Bruce Charlton's Notions

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-essence-of-inklings-idea-for.html

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On earth, during mortal life - yes, of course love can be bad; and often is.

If the love is illegitimate, then its fruits will be bad, and thus we we know.

Love of God cannot be bad, but love of neighbour can be bad - often, perhaps usually is bad - insofar as it usurps rather than sustains the love of God.

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Charles Williams adulterous love of Phyllis Jones was bad, and can readily be seen to be bad by its fruits.

On earth these fruits included immediate and growing dishonesty, then hurt, then destruction of wholeness, then misery - and in ultimate terms this unrepented evil earthly love, led to displacement of Williams' love of God.

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From about 1937 C.W focused on the idea of coinherence by means of exchange and substitution; and this increasingly became conceptualized as a non-Christian technology, a magical not religious thing.

From Alice Mary Hadfield's An Introduction to Charles Williams (1959):

Page 138: From [1938] on, the word 'love' has always a double meaning in his thinking, as personal love, and as love in the City which may be felt in any of the concerns and relationships of people everywhere.

[Note: no reference to love of God.]

Page 141: Can [coinherence] be done without belief in Christianity, without belief in God at all? I [AMH] would say not, though C.W clung to his claim to talk on equal terms with agnostics and non-believers. My objection to [C.W's novel] Descent into Hell [of 1937] is that by silence about Christ it is implied that the life of exchange can be lived without knowledge of Him.

Page 133: Just as he was not particularly interested in people's personalities but much more in their ideas and behaviour, so he was not curious about the personality or human details of Jesus and His life at Nazareth in the Gospel story... It was the paradox of the union of God and Man which held C.W's ,ind, as it had Karl Barth and again the modern theologians of the century.

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Thus we perceive that fatal flaw in C.W, along with 'modern theologians' which has led to the current anti-Christian heresy of Liberalism - the deadly heresy of forgetting or displacing of love of God, and the consequent and false assertion of the Goodness and indeed primacy of love-as-such, of earthly love, of love of any-thing under any circumstance - of even illegitimate love.

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It is quite easy to discern Christian Reactionary blogs from Secular Right blogs in terms of bad language.

Bad language = not-Christian, indeed anti-Christian (whatever alternative pretense may be asserted).

Of course, bad language is merely a symptom of the soul - but it is a very clear one.

Whenever this blog attracts commenters from the secular Right, I can guarantee a great deal of moderation screening; and the typical commenter (and indeed blogger) at a secular Right blog takes a delight in bad language (especially sexual description) which is, frankly, creepy to a Christian.

This applies to many (not all - e.g. that 'perfect gentleman' among the Alt Right, Dennis Mangan!) of the even the best of Secular Right blogs, bloggers and commenters, as well as the worst - for example, one of the danger signs about Mencius Moldbug is his (literally) perverse delight in bad language.

Of course bloggers refraining from bad language and screening bad language from their comments does not, in itself, show that they are Christian - but it does help make the world a better place.

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Charles Williams (1886-1945) was one of the Inklings, and typically the third name to be mentioned after JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, and at the time Williams was much more successful and famous than the other members of the group.

Yet Williams' work is now hardly known - and with good reason, since much of it is defective and none of it is clearly of the first rank.

On the other hand, I find myself returning and returning to this fascinating character, struggling with his difficulties and obscurities - and examining the memoirs of his friends and colleagues.

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My latest idea is to reconsider Williams in a way that focuses on what I believe is his best book - and it was certainly the one that was first noticed by an Inkling (Nevill Coghill) and, being loaned around the group, first sparked the interest of Lewis and Tolkien - the novel The Place of the Lion published in 1931 and (I infer) written in the preceding year.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tolkien-and-lewiss-annus-divertium-of.html

All accounts of Charles Williams that I have seen glide-over the 'fact' that PotL is his best work - for the simple reason that they disagree with this evaluation!

Many Williams scholars would argue that C.W's last novel - All Hallows Eve was his best, and this was written shortly before he died and while a regular Inklings attender. I beg to differ...

Also, most of the earliest accounts of Williams come from those who saw him primarily as a great-but-neglected poet; while modern accounts are from those who regard his as a great-but-neglected theologian - so the idea that PotL might be the apex of Williams achievement is not even considered.

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Nonetheless, let us assume that Place of the Lion is actually, in some way or sense yet to be determined, Williams most important work.

My first piece of 'evidence' for this contention is merely that it is the work I personally have returned to most over a period of 25 years, and most enjoyed, and which I continue to find better and better each time I read it; and the second piece of evidence is the historical fact that Place of the Lion was that work of Williams which first attracted Lewis and Tolkien.

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When William's life is re-centred on PotL then a very different perspective is created, because it places his great achievement at the culmination of that happiest period of his life when he was working at the Oxford University Press, Amen House in London - and was at the centre of an extraordinary and semi-mythological world in which his colleagues were seen as simultaneously themselves engaged in their modern work, and mythic characters engaged in archetypal activities.

And this is also the world of PotL - it is a world which begins in the mundane and becomes increasingly interwoven with the archetypal, mythic and - eventually - Christian.

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For me, the best book about Williams is the wonderful early biography An introduction to Charles Williams (1959) by Alice Mary Hadfield - and what makes it so good is that AMH knew Williams as a very close friend and 'disciple', and (from the internal evidence of this book, written in her prime) was also a person of quite exceptional intelligence and insight.

(According to a label inside the cover, my secondhand copy of the AMH biography comes, appropriately, from the library of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, Oxfordshire - one of the earliest women's (Anglo-Catholic) religious orders of the Church of England.)

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 The novels are full of action with an element of violence. Their action moves beyond the material world, and develops from relations to, and beliefs in, a world of spirit and ideas. 

They all pass, sooner or later, through the material bounds of normal life, while maintaining normal life in the plot...

C.W's ideas were no sooner framed in mortal people and material surroundings than they bounded-off into the eternal non-material world which he saw pressing through our lives, and were held by his genius and his style in a tension between the two which is 'existential', thrilling, sometimes unbearable, not always succeeding...

Read the novels and see what exaltation there was in this man, what grappling with unresting opposites until he wrung strength and order from them, what joy and glory he found in daily life in an office; and, finding, was able to expose and make available for others. 

