Bruce Charlton's Notions

The main difference between Romantic and Traditionalist Christians (when they are real-Christians) is that Romantics will acknowledge explicitly (to themselves, as well as others) that their bottom-line convictions are a matter of intuition... 

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I grew up in a world which put faith in institutions.

Leaving aside the church for a moment (since I was an atheist) I was among people who had faith in the United Nations, and the European Economic Community (now European Union), the United Kingdom, England, the Labour Party, the National Health Service, Universities and more abstract institutions such as Science and Education.

Such things were regarded as net good, that is good in essence and on average, good on the whole, tending towards good...

I now perceive that none of these are worthy of faith - indeed all modern institutions are net bad, bad in essence and on average, bad on the whole, tending towards evil...

Yet I have not found any worthy substitutes. 

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This world is one in which people seek institutions in which to put their faith - I do it myself, somehow I can't help myself - yet for honest people this has become harder and harder.

We seek some grouping or activity in which to place our hopes and to which we wish to dedicate our best efforts.

Yet we are thwarted in a search for worthy institutions with which to ally ourselves.

Indeed, it is probable that there are none - indeed why should we expect there to be any?

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The hardest thing for Christians to accept is that this applies also to the official mainstream churches and denominations. If we consider any large, powerful Christian church, we will find that its leadership is driving it away from the Good and into closer alliance with secular hedonistic modernity.

At an institutional level, large and powerful Christian churches are net bad and to support them as a whole is, I am very sorry to say, to support the forces of evil.

(Of course, this has been the usual situation in evil societies - the churches become corrupted - sometimes heretical elements in the churches have led corruption. )

And, conversely, any net Good church - worthy of overall support - will be small and weak.

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Since most of us work (and worship) in large and powerful institutions, we need to get used to the fact that the good elements which we admire and would wish to support are minority, local and dissenting - usually beleaguered, declining or on the verge of extinction.

Our choice is to be one of these dwindling islands within the large and net-evil institutions en route to being swamped; or to work in a weak and tiny institution that is good-on-the-whole.

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This applies to churches and denominations.

Real Christians have a choice: to be a persecuted minority within an overall (on average) wicked and corrupt large and powerful church, or whole-hearted members of a church that is overall good but small and weak (or something quantitatively in between).

If a Christian is a member of one of the larger and more powerful churches, he will either be in an embattled minority or essentially corrupt.

(And, of course, most of the embattled minorities are themselves essentially corrupt! - embattled minority status is of itself no indicator of goodness.)

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We are not on the winning side, and the desire to be on the winning side - and part of something large and powerful - is a force tending towards our own corruption.

What we need to remember, what ought to give us hope, is that everything good we do has an effect.

Not that it might have an effect, but that it does have an effect: not a contingent effect somewhere down the line, but an instant, universal and eternal effect the consequences of which may be obscure and take time to unfold.

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Not that we necessarily know how or where it has an effect - probably we never will know anything of this (at least not while we are in this world) - but that every single personal, obscure and apparently-'insignificant' act of good is in reality of vast import.

The more difficult our own situation, and the more overwhelming the might of evil institutions brought to bear on Christians, the more Christians are made to feel futile: the more clear should be the universal (albeit mysterious) power of individual acts or tiny and temporary alliances.

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I often hear it said, and I believe it is true - although how common it is, I don't know - that modern people lose their Christian faith when bad things happen to them.

This is, however, very strange - because in the olden days when bad things happened to people, it apparently seemed to do the opposite: to increase their faith. Or even if it didn't do this, bad things did not seem to lead to widespread apostasy.

I have been reading the great Medieval English poets Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland recently - who lived through the Black Death when half the population of England died in a few decades, a catastrophe of world historical severity.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/was-black-death-necessary-cause-of.html

More than two million people died, and the population took three hundred years to recover.

Yet Chaucer and Langland barely mention the fact. And certainly it led to no great loss of faith in England - if anything it increased the zeal among the proto-Protestant Lollards.

Why should this be - I wonder. That misfortune used to strengthen faith but now weakens or destroys it?

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This is, for me - as a late adult convert to Christianity, one of the most important insights to make sense of world and historical Christianity.

The 'publicity material' for many or most (but not all) genuine Christian churches has tended to be exclusivist; claiming that only 'we' have the keys to salvation: that only inside the church can you be saved, and outside of this particular institution all are damned.

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There have been times when I have tried to believe this of a particular church, or even to make sense of it - but honesty prevents this. It is crystal clear that real Christians, and indeed the very best Christians, have existed across many denominations, and as members of many churches and of no particular church.

Exclusivist claims by churches in relation to salvation are therefore factually false. Exclusivist claims can only be, should be, interpreted as matters of expediency or strategy - as a concession to human weakness and vacillation; perhaps necessary on average, in some circumstances and for some people. 

(But it is better - preferable - when a church can function without making exclusivist claims in relation to salvation.)

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Therefore, my interpretation is that in Christianity there is one mystical church but many denominations and individual institutional churches. 

The one mystical church is the community of those who have repented and currently accept Christ's salvation.

(Others will join this mystical church later in life, and still more will accept Christ after death, when confronted with the reality of the situation).

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So what is the legitimate purpose of the specific, institutional churches?

Their proper purpose is to sustain faith and encourage the spiritual progression - the becoming-more-divinized, that is the theosis, or sanctification - of their members.

A good church is one which supports Christian faith on average and in individuals by various means - such as teaching, sacraments, prayer, study; by structures of legitimate authority and by informal social mechanisms.

A bad church does the opposite - and tends to destroy Christian faith on average, or in particular individuals.

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Therefore, each church can be judged on average, and also at the individual level. Some bad churches, which destroy Christian faith on average - such as the most of the mainstream and most powerful Liberal Christian churches within both Protestant and Catholic denominations - may nonetheless be helpful for specific individuals (for instance, those who fight these anti-Christian trends by staying in bad churches).

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So, denominations and churches are not about saving us, but about sustaining us in faith and moving us further towards the status of Sons of God. 

What differs in each church is the emphasis and scope. Some churches are happy with a moderate piety, others encourage members to scale the heights (and there are advantages and risks to each tendency). Some churches focus on celibacy and the monastic/ religious life - others focus on marriage and the family as the pinnacle.

The different emphases are not a matter of indifference, they do matter. Some churches have a better emphasis than others - especially in relation to particular times and places and people.

Some churches are much more correct than others in terms of what they teach, recommend etc. Some churches provide access and encouragement on a path to higher levels of spiritual progression than do others. Some churches do not even claim to enable high levels of theosis, but focus instead on evangelism. Some churches have an international scope and potentially a social-political role - but with all the hazards that brings, others are tiny and local and pure.

Some churches are competent and coherent, while others are a mess; some are mostly-uncorrupted, while others are full of fake Christians in leadership positions; some have a warmth of spirit, others are emotionally cool - or even cold.

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Specific churches and denominations are very important - they can be very helpful, or else a major hindrance to spiritual progression: In sum - specific Christian churches make a huge difference (for good or ill); but none of them are crucial to individual salvation.

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This is William Arkle writing in the persona of God, who is writing a letter to us to explain himself:

You are in a situation where your own private world which you live in will be what you make it. If you allow it to be dominated by the wishes of your physical nature, you will feel alien to it even if you are carried along by it. If you feel like a stranger to yourself it will make you unhappy, and you will doubt your own true identity, and you will lose faith in all the higher values in life.

