Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Life is impossible to get right. We are weak, we are wicked, we err.

But, fortunately, life is not brittle - it is not all or nothing, it is not a matter of either perfection or damnation...

because of repentance.

To repent in the name of Christ (because unless repentance is by Christ then it is just psychology) is to transform the basis of life.

Therefore our own sins are not fatal in an ultimate sense - so long as they are repented.

And therefore the worst of sins is to encourage sin in others - because while we are responsible for our own repentance or lack of it - others may not repent the sins we have encouraged in them.

More exactly, the worst sin is to propagate a 'world view' which denies the necessity of repentance for what really are sins.

This worst sin has various forms: advocating sin - depicting sin as fun or cool; advocating inversion of the Good - depicting Good as evil, and evil as the real Good; denying the reality of the distinction between Good and evil - between creation and destruction; between Love and hate;

...and inducing despair: to induce despair in another person is indeed a terrible sin - because despair is loss of hope, and loss of hope prevents repentance (since despair tells us there is 'no point' in repenting).

Thus to advocate nihilism, the deny the reality of the real, to argue that life is nothing-but, that the bottom-line is meaningless, that purpose is illusory, that we are on-our-own... these are among the worst of sins.

To feel this way oneself is NOT such a bad thing, normal 'everyday sin'. To feel nihilism is just part of the human condition - something we may 'sincerely' feel, but which we can choose to repent in a trice.

But to advocate nihilism, deliberately to induce despair, to persuade another person to become a nihilist... well, that is a terrible sin, a sin of the utmost gravity.

Understanding that the worst sin is to propagate sin is to understand that the modern world is the worst society ever in the history of the world; and that the focus of evil activity is the Mass Media, and those who operate within it to propagate sin in all the ways previously described - and in particular, by direct and indirect means, tactically and strategically, carelessly and deliberately: to induce despair.

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Pride is the primary and worst of Christian sins, therefore we tend to guard against Pride but also tend to be ready to diagnose it in others.

Indeed, it is much easier to perceive Pride in others than in oneself - and this is often a major blind-spot.

(Hence Jesus's parable of the mote and the beam in the eye, in the New Testament).

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But Despair (i.e. hope-less-ness - therefore denial of the Truth of the Christian Good News) is also a 'major sin' - and it may be that Despair is the most characteristic modern sin.

Certainly, modern society looks most like a society in which people are frantically trying to stave-off Despair by sensation-seeking, powerful stimuli such as sex, distraction, intoxication...

But, unlike Pride, and in this respect the opposite of Pride, it is easier to discern Despair in onself than in other people.

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So the basic situation is that we tend to over-diagnose Pride and under diagnose Despair in other people.

Yet for me personally, I know that the fight against Despair has been a very big thing in my life; and I also know that this has been the case for several of the people whose biographies I have read most deeply: for example the Inkling Charles Williams.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/light-on-very-strange-personality.html

Another example would be the philosopher Wittgenstein.

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My point is that what primarily motivates a person, and perhaps leads to their obvious sinfulness, their errors - may be Despair and the fight against Despair - rather than Pride-full-ness.

And when this is the truth of the situation, it is likely that there will be a profound misunderstanding.

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A person prone to Despair may be in a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment struggle to keep-going, keep-motivated; and may seek stimulus and distraction like a drug addict seeks a fix - and this will lead him into all manner of sins and wickedness - and then to compound the sin by defending and justifying his actions.

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Yet, seeing the sins and wickedness, another person might well ascribe them to Pride - indeed is more likely to ascribe them to Pride; but they would be wrong.

And the Despairing man may conceal the root of his behaviour, since Despair is a feeble and weak thing - and anyway, if he does admit to his Despair, he will very likely be ignored or disbelieved; or else Despair will not be given the primary role which in fact it has in his Life.

Because those who are not so prone to Despair simply cannot understand or believe its primary and shaping role in some lives.

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I recognize marriage and family as the only potentially effective antidote to Despair - yet utterly precarious in this mortal world; and I believe that that this fact has not merely personal but cosmic significance. Charles Williams knew that only his wife, his marriage, could shield him from Despair - Wittgenstein (as a mostly-celibate homosexual) tragically never experienced this. 

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Original Sin is two things - what actually happened and the various explanations of what it means.

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IF Original Sin is taken to imply that Men are rotten at the core - then I fear it will be a lethal idea for many people in many situations in this world where the institutional churches certainly are rotten at the core.

Because if Christians cannot trust themselves, but instead regard themselves as fundamentally and intrinsically mastered by pride and helplessly subject to demonic deceptions - and furthermore a world where there is a high probability that any outside help mediated by humans is going to be corrupt - then there is no hope of us making right choices: no hope at all...

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The situation is strictly hopeiless because we cannot even choose the correct denomination, and within every denomination there are factions - and we cannot choose the right faction either.

there is no hope if Original Sin means we cannot make right choices from within ourselves, because then we cannot even decide who to trust.

And no hope means despair, and despair is a sin.

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So, if Original Sin is being understood to mean that we are rotten to the core and cannot trust ourselves, then we are simply doomed.

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(But, alternatively, if we can make good decisions about which person, denomination, religion to trust - then there must be some goodness at our very heart; and a strict/ extreme interpretation of Original Sin cannot be true.)

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Luckily, that 'strict/ extreme understanding of Original Sin as implying that all humans are necessarily rotten at their very core is not entailed by scripture, but is a secondary matter of explanation and extrapolation.

So Christians don't have-to believe in original Sin.

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However, it might - plausibly - be argued that without the concept of OS, then Christianity will be too weak and wishful and wavering - but we know from 180 years of the CJCLDS church that this is not necessarily so: Mormonism has conclusively demonstrated that a church and a people can be steady and firm in a Christ-focused faith while not believing in Original Sin.