He had extraordinary intellectual powers and he could draw naturally on extraordinary subjects; but all was forced into the service of the common day, our concern with money, love, marriage, illness, unemployment, examinations, or bad temper.

He also insisted with equal force that our common day should relate itself to extraordinary subjects and ends; to glory, to joy, to purity and power...

The style of C.W's prose makes action out of thought. It comprehends action in thought far better than action in limb and muscle.   

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Hadfield's chapter on this era on C.W's life - The Approach of Power - is superb: full of pregnant aphorisms and sharp evaluations. Here are some extracts from pages 86-7:

It is easy to pick holes in the novels. They were written hastily, and they take enormous themes for their own purpose with little knowledge and hardly any research, but the use made of them is never superficial...

His ability to seize on a mystery and express it in his own experience and emotions has produced a handful of the most exciting novels one can read. 

They are not fantasies. Through considerable psychological complexities, their attitude to life is wholly positive and affirmative.

The characters move in mysteries of which their daily lives and jobs, meals and buses, are the veins along which the mystery glows. 

This is the essence of the religious mind, and the revival of it is the most important of all CW's work for religion. 

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This sentence expresses, I believe: the importance of Charles Williams.

The characters move in mysteries of which their daily lives and jobs, meals and buses, are the veins along which the mystery glows. 

His main 'work' was in his life; and his most lasting legacy was That Hideous Strength (most obviously), and The Lord of the Rings (as it emerged after the attempt to write the William's-esque novel The Lost Road/ Notion Club Papers) - which achieve written expression of this essence of Williams 'religious mind' at a higher level than Williams himself ever attained.

Of course Tolkien and Lewis (individually and together) were already at work on this 'project' of restoring myth to history, of linking modern life to the legendary past, before they read Place of the Lion - but I think Williams concrete, successful, enjoyable and already-published example may have been crucial.

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And, influence aside, this aspect of Williams is crucial to modern Christians.

We must recover 'the essence of the religious mind' - which is faith as a lived experience; not doctrine merely, nor theology, nor obedience merely, but all this appropriated, assimilated to our mundane lives - understood in 'action'.

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Too many Christians have become fixated upon belief as 'assent-to', or as 'obedience-to' - yet a gulf lies between assent and obedience and the deepest, the proper, sense of belief as 'living-by'.

No real Christian disagree with this goal, but in practice it seldom happens. Serious churches focus on 'correctness; of the abstract theoretical aspects of belief; while the lapsing apostate pseudo-Christian churches focus on 'nice behaviour' in disregard of assent and obedience.

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This is theosis, sanctification, the process of becoming ever-more Christian; that all Christianity must, a piece at a time, cumulatively, personally be appropriated and assimilated and find its expression in action.

Christ as our personal saviour and Lord must make a palpable difference to the Christian's life in action; in exactly the kind of sense achieved by the effect of Williams on the Amen House Office.

Action includes, then, not only doing different things; but a transformation of perspective in which everything is changed.

To the greatest extent possible, myth should become life should become myth.

As we may read in The Place of the Lion.

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I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with reasonable argument based on false premises, which has the counter-productive effect of reassuring the servants of evil of their own reasonableness

Here is a typical example:

Yesterday I read an article critical of the way in which scientometric measurements are being applied by management to individual faculty in a particular London college as a job evaluation mechanism - so that academics of such-and-such a rank are required (over four years) to publish X papers per year, in journals with an impact factor of Y, and to obtain Z hundred thousand pounds of 'research funding'. Supposedly, those faculty who hit the targets keep their jobs, those who miss them will be sacked.

(The policy example is merely a routine and everyday example of utterly typical, mainstream modern management behaviour, or of political behaviour at any scale from the local to national and international.)

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Now, this policy is wrong in so many ways I could write a book about it - in fact I have published numerous papers and commentaries on this subject over the years, pointing out that this is a misunderstanding of scientometric data, which is of narrow and short-term applicability, that there are undesirable (and measured) medium and consequences from this strategy - and so on.

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So the policy is ineffective and inefficient, and indeed counter-productive in terms of its avowed intentions.

But that is obviously not the problem.

That would only be the problem if it could be assumed that the management were in any sense at all actually trying to solve the problem to which this policy is supposed to be a solution. But of course they are not.

Of course not!

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I am not talking about the fact that management do what benefits management; that is a perennial fact of human affairs, but in the past it did not lead to the proliferation and avalanche of expensive, intrusive, inefficient and destructive policies at every level.

This is not just bureaucrats feathering their nest at the expense of others.   

The problem is that the management, the people who implement such schemes of evaluation, and who cooperate with such schemes, are evil - and to argue with them as if they were well-meaning folks who were making a slip-up they would be anxious to correct, is simply to collude in covering-up the reality of the situation.

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When I say they are evil, I am not saying this in a vague or subjective way; they are evil in the exact sense that they are engaged in the active destruction of good - insofar as there is good research in a university, this kind of scheme will destroy it.

That is not a matter of opinion, it is known insofar as such things ever can be known - if you reward people for doing the wrong things in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons, and punish people for doing the best work of which they are capable in the best way they know - then you are engaged in the active destruction of good, which is the definition of evil.

A portion of these management actions are explicable in terms of incompetence rather than evil; but not most nor all, since management are indifferent and indeed wilfully blind to the evil consequences of their actions - which is itself evil.

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Of course, this type of management evil is an exemplar of the banality of evil taken to ludicrous extremes. We are not talking here about brutal-faced concentration camp guards, nor ice-hearted and sadistic officials with rimless glasses; these servants of evil are mostly nice, middle aged, middle class ladies.

People, that is, who are the very epitome of 'well meaning' - but the problem is of course that they are not well meaning, they are ill-meaning.

It is so tempting to excuse them on the basis of incompetence, because of course they are grossly incompetent - but they are ineducable and uncorrectable, so to engage is merely to flatter and disguise their intractable ignorance.

It is tempting to engage with them in a way which assumes their concern. And they do feel concern, they love to feel concern. Feeling concern is precisely what enables them to serve evil with such unwavering devotion.

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My point is that to engage with  people that have evil motivations as if their motivations were good is not just futile, but actively harmful, actively abetting of evil.

On the other hand, it is likely counter-productive - at least as a strategy - to be openly hostile and aggressive - unless you really are likely to win.

No, the only valid option is to refuse engagement, to say nothing, do nothing, shut up, decline to cooperate, decline to cooperate, decline to cooperate.