 You may disguise the situation to the people around you but inside yourself you will feel lost and helpless and degraded.

My work is to increase your sense of reality to yourself, and make it feel of great value to you, without it spilling over into pride and selfishness. The balance between the over-subdued nature and the over-inflated nature is not easy to keep, and is a necessary balance to be achieved before other values can be built in.

The balance between the over-subdued nature and the over-inflated nature is not easy to keep, and is a necessary balance to be achieved before other values can be built in. The foundation lessons to be taught are thus integrity and responsibility, combined with affection and sympathy, but added to an ability to feel a balanced importance in the scheme of things. 

It is not an easy thing to believe you have great value and ability, and at the same time maintain a temperament which does not try to show off and impress people, and perhaps even dominate them. 

Every new gift I give you with trepidation because I know you are more likely to misuse it before you learn to handle it correctly, so, to me, a gift can appear like an ordeal and a temptation, and I am worried when I see some of you working to achieve special powers which may well be your downfall so far as the graceful balance of your temperament is concerned. 

On the other hand, I am glad when I see you developing gifts as a result of loving aspiration and wise discrimination, for such gifts I know will surely benefit you and all those associated with you.

http://www.billarkle.co.uk/prose/letterfromafather3.html

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In our culture there is a tendency to assume that gifts and abilities ought to be developed - people should make the most of themselves -- in general, the idea is that power and capability (in persons or in our groups or nations) are 'a good thing'.

But from a divine perspective there is a big problem - and it is a problem that we can see with many geniuses - especially the most recent twentieth century geniuses.

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Gifts are potential abilities to affect the world - Gifts are Power.

Is power a good thing? It depends on what you do with it: But we would agree that giving power to an evil person, or even just an irresponsible person, is a bad thing.

Bad, that is, from a divine perspective, even when the specific person with power got what they wanted. And bad from the perspective of that individual's 'graceful balance of temperament'.

(Think of Gollum and the Ring of Power - Gollum 'wanted' to possess the Ring, but it was bad for Gollum's balance of temperament, and bad from a divine perceptive that he should have it.)

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I think this used to be much better understood than it is nowadays: That before someone has power, they need already to have learned the foundation lessons of integrity, responsibility, affection, sympathy, balance...

It applies to individuals, and it applies to nations and cultures. Yet not only are the foundation lessons neglected, they are not even attempted!

The situation is perilous enough when dealing with natural (divine) gifts - but the worst possible situation is when people, nations, cultures are systematically and successfully working to achieve special powers without any recognition that powers are intrinsically likely to be corrupted. And this applies to powers of all types - including medicine and healing, including art and literature, including housing and clothing... But obviously so in terms of science, technology, and bureaucratic organization.

Insofar as we fail to perceive the probability of hazards, we have chosen to misuse power - while blinding ourselves even to the possibility of misuse.

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The situation is really very simple: it is a matter of motivation. From the divine perspective; gifts and powers in the hands of the badly motivated are a horror - and only in the hands of the well-motivated are they a good.

Since everybody claims to be well-motivated (even Gollum) - but nearly everybody is this requires discernment on the basis that people tend to be self-deluded and dishonest about their bad motivations - and what people say about their motivations needs to be compared with their actions; and their ability to maintain good motivations in the face of temptations needs to be evaluated: power does intrinsically tend to corrupt, and corrupted power is far worse than no power.

The divine perspective would therefore seem to be: Better no geniuses than corrupted genius; Better no breakthrough innovations than those which would be used with bad motivations; Better cultural decline and extinction than an unstoppable evil empire.

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In other words, from where we are, and as we are, and what we want to be - gifts and powers, energy and determination will all do more harm than good - much more harm than good; and we cannot use the excuse that we have evil enemies and it is 'us or them' because - from a divine perspective, we may both be bad, but we may be worse because of our superior gifts and powers...

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Therefore - the situation is that on the one hand, we in The West we have cultural decline (decline in power, achievement, capability, efficiency, courage and will) because we have rejected Christianity - because we no longer place religion above all other considerations; and on the other hand we should not even allow ourselves to hope that Western cultural decline is reversed until after there has been a Christian revival, a Great Awakening.

And if religious revival does not happen (as seems all-too-probable) then it is better that we do not reverse Western cultural decline.

Because - motivated as we now are - with our policy, propaganda and multiple laws and regulations systematically enforcing explicit moral inversion (a situation of depravity previously unknown in human history) - we are already and are still much-too-powerful

So enhancement of Western power, achievement, capability, efficiency, courage and will in the absence of prior religious revival would (from a divine perspective) likely be regarded as one of the worst possible outcomes.

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It is hard to grasp, or at least hard really to believe, the deep truth that fear is the opposite of love; because it is only true of Christian love of God, specifically, and of 'fear' that is the fear of the future ('angst') specifically.

But, as such, fear accounts for a great deal of the worst kind of misery in life; and love accounts for a special quality that is seen in the most faithful Christians - such as saints.


In my experience, fear can sabotage life when it is going well; and when there is some adversity, fear can make that (perhaps minor) adevrsity into something overwhelmingly significant, debilitating - fear can make adversity into depression.

In worldly terms there is no honest and satisfying answer to worry about the future; and no way in which that worry can be limited.

It is the nature of this mortal life that everything is uncertain, and all kinds of things might happen: and they really might happen. After all, terrible things have happening, and are happening to people all the time; plus, in a theoretical sense terrible things could happen to me (or those I love) at any time. Nobody can definitely reassure us that they will not.

External events may (by human motivations, or from natural disasters) overwhelm us. Our health is potentially fragile, this debility, pain or lesion may never get better, may get worse, may cripple or kill us...


Once fear gets hold; any apparently small life event (and there are always plenty) may become amplified to a grinding, persistent, increasing obsession; and life here and now be ruined by fear of what may happen; because nobody can say for sure that it cannot happen. 

The only solution to this is love of God, and specifically love of the Christian God; who is the creator, who is our Father, and loves each person. The implication is that a God who is creator can order life and a God who is a loving Father can order life such that it will be for the ultimate benefit of each and every person. 

My faith and trust in, love of, such a God is the only solution to free-floating fear; because it is rational. It is rational to assume that whatever happens to us in life will be for some good reason, and that our primary job is to to respond properly to whatever happens, to learn from whatever happens.


Yet this is not fatalism, because for Christians each of us is an 'agent', is a 'Son of God' with 'free will' - that is we all are a temporary-mini-god; so despite that our job is to respond and learn, we are not passive victims of life, we are not merely acted-upon by life.

Instead, our situation is one in which the situations of our own personal lives are a consequence, a product, of God's evolving creation interacting with our own genuine creativity; our capacity to have a personal motivation and to initiate new thoughts and actions.

God is the one source of creation that makes the arena, and each of us are point-sources of creativity within that arena.   


What will happen is not predictable - but whatever does happen, God will be working (behind the scenes) to enable each of us to make the best of it; whether that best is sooner or later, during our mortal life or afterwards.

The confidence that this is true is faith-in, and love-of, God; and when faith and love are perfect - then trust in the future is perfect; and there is no fear.

The greatest saints therefore do not fear, and when we are (temporarily) in that saintly state of faith and love: neither do we.


But with most of us, we have not yet learned what the saints know; therefore our lives include serial, sometimes cumulative, challenges to our faith and love of God.

Something bad happens, or else we begin to be concerned that something bad might happen; and we respond with fear...