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Some fear that it is only Original Sin which implies the absolute need for a Saviour, that if we were not all utterly rotten, we did not really need salvation; and if we dispense with OS we will, sooner or later, dispense with Christ...

But this tow-sided analysis is just too simple.

It is too simple to regard salvation as either/ or - either our doing, or Christ's doing - this either/ or dichotomy is too simple a dichotomy even for ordinary everyday life, such as understanding family disputes!

If we cannot understand a fight between two children if we insist in advance that the reason must be necessarily and inevitably and only either the full responsibility of one child or the other child - but not-ever both; then why should we expect to understand salvation that way?

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It is ridiculous to apply either/ or to salvation! - although it is a very typical philosophical error to fall into the trap of either/ or - often either zero or infinity - both of which are incomprehensible nonsense.

That kind of thing was built into philosophy from its very origins - and carried over into Christian theology. 

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In sum, Original Sin is not necessarily wrong, and/ because many or most great Christians have believed OS in some fashion - but they were able to be Christian and believe it only because, in practice, OS was not understood to apply absolutely, and because they lived inside a religious society and implicitly accepted the wisdom and goodness of some source of external spiritual guidance.

Modern secular people - adrift in a spiritual and ideological marketplace and with no implicit authority source - cannot really believe in, live by, Original Sin - but in attempting to do so they can destroy Christian faith in themselves and in others: they can induce paralysing despair in themselves and in others.

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Modern Christians will just have to be more sensible - and less philosophical - about these matters; because the theology of our relationship with God ought to be at least as complex as our ordinary everyday understanding of ordinary everyday human relationships - surely?

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Thinking affects the world - just as we knew it did when we were young children. 

We knew then that thoughts come into our mind from outside our heads, and that our own thinking was known-by and affected the world outside our head. 

We knew then that our fear could attract the attention of that-which-is-feared; and indeed could conjure-up that-which-is-feared. Thinking about a bad thing could 'make it happen' - so we tried not to do it. 

(The child experiences this being-part-of-the-world spontaneously and passively; yet it is this basic understanding of 'participation' which the Romantic Christian aims to recover consciously and by choice.)  

Our thinking is a part of the world, and this is the reason why sin is evil; why our 'feelings' can harm the world. 

The modern materialist cannot comprehend why what he thinks or feels 'in the privacy of my own mind' could or should be of any concern to anybody else - and that God 'would not be interested' in such trivial matters as his personal attitudes, fears or desires. 

But the world Just Is Made so that our thinking is part of it. Thinking is Not confined to our brain - the idea that thinking is a free-spinning cog, detached from 'reality' is an incoherent delusion.

(...As Owen Barfield explained in Saving the Appearances, 1965).

Therefore, when we (for instance) experience a powerful fear of what the demon-controlled global totalitarian establishment might do to us (as spontaneously happened to me this morning, shortly after waking) - we are both committing the sin of despair and also making that bad outcome more likely. 

We make the bad outcome more likely by lending the creative power of our imagination to an evil world picture. By yielding-to despair, we take the side of Satan; and lend him material assistance by our spiritual activity. 

And this is why such thoughts come to mind. Since our minds are not cut-off from the world, evil thoughts can be put-into them by evil spirits - as was always acknowledged in the past. 

But the flip side of this frightening reality is that every 'defeat' of evil thoughts in our mind (by our will) has beneficial external effects - which is why we do not get evil thoughts all of the time: defeat wounds Satan. Every repudiation of sin somewhat improves the world

All good thoughts, aligned with God's will, tends to make good futures more likely.   

Thus we ought to recognize fear and despair as sins, and inwardly reject them - make the inward affirmation that we do not want to sin. 

This act of will (of free will) is called repentance; and it has the effect of transferring our creative aid from Satan to God (a double benefit!). 

By repentance (recognition and rejection of sin) we have thus rejected the world picture being imposed upon us by demonic powers and their servants (by all means They can muster), we have made an act of affiliation to divine creation, and we have redirected our soul's effort towards God.

However, this identification and repudiation of sin, and commitment to Good, needs to be distinguished from its perversion as 'the power of positive thinking': the idea that we can 'get what we want' if we want it hard enough. 

Positive thinking is about imposing our personal will upon the world - getting what we want from the world; and this is an extremely different matter from willing our allegiance to God's ongoing work of divine creating; extremely different from taking the side of Good in the spiritual war of these times.  

The positive thinker would - like a Romantic Christian - also try to reject fear and despair; but he would do thins because they are negative emotions that make him feel miserable. The positive thinker is not rejecting fear and despair because these are sins, nor because they aid the attainment of a more complete and extreme demonic anti-creation than we already have. 

Neither would the positive thinker be making a commitment to God's plan for reality. He is instead trying to impose his own plan on reality - and this existential selfishness plays directly-into Satan's hands, is immediately woven-into the demonic anti-creation that opposes God. 

Both positive thinking and repentance/ affiliation are - in a broad sense - concerned with 'getting what we personally want'. To the modern secular mind this means that one is as good (or bad) as the other - merely different forms of self-gratification... 

Nonetheless, there is a distinction between types of self-gratification in terms of their assumed, ultimate metaphysical context. 

The distinction is between a secular attitude of aiming at what provides gratification in this mortal life - on the metaphysical assumption that this mortal life is believed to be the only life. Or, by contrast, a Christian attitude of regarding this finite mortal life as followed by an eternal post-mortal life; with this our mortal life gaining meaning from its purpose. 

The Christian purpose of this mortal life is assumed to be 'educational': we are intended to learn from this life 'lessons' of importance to the eternity which follows.     