Make them do everything, don't give them any excuses, don't make it easy for them to represent themselves to themselves as reasonable or rational or concerned or compassionate; reveal them as using power and coercion nakedly in their unrelenting mission of destruction.

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We must recognize that we are not up against bumbling incompetence, we are not dealing with people who want the same things as us - in a sense we are not really up against people at all.

We are up against wraiths.

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Tom Shippey pointed out in The Road to Middle Earth that turning into a wraith - the process of wraithing - was a very modern and managerial form of evil - to lose one's self and to become insubstantial in the service of evil.

That's what modern management, media and politicians essentially are - ringwraiths. To recognize this is to know what to do.

When Frodo asked Gildor for more information on the black riders, so he could know the danger that pursued him, the elf replied: 

Is it not enough to know that they are servants of the Enemy?... Flee them! Speak no words to them! They are deadly. 

And, Strider later added:

You fear them, but you do not fear them enough...


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Just a comment on the corrupting effect of Leftism and the absolute necessity to expurgate Leftism from one's own perspective...

It has been and is a source of great dismay to me that so many people who - a decade or two ago - I used to respect for their stalwart work against some of the plagues of modernity such as short-termist expediency, bureaucracy, commercialism and the like; have ended up on the wrong side in the litmus test issues of now.

Issues like Climate Change in science, or Diversity in politics and public administration, or the Sexual Revolution in Christianity - so many erstwhile good eggs find themselves rotting on the wrong side; typically not just in one but all of these principal matters of public discourse.

It is, I find, embarrassing to encounter such people. They imagine themselves to have remained, as they once were, crusaders for truth, beauty and virtue - they may assume I regard them as such; yet my covert evaluation is the opposite: that they have become, by subtle and incremental stages, corrupted into enemies of the Good.

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And the cause is always the same: Leftism. In its various forms. Attachment to the sacred concepts such as equality, socialism, democracy, individual freedom, feminism, and the rest of it.

It seems that bottom-line adherence to any one of these types of ideology will suffice to defuse resistance, subvert objections, facilitate acquiescence to the forces of darkness.

Capitulation may be grumpy, may indeed be characterized by extreme and public distress - but in the final analysis capitulation is preferred to the unimaginable alternative of becoming a real and thorough-going reactionary, outwith the acceptable bounds of discourse as defined by the media and implemented in politics, public administration, the legal system, and education.

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Hence the primary value of being a genuine reactionary is seen not in what it achieves in terms of implementing its goals - which is usually nothing - but what being an explicit reactionary prevents in terms of the corruption of individuals.

Think of the example of someone like Don Colacho

http://don-colacho.blogspot.co.uk/

His influence was negligible, but he personally remained essentially uncorrupted; and his work appeals to and assists those whose goal is likewise to avoid becoming personal instances of corruption: those who, if they cannot be a part of the solution - seek to avoid becoming (unwittingly perhaps) part of the problem.

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I regard myself as a Mere Christian - and have been trying to understand the implications; which are somewhat more complex than I had at first recognized.

To be a Mere Christian is to believe:

1. That salvation may be attained through several Christian denominations.

2. That the riches of Christ are spread across several Christian denominations.

3. That any specific and valid Christian denomination tends to certain faults - biases and incompletenesses.

4. That Mere Christianity is not a viable church; therefore that specific denominations are both desirable, and indeed necessary for there to be a viable institutional church of Christ.

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Therefore, the Mere Christian nearly always has trouble in choosing (and sticking with) a Christian denomination - whether as a new convert or as a practising Christian in a world where most denominations are mostly apostate (and the situation continues to worsen).

Because, on the one hand, the Mere Christian has an ultimate indifference to denominations - such that I personally could be (and the list is not exhaustive) a conservative evangelical Anglican, an Anglo Catholic, a Lutheran, a Calvinist, Eastern Orthodox, a Roman Catholic (of the SSPX type, or Anglican Ordinariate), or a Mormon. I would not be equally happy with all of these, but certainly I could and would join and worship at any of these denominations if circumstances made it optimal.

But, on the other hand, all these denominations demand assent to more than I regard essential - and may indeed demand assent to the idea that what I regard as non-essential is essential.

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So the Mere Christian could in one sense join a wide range of denominations; but in another sense, any valid denomination will almost certainly demand a wider assent than any Mere Christian could truly give.

It is a bit of a double-bind, you will agree!

Which is probably why, so far, I have stayed with my baptismal church (of England) - since more specific assent to a wider range of propositions is demanded of new converts to a denomination than cradle members of a denomination.

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I recently had another enjoyable meeting with locally-dwelling Christian blogger Alastair Roberts

https://alastairadversaria.wordpress.com/

during which he made what seems to me a very important point:

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If The Bible is to be understood properly, we need to see it as a story consisting of stories: a narrative of God's dealings with his People.

It is not, therefore, primarily an abstract philosophical discourse, nor a set of principles or instructions: it is a collection of stories which tells a big story.

Or, a big story within-which that same big story is retold many times, at many scales, with many variations.

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So, how should we proceed if we want to understand the Bible as the narrative that it primarily is - when the answer to questions is not to be an abstraction?

What is the meaning of the first chapters of Genesis, of a story like Jonah or Job, of a parable by Jesus' or an event from His life?

The answer must be 'another story', or stories - further narratives which elucidate the particular narrative under investigation.

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But we can be somewhat more specific than this.

Understanding comes from expounding and condensing.

Expounding a story means looking at parts of a specific story as microcosms of the whole specific story - so that individual parts of a story are seen as recurrent themes in which the whole specific story is being alluded to. So that the parts of  a Book in the Bible, or the life of Christ, or a parable can be seen as miniature examples of the whole parable.

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(The correspondence is, as Alastair said, more akin to a musical theme than an abstract symbol; music in fact consists of thematic elements - a phrase or melody contains in miniature aspects of itself, and also a larger piece of music revisits themes which are recognizable even as repeated with variations and transformations.)

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Condensing a story involves the ability to make a shortened (summary) version of the story, so that it can be told as part of a longer story.

So that a Book of the Bible can be seen as summarizing the whole of the Bible, and the same can be said of the Life of Christ, an event in the life of Christ, and a parable of Christ.

