhaps towards making a 'last chance' situation for even the worst of sinners; in which - for a moment - clarity is attained, and a final decision made. 

For some souls - such is apparently their only realistic possibility of avoiding their own prior-choice of damnation. 

Why is the Western world getting worse; why is materialistic-Leftism triumphant; why are we being incrementally crushed by the imposition of totalitarian bureaucracy? What meaning can such experiences have for us, in terms of God's plan of creation?
 

My assumption is that God's motive for creation is love, and that a major aim is to enable people to choose to join with God in the 'project' of loving creation. So, the hope is that some people will choose to learn from their experiences to make the choice of Heaven.

Since Heaven is a place of love, only those who can love can dwell there - or indeed would want to dwell there. An analogy is a loving family; because that is the ultimate basis of Heaven - God's family. For those who love the loving family, it is the best possible situation - but for those incapable of love or who reject love, the family is an abhorrent situation: oppressive and boring.   

Another assumption is that Men are free agents, and God does not know who has capacity for love or who will make the ultimate choice that love is primary. Therefore such matters can only be decided by experience. In other words, who wants and who does not want love is something that emerges as creation proceeds - creation is a situation of testing and development, during which each person's attitude to love becomes apparent.

More exactly, each person is brought to a point of decision, from which is determined whether he is a sheep - who chooses Heaven, or a goat - who rejects Heaven. Of course, such a decision can be and is often deferred, but the point of decision is at least when Heaven is chosen permanently.

It seems that resurrection into Heaven - made possible through Jesus Christ - is an eternal commitment, and the possibility that this commitment to love is eternal is a vital aspect of Heaven.

So there is a sense in which the ongoing processes of God's creation are a means to the end of self-sorting ('assortative partitioning') into sheep and goats: more exactly a means to self-sorting of sheep into Heaven eternally; and goats into some-other-destiny (not Heaven, maybe not eternal).


Let me provide an analogy based upon my thirty-something years of working in universities. The situation of universities became more evil over this time, mainly due to the progressive introduction of bureaucracy which was also the imposition of leftist-materialist (ultimately anti-Christian; thus anti Truth, Beauty and Virtue) ideology.

In this context of step-wise increase in evil, people reacted variously. Some people disagreed-with and reacted-against bureaucracy; other people saw its evil went along with it for selfish and short term reasons (e.g. careerism); others simply did not regard creeping totalitarianism (towards omni-surveillance and micro-control) as being bad or evil... They liked totalitarianism, materialism, the inversion of morality and truth... they wanted more of it.

People who perceived the evil and repented it correspond to the sheep. These are the people who comprehend and share God's values, and who want to dwell in a situation where such values prevail, which includes being a situation among others that have made an eternal commitment to God's values. Heaven is a place where Men participate with God in the work of loving creation.

The goats, in this analogy, are those who respond to experience of creeping totalitarianism with approval. They are either not capable of love or else have chosen to reject the primacy of love and put some other values in its place - for example leftist political values or the sexual revolution; and these values trend inevitably towards inversion of Christian-values.

Those who see the evil of bureaucracy but go along with it for the time being, for careerist reasons; correspond with those who are not yet sorted into sheep or goats. They have not yet decided. Their decision is being deferred.

What happened and continues to happen is that the situation continues to get worse; universities become more bureaucratic and totalitarian and evil. Their original-residual Christian values become more destroyed, subverted and inverted. And one consequence is that the unsorted are put under increasing pressure, as evil impinges upon them more and more obviously and potently.

Under this increasing evil - individuals will either repent and rebel; or else it will become revealed that they approve of bureaucratic totalitarianism: they will be self-assorted into sheep and goats.

Those sheep with loving natures will, sooner or later, come to the point of rejecting The System. Those goats who lack the capacity for love, or actively reject the primacy of love, will actively, consciously, choose to join with the strategic evil of The System... they will live to succeed in the ever-less-loving, ever-more-materialistic inverted-world of totalitarian bureaucracy. 


The above example is, therefore, a microcosm of what is going-on in God's creation. It is also an explanation of why - in some times and places - it is valuable that 'things' get worse. The most-good sheep are able to learn from 'mild' experience that they want to choose love. They don't benefit from harshening (more evil) conditions.

But there are other sheep with more mixed motivations, less naturally good, who require the kind of increasing evil, increasing pressure, increasing clarity of creeping-totalitarianism - for them to awaken, repent and rebel - and choose Heaven.

This is, therefore, a possible explanation of the meaning why 'things are coming to a point' in the modern West.