A Romantic Christian does indeed want to reject fear, despair, resentment and many other unpleasant feelings; and instead to think positively. 

And repentance does have a positive power. To recognize and repent a sin is to starve it of the oxygen it would otherwise obtain from being regarded as a valid emotion. 

But the aim of thinking positively goes beyond mortal life into Heaven; and the the ultimate 'positive' is seen as our personal, chosen, active participation in God's creation.

 

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Which is why the mass media is by far the most evil entity which has ever existed.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-evil-of-mass-media-greatest-evil-of.html

It is generally not understood, even by Christians, that it is standard Christian doctrine that advocating sin is far worse than actually sinning. The reason is that sinning (to some significant extent) is unavoidable and a part of the human condition, while advocating sin is deliberate.

So the primary virtue is to advocate virtue; the worst sin is to advocate sin.

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Actually being virtuous is certainly a good thing, the best thing - but is not always possible to everybody - for reasons of character and circumstance, weakness and ignorance.

Intellectuals preen themselves on their virtuousness because they refrain from violence and theft  - yet theologically speaking modern intellectuals are - as a class - practitioners of deliberate evil on an vast scale in their systematic destruction of truth, beauty and virtue.

And, of course, the biggest and worst evil of the class of intellectuals is to advocate evil by inversion of the good: to claim ugliness is beauty (eg. mainstream modern art, design and architecture), to enforce wickedness as a higher virtue (eg. the sexual revolution as positively-depicted in a million novels, movies and TV shows and a billion news items), and to enforce distortion and suppression as the essential truth (e.g. the narrowing and ever-more-aggressively false doctrines of political correctness).

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The corruption runs deep, yet not so deep that intellectuals have utterly lost subliminal awareness of what they are doing. This combination accounts for the prevalent misery, angst and anger of the dominant classes having a different quality from that of the past - a undertow of self-hatred and suicidal despair.

Despair is the key concept: the absence of real hope: hope of good that is real, objective, permanent.

(The creed of the modern intellectual is that no good thing is real, objective and permanent.)

The creed of the modern intellectual is implied-despair. Not the direct preaching of despair as a principle - but rather preaching of a set of non-beliefs that must lead to despair - because there is nowhere else for them to lead...

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There is then - understandably - a craving for escape... but an escape merely into distractions that are pre-acknowledged to be unsatisfactory and unsatisfying because they are regarded as untrue.

(We are allowed to escape, sometimes, but only if we regard the escaped-to word as untrue. An imagined world must be acknowledged as fundamentally imaginary.)

Having demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective validity of God; the intellectual elites have recently demolished (to their own satisfaction) the objective good of marriage and family - and they are left only with a life based-on 'work and leisure'...

Work and leisure are all that remains. There is nothing else.

Yet work has long since been exposed as a fraud and demolished (to the satisfaction of elites) by Marxism/ Socialism/ Liberalism/ Leftism...

So leisure is now the whole thing - a life aspiring to leisure, and yet leisure pre-acknowledged merely as a pastime - something to pass-the-time... a search for distracting novelties.

Sexual novelty, travel to new places, buying new stuff, doing new things... that is IT: the whole thing. That is the highest conceivable aspiration of the modern intellectual elites and the world they propagate 24/7 via the mass media, the world to which we are addicted, the world to which we are electronically plugged-in: a world which is, in its primary operations, built-upon the deliberate advocacy of sin: that is, the deliberate destruction of good.
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http://addictedtodistraction.blogspot.co.uk/

The main problem of the modern West is the inversion of sin; which is that the traditional sins (especially sexual, but also pride, envy, greed etc.) are not sins, but instead virtues. 

And the reciprocal invention of new "deadly sins" that are not sins, such as (the actual current usage of) racism (seemingly now regarded as the sin of sins - unless the recognition of traditional sexual sins as sin, is even worse). 

But value-inversion is made worse by a legalistic understanding of sin, in terms of categorical lists with operational definitions. This is literal rending of sins is necessary if any "sin" is to be made the basis of our totalitarian System.  

For example; the not-sin of racism is a specific concept referenced in bureaucratic strategies, regulations and laws - operationally defined in measureable terms; such as specific words, or percentages of personnel (pre-divided into good/ disapproved and bad/ being-promoted races); and by mandatory active participation in defined antiracist initiatives and actions (e.g. mass genuflecting, parades and speeches, display of posters and flags etc.). 

So, although the not-sin of racism is supposed to be a thought-crime, a wicked motivation; in practice it gets operationalized in quasi-objective terms: you are guilty of racism by saying or writing this taboo, or by failing to join with that ritual, or in terms of percentage "representation". 

In strategic spiritual terms; this legalism and literalism represents the reduction of (imperceptible) spiritual conceptualizations of sin, into a controllable material manifestation; in a world where official and public discourse recognizes only "the material" as real and significant. 

By the sustained operations of actual social reality; the populace are trained to regard the legal and bureaucratic definitions of detectable and measurable material manifestations of sin, asif they Just Are the sins themselves. 

In other words; because society treats sin legalistically and objectively in categories; that is how people habitually, unthinkingly, moralistically regard the reality of sin. 

 

Of course; what I have described as the current materialist-totalitarian reality of values; is a simple inversion of the old religious system of values, which was dominant from the medieval era until recently - which also regards sin in a legalistic and categorical way. 

Sins were conceptualized in terms of categorical lists of behaviours that would send someone to hell, unless he specifically repented each of them. Repentance was often understood as going through the entire list of one's sins, and repenting them each and specifically - before being allowed-into Heaven. 