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In sum, to understand a story - to explain a narrative by narrative - is to bring out that a real specific story is on the one hand a microcosm of the whole story; and on the other hand contains microcosms of itself.

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So, a person who understand the Bible is - by this account - a person who can tell the story under consideration, and tell the smaller recurrent versions of itself within the story; and can tell bigger stories which include a condensed version of the the story under consideration.

Stories clarifying stories - and not abstractions extracted from stories: story is the proper primary model of Christian discourse.

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It is not unusual to do the right thing for the wrong reason - to make the correct specific choice but validated by the wrong general principle.

In the heat of battle, it can be forgotten that my enemy's enemy is not necessarily, perhaps not even usually, my friend.

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Looking back over my life and the various conflicts, it is clear that sometimes I wanted the right thing, fought courageously for the right thing, but for the wrong reason.

In particular, I might be defending a position which derived from common sense or natural law: let's say I was defending 'the good' against attack - let's say I was defending traditional morality from political correctness.

But before I was a Christian  there was no 'ultimate' reason for me to defend the good: no objective basis for saying that good was good. So how could I rationalise what I was doing, how could I justify my decision to defend the good?

How could I get the motivation to accept short-term disadvantage in pursuit of long-term good?

What made me brave?

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Because that is the key - this matter of motivation.

Unless motivations are strong, then there will be no living of belief, and expediency will always prevail.

Ultimately it is about the virtue of courage: why be brave?

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Courage is a virtue, and a key virtue upon which all other virtues depend; but the most usual reason for courage is - I suspect, at least on the basis of my own experience - not virtue, but in fact a sin: the sin of pride.

So that it often has been the case that I pursued a good cause, and (relatively) courageously, but for a bad reason - indeed a very bad reason, perhaps the worst reason of all: pride.

I was virtuous for a sinful reason. 

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My act of courage was a result of my own pride, a belief in my rightness. Not God's rightness.

My own rightness, and how could it have been otherwise?

Without God, there are only the wills of different humans - and courage can only be underpinned the belief in asserting one's own will rather than accepting the will of others.

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Well, at least, that is the abstract justification. In practice people can do good, for good reasons, in the absence of a belief in God: they 'just do it' - but cannot explain or justify what they do.

They are inarticulate in their dogged resistance to sin: and thank God that they are.

Because the danger comes - especially for reflective people - in articulation: precisely in explaining to yourself, or to other people, why you are resisting what other people want. Explaining the grounds for your resistance, your disobedience, disruptiveness, what-looks-like your aggressiveness.

And in explaining to yourself or others, you may fall into the sin of pride, and this fall into pride may be self-reinforcing.

Courage from pride leads to the necessity for stronger pride to sustain and enhance courage. 

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Indeed it often is this way - which is why courageous fighters against 'the establishment' are often such very bad people. They get their motivation from pride, and the harder and longer is their fight, the greater the need for motivation becomes: until they are consumed by that pride upon which their courage depends.

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Courage is a virtue; it is good, it is essential, it is very lacking in modern society: we need more courage.

But what we need is courage on the side of good, and for good reasons.

(Any other motivation for courage is lethal: the enemy's work.) 

And the only side of good is the side of God; and the only good reason is a God reason.

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"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)

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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.

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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.

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One true thing, at least, was said by Kurt Vonnegut - that loneliness was the big problem of modern life.

People are not built to live alone, to eat alone - yet so many people do, more and more as marriage and families are avoided and destroyed against a background of secularism.

People use their wealth to live alone, to be independent of ties and hassles - they are addicted to mental isolation.

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I used to suppose that the increasing numbers of single and divorced would lead, spontaneously, to new forms of group living - to something like colleges, where people could eat together and share social activities. 

Yet if people are plagued by loneliness, neither are people built to live herded randomly in institutions - they are meant to live in organic groupings, tied by meaningful affiliations.

New forms of group living have not arisen - atomistic disintegration proceeds apace. 

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The pain of loneliness may be alleviated or blotted-out by distractions; by immersion in the mass media, by communication technologies, by the serial psychodrama of modern sexual relationships, by travel, by consumerism and fashion, by drugs - but these are analgesics: the problem remains.

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Indeed, the problem of loneliness is ultimately spiritual, not a matter of proximity to and contact with 'other people'.

The reality is that we are never alone because God is with us always; therefore loneliness is a part of our state of sin - which is why loneliness is ever-more prevalent.

Loneliness is a side effect of alienation. A society without meaning or purpose or a personal relationship between the individual and the world, is a society where loneliness is intrinsic, existential and un-assuage-able.

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http://orthosphere.org/2013/01/06/a-prayer-for-lawrence-auster/

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It is obvious that in modern secular society there is a slippery slope by which people first modify their bodies simply to fit in with fashion; then justify further modifications in terms of self-therapy (e.g. enhancing their self-esteem, overcoming anxiety or misery due to some aspect of their appearance); and/or justify further modification enhancing their appearance (making themselves look better than otherwise they would have) - the process ending-up with grotesque (and, presumably deluded) self-mutilation in which there is either a psychotic indifference to the result (e.g. old women living behind the crude flesh mask of a younger woman), or even a deliberate self-infliction of ugliness.

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The most obvious example is the path from use of make-up and hair dye; to cosmetic plastic surgery, to serial usage of 'enhancement' plastic surgery which tips-over from creating a fake youthfulness to varieties of repulsive grotesquerie; to forms of permanent self-inflicted uglification with piercings, tattoos, scarification... and the rest of it.

This slippery slope has been descended rapidly in Western societies - within a couple of generations - and accelerating as it goes.

These phenomena are now increasingly common, even among the (more-or-less) respectable people in society - and the extremity incrementally increases with (so far) no sign of reaching a plateau - a true slippery slope. 

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Yet, among traditional and religious societies, the first stages of using make-up, hair dye, cosmetics and clothes fashion, therapy or self-enhancement do not lead down a slippery slope - but stop at a certain point that is socially sanctioned. Those who go beyond that point are met with significant explicit social sanctions, and therefore such transgressions are rare.

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So this particular slope is not intrinsically slippery; but is slippery in a secular society in which there is no overall transcendental framework for evaluation.

Thus, a traditional and religious society evaluates all actions in terms of some overarching scheme - and the use of cosmetics, hair dye; fashions in clothes etc are all subordinated to larger aims and meanings.