And it is by overcoming this fear with faith-in and love-of God - again and again, with different challenges - that we are learning how we need to be if we are to to make our personal choice in favour of the gift that Jesus Christ offers us: resurrected life in Heaven.

I find the "manosphere" - including the "Christian" sub-type - always and increasingly wrong-headed - and indeed harmful. 

So I thought I'd add my two-penn'orth in a way that is intended to be a negative corrective to some of the most blatantly false attitudes and aims. 

(I do not feel it would be right - would indeed be absurd! - for me to offer positive advice of a "what to do" kind; and indeed that would be counter-productive to the desired attitudes and aims.)

This is from a broadly Romantic Christian perspective (implicit in everything that follows) - which means it is rooted in my own intuition and experience for which I take personal responsibility; which implies that I will not "defend" my convictions, nor argue with those who disagree - because public "facts" and "evidence" depend on prior assumptions; and all logic and reason can do is infer the consequences of assumptions. 

One assumption, behind all this, ought not to need stating to Christians - but, of course, does (we are all sinners); and this is that Love is By Far the most important thing in marriage; as it is in this mortal life and in Heaven. 

(And Love is dyadic - as I have recently tried to explain.) 

If Love is not the underpinning of marriage, then we will be dealing with a public institution; and that means - in The West, now - marriage will be subject to a System that is evil overall and by intent. 

(Context: There are no guarantees in this mortal life; and your life is probably not "about" what you currently suppose it is about. We live in a divine creation - therefore (over the timescale of mortality - which is seldom in the immediate short-term) probabilities are not relevant to those fundamental matters crucial to the real purpose of your life; I mean, concerning matters where God would be expected to "intervene". In short; God will make happen what needs to happen.) 

Courtship begins with adolescence, and - as of this time and place - we all start-out from an adolescence characterized by intense self-consciousness and alienated consciousness: a situation of bad faith, hypocrisy and fantasy. 

We are hyper-aware of our-selves - but that "self" is compounded largely of fantasy (what we think we would like to be, what we want other people to be like). It is very seldom our real or true "primal self" indeed it is often an opposition or even inversion of that real self. 

We need to learn from this original situation, and work towards something better; which is:

Making our public persona a genuine manifestation of our real self. 

The other characteristic of modern adolescence, is also a consequence of our alienation. This is our conscious experience of being cut-off from spontaneous participation in the consciousness of other people; which means we tend to experience others (including women) in an un-real fashion - rather like characters in a novel, movie or play. 

Too often; because our the standard modern set-up of consciousness and culture: we engage our own fantasies our our-selves, with other-people's own fantasies of themselves (including women); and this must be overcome as much as possible. 

Furthermore; the above leads to the familiar situation in which relationships are reduced to a hypocritical war of attempted manipulations. 

(e.g. We attempt to project our fantasy persona (of what we think we want to be like) to manipulate a woman who may be doing the same: the "winner" is the one who succeeds in fooling the other into accepting the projected persona, and thereby successfully manipulating him or her. Meanwhile, the primal self is cut out-of-the-loop altogether.) 

For a Christian to accept that adolescent and alienated situation and work with it, rather than against it - and to claim this as Christian; is in bad faith - as well as hypocritical, dishonest, psychopathic (i.e objectivizing others and attempting to use them for gratification). 

It also prevents us learning from the experience of our actual situation in this mortal life. 

More explicitly, a marriage built on projection and manipulations is a marriage based on a lie. Furthermore, the lie intrinsic to a projected persona will tend to attract a woman who is attracted to that persona - which is not our real self: any resulting marriage will probably be rooted in dishonesty and deception.  

One very small positive suggestion to round-off: if you succeed in making your public persona a genuine manifestation of your primal self; then a woman (and you are only seeking one woman, a single wife) who is attracted to marry you on that basis (or something near to it, tending towards it) - will be more likely to love you for your real nature. 

If you hope for that marriage to be strong, lasting, loving - a basis in truth is surely for the best?

Note: To any new readers; check-out the guide to would-be commenters in the sidebar. 

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Much of modern life is predicated on the assumption that it is possible, indeed usual, to do good things for bad reasons; that motivations are detachable from actions.

And, of course, in a short term and restricted sense the two are indeed separable.

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For example, it is routinely assumed that health services, environmental preservation, feeding the malnourished... these kinds of things are assumed to be good in themselves, and worth doing without respect to motivation - most people would assert that it is more important that such things actually be done, than it is to focus on the motivations for doing them.

Because of this assumption that action and motivation are separable, we get government agencies that supposedly "do good" funded by coercive confiscation of resources; and also NGOs, charities, voluntary groups who are devoted to these 'good works' without reference to any motivation for these good works - or at least this is their official stance...

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Modernity is about the specialization of works, in detachment from faith.

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In practice, what is found is that individuals or groups which purport to do good works without motivation soon end up not doing good work at all - but being selfish (at many levels) while gaming a set of rules.

What is found is that, over the medium- to long-term, faith determines works.

And lack of faith generates indifference to the actual outcomes of works. 

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Government agencies or charities set-up without faith and purportedly to alleviate poverty/ protect the environment/ pursue 'justice' without regard to larger motivation; instead create and sustain poverty/ destroy the environment/ implement systematic injustice while consuming their allocated resources in selfishness.

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In practice, the necessity, the inevitability, of motivation means that it cannot be dispensed with - either by individuals or by groups - but faith either returns by another route, or else lack of faith generates an indifference to the actuality of works.

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For a couple of years back in 2010-11, I was deeply immersed in Eastern Orthodox Christianity (as can be seen from this blog, at that time) - and I was especially interested by that tradition's embrace of mysticism and spiritual experience; how this 'worked' and how they dealt with the problems. 

The US lay-monk Seraphim Rose (later a priest-monk) wrote on this topic with what seemed like great insight and a full acknowledgement of modern conditions. 

What I derived from this; was that the ascetic monks and hermits of the EO tradition (including the millennium before the Great Schism division of the Catholic church; which was caused by divergence of the Western Latin tradition - especially the emerging influence of philosophical theology) were indeed actively seeking a direct and personal relationship with the divine and with spiritual Beings - with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, Mary the mother of God, angels, and saints - dead and living.  

This active seeking of mystical spiritual experience was pursued by very extreme measures! Including extreme asceticism (lack of food, extremes of heat or cold, immobility,) and heroic vigils (staying awake praying for many hours, sometimes is adverse conditions), and by prolonged meditation including solitude for extended periods - sometimes years. 

The EO tradition is, however, very aware of the problem of achieving spiritual experiences that are demonic rather than with representatives of God. 

This is often represented as demonic attack, or sometimes of succumbing to temptations such as spiritual pride, or being deceived. Some of the greatest of Saints are represented as susceptible - for example it seems that England's greatest Saint - Cuthbert - was assailed (i.e. badly tempted) by demons when he went into solitude on the island of Inner Farne, off the coast of Northumberland. 

Seraphim Rose also explained that there was no valid method or system by which angels and demons could be distinguished reliably, because demons were capable of impersonating angels convincingly; and because the mystic's own evaluations were affected by his own (inevitable, because human) sinful impulses. 

According to SR; over many centuries, the best method for protecting mystics from demonic temptations was a Spiritual Father who had himself known and overcome such temptations, and who might reasonably be assumed to be wholly dedicated to the spiritual good of his spiritual sons and daughters. There was (especially, and in the end, only) in Russia an unbroken lineage of Spiritual Fathers in the premier monasteries, that ensured the overall and across-time integrity of the Russian Orthodox tradition. 