(I find it bizarre to suppose that the whole world of creation and our-selves can thus be cut-up into discrete chunks, some of which are sins! My understanding is instead that reality is only validly divided into separable Beings; but sins are part of the continuous field of divine creation - they can be distinguished in terms of emphasis, but cannot ultimately be separated and divided.)  

Such a linear and sequential procedure of repentance might need to be done during mortal life (e.g. by confession and absolution) or afterwards (for instance in a Roman Catholic purgatory, or the "toll-booths" of Eastern Orthodoxy).

In practice; such a way of thinking and behaving was so dominant that people also came to believe that only these categories of official sins were real or significant sins. 

Consequently; many of the besetting sins of modernity - such as dishonesty, existential fear, and resentment - became invisible, ignored, denied. 

So that habitual and expedient exponents of untruthfulness (such as nearly-all modern managers, politicians, bureaucrats; and professionals such as teachers, doctors, lawyers, the police and military, and church leaders); will mislead, be dishonest, and outright lie systematically and for-a-living - on a daily, or even hourly, basis - while having a clear conscience! While regarding themselves as good-people, including Good and exemplary Christians. 

One side-effect of this categorical way of thinking about sin has been that people come to regard themselves and others as not-sinners (and other people as sinners) - the world of Mankind being divided into sinners and the Good. 

Such people regard themselves as basically good human beings; so long as they refrain from the listed sins (or the worst of them, at least) - or else repent them specifically. This leads to a sense of self-righteousness that is a gross distortion of the realities of our mortal life. 

On the other hand; the ubiquity of some of the listed sins can lead to a sense of despair and helplessness; and other people react-against this by asserting that if a sin is universal, or very common - then it can't really be a sin! - and is simply being used by religion to control the population. 

This also applies to modern value-inversion - for instance when white people are officially regarded and regard themselves as inescapably racist, and therefore experience inescapable white guilt - rendering them demoralized and obedient to those who offer rituals of expiation.

  

My point is that - from the Fourth Gospel Christian perspective which I believe is true - legalism and categorical description is a basically mistaken and itself-sinful way of thinking about and conceptualizing sin. 

From Jesus's teaching, we are all sinners all of the time; because we are not wholly-and-always motivated by Love. We are thereby misaligned with God's creative will, hence all of us (as we are) are utterly unsuited to dwell in Heaven. 

But this is Not a cause for demoralization, demotivation or despair; because Jesus has said that all who follow Him shall be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven.

The best way to think of sin is very generally; as whatever would prevent us (as individuals) from accepting the gift of everlasting life. 

We may each have one or more besetting sins that we find difficult (or impossible) to give-up in order to enter Heaven - but this is ultimately a matter of not loving Jesus enough, not wanting Heaven enough. 

If we love and desire above all to follow Jesus Christ; if we take the side of God and divine creation in the spiritual war, and wish to participate in creation eternally - then quite naturally we will repent, shed, leave-behind any and all sins (named or unnamed) in order to attain our deepest desire. 

If we desire to be re-made (i.e. resurrected) such that we become motivated only and always by love eternally - then sin is just the name for anything and everything which would prevent that process of re-making. 

Repentance is the word for our agreement to having stripped-away and left-behind all that would otherwise prevent resurrection into Heaven.  

It is really very simple. 

Christianity is a positive (not double-negative) religion; it is opt-in (not a matter of passing a test); God is our loving parents (not a judge administering laws), Christianity is a family (not a monarchy). 

We are not meant to worry over sin! Jesus came to save sinners - we need to focus primarily on the saving, not the sins: we will know the sins in consequence of our desire for salvation. 

If we understand Jesus's teaching in the way it was intended and exemplified (and which can be confirmed here-and-now by the guidance of the Holy Ghost); 

and if we therefore base our faith on positive love and the choice of following Jesus Christ to Heaven -- 

then we know that everything important about "our sins" will be recognizable clearly and simply, and we will know what to do, and we will do it - when the time of choice arrives. 

The spiritual war is fought in public over whether the 'sins' of mainstream, totalitarian leftist-materialism ought to be regarded as primary (e.g. racism, sexism' climate- or peck-denialism...); or whether instead the traditional Christian sins such as adultery, fornication, drunkenness etc.) ought to be the major focus. 

(The mainstream has the advantage in this dispute because they deny that the Christian sins are sinful at all, but rather virtues; while the self-identified Christians usually agree with the totalitarian left that attitudes such as racism, sexism, and -denialism are indeed sins - and will, for example - routinely and officially exclude leaders who disagree with any of the mainstream leftist definitions of 'sin'.) 

My usual list of the most dominating sins of this time and place includes fear, resentment, dishonesty and despair. 

But these are - at best - almost completely neglected by Christian teaching - which continues to focus on more traditional (and spectacular!) sins of a sexual nature; or sins that are (at least officially) still against the law: things like murder, rape, theft etc. 

Such a focus has the unfortunate (but probably deliberate) effect of creating and sustaining "Pharisaism" among Christians, which I would here define as the belief that sin can be avoided - with enough effort. 

Well, yes! Spectacular sins can indeed be avoided. And avoiding these is made much easier by the fact that they are socially dis-approved, and if detected they will be punished. 

But my understanding is that Jesus said this was not only insufficient, but a harmful attitude to life. 

Sin, as such, is so pervasive in the human condition as to be unavoidable; and the belief that sin can be avoided leads to what Jesus termed 'hypocrisy' - that is, to assumptions of purity and authority on the basis of being (at least publicly) able to avoid a few extreme and spectacular sins; while neglecting the far more frequent, but equally in need of repentance, sins of everyday life - such as dishonesty.

Did you murder anyone yesterday? Probably not. And, if you did, you probably repent it. 