By contrast, modern secular society is fragmented, and no fragment has primacy; so that cosmetics, fashions, styles in hair, plastic surgery, tribal self-marking... all are perceived as autonomous, and unconnected - developing under their own internal dynamics, regulated by a circular process of validation that whatever is - is good.

There is no overarching scheme under which such choices might be subordinated - thus these choices become taboo - especially in Leftist-privileged groups   

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Is all this trivial?

No, not at all - these broadcast very strong and significant social signals, and these signals have an effect in first gaining acceptance for, then normalizing, then lending a positive evaluation to advanced self-manipulation of appearance.

In particular, the deliberate public display of 'extreme' cosmetics, forms of hair style and colour, clothes, types of body mutilations and modifications, cosmetic plastic surgery and the like make a highly reliable (although obviously not completely reliable) signal of being anti-traditional-religious in general, and anti-real-Christian in particular.

That this is true is obvious - but why? Although some people deploy their appearance in a way which is deliberately subversive of Christianity, this is not usual - most of those who subvert Christianity by their appearance are not motivated specifically to do this; and might hotly deny that subverting Christianity is in fact, objectively, what they are doing.

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But the association between 'extreme' appearance and anti-Christianity most typically arises because it is evidence of a person's primary allegiance.

At its simplest, a person who follows every fashion wherever it leads, or a person who has face and body carved into that of a younger or different person, or a person who marks or mutilates himself and displays the result with pride... such a person is advertising their subordination to secular values. 

So these extreme pathologies of appearance are - as might be expected - a mark of enslavement.

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Enslavement to what? Enslavement to the meaninglessness, purposelessness and nihilism of modern secular culture.

That is, enslavement to evil.

So many modern people are walking, talking acts of aggressive subversion of the good, and (mostly unwitting) advertisements of allegiance to values that are negative, destructive, short-termist, selfish.

They are living advertisments for wickedness; just as if they were covered in propaganda slogans or broadcasting slanders.

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Simultaneously, the distorted 'kindness' ethic of modernity renders the whole phenomenon uncriticizable on the basis that it is mean and hurtful to point out what is going-on.

Thus, the proudly anti-Christian message infiltrates almost everywhere - into the mass media and news, into libraries, bookshops and other cultural centres, into schools and churches, into children's TV, movies and books... 

Fortunately, even though the damage to a body is often irreversible, the damage to a human soul is not - and although flesh cannot usually be wiped clean and restored to its natural state, the soul can - the soul may - with repentance - be washed clean and made new by Christ's forgiveness and love.

Then there would be no more proud and unchallenged display of the anti-Christian propaganda of the body. 

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I was browsing through the Ten Commandments in the Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer, as one does, and noticed the phrase at the end of the Second:

For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, and shew mercy unto thousands in them that love me and keep my commandments.  

...and keep my commandments.

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Of which number IV is to keep holy the Sabbath day... In it thou shalt do no manner of work...

And I realized that I was not even trying to fulfil this commandment.

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So, from this Sabbath I resolve not to do work, which means no blogging - and no distracting or entertaining myself reading blogs, or the news, or amusing myself with distractions, or gossiping.

When I am not doing directly Christian things (Church, Scripture, Edifying matter, Prayer etc); I need to devote the Sabbath to sustaining and strengthening Home and Family (which purpose includes chores, repairs; and also reasonably-wholesome group activities which serve to strengthen and sustain the family).

No doubt I will forget and fail in this observation of the Sabbath - but when I do forget or fail I will need to repent and ask forgiveness, and resolve to try again.

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NOTE ADDED 3 March 2012 - I failed to live up to this resolution - in fact my Sabbath observance is much worse now than when I made it. This demonstrates - as well as my own feebleness - the dangers inherent in such resolutions. 

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Our culture is dying, is killing itself, from abstraction.

We take abstract concepts like equality, freedom, justice; concepts which nobody understands - and we use these remote and un-understood abstractions to 'problematize' - to challenge, question, subvert, invert and destroy - perfectly obvious and commonsensical realities such as men and women, marriage and families, love and hate.

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We denigrate obvious realities, comprehensible to everybody; and subordinate them to un-understood abstractions, comprehensible to nobody.

We replace sex-differences between males and females which are understood even by very young children; with 'gender', which is an abstraction that means nothing or anything (amounting to the same thing).

We take the idea of Father and Mother, which are spontaneously known by small children - and render them taboo, render them evil and unusable in public discourse - and replace them with... what? Abstract gibberish about 'equality' (a concept that nobody can define operationally, and never has).

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As Christians, we must escape these nets of abstraction; we must bring our explanations back to that which is common sense and comprehensible to a child.

Christianity is a story, with characters; and behind it is God who is a character, a person, who participates in the story - and if we don't think of God as a person, then he might as well be nothing, for all the good it will do us.

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Christianity began to lose its grip on the human imagination when it began to ridicule and subvert God as an old man (perhaps with a beard) in a place called Heaven, who is our loving Father, and we his children.

Yet that is about as much as we can understand about God, and certainly our true understanding is of this kind; and if we replace this kind of understanding with something abstract about omnipotence, omniscience, unchanging eternity and the rest of it - then we simply remove God from our life.

The abstract God becomes something like gravity or magnetism or 'evolution' - all the qualities that might make us love and willingly obey God are dissolved away.

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Christians must be bold to be simple-minded and simple in expression and simple in explanation; and humble to acknowledge that that is all that we can truly comprehend and live-by.

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Abstractions are not more true, because we cannot handle abstractions in the way that we quite naturally handle stories about people. Indeed, it is doubtful whether humans can handle abstractions at all - except briefly, in very specific spatio-temporal and subject-limited ways (e.g brief eras of mathematical and scientific genius).

Christians must therefore never answer a concrete question about God with an abstraction - must never pretend to clarify a comprehensible problem with an incomprehensible solution.

(The questioner may be silenced, but they will never be satisfied. And it will inculcate a habit that is not just bad, but potentially lethal to salvation.)

If we do not understand life - including salvation - 'anthropomorphically', as a story about of the motivations and relationships of people, then we have eschewed understanding of life.

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To sweep aside God our perfect loving Father in favour of a God of abstract attributes operating in a universe of matter and forces, is not only to break the wholeness of this world and sever our relation to it; it is to open the gate to infinite error and uncorrectable sin.