But this lineage was broken, permanently, with the Russian Revolution of 1917; and the subsequent murder of the Tsar and his family, and (essentially) all of the true-hearted Bishops, Abbots and holy monks - except those who escaped overseas and were dispersed in non-Orthodox nations (and they left no heirs of their stature). 

What I got from this was that direct mystical spiritual-contact was essential to Eastern Orthodoxy over many, many centuries; therefore it was worth taking the risks of being deceived by demons - even though there was no really reliable method of ensuring that some aspirants were not deceived. 

There could be, and was, pre-selection of those monks who were best motivated - before they were allowed to become extreme ascetics, or hermits. But this was no guarantee, since all Men are sinful, hence susceptible, to some extent. 

And even the best supervision by Holy Fathers did not reach into the 'desert' conditions of the hermits, which may last for years - e.g. there was nobody to supervise St Cuthbert in the harsh solitude of Inner Farne.  

But the background to all this implicitly seems to have been that personal contact between Men and spiritual Beings, and God; was so vital that risks must be taken. 

Eastern Orthodoxy works in a society in which there is a communal spirituality, such that individuals are immersed in the group mind of the people; such that the Tsar really can represent his people in relation to God; and monks really can be intermediaries between the divine and the mass of lay-people. 

But modern Western consciousness excludes this possibility; and therefore we are confronted by a choice between - on the one hand - personally taking the same kind of risks that the Eastern Orthodox monks used to take - but without the possibility of valid human supervision (because the churches are all net-corrupted, and Men of the spiritual stature of past Holy Fathers are not to be found - Seraphim Rose was very definite about that). 

And - on the other hand - practicing a second-hand faith. 

Practicing, that is, a Christianity that has lost its beating heart of contact with the divine, angels, and good-spirits of other kinds; a Christianity of mere scholarship... A Christian faith that is about being a Christian - got from books and other-people, following rules and rituals, doing set tasks, and expressing certain formulae of words - rather than actually being a Christian.

That mainstream modern Christianity is merely second-hand and not a real faith and therefore weak and easily (eagerly!) corruptible, was made obvious in 2020 - if it was not already so. 

The problem is that being a second-hand Christian, is another way of Not being a Christian.  

That is why a second-hand Christianity that engages in spiritual scaremongering, and eschews or proscribes direct and personal spiritual contacts with God, Jesus Christ and the wide range of divine and good spiritual Beings - is a weak, fake Christianity - because it is spiritually dead. 

Therefore, the only way actually to be a Christian is to take the risks of being deceived. 

And to have faith that anyone who is genuinely motivated to God and Jesus Christ will be able to receive the necessary divine corrections, when things go wrong. 

(When, not if, things go wrong.)

Now that traditions of Spiritual discipleship are broken, and now that Men have no good churches upon which faith can be pinned; and when our consciousness has become individual and agentic, rather than being immersed in a group (so that Christians must take personal responsibility)... 

We can be sure - 100% confident - that God our Heavenly Father and the Creator - has ensured that every single person is, nonetheless,able to get the experiences and guidance he needs for attaining salvation and spiritual development. 

If individual spiritual knowledge and mystical experience are indeed a necessary part of being a Christian, as was believed by the Eastern Orthodox for nearly 2000 years - then we can be sure and confident that this has been made possible. 

Possible for me, and for you. So; if you do not already know this by experience, than it is time you found out (that is; if you desire to be and remain Christian). 

To summarize: There is no safe way to be a Christian; therefore the danger of spiritual scaremongering is considerable, and safety-first-ism must be rejected - since the sanction for yielding to spiritual scaremongering is to become first a second-hand Christian, then (because that is so feeble and easily corruptible) not-at-all. 

One who rejects personal discernment and responsibility and seeks safety in external institutions and rules - will simply not be a Christian before very long, will be led by the nose away from Jesus Christ. 

Remember: This is (here-and-now) a world where all major institutions (national and global - including the churches) are under overall-demonic control.

Demons want all religion to be mediated by human institutions, because demons can control institutions.

Surely that is obvious? 

Thus; all Christians need direct spiritual contact with - and guidance from - the divine and all possible Beings of Good; and must therefore take courage, take the risks - in a spirit of trial-and-error; while being always open to correction by "divine-feedback" (which will me made available): and ready for repentance. 

Note added: I suppose I should say again what I have already stated so many times: which is that I think the current situation is that many (most? all?) real Christians have actually already started doing exactly what I recommend - have used personal discernment and taken personal responsibility for their Christian faith, including their choice of denomination and church, and which "authorities" to follow in that particular church. But... Because this has been unconscious, hidden from their own awareness; they have not acknowledged explicitly to themselves that this is what they have actually done -- and instead they pretend/ assert that their choices were actually compelled by "evidence", "reason", "logic" or some such external and supposedly-objective source (for which they, personally, eschew responsibility for choosing; claiming necessity). These are living in a situation of Bad Faith by denial of what is true. Since such a situation is fundamentally incoherent; therefore their Christianity is weak - and readily corrupted or diverted. I suspect that something of this kind is responsible for the incremental loss of once-real Christians, year by year, as they fail one or another Litmus Test; become this-worldly in their primary orientation and aspirations; or fall into an externally-controlled form of second-hand Christianity that presages de facto exit from the faith. 

Courage is a virtue, indeed - as CS Lewis said - it is "the form of every virtue at the testing point". In other words, unless the other virtues are sustained by courage, they will be discarded whenever inexpedient. 

The evil-twin vice mimicking courage is recklessness; which is act inexpediently because you don't understand that it is inexpedient. 

A reckless person might therefore endanger himself be falsely believes himself invulnerable ("it's not really dangerous", "it couldn't happen to me!") or because he wrongly regards the adverse outcome as trivial ("getting shot isn't that bad.").  

Courage, on the other hand, is when the inexpedient is done despite the understanding that it is inexpedient - but done anyway for reasons that go above or beyond expediency. 

This is why there is so little courage nowadays - simply because very few people are strongly motivated by reasons 'above and beyond'. 

For Christians, who do have reasons above and beyond; the source of courage is easy to state, but harder to do: It is simply to live by Faith and in Hope.

Faith is that God - who is the creator and sustainer of this world, and our loving Father - will always be-arranging-things for our ultimate spiritual benefit. 

No matter what evils are practiced by Men or demons; God will turn that real evil to the possibility of ultimate and eventual Good. 

And for each of us, as specific individuals. 

Hope is based-on knowledge that beyond this finite mortal life, there is the possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven; and that is available to any and all who choose to follow Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, for a follower of Christ, the worst that can happen in this mortal life will pass and be succeeded by something far better and forever. 

Thus Faith and Hope underpin courage, and are the antidote to fear. 

(And also the antidote to that lethal sin: despair.)

Furthermore; Faith and Hope themselves feed-into the affairs of this mortal life via the courage they sustain, and the virtues they enable. Precisely because rooted in the next world; Faith and Hope will materially benefit life in this world, and give the best chance of good outcomes - no matter how bad things may get.  

While the situation of Christianity in The West is dire, whichever way you look at it, there are places in Africa, Asia (especially China) and in some Arabian countries where Christianity is growing fast and Christians are active, devout, energetic - to the point that the numerical decline of The West is approximately balanced by expansion elsewhere.