But were you dishonest yesterday? Yes You Were! And probably dozens, maybe hundreds of times; especially if you are a manager or a professional or any kind of leader. 

Indeed, most middle class people are dishonest as an essential (and growing) element of their job: they are strategically, calculatedly dishonest for-a-living.  

Did you repent these dishonesties - did you even notice them at all? Even worse - do you regard yourself as a truthful person, and deny that you were and are dishonest? 

Sins such as dishonesty are un-noticed and therefore un-repented because they are socially-approved, and often socially rewarded: 

Back in 2020-2021; we were all socially expected to fear the birdemic - and anyone who did not express sufficient fear was regarded as a danger to public health. 

Resentment is the motivational basis of antiracism, feminism, socialism and many other leftist ideologies (and several actually-left but supposedly-right ideologies such as nationalism); and nowadays such resentment (whether personal, or vicariously expressed 'on behalf of' the 'oppressed') is mandatory in public discourse. 

A manager and a politician is rewarded for dishonesty (e.g. calculated misleading, untruthfulness and indeed lying - if lies effective and deniable); and will be sacked if he refuses. Much the same applies to scientists, doctors, lawyers, church leaders, economists, the police and military... essentially it applies everybody in leadership or 'expert' positions in major social institutions. 

My point here - which I think was also Jesus's point in His teaching - is that we sin all the time, and deliberately - and we have no intention of ceasing to sin when those sins are socially-allowed/ mandatory; because to do so would put us out of a job, and exclude us from human society. 

Fortunately (!); Jesus came to save sinners, and not those (non-existent) persons who are sin-less.  

Jesus asks 'merely' that we acknowledge that we sin all the time, and cannot (indeed we do not wish to) stop sinning: and 'yet' these and we are exactly those who Jesus can and will save... So long as we are prepared to acknowledge and repent the fact.  

How does this fit with salvation? Well, in the Fourth Gospel ("John") the word "sin" is mostly used to mean "death" - that is, death without resurrection, death without salvation. 

Resurrection (i.e. eternal life, instead of death) depends on what we can call repentance, not on ceasing to sin. 

And repentance is necessary to salvation because resurrection requires that we are prepared to acknowledge sin as sin, and leave it behind us before we can proceed to eternal life in Heaven. After all, Heaven would not be Heaven if sin was still present - there can be no sin in Heaven; but we are all sinful, nearly all the time; therefore we must reject All sin before we can be resurrected into Heaven.

Repentance can therefore be thought of as the firm intent to leave-behind all sin (spectacular and unnoticed) when the choice and chance of resurrection comes to us (presumably, after death), and when all such sins shall be brought to our attention*. 

To "follow Jesus" means to repent all our sins. And it is those sins that are socially un-recognized, denied, or rewarded which are far less likely to be repented than the big and obvious sins on which nearly-everybody is agreed.   

*We cannot, of course, recognize all our individual sins during this mortal life - there are too many, and we lack sufficient discernment! But we can avoid falling into the damnation-trap of denying sin, especially when it is brought to our awareness. That way, when we come to the point of decision, we will not be held back from salvation by our habitual, ingrained and calculated unwillingness to let-go of 'the least of' our sins. For instance; someone who has spent forty years 'justifying' his own deliberate dishonesties in the workplace; may find it very difficult to acknowledge that dishonesty Must utterly and forever be repudiated in Heaven. 

That greatest of Tolkien scholars, Tom Shippey, noticed something profound yet hidden in the Lord of the Rings - which provides narrative 'evidence' for Tolkien's frequent theme that it is always wrong to despair. 

Despair is wrong primarily because we live in the ongoing creation of a God who loves us as his children; so this world is being-created, moment by moment, with an eye to the primary purpose of life: which is providing each of us with the experiences we most need to learn from in terms of our Christian choice of resurrected life in Heaven. 

 

(Conversely, this world is Not designed for atheist-materialists, who disbelieve in Heaven. Their lives are indeed, by their own assumptions, meaningless and pointless.)

So, 'general' despair is wrong, and a consequence of lack of 'faith' - that is, lack of trust in God's loving goodness and personal concern for each-of-us. But specific causes of despair are also a mistake; mistakes of inference. 

Why? Because despair is the certainty of bad outcome, such that one gives-up hope. And - simply put - despair is always wrong because we never have conclusive reasons to give-up hope. 

 

Despair is not based on probability, but certainty - and that certainty is always false. A high probability of a bad outcome should be called pessimism. It is not despair because it is a best guess, and estimate; and we realise that even the very improbable sometimes happens. 

Note: It is vital to distinguish between despair and pessimism; and between hope and optimism. 

Despair is a sin, and is always-wrong; hope is a virtue and (for a Christian) always-right. Optimism and pessimism are merely conjectural judgments about the likely future - constrained by individual ability, information and honesty...

 

But more fundamentally, despair is not even about strict-probabilities of the future of a known situation; since we are very unlikely to be framing, to be understanding accurately, the real nature of the situation.

Even if we know a lot about a situation, we never know every-thing about it; and some specific thing (some 'fact') that we do Not know, may have the capacity to transform our understanding. 

If we knew that particular fact, then our 'conclusive reason' for despair would go. 

 

In the Lord of the Rings, there is a seeing-stone device called a palantir, which may be used to gather information. Yet, whenever we see a palantir in use to gather more information and make a judgment, an error is made.

Always, something important about the user's assumptions are wrong, and some vital fact is missing; and therefore his interpretation of the factual information is in error. 

 

For example, when Sauron sees Pippin in the Orthanc stone, Sauron assumes this is the hobbit ring-bearer ('Baggins') who has been captured by Saruman - and he dispatches a Nazgul to collect this precious prize. 