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After the anti-Christian, lying drivel spouted by Rowan Williams and Justin Welby over the Christmas season; how refreshing and enthusing it is to read the New Year message from the Anglican Archbishop Wabukala of Kenya - which I reproduce in full below.

Western Anglican Bishops need to learn how Archbishop Wabukala discusses both Christianity and Politics: subordinating the Politics to Christianity!

The following comments are striking, and contain a seed of hope:

In our modern context we need now to be thinking of mission beyond our borders.

In the past we have been the recipients of missionary endeavour and we thank God for those who brought the gospel to this land, but now the sending nations of the West are in deep spiritual and moral crisis and it is time for us to take a lead in global mission.

The majority of Anglicans are now in the Global South and that means we need to take greater responsibility in global leadership.

We cannot simply stand by as we see many of the Anglican Churches in the West, including the Church of England itself, being severely compromised by the deepening spiritual and moral darkness of the societies in which they are set.

To which I say to the Archbishop: Thank you and Amen.


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Arise, shine, for your light has come.’ Isaiah 60:1

My friends, as we stand at the beginning of a New Year with our hopes and our fears I want to encourage you to have a strong and confident hope in Christ. It is time for us to hear again the words of Isaiah ‘Arise, shine for your light has come’ (Isaiah 60:1). In Jesus Christ, the light has come and this great truth gives substance to the hopes we hold as we stand at the threshold of a New Year. We have hopes for our children, our relationships, study and work and as we enter the 50th year since full independence, we also have hopes for our nation, especially that the General Election under a new constitution will mark a clean break with the troubled politics that have blighted the life of our nation and lead us forward to peace and prosperity.

As we read the newspapers we find some commentators are optimistic and some are pessimistic. Both views can find evidence to support their position, but I want today to say that we Christians should be neither optimists nor pessimists, but people with a strong hope in the promises of Scripture and the power of prayer. When the Bible speaks of hope, it is not just a wish, like saying ‘I hope there will be good crops this year’, but it is something definite and certain that will happen.

Optimists hope for the best, pessimists expect the worst, but we trust in the God who is able to strengthen us to do the best things even in the worst times. We are always hopeful because we know that there is a God in heaven who is working out his purposes in history despite, and even through, human sin and failure.

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Our reading from Isaiah 60:1-7 is one of those great prophetic passages which foreshadow the climax of the bible story in the closing chapters of the book of Revelation. In wonderful poetic language we glimpse what it will be like when the victory of God over sin and evil, achieved in principle upon the cross of Christ, is fully revealed at the end of human history. Isaiah sees the people of God radiant with the glory of the Lord, thrilled and exultant as they are gathered to the restored Jerusalem from all the nations of the earth.

Some of you will be thinking that this is all very well, but it seems remote and doesn’t have much connection with the reality of our lives here and now. How do I make sense of Isaiah’s call to ‘Arise, shine, for your light has come’? The answer is that our future hope is already being realised. We will not see this glory and this light in its full splendour until Christ returns, but the light has already begun to shine out, just as we know that the first shafts of sunlight at dawn will lead to the full strength of the noon day sun.

The reality is that in Christ the light is already shining and the darkness, however thick, cannot ultimately resist it. This hope is a great strength to us now and can transform the way we think and live. So how can we live as people of hope and as agents of transformation in the year ahead?

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Firstly, we are called to ‘Arise’. What does it mean to ‘Arise’? It means to be fully awake, shaking off drowsiness and the false world of dreams. As the Apostle Paul quotes to the Ephesians ‘Awake, O sleeper and arise from the dead and Christ will shine on you’ (5:14). We who are children of the East African Revival movement are familiar with the phrase ‘Walking in the light’. It means having personal and spiritual integrity by being transparent to God and to one another because we know that the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins.

Walking is a lifestyle, not just an experience, in which we commit ourselves to seeking the reality of God’s presence and love day by day. We do not conceal or pretend and we do not lead double lives. Imagine what a difference there would be in the life our nation if everyone who calls themselves a Christian lived in this way! In fact Isaiah does not simply say that we are in the light. He says that because we are in the light, we ourselves become light. We ourselves are to ‘Arise and shine’ and reflect the glory of the Lord by a lifestyle and behaviour that is true to our new identity as those who have been born again to a new and living hope in Christ.

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Secondly, we cannot be people of light without coming into conflict with darkness. Isaiah speaks of the earth and its people as covered by a ‘thick darkness’ (v2). Light cannot compromise with darkness because light by its nature is the opposite of darkness. Where darkness would mask and conceal that which is evil, the light exposes, reveals and rebukes. This spiritual darkness is the natural state in which we live without the light of Christ and we should not be surprised that many people seem confused, indifferent or even hostile to the gospel and follow false religions. We need to be much more sensitized to this spiritual reality and our response must be to let the light of Christ shine brightly through both faithful preaching of the gospel and consistent Christian living in everyday life.

To take a practical example, in the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Transparency International, Kenya is ranked 139 out of 176 and the same organisation has evidence which shows that the annual cost of what we call ‘petty’ bribery in Kenya is running at 33.6 million Ksh. We cannot expect our politics to be healthy if we as Christians are willing to tolerate a culture of petty corruption in everyday life which corrodes trust in those who are entrusted with authority. What a great step forward it would be if we could mark 2013, our fiftieth anniversary of full independence, but a significant step up the Transparency Index!

As we look forward to the General Elections on 4th March 2013, let us rise to the occasion by conducting our campaigning period with dignity and concerning ourselves with issues rather than the sentiments that inflame tribal clashes. These elections should be marked by respect for one another and a willingness to take responsibility for the outcome, with those who loose accepting defeat for the sake of the common good.

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Thirdly, we need to remember that light not only exposes, but also reaches out. Twice in these verses Isaiah speaks of the ‘glory of the Lord’. In verse 1 he says ‘the glory of the Lord has risen upon you’ and in verse 2 ‘his glory will seen upon you’. Glory is attractive, it is magnetic, and the result is seen in verse 3 ‘And nations shall come to your light’. The glory of God will not be fully revealed until Christ returns, but it should be our hearts' desire that here and now we have a foretaste of that glory in the power of the Holy Spirit through transformed lives and heartfelt worship. The East African Revival added greatly to the churches’ numbers because people saw and experienced the glory of God as a personal and life transforming reality. Walking in the light is not to be confused with simply maintaining an inward piety, morality or traditional values.