It is a bad habit of Christians (under tough questioning and the stress of pervasive modern evil) when it gets down to specifics; to take refuge in soothing abstractions and professions of ignorance. 

It is a habit that is pretty obvious to atheists (of whom I was one until 2008), and which certainly looks like evasiveness and manipulation.

It is actually worse than that - because for too-many Christians the tough questions are, even At Root, unsure and imprecise, and for unclear reasons - so that their understanding gets fuzzier and weaker the closer they get to fundamentals. 

This is no basis for a tough and real Christian faith. 

For instance - Heaven. Christianity is 'all about' going to Heaven after we die biologically; so you would assume that Christians could answer straightforward and basic questions such as: 'What is Heaven like?' 

After all, how could anyone know that he wanted to dwell in Heaven forever, unless he had a pretty clear idea of what Heaven was like? 

Who is in Heaven - what kinds of people? How is Heaven 'organized'? And what kinds of thing do resurrected people actually Do in Heaven, on a day to day basis? 

What we want and need are simple, concrete, but general answers that avoid incomprehensible abstraction and eschew evasions. Answers that explain clearly what detail is knowable and why, and what is not knowable and why. 

But Christians are much too eager to open the escape hatches, and avoid the embarrassment of properly-answering such questions (or avoid revealing, and to themselves, their own ignorance) by stating that Heaven is beyond human comprehension and too great to be expressible; or to reach for vast, soaring but uninformative abstractions about light, space, oneness, communion...

Or to take refuge in 'negative theology' by saying what Heaven is Not: such as Not angels with wings playing harps and singing hymns to old man with a beard on a golden throne... 

Yet none of this is helpful in answering the question. 

Another example concerns the two big criticisms of Christianity: the problems of free will and evil. 

The problem that if God created everything from nothing and is omnipotent, then ultimately God is and does everything; so there is no space for free will, and God is responsible for all evil as well as all good. 

Christians know that it is essential for their faith to include free will, or else nobody could choose to follow Christ; nor could evil originate from anywhere except God. But they also regard it as essential to state that God created every-thing and is omnipotent. 

If, after 2000 years, Christians still can't explain clearly (without soothing abstractions and squirming evasions) how evil happens in a good world made by one good God; or how a God that supposedly controls everything allows the most extreme evils; then this is a pretty damning indictment. 

Faced with stark contradiction, Christians often seem perceptibly uncomfortable (squirming) - and 'explain' by reaching for abstraction. Yet abstraction is usually trying to answer an easy question by introducing a difficult (perhaps impossible) answer. 

How can we suppose that we have answered a simple and honest question by pointing-at something so difficult to comprehend that it requires further and more-difficult explanation?

The psychological effect is that the answer is not given into order to clarify understanding, but with the effect of obscuring the problem by soothing it away... 

There are several of these soothing abstractions given prominence in Christianity - such as the orthodox, mainstream doctrines of the Holy Trinity.

The tough question is that if Christians claim that there is one God, how can Jesus also be fully divine? Surely that is at least two Gods? And then, what about the Holy Ghost?...

And if Jesus is God, how can he be a Man? If he is a Man, how can he be God? Such obvious questions arose very early in the history of Christianity. 

The 'answer' is a bunch of soothing abstractions or incantations, with the actual effect of hypnotizing the problem away - by restating the problem as a mystery of three in one, and one in three etc. This is an explanation that is not an explanation at all - it is to answer an easy question with an impossibly difficult answer. 

Yet, after 2000 years, this is become a creedal matter, a necessary article of faith; something that is supposed to have been a decisive and final clarification of a problem so obvious a child can see it.

There is a sense that Christians hope that the problem will go-away if they declare it solved - and for many centuries this was actually true. Christianity held-together, despite the feeble answers...

But it is not true now.   

So, most Christians (for 2000 years) have done this kind of thing all the time - resorting to abstraction and ignorance - and about some of the most fundamental matters of faith.

And this is another deep and debilitating weakness of Christianity - which I am sure has contributed to the catastrophic collapse of the past 18 months (i.e. the worst and most rapid reversal of institutional Christianity since its foundation - and if you have not noticed this, then you are in deep trouble).

It has become very obvious that most 'Christians' do not believe what they say they believe; and have actually abandoned their faith...

By contrast, these same 'Christians' are utterly credulous-of, slavishly obedient-to and defensive-concerning... whatever latest lying garbage is being spouted by government officials, advertisers and the mass media. 

But Christianity is true and real, and there are clear and simple answers to all the tough and simple questions. 

But none of the churches will tell you this - and certainly no other institutions will do so. 

Indeed you will need to work the answers out for your-self - because why should you - how should you - trust anybody else in such times?

In such a situation, old style Christian evangelism - pushing the same old abstractions and evasions - is pitiful; and apparently counter-productive with most people.

In these end times; conversion is a matter of sorting things out for yourself and by yourself to attain answers that satisfy yourself. 

All we can realistically do is provide an example of whatever sort can be managed; and encourage others really to think - for and from them-selves. 

And if you get it wrong, you will soon know; because your un-rooted faith will be swept-away like a bubble in the burgeoning torrent of lies and manipulations; and you will be gathered-into the thundering main-stream, heading down the steepening slope towards Hell.

But if you get it right, you will be separated and poised calmly amidst the maelstrom; realities will glow out from among the filth and be drawn to you (and you to them)... You will inwardly be sustained, energized and en-couraged. 

When you have answered the vital questions to your tested-satisfaction; you can navigate irresistibly through this bedeviled world. 

You can navigate towards a Heaven that you already understand well-enough to desire; eternally to participate in divine creative work that you yearn to join-with; following a Jesus whom you know sufficiently to love.

In her Introduction to The Image of the City, a collection of essays by Charles Williams, Anne Ridler states that 'At the centre of Williams's teaching lies this dogma, that the whole universe is to be known as good.'

She then goes on to describe how Williams lived in a state of underlying misery - that he said he would have declined the gift of life, if offered; that he had a death-wish, that he did not hope for eternal life but would prefer everlasting unconsciousness, that the world lived in a web of distress, that the life of young people was hell... and so on,

The question is how Charles Williams went from a core conviction that everything is good, to a life of such total distress.

I think the answer is quite simple, which is that Charles Williams really believed, really lived by, the idea that reality was outside time, that all times were simultaneous - that what applied now applied forevermore. He was a profound Platonist - in believing that time, change, decay and corruption were superficial - the reality was time-less, unchanging.

Many, many Christians have said such things throughout history - but few have really believed them: Charles Williams was one of the few - and he was intelligent enough to find the implications inescapable and deeply contradictory.

If Life is good - and this is Life - and real Life is eternally itself... then this must also be good - and it seems terrible.

In my understanding, Charles Williams was a victim of the poison of what might be termed Classical Metaphysics in Christianity: the kind which says that life IS good - always has been and always will be. Most people are too emotionally shallow or too lacking in philosophical rigour to feel what Charles Williams felt as the implications of mainstream, standard, Christian theology.

Williams could never find reassurance, or relief from this state; because he was correct - the implications flowed from the assumptions; and the implications were tragic. The life and resurrection of Christ was, by this account, tragic - as revealed in Williams's most heart-felt essay The Cross where he concludes that the thing, the only thing, which makes the underlying reality of a good universe to be bearable, is that God also and voluntarily submitted to its justice and suffered its agonies when he became Christ.