This is a mistake, which happens because Saruman does not realise that the palantir is no longer in Saruman's hands - and because he assumes the stone is being deliberately used, rather than merely the object of hobbit curiosity - an 'accident'. 

Later, Aragorn shows himself deliberately to Sauron, after Sauron has discovered that Isengard was defeated and (presumably) the stone taken. 

Sauron then assumes that Aragorn, as the heir of Isildur, has taken the Ring and is learning to use its power. Sauron therefore 'hastily' launches his assault on Gondor before this has been fully prepared - and is defeated. 

 

A third example is easily missed (I missed it! - but this is where Tom Shippey contributed his key insight) because it can be inferred only by a careful calculation of chronology. It is that Denethor uses the palantir at the time when Frodo has been captured by Sauron - and sees a hobbit in the enemy's hands. 

Denethor assumes that this is the Ring bearer hobbit whom Gandalf sent into Mordor, and that Sauron now has the Ring. Denethor therefore despairs, his mind breaks, and he descends into madness, suicide; and the attempted murder of his son Faramir (who Denethor assume, also falsely, to be certainly fatally injured). 

What Denethor does not know is that although this is indeed Frodo, and he is indeed in the enemy's hands - at that time Sam has the One Ring; and is not in captivity. 

And it turns-out that this small unknown fact is enough to transform the entire situation from one of 'certain' despair - to the success of the quest. 

This warning of Tolkien's is of crucial significance to these times. 

There really has been a successful global coup, and the world really is ruled by an evil totalitarian government. And there probably are a large proportion of the population who have taken the side of evil. 

From what I know, according to my framing of the situation, the probabilities for the future seem extremely adverse: therefore I am a pessimist about what is coming.

 

Yet my understanding is at least distorted, and may be wrong; and my information is certainly incomplete. There are many facts of which I am unaware. So I have zero grounds for certainty. 

On the other hand, I know that this is God's creation and is being-created moment by moment; and that (since we are all God's beloved children) this creation is always taking into account each individual in ways that I cannot comprehend - but can guess-at based on the way that loving parents regard all their individual family members. 

God does Not see mankind as an homogeneous mass; but instead sees each person as a beloved son or daughter in relationships with other sons and daughters. 

And God is not trying to optimise our temporary, mortal earthly happiness (although that is a factor); but is instead primarily focused on our eternal salvation and life as participants in the work of divine creation.  

We do not have the advantage of a palantir, which always shows the factual truth. But even the palatir does not show the whole truth; and it cannot interpret what its pictures mean. So, even a palantir may well be deceptive - fatally deceptive. 

Our information is much less honest and reliable than that of a palantir; and we are even less 'wise' than either Sauron or Denethor...

So, as Christians we do not have grounds for general despair; and being poorly-informed fools, neither do we have specific grounds for despair - there may well be a transformative fact of which we are unaware. 

 

Therefore, be not afraid; be of good cheer! That is the only faithful and accurate way.

Trust in God! Follow Jesus Christ! 

And you cannot be wrong. 

 

Some people - most modern people, apparently - say that find it hard to believe that God - or, at least, the Christian God of Love - would exclude certain sexual behaviours, acts and identifications: would regard them as sins.

This labelling of sin seems to them arbitrary and unbalanced... it can indeed be made to sound ridiculous, to the point that through the twentieth century official public sexual morality was first - but only very briefly - made 'free', then now it has been inverted, with the 'normal', natural and traditionally Christian sex and sexuality becoming the problem; precisely because Christianity regards some acts and attitudes as sins... 

Of course, this whole matter hinges on the reality and nature of sin; and public discourse has long since regarded sin as unreal (arbitrary, artificially defined and open-endedly subject to re-definition) and has degraded the concept of sin to the point of ridiculousness - or indeed evil. The major modern moral inversion is that those who believe in the reality of sin are regarded as the ones who are evil.

Those who advocate what used to be (not long ago) regarded as sexual sin are nowadays treated as the virtuous ones and rewarded with praise and status (and material goods!) both by official culture and the mass media - they apparently 'solve' the problem of sin by dissolving the concept of sin and making it a matter of personal preference and freedom and the sacred pursuit of happiness. So long as the consequences of some behaiour can be portrayed (in official and media sources) as potentially happy, self-respecting, and kind - then that is taken to be the proof of rightness.

(And any contradictory evidence of consequent misery, suffering, despair following sin... is blamed upon those who 'label' the behaviour as sin. Essentially, this is Catch 22 in reverse!) 

At any rate, in a world of establishment and counter-cultural moral inversion - to focus on the sin of acts and behaviours has become counter-productive - even when true. I think the key to a response is regarding morality positively, as what God most wants us to do.

*

This differs among Christian churches - which is a source of weakness that has been exploited - but for the CJCLDS it is clear from multiple revelations and the teaching of living prophets that God most wants us to marry (I mean really marry, with a person of the opposite sex), stay married, have children, and live in loving families.

For Mormon believers, the primacy of marriage and family is not some bit of moral teaching 'parachuted' in from above, but something built-in from the ground upwards; from the basic metaphysical understanding of reality: the 'whole' human is ultimately (at some point, perhaps extremely remote, in post-mortal life, when Man has progressed to the fullest divinity) a complementary, irreducibly dyadic combination of an exalted man and a woman bound together by love.

'Celestial marriage' is the aim, and it is the completion, of Man.

This is the clear ideal - and this is what is taught, supported, worked-towards...

Now, there is compassion and help for those (which may be a majority) who for a multitude of individual reasons of many types, cannot do all of this (or indeed any of it) during this mortal life - and there is therefore a second strand of the ideal life of celibacy - it seems that this may be part of God's plan for some individuals during this mortal life, if not eternally.