Since the Brexit vote a month ago, nothing substantive has happened towards Britain leaving the EU, and it is clear that the Establishment are 'dealing with' the problem by distraction, delay, and demonising the substantial majority of people who want to Leave the EU.

But it won't work - at least not in the medium term - the fact of the Leave vote shows that Establishment pressure and propaganda doesn't work on this issue, and what it symbolises. The strength of desire for British, actually English, autonomy and a distinct national destiny has been strengthened by the Leave vote.

On the surface nothing has changed except that the small minority of the Establishment who embraced the national project of accelerating self-loathing and slow-suicide, are revealing a state of despair at the prospect of purposive submission to evil being slowed-down a bit; their anxiety at being forced to think a bit about the purpose of their lives when they don't have any purpose. There seems to be a frenzy of displacement activity in the large politically correct bureaucracies, simultaneously preparing for, and trying not to prepare for, Brexit.

The Establishment' contempt for those they rule has never been clearer - they thrust it at us by the assumptions being their every statement: the biggest selling weekly magazine - The Radio Times - has a cover stating as uncontented, obvious fact: 'If ever Britain needed a laugh, it's now!' - oblivious and in-denial-of the palpable lightening and lifting and turn towards optimism in the national mood among the masses.

Meanwhile, 'destiny' unfolds beneath the surface and barely noticed - as the dominoes are being assembled towards a moment of choice: two lines of dominoes - which one to push-over?

This cannot be hurried, and it takes account of human choice. But the Establishment have chosen to continue their march towards death, and are systematically putting everything into place towards creating a fork-point at which the future path will be decided by people who will be aware of the significance of their choice.

What is coming is that many millions of people will (all-but) simultaneously be brought to that point, brought to a moment, in which the Issues are made clear.

At that point they will be compelled to make a personal choice, from the ultimate freedom of their true Self.

Individuals may, in the event, refuse to acknowledge that which they - at that point - know, and may pretend that this is not-really the crux which they are confronted with. Individuals may step-back from the freedom of their Tue Self and hand-over control to the one or another of the 'automatic', constructed and manipulated false selves... That would then be their individual choice - the choice to shirk ultimate responsibility - which is itself a positive choice against personal autonomy and freedom, implicitly expressive of a desire for annihilation.

When the dominoes are assembled, and a mass of people have been brought to this moment of clarity; they will make a choice - and across the population, upon that personal choice will depend the path but not mathematically nor by majority. In the end, it will probably come down to the specific choice of a single person upon which everything hinges - but it will not be known who that specific person is until after they have made the choice.

Probably, as is usual, the path towards evil will be more expedient in the short term - probably the right path will be one in which things must get worse before they can get better.

Some people seem likely to choose evil - choose, that is, to refuse to give-up their fuelling energies of fear, resentment, hatred; and push-away the dawning prospect of love, courage and knowledge. This is not an uncommon choice - what will be different in the coming time is that the choice will be made in knowledge that the choice has been made.

But the aim of those paths will be known, and the decision will be made - like it or not - there will be a moment of clarity, and after that moment we will know whether (as a people) we wish to live or die. When that time is passed, the first domino will have fallen on one line, or the other, and events will then accelerate and change will be very rapid and undeniable - and very soon everyone will know what has been decided.

So what can we, as individuals, do to prepare for this moment?

Firstly, welcome the moment as a great opportunity to step-off the down escalator - the first opportunity for two generations. The evil Establishment are terrified of this moment of choice, and are trying to prevent it by distraction, delay, and demonisation. (They bewail the 'polarisation' of national life - but they mean by this that the masses ought-to be submitting to the Establishment in a unity of strategic self-annihilation. So long as the Establishment is evil, polarisation is necessary and good.)

Secondly, to prepare ourselves for making the right decision by sustaining our good motivations, and putting aside fear, resentment, and hatred - and especially fear; instead nurturing our love and courage. A realistic sense of optimism and possibility are helpful at this point.

And thirdly to ensure that the decision will come from our real, eternal, divine selves - by identifying, locating and exercising those real selves at our inner core - and living-from them as much as possible. This entails taking time - alone, in quiet and undistracted - to think, to be, to feel.

Everything depends on clarity - and fortunately clarity is spontaneous - so we all need to take a break from muddying and stirring-up the waters of our minds, and then we will know.

In a nutshell - we need to believe and recognise the possibility that the future may come down to depending upon our specific, personal and individual choice: that is the proper attitude in which to choose.