If that is not despair - it is a mere - unconvincing - whisker away.

And how often, how usual, has been this tragic interpretation of Christianity the prevailing emotion among the deepest thinkers?

And what a contrast this has been to the un-philosophical and optimistic 'Christianity' of Christ himself, of countless 'simple' Christians, and the 'good news' of the gospels.

The difference is, I think, quite simple - and it is related to time. The simple, commonsense Christian - the non-Platonist, the non-philosopher - naturally regards Christianity as being about a future state of good - not an eternal good, in which all times are and will be equal.

So 'simple' Christianity is about God as an aim, not about good as an actuality; and Christian hope has been based on faith that the state of good will happen, not that good has already happened.

Sophisticated Christian theology superficially seems to be positive and optimistic in its claims of Heaven being here-and-now-and-always because of the un-reality of time - but its philosophical implications are dark, miserable and pessimistic (and difficult/ impossible to square with the good news of Christ) - in that ultimately things can never be better than now. And if, as is the case, we cannot see this now, then there is no reason to assume things can ever become better.

This is a false distortion of the plain Christian message of hope based on the optimistic conviction that time is real. Because time is real - that is linear, sequential; things that seem bad now may really be bad (we don't need to assume that bad-seeming is 'in reality' good), but bad things really can get better than they are now, and the Christian faith is that we know by revelation  that things really will get better.

In sum, Charles Williams is a better, a more rigorous, a more honest philosopher than most Christian theologians - and he lived and experienced the consequences of his theology. Since these consequences were so dark and despairing, the life of Charles Williams in relation to his theology makes a reductio ad absurdum of Classical Theology: i.e. the consequences of Classical Theology demonstrate its erroneous assumptions.

The advice never to resign, never to apologise is good advice - but the reason for it is misunderstood.

The reason is not because then things will work-out better - that is not knowable, outcomes are not controllable.

Part of the reason is that resigning and apologising is exactly what 'they' want you to do - and that fact, in and of itself, ought to be sufficient evidence that resigning and apologising are a bad idea.

*

However that resignation and apology are what is wanted leads onto the question of exactly 'why' the secular Leftists - i.e. the mainstream socio-political Establishment of all 'parties' - so much want their victims to resign and apologise?

The answer is related to the underlying objective of the Establishment - which is to lead the world (first The West, then everybody else) into self-loathing, despair, implicit suicide, and ultimately chosen damnation.

(Our situation is one of spiritual warfare.)

*

Given that PC witch-hunts are primarily directed against those who tell the truth - resignation and apology means that the victim publicly repents his Good action.

To do something Good, and then to repent it - is actually worse than doing nothing; because it teaches (with the explicit endorsement of the victim) the public lesson that Good is actually evil.

Un-repented evil is, of course, the main weapon of the secular Left (by moral inversion they re-label evil as good, ugliness as beauty, and lies as truth) - but repented-Good is even more powerful a weapon of corruption than un-repented-evil.

*

This is also why most PC witch-hunts are directed against those of 'liberal' views, especially those who broadly favour the sexual revolution - rather than against those who have strong and primary religious convictions.

The witch-hunting Leftists know that other Leftists can be relied-upon swiftly to cave and capitulate.

This is because secular Leftist/ sexual revolutionaries/ 'liberals' (whether or not they term themselves socialist, democrat, conservative, republican, libertarian or alt-right) are all very weakly motivated when it comes to moral principles.

Secular principles are essentially expedient, this-worldly, and orientated towards hedonic goals: the enhancement of pleasure and minimisation of suffering in life. Such people can easily and quickly be pressurised into 'selling-out' - by simply piling-up the threat of disincentives.

*

So - when the chips are down (as opposed to their theoretical boasts or even sincere intentions) the secular/ liberal/ leftist/ sexual revolutionaries among victims of PC witch-hunts have almost all, and rapidly, capitulated - and done exactly what was wanted of them: resigned and apologised.

They may talk tough before the fact, they may say they won't capitulate - but, in fact, they do.

*

It is pretty much only those of strong religious faith who ever stand firm and refuse to apologise or resign; and this is simply because real religious motivations are much, much more powerful than secular motivations.

This is just a fact of human nature - known for centuries (or millennia).

*

And this is why a secular backlash against secular Leftism will not be effective. Any potential leaders will be picked-off sequentially, as and when they threaten to challenge the core agenda.   

When things get tough - people who have rejected the divine will not hold the line, and they will capitulate.

Which is why there must be a spiritual awakening, a religious revival: nothing else can work.

 **

Of course, real religious faith cannot be had merely because it gives strength of motivation - rather, strength of motivation is - or can be - a consequence of real religious faith. Strong faith is based upon knowledge of truth; and not on any kind of expediency or hoped-for this-world consequence.

Over the years I have been asked - sometimes in comments, sometimes in personal e-mails - whether Christians should be having spiritual experiences; these forming the most solid basis of their faith?

I have been asked this question especially by those who do not have such experiences - on the lines of: 'Is there something defective about my Christian faith that I personally don't ever get spiritual experiences?'

The answer I would now give (as a generalisation) is that yes, modern, adult, Western Christians should be having spiritual experiences, and should base their Christian faith upon them. And that yes; anyone who does not have such experiences should indeed regard their faith as (to that extent) defective.

The reason is that the ability to have spiritual experiences in a Christian context has become necessary here-and-now; and it is the lack of such experiences - or the denial or explaining-away of such experiences as false or trivial - that is the root of Christian weakness and the problem of materialism/ positivism/ scientism/ reductionism - the Ahrimanic totalitarian bureaucracy and Leftism.

It is that important.

Spiritual experience has become vital for Christians in this modern context and era - which is why I believe that Romantic Christianity is now (it was not always) our destined way forward (via Final Participation)  to Life Eternal; and that all other paths will lead elsewhere.

So I would argue that a Christian who has not had any spiritual experience, is not having spiritual experiences, should not rest content in that situation; but should examine his metaphysical assumptions, attitudes, behaviours etc - to try and discover what is blocking the spiritual experiences that would otherwise be happening. And then try to remove those blockages.

Or else, it may be he is indeed having spiritual experiences, but is failing to recognise or denying them. That too should be remedied. In this modern era our task (as adults) is to become conscious of the spiritual realm - and the spiritual realm must be freely chosen.

Thus we should neither want nor expect to be overwhelmed by irresistible spiritual experiences, since that would be bad for us - we should want and expect to know them, and choose them. 

This will be (as usual) a very personal and distinctive matter - each must discover for himself - and only you can discover for yourself (nobody else can do it for you). Furthermore, because we live in a pervasively materialist world, there is a tendency passively to lose the ability to connect with the  spiritual realm: for spiritual experiences to become less frequent, less intense, to cease... This should be regarded as a sign of spiritual malaise.

In sum, it is no longer sufficient for a Christian to be passive and unconscious; no longer sufficient to follow external guidance, no longer sufficient to suppose that following rituals and adhering to morality is sufficient.

These are insufficient because a person who tries to be that kind of Christian will not remain any kind of Christian at all (except verbally), but will join the mass materialist apostasy - even when they self-identify as Christians. They will not choose Heaven.

Here-and-now the only secure Christians are those with direct personal conscious experience and knowledge of Jesus Christ and his offer of Life Everlasting. And if Jesus is then chosen and Heaven made our first priority, then that is indeed sufficient.