There is of course the significant matter than the great majority of people will fail to live perfectly by the ideal; they will probably fail many times, in many ways both great and small, and they may not be able to stop failing. These are not 'damned' nor lost to salvation but they are required to 'repent' - i.e. required to acknowledge the ideal and their failure to attain it.

(And not, for example, to say that their failure is actually success; especially not to assert it is a superior kind of success: which is the norm in modern public discourse.)

But it is forbidden to argue and teach that 'other sexual ways' (of any kind) are either equal or superior to that which God has clearly said is the ideal. Anything other than the ideal must be acknowledged as sub-optimal.

The serious sin is not so much in doing otherwise than the ideal, but in assuming or arguing otherwise, or saying that sex and sexuality 'don't matter'; in making laws and regulations on that basis, or in failing to repent (i.e. acknowledge the sub-optimality of) other behaviours. 

*

I think that sexuality (in our era) shows clearly the two somewhat different requirements for public and private morality. Public morality (as a part of 'politics' - law, regulations, economic incentives etc.) must be, can only be, simple and clear.

If morality is not presented simply and clearly, then it will in practice be interpreted in a simple and clear way - whether we like it or not.

So public morality will always be simplistic and harsh - just as is our current politically correct morality simplistic and harsh, but in an inverted way than the past. And it is the job of individuals to soften and nuance this simplicity and harshness when appropriate, in individual instance, based upon wise judgement and not on rules.

We cannot expect, and we will not get, perfection in attitudes, justice or anything else - there will always be a bias, and we must make a choice of which direction 'the system' is biased towards: morality (as in the past) or anti-morality (as at present). 

*

For Christians there is the 'problem' of being strong and able to resist being swept into secularism, while remaining compassionate and empathic.

There is no rule for this - but some types of strong Christianity are brittle and if they yield an inch they seem to collapse altogether; while other types seem to be able to be strong without harshness or encouraging hate: strong in will but soft and warm in heart.

I think this ideal of strong-and-loving, tough-and-soft, clear-and-warm... is made easier by regarding sin as failure to live by the ideal, rather than in terms of specific acts and attitudes being sinful in and of themselves.

What has made the modern sexual revolution such a devastating anti-Christian force is that it has managed to reduce sex and sexuality to be considered as discrete and detached acts, which seem trivial and arbitrary, and therefore not the kind of thing to have eternal significance.

Christians should not fall into this prepared trap - but try to make clear (not least to ourselves) that sexual sin is mostly a matter of failing to live by divinely ordained sexual ideals; but this failure is not of itelf the major problem in modern life: the major problem of modern life is denying the truth that God does have a plan, an ideal, for human sexuality and sexual life; and that we know (because we have been clearly told) the basic structure of this plan - and that when we (so often ) fail to live by the plan, we muct acknowledge ('repent') these failures.


**
But if you don't know, here it is:
https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng

If there is no God, and this world is a merely-determined/ accidental and purposeless happening; then life is also purposeless.

If life has no external and shared meaning, then all that matters is how we feel about it - so life reduces to psychology.


Our innate psychology includes all kinds of instincts including loyalty, courage, appreciation of beauty, natural virtue... but with atheism these are accidental and contingent consequences of our past evolutionary history - and their meaning is in-the-past; and that meaning was only to enhance our differential genetic replicative success (because people are organisms, and organisms are only disposable contingent gene-controlled robots that exist to promote gene replication).

We may feel the pull or push of natural ethics or 'higher instincts' but they have no validity for 'my' actions, 'here-and-now'.

Therefore psychology reduces to the pleasure-suffering axis.


In other words; the only psychology that can be justified (for me, here, now) is my feelings, now = hedonism (the principle that the axis of my pleasure-suffering is the only 'ethic').

Current - here-and-now - feelings are the only relevant factor; because the future cannot be reliably predicted and the past may be forgotten or memories may be false.

Hedonic feelings are the only self-justifying feelings, because (by circular definition) feeling good is better than feeling bad. And because (with atheism) nothing else matters.

So with atheism hedonic feelings are the only thing left-standing.  


And when short-term pleasure/ happiness, gratification is the only bottom line; then as soon as it is absent, life is worthless.

If we come to believe that our own personal happiness is in decline or impossible - or simply currently insufficient: too weak or too infrequent - then we shall (we realise) despair - sooner or later. And there can be no reassurance against this despair, because such despair is rational.

Under such circumstances, only the deluded manic or the manipulative psychopath can be consciously happy with life - and even they are vulnerable to downswings.


What happens then? Look around.

We see a society incrementally being overwhelmed by a tidal rise in despair; caused by atheism and the ethic of hedonism.

Amping up the pleasure is ineffectual - unless it could be made overwhelming and continuous (which is the false promise of transhumanism - a world of engineered permanent euphoria). And all pleasure is (apparently) subject to 'habituation' - pleasure fades unless there is novelty, or increased dose. This seems to be a biological built-in.


(This is why atheism so quickly devolves from pleasure-seeking - like the middle 1960s radical-leftist, libertine hippie ethic of promiscuous sex, hedonic drugs, and rock & roll... To the 1970s-and-onwards ethic of suffering-avoidance - with its hopes of a 'therapeutic' totalitarian world government that will prevent any kind of personal, social, planetary suffering. The change is from pleasure-seeking to pain-avoidant: from stimulant and euphoriant abuse to mass mediation with tranquillisers, mood-stabilisers, and antidepressants; from aiming-at a positive and pleasurable socialist utopia - to a society structured-around preventing the angst caused by global warming, microaggressions, racism, sexism, unbiological sexuality and sexual identity etc.)