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It is dynamic Spirit filled faithfulness to Christ and his Word to which unbelievers are irresistibly drawn. In our modern context we need now to be thinking of mission beyond our borders. In the past we have been the recipients of missionary endeavour and we thank God for those who brought the gospel to this land, but now the sending nations of the West are in deep spiritual and moral crisis and it is time for us to take a lead in global mission.

The majority of Anglicans are now in the Global South and that means we need to take greater responsibility in global leadership. We cannot simply stand by as we see many of the Anglican Churches in the West, including the Church of England itself, being severely compromised by the deepening spiritual and moral darkness of the societies in which they are set.

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The GAFCON movement is one way in which global Anglicans are responding to this need and I am very happy that in October this year, we are expecting the second Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON 2) to be held here in Nairobi and we look forward to welcoming Anglican leaders from around the globe. I believe this will be a strategic moment in the reshaping of the Anglican Communion to fulfil our vision for global mission and a time when we will experience a foretaste of that glorious gathering of the people of God which Isaiah prophesied.

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So as a new year begins, I hope we are beginning to see more of what it means to align our lives with Isaiah’s great vision of the people of God as a global community, radiant with his glory. In recent decades we have rightly emphasised what we call the ‘holistic gospel’, aware that the good news must be expressed in deed as well as word, but we must never lose sight of the fact that to be truly holistic, there needs to be a seeking after the presence of the God who has revealed himself in the Scriptures at the heart and centre of our life as a church.

God is light and we can only arise and shine if he is present with us. Moses understood this truth when he pleaded with the Lord, despite Israel’s sinfulness ‘If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here’(Exodus 33:15) As we prepare to move forward into a New Year, let that cry for God’s presence echo in our hearts too.


The Most Rev’d Dr Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop of Kenya and Bishop, All Saints Cathedral Diocese, Nairobi.

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Continuing on my theme of real Christians (necessarily reactionary) and our strategy for permanent resistance

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-strategy-for-permanent-resistance.html

What is the size and nature of resisting groups?

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I think we need to think in terms of C.S Lewis and JRR Tolkien's group the Inklings - that is a few like-minded and local Christian friends (various denominations), meeting regularly for mutual encouragement, to discern the truth.

Of course it would be good if the groups could be larger and more organized - something like the size of a college... But the essence of the situation is that this is no longer possible.

Indeed, I would find it impossible to gather a group even as large as the Inklings; and must survive for long stretches with just one or two confidants - and I am luckier than many to have them!

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(Let not the best become the enemy of the good! We may imagine a vast Great Awakening, a reactionary revolution, the fourth Rome of Byzantium, a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, a pure Puritan republic... or whatever. And these imaginations are necessary and good. But in the mean time we cannot muster enough people to support a magazine, a political party, a college! And every week brings a fresh defeat and another retreat. In such a context, a group of just six local and like-minded Christians would be a precious gift.)

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But what would such groups actually do?

Well, that would depend on what the people involved actually did: the Inklings included writers with an historical interest, and so were responsible for Lord of the Rings and That Hideous Strength (for instance) - which are of immense value to modern real Christians.

But no doubt groups with other interest would do other things - that is a matter of local tactics, tailored to local specifics, and changing over time.

But the main benefit of such interactions, at least so I find, is to clarify what is going on and what should be one's attitude to it.

What ought to be done may not be possible to do, but it is valuable to know what is being aimed at - and what ought not to be done (what should be refused) may be a more attainable objective.

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When things get tough, even a single trustworthy friend of like mind has been of great value to me - a value both spiritual and practical: and two such friends are more than twice as effective as one - and three, four or five would be even better.

Let not the best become the enemy of the good.

Small groups of trusted and like-minded friends.

And if not 'groups' - then at least pairs or trios.  

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Superb insights excerpted from pp 170-172 of Psychotic depression by Conrad M Swartz and Edward Shorter. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Words in square brackets were added by me, editorial cuts are indicated by ....

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For the sake of discussion, we could say that one way to terminate all hallucinations, delusions, insomnia, and complaints of low mood and loss of interest [from someone with Psychotic Depression] would be to anaesthetize the patient to unconscousness...

Yet this would be symptom management, not treatment, scarcely a desirable or sensitive form of practice. 

More feasible than complete anaesthesia are drugs that only partly inhibit the brain from operating and superficially appear to leave the patient conscious. This is tranquilization.

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Physiologically, benzodiazepine and barbiturate tranquilizers [and one could add alcohol] are called 'depressants' because they diminish brain functions.

In low to moderate doses they inhibit learning, recall, coordination, awareness of complexity, problem solving, willpower and attention.

In larger doses they are general anaesthetics and can cause unconsciousness...

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Antispychotic [or neuroleptic] tranquilizers inhibit the functioning of only some areas of the brain: those related to new thoughts, novel problem solving, social complexity, initiative and motivation. 

These functions are housed in the prefrontal section of the brain. This sounds like a small fraction of the brain, but in humans the prefrontal region is almost half the brain cortex.

Its functions represent the essential differences in psychological performance between humans and animals, and also between human adults and children... 

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The deficits in psychological performance caused by antipsychotic drugs mentioned here occur similarly in patients with Parkinson's disease...

Both with antipsychotic drugs and Parkinson's disease, the function of dopaminergic brain cells is deficient...

Both groups... show impairments in problem-solving abilities, planning, initiative taking, and dealing with complexity...

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The behavioural results... vary with the particular antipsychotic drug.

Dopamine-blocking antipsychotic drugs - such as haloperidol, perphenazine, and risperidone- decrease motivation to speak, together with lessening complexity and amount of thought. 

Some of the more recently introduced antipsychotics (e.g. olanzapine, clozapine, and quetiapine) decrease thought complexity more than motivation to speak; and because the patient speaks abundantly the thought simplicity is easier to notice. 

Decreases in self-discipline and organization contribute to the weight gain patients experience from olanzapine, clozapine, and quetiapine. 

Olanzapine and clozapine also obstruct the function of the medial prefrontal cortex, which causes apathy, somnolence, and generalized weakness. 

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Anaesthetizing brain function is surely a last resort. 

It is management, not treatment. 