Totalitarianism is the attempt to control thinking.

The usual excuse is that this is the best or most effective way of controlling behaviour; but in the end that is just an excuse - and the real and strategic motivation is to control thinking because that is what is wanted.

Totalitarianism has nothing necessarily to do with violence (as Aldous Huxley perceived in his Brave New World of 1932 - and to equate totalitarianism with violence was an error by Orwell). For totalitarianism 'whatever works' is the guide.

Thus we now, in the West, live in a highly totalitarian society, in which most people's thoughts are controlled most of the time - by a combination of indoctrination during childhood and youth, the unified-linked bureaucracy of the government and the workplace, the mass media and its addictiveness, and a legal system which explicitly includes thought crimes (what else are 'hate crimes'?).

There is a combination of filling people's minds with approved thoughts, and excluding disapproved thoughts (by direct exclusion, and by simply driving them out with stimuli, noise, and the prevention of detached solitude).

There is very little concern about this state of affairs - and indeed it seems that many or most people positively approve of totalitarianism so long as it is 'in a good cause' - thus our current secular Left totalitarianism is okay because people agree with its goals; and indeed most people apparently want ever-more totalitarianism so that their goals may become realised.

So why is it bad to control peoples thoughts, if the cause is good behaviour?

Well, totalitarianism isn't bad for atheists and secular people generally, which is why our society is as it is; since the aim is merely 'good behaviour' in pursuit of goals like comfort, peace, prosperity and amusement.  

In practice (and ignoring empty words), all non-religious people approve of totalitarianism.

Also totalitarianism isn't bad for most religious people in most religions - which is why there have been many religious totalitarian societies that regard thought-control as a legitimate means to religious ends. (They were usually limited by their technology, and the degree of support; but the totalitarian aim of thought-control was explicit.)

Totalitarianism is only really 'a bad thing', an evil, for those Christians who view motivation as primary; who regard freedom or agency as central to salvation and theosis - such that only a truly free, creative, and divine decision of our truest and deepest selves is valued by God; and our actual behaviour is secondary, and indeed (since behaviour may be coerced) almost orthogonal to the divine purpose.   

Any system of any kind (whether political, in the workplace, the church or the family), of any aim, that tries to control thought, or to prevent agency - any system which tries wholly to occupy the mind - is therefore evil to this kind of Christian.

This kind of Christian - the kind that regards agency as non-negotiable and central to the faith - would regard any and all types of totalitarianism as evil; no matter how kind, how non-violent, how materially successful; and no matter how happy was the resulting society. After all; Huxley's Brave New World was almost certainly happier than any society of recent centuries.

If happiness is the number one priority; then totalitarianism is the likely means to that end and will sooner-or-later be embraced - and then (as now) the only genuine dispute relates to who is in charge of the totalitarian system.

And that question, in a nutshell, constitutes the entirety of modern mainstream politics.

Well, to be exact, it isn't always ineffective - indeed, conservative evangelical protestants are among very few denominations still winning converts among native European-descended people. But the numbers are small, and most Westerners are immune to their message.

Why? Because traditional Christian evangelism focuses on salvation - on saving-from Hell. (Note: All the following is true, and I endorse it...) Traditional evangelism focuses on sin, and the need for repentance from sin. It focuses on getting people to recognise their sins, acknowledging that sin really is sin; and on having faith in Jesus as Saviour - in understanding that faith in Jesus is both necessary and sufficient for salvation.

All of the above is true and necessary and absolutely-must be affirmed by all Christians - and yet it doesn't work.

It doesn't work because people don't believe God - consequently they don't believe in the reality and objectivity of sin, they don't believe in Heaven, so they don't believe in Hell... even worse, they prefer Hell to Heaven; because Heaven would entail giving-up some favourite (usually sexual, but maybe emotional) sin. It doesn't work because people don't feel the need to be-saved; and they are unimpressed/ uninterested by what they are being saved-for.

And it doesn't work because the primary suffering experience of modern people is alienation - of being cut-off from the world; of finding life (meaning this mortal life) meaningless and purposeless: of finding nothing really-real, and of being haunted by a conviction that life is merely a senseless and lonely spark in eternity.

To save someone from alienation is not like saving someone from the consequences of sin; saving from alienation requires, more than anything, a purpose for life. From that purpose can come meaning, and that purpose may also give meaning to relationships; and when that purpose extends beyond biological death then a great deal has been achieved.

Christianity as a faith has, so far, been bad at providing positive purpose. Instead, purpose has traditionally been provided not by the faith but by the church, by the human organisation. Yet most Christian churches are now corrupt, and indeed anti-Christian overall; and those which are not corrupt are small, scattered; and mostly incapable (through lack of persons and resources) of providing an 'alternative purposive life' for alienated moderns.

What is needed, then, is development of Christian doctrine that goes beyond salvation; moves directly from saving-from on to living-for; from the negative to the positive.

I think this means Christianity picking-up from the incomplete 'project' of Romanticism - as exemplified by Blake and Coleridge; of seeking to reconnect Man with a living nature, of recognising that God is within as well an an external person, of thinking much more about the nature of Heaven than the avoidance of Hell. And understanding Heaven as an active, dynamic, purposive world - a world of loving relationships united in divinely creative activity.

And recognising that this is something we can, and should, be doing here and now, on earth, during mortal life.

This is the Good News of Christianity for moderns; and ought to be the first point of contact and primary message. Salvation is absolutely-necessary; but it is a means and not the end. As it says in the Fourth Gospel  (John 20:31):

...these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.

Which makes clear that the ultimate purpose is 'life', which (through this Gospel) means the divine, Heavenly consciousness.

Even knowing this; not everybody will even want life everlasting, life more abundantly, the life of Sons of God - most of Jesus's audience rejected it, after all. But modern people ought to be clear, at least, the magnitude of what it is they are rejecting.

If they can first understand the nature and scope of what is positively 'on offer' - only then, and if they want it, they can then decide whether or not this offer is real and possible.

*

Would it be, is it, rational for the Right to oppose new measures simply because of their provenance - simply because the Left are so keen on them?

Experience says: Yes.  This is a reasonable, sensible, default position (pending further evaluation).

*

1. Current Leftist leadership is bureaucratic, therefore they make change (necessary or not, helpful or harmful); and therefore they are indifferent to the real world outcomes of change (because in bureaucratic systems the consequences of change are decided, not discovered).

Yet in complex systems there few ways to improve the system and many ways (an infinite number) to damage the system - so change as such is almost certain to be harmful, except when there is strong reason to assume it will be beneficial.

The default must be no change.

*

2.

In modern society, with its ultra-Left politically correct leadership; for a real Christian or indeed a mainstream conservative or libertarian almost all changes proposed or implemented are bad. Looking back, this has been so for some considerable time.

Therefore this change, under consideration now, will very likely be bad.

The default evaluation ought to be that any proposed change will be bad, even if it is presented as Good.

*

3. The Right and Left are entwined in a reciprocal relationship.

In deciding how best to damage Christianity and traditional society, the Left (which is concentrated in the mass media - that is the centre of its power) is continually floating ideas.

When an idea emerges that the Right can show to be almost-certainly damaging to those things which the Right values - then the Left will pick-up this idea and press it very hard indeed, with the full force of the modern mass media, sustained over many years.