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The phenomenon of self-remembering has been of interest to me since I first heard of the concept and found a word to apply to my experience

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/self-remembering.html

It is that sense of Me! Here! Now! whereby quite suddenly we may become aware of our situation and condition: a simultaneous awareness of ourselves and our surroundings.

What is remarkable about self-remembering, in my experience, is its rarity; indeed it is so rare that I suppose that many people never experience it at all - but remain absorbed either in awareness of their inner selves or the outer environment - but not both simultaneously.

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The sense that self-remembering had some significance thus predates my conversion to Christianity by many years - and is something I recall certainly from mid-teenage; indeed much of what I do recall from my life is these moments of self-remembering.

It would seem that this state of self-remembering is of such special significance that (for some reason) it orientates our lives: it provides the thread of continuity on which our lives are strung.

And if we lack it, we should seek it - the state can usually be induced (or allowed to emerge) simply by remembering to self remember; yet how seldom we do remember to do it, how swiftly we choose to ignore it and move back onto introspection or out into absorption in externalities!

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On the eve of retiring from his tenancy of the Archbishopric of Canterbury (thus head of the third-largest Christian denomination in the world), Rowan Williams has finally, publicly, utterly abandoned the pretence of being a Christian.

In last year's January the First broadcast, RW managed to restrict mention of Christianity until the last minute of a four-and-a half minute broadcast.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/archbish-of-c-speaks-to-nation-spot.html

But this year he has succeeded in eliminating from his final broadcast any reference to Christianity whatsoever.

To be frank - such honesty comes as a bit of a relief.

I only wish he could have been honest about his apostasy a wee bit earlier - for example ten years earlier, before he took the Canterbury job...

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http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2777/archbishop-appreciate-the-silent-conspiracy-of-generous-dedication

Full text: 

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Archbishop Rowan Williams' New Year Message

1st January 2013

Whenever I make a broadcast like this one, I’m acutely aware of the gap between what I’m seeing here and what you’re looking at, at home.  You see me now sitting quietly in my study. What I’m seeing is a small crowd of wonderfully expert and efficient technicians doing the filming, meticulously checking the pictures and the sound.  What we see happening is only a small part of what’s going on in order to make it happen.

And this last year we had a chance to notice this, for once, in a very vivid way.  The extraordinary events of the Olympics and Paralympics last summer provided an unforgettable spectacle.  But everyone who visited the Olympic site or watched the broadcasts will have been made aware of the army of volunteers who cheerfully gave up their free time and worked away, without complaint, all hours of the day and night to make these great events happen. They were the key people who translated the Olympic vision into reality for the rest of us.

It ought to make us think a bit harder about all the other folk who quietly, often invisibly, turn vision into reality and just make things happen – especially volunteers.  Here at the Robes project, over twenty local churches are combining to offer food and shelter to homeless people in London.  Religion here isn’t a social problem or an old-fashioned embarrassment, it’s a wellspring of energy and a source of life-giving vision for how people should be regarded and treated.  So let’s recognise this steady current of generosity that underlies so much of our life together in this country and indeed worldwide.

It’s all based on one vision – to make our society, our whole world, work for everyone, not just the comfortable and well off.  And it’s a vision that sometimes seems to need Olympic levels of patient hard work and dedication.  If you have the good fortune to live in a community where things seem to be working well the chances are that if you slip backstage you’ll find an army of cheerful people making the wheels go round – and don’t forget just what a huge percentage of them come from the churches and other faith groups.

How very good that people like that are there for us, we can say – but as soon as we’ve said that, we should be prompted to ask the tougher question: what can I do to join this silent conspiracy of generous dedication?  There’ll be those who have time and skill and strength to offer; there’ll be those who have less of these, but can support in prayer and goodwill.

And as we think about this silent groundswell, perhaps our minds can begin to open up to the deepest secret of all – the trust that the entire universe is held together by the quiet, unfailing generosity of God.  What we see and grasp isn’t the whole story – but just occasionally we can get a glimpse.  I hope there will be lots of joyful glimpses like that for you in the year ahead.

Every blessing and happiness for the coming year.

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We are losing.

The tide shows no sign of turning.

Reactionaries in general, and those who aspire to be real Christians in particular, will (for the foreseeable future) have to operate in this context: the world as we find it.

Therefore we must do without optimism - do without the expectation of victory; but we must always be hopeful and we must never give up.

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We will need to prepare for a long and patient fight, a defensive war, the kind of resistance which will not yield up an inch of ground without making it as hard for the enemy as possible.

When forced to retreat a few steps, each of us must immediately turn and dig-in to hold the next defensible position as long as possible.

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Dogged resistance is much more important than argument.

Silent, unexplained, indomitable resistance is far more to be desired than the fake conflicts of flashy verbal and symbolic posturings of mainstream 'conservatives' and fair-weather 'traditional' Christians; which consists in rhetorical displays of eloquent, lucid, witty argument - inevitably followed by swift surrender and total capitulation (and always somewhat earlier than is necessary).

Dogged resistance every step of the way and without end...

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This strategy certainly makes life harder for those who seek to impose evil; it forces them to expend energy they would prefer to use in other tasks, they are dragged-down from the heady intoxications and novelties of the easy victory after easy victory resulting from a successful Blitzkrieg; dogged resistance makes 'reform' boring, thwarts feelings of 'progress', and exacerbates their natural and intrinsic impatience; they lose the expectation of a final and complete victory achievable by one devastating blow.

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Since the enemy are secular, worldly, short-termist hedonists with a short attention span - they  loathe the messiness of infantry warfare and aspire that we will all surrender after a single devastating airstrike has shown that our cause is 'hopeless'.

(That is the key: they seek to overwhelm us by making us give up hope, make us surrender and submit, or make us turn and run.)

But we must never give up hope. We must make them root us out, building by building, trench by trench, foxhole by foxhole; in close combat.

(This need for the enemy to engage in hand-to-hand combat may even bring a greater possibility of repentance and reformation. Probably not; but it might.)

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We must discard all optimism, we must not expect to see anything resembling a victory in our lives and in this world (at most a temporary stay or cease-fire in which we can recover); but instead live on indestructible hope and in assurance of ultimate victory.

We don't need to say much - just a few battle cries.

We just keep on and on fighting, and make sure they know that we cannot be demoralized, always will keep fighting; inch by inch.

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Note: this theme is continued at

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/units-for-permanent-resistance-groups.html 

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