(Mostly by singling-out, lying-about, mocking, demonizing, damaging and destroying anyone who stands against it - this reputational assault being sustained by the mass media over years and decades. The modern mass media is fickle and self contradicting about almost everything - except this matter of reputationally destroying its enemies - and sanctifying its [arbitrarily chosen] symbolic heroes.)

*

4. The reciprocity between Left and Right means that by the time the Left has chosen its big theme and is pressing for implementation of key policies - the process of evaluation of the effectiveness of this policy is well advanced: by the time the Left has decided on its Big Issue of the day - mass welfare, easy no-fault divorce, feminism, the environment, diversity, mass immigration, redefining marriage, whatever it may be - by this time the Left is sure that the chosen policy will inflict enormous and ramifying damage on its enemies.

And also, by this time, the counter-rational assumption of the necessity of (this) change has been established - the default rational assumption of no change has been inverted.

Such that anyone who opposes the Left's latest policy change - a change which has been carefully pre-selected for the likelihood that it will be the first step down a slippery slope, or the entry point into a cycle of positive feedback of socio-political damage - any opposition can by this time be plausibly presented as irrational, futile and weirdly radical.

*

In conclusion, the Right needs to be aware of the way it is manipulated.

The really big and really destructive changes to Western society have been introduced in a stereotypical fashion such that, by the time the policies are being proposed to cement and expand such changes, to make them official and legally enforceable; by this time to go along with the change seems easy and sensible, the change itself seems almost trivial, at least very small and probably reversible if it doesn't work out; there seems like a possibility (if not likelihood) that good consequences might, possibly, ensue (or, at least, good consequences cannot conclusively be ruled-out); while opposition is extremely difficult and feels very uncomfortable and indeed dangerous.

Also, by this time, given that the Leftist agenda is mostly media influenced, it can be difficult to find what seem like strong enough grounds for rational dissent.

*

Well, in practice, such grounds are not needed. When the Left is pushing something very hard, when there is a multi-system onslaught from the mass media, politics, law, civil administration, education... and yet the focus of this campaign seems almost trivial... then is the time for real Christians to get very worried indeed.

They don't need to know any more. Look at the provenance of proposed change. Who wants it - which organizations or people does it emanate from? What is their track record?

I don't mean who 'supports' the change - because by this advanced point in the introduction of major damaging policies all but the heroes and potential martyrs of faith will support the change, so 'everyone' 'supports' the change - I mean from where does the change emanate: who is driving the change? What kind of organizations and people are they, and what are the other things that that kind of people are driving? What is the socio-political package or agenda that they are promoting?

*

Politics is very simple - necessarily so.

There is no nuance in politics, no fine-tuning, only distracting quibbles.

The Big Issues are major forks in the road - most lead to destruction, a few towards salvation; but how do you know which Issues are Big?

You cannot always tell from analysis of the content - the Big Issues are usually disguised as trivialities until they are settled.

But, really,  it is very easy to spot them: a simple attitude of negativism will suffice as a default.

If they want it so much; then it must be bad.

* 

*

There is a real problem about goodness in secular modernity - a division between being good and doing good: between motivations and actions.

*

What people seek is to perform actions which are self-justifying, which are good in themselves - the justification is (hoped or asserted to be) in the form of the activity, the type of thing it is.

There are many such lists of approved behaviours - different between social groups.

But we also recognize, in our hearts, that 'works' are not justifying, that works are not good in themselves. That supposedly 'good works, can be done with bad motivations.

And that good works may have bad outcomes - or at least mixed outcomes with - apparently - bad predominating.

*

Motivations are important,and there is another current of modern thought which is all about intentions, being well-meaning, convincing oneself and others that we want good things.

And indeed insisting (trying to insist) that we are judged by our motivations not outcomes.

Yet we also recognise that this is - of itself - merely a form of self-gratification, of hedonism - feelings - feeling virtuous, feeling more virtuous than others, feeling virtuous despite doing nothing or doing things which are harmful.

Invulnerable self-righteousness...

*

Reality is not divided into motivations and actions, faith and works - reality is unified, to divide it is an act of violence, and there is loss - reality is not halved, but each fragment remaining is less than half - something having been destroyed by ripping them apart.

*

Instead of pride and hatred the motivation must be humility and love - but not submission to those who hate us, nor love as a species of wishful thinking.

*

In order to energize ourselves to do good actions, do good works, we use evil motivations - pride and hatred notably: we stoke-up our own pride, we allow ourselves to hate, indeed whip ourselves into hatred - and we justify this to ourselves by the idea that we will use this energy in a good cause.

This is mainstream.

We invite evil (and we know it to be evil) into our hearts and societies - with the excuse that we will harness the demonic forces for good: like hiring orcs as mercenaries and paying them with human flesh...

*

It is often claimed that Christianity is good for societies, and good for men - in the sense that societies are better places to live-in and Men are better behaved. 

But I was never much convinced by this; I cannot really see a qualitative change-for-the-better in history - dating from the time of Christ; nor in Men who become Christian. 

There seems to be evidence on both sides - and furthermore, it doesn't seem like the kind of claim where evidence should be relevant. Should we be basing our faith on our knowledge of 'history' and how we interpret it? 

I don't think so - and I don't find any ground of assumptions from-which Christians and non-Christians would be likely to agree on the objectivity of evaluations about better societies and better Men.  

After all, there are massively opposed views about how good a Man someone was. Was Winston Churchill the greatest ever Englishmen (he was voted number one in a national poll), or was he an incompetent fool, motivated by evil (as many have always argued)? 

And the same applies to societies. For example, there are plenty of people - apparently - who think that England in 2021 is overall a 'better' place than it ever has been - and is getting better. How can someone like me even begin to argue objectively with someone who reaches such an evaluation?

Anyway, when I read the Fourth Gospel ('John' - our primary text on Jesus's life and teaching) - I don't see any claim that Christianity makes people better; and the Gospel is unconcerned by the valuation of nations, empires. 

Christianity is about following Jesus to resurrected life eternal - and any relationship to changes in human behaviour is very indirect; indeed Jesus goes to considerable lengths to argue that good behaviour is Not the point; and that sinners can be saved by faith. 

To be clear; I believe that being a Christian can and should be of immense benefit to living life as it should be lived; indeed I regard it as essential for a proper understanding of life. 

Yet, I do not see any strong links between this and desirable-behaviour. 

However, while I doubt any general claim that Christianity is an effective means of intrinsically-beneficial psychological and social control; it does seem very obvious indeed that the loss of Christianity - apostasy in individuals or nations - is very bad for these things.  

So bad, in fact; that the capacity for recognizing and knowing badness is itself lost; and individuals, and societies, are set-adrift in a sea of incoherence which they cannot notice, therefore cannot escape-from.

People, societies, have lost values and the capacity for values. Therefore their values are arbitrary and externally-imposed; by others who have, themselves, at best lost values.

(But at worst - that is to say in reality by my judgment - a world where arbitrary values are imposed by those whose values are the inversion of Good.)   

At the deepest level, this is not really to do with the removal of religious constraints (as is usually argued); but is more more fundamental and dangerous a phenomenon. It is to do with the removal of faith; meaning those metaphysical assumptions that enable both coherence of thinking, and hope for life. 

When people really believe - believe so deeply that they are unaware of this belief - that they are adrift in a meaningless, purposeless world; where they themselves are just a temporary irrelevance --- then we get the kind of objectively-dysfunctional people and societies we see all around us. 

And that is Not 'a matter of opinion'; but a truth - a truth for those who are capable of coherence.