Atheism, as it becomes mainstream, then mandatory (in public life) leads to rational and increasing  despair; from which there can be no escape while atheism prevails.

The solution should be, but isn't, obvious: to re-examine our arbitrary and evidentially-unfounded assumptions regarding the fundamental nature of reality.

(These ultimate assumptions concerning the nature of reality are termed metaphysical.)


But once a person, or a society, is already-in the depths of atheism-induced despair; then it becomes increasingly difficult to make the metaphysical effort to escape, because real escape seems impossible, hence effort is futile and (here-and-now) counter-productive. 

Despair is the fruit of atheism, and despair is perhaps the worst of sins; because it destroys the belief that escape is possible.

Hence mass human despair is the sin most deeply desired by the devil. 


Note: In psychiatry - the highest rate of suicide - and of death from refusal of drink and food and lack of self care - is among the severely depressed: i.e. those who are in the grip of self-fulfilling despair. Captive animals in despair cease to reproduce despite protection from predators and adequate provision of food and shelter - precisely analogous to the modern atheist populations of The West. 

Further note: If you join the same dots in a different way; you can see why atheism tends strongly to supporting the demonic agenda of subversion all good values; and opens the atheist to the ultimate demonic goal of value inversion (evil is virtue, ugliness is beauty, lies and fakes are truth) - in the sense that when value inversion becomes socially-expedient (as it is now) there is no strong reason to resist it, and many reasons to embrace it. 

Fear is a sin, and indeed one of the very worst of sins - a sin that is capable of singlehandedly wrecking the whole of a human life.

I don't mean fear as an emotion - that is just a matter of an evolutionary adaptation to threats... I mean existential fear: that is, fear as a mind-set, fear as a basic stance towards life.

For Christians, to live in a mind-set of fear is to deny the basics - to deny that God the creator is our loving Father. Fear is, indeed, a variant of despair - which is the assumption that God has placed us in a hope-less situation - which would mean that God did not love us or was not the creator of this world.

Fear is so basic, so pervasive, that it is a primary motivator for many people much of the time - whole religions, whole civilisations are built primarily on fear: fear of the gods or God, fear of Life, fear of reality...

Christians have often - and still do - deliberately create fear - and I mean existential fear, the worst kind, the worst kind of sin - as a way of supposedly enforcing faith. This is crazy if it is sincere... certainly it is wicked and counter-productive. When this happens, something has gone terribly wrong - sin has overcome the Christian message, the Gospel has been perverted.

Our lives can become absolutely dominated by fear; and this can even feel like a moral imperative. Morality gets mixed up with fear of hubris, superstitious fear that if we do NOT fear, then the fates will be revenged upon us...

Life, by this account, ought to be a continual submission, a continual propitiation, a continual attempt not to offend the tyrannical and jealous and vengeful forces that are assumed to control things... If we do NOT fear then we will be crushed, to teach us not to presume, teach us not be pride-full... The idea arises that continual and expected and mandatory fear is the core way of avoiding pride. Fear becomes a duty.

The fear-full are prone to inculcate this same existential dread in others - perhaps on the excuse that people need to be afraid or else they will not avoid sin... But this is an appalling thing to do to others - fear can rapidly and permanently get out of control, grow like a cancer in a person or a community - and kill it. Eternally kill it.

Systematically to inculcate existential fear is a double sin - because, unlike personal sins, it is deliberate and avoidable - and this requires repentance even more than fear in oneself. 

Existential fear is NOT Christian, it is a failure of faith...

If we do fear then it must be repented; and I mean must - not because we will be punished by God if we don't repent our fear, but that by fearing we have already rejected God implicitly... we have already rejected the God of love and rejected our relationship with him... We have specifically rejected the fact that he is our loving Father and we are instead insisting that God is a tyrant who requires that we live in continual and systematic terror. 

So fear is a sin, and a terrible sin which can destroy everything: it must be repented. We need to want to be free of fear, we need to aspire to a sublime confidence about life: that is what God wants from us.

*

Those who look for hope in mainstream politics: listen-out for repentance before you believe-in reform.

Unless preceded by a wholesale confession or error, a wholesale repudiation of previous policies - nothing will happen, it won't make any difference, it is all a deception (us-deception for sure, self-deception very possibly).

*

Politics is simple - one thing or another thing.

If they have been doing one thing and it leads to trouble, they must reject it and do another thing.

But they must reject it.

*

Otherwise it is (in effect if not intention) just a trick to enable them to keep doing 99 percent of what they want, while making a big fuss over the 1 percent concession - until the concession is a tiny island of common sense in an ocean of political correctness, when it will (obviously) be swamped.

*

The only major UK political change I have experienced which went against the tide of Leftism, was the reversal (albeit short-lived) of decades-long economic decline by Margaret Thatcher's government. All the other stuff from the Conservative was either moderate Leftism or empty wind.

But the economic reversal was done in the teeth of resistance (including mine); it was done after repenting and repudiating the whole idea of socialist economic central planning; and the new principle was re-stated over and over.

*

That is what is required, that is what we would need to see if destruction is to be reversed before catastrophe.

The ruling elite must repent loudly and clearly and repeatedly; must humbly acknowledge that they have been wrong all along; must reject their self-justifying narrative of equality and progress; must explicitly apply a wholly different aim and discourse...

The ruling elite must be, in effect, born again.

*

Naturally this seems utterly implausible - that such a collection of preening, prancing popinjays would actually humble themselves en masse in face of ordinary common sense and traditional values: to proclaim they had been utterly mistaken about secularism, leftism, modernity...

I see no sign of it.

*

Pride has them in its grip. They will not give-up their narrative.

It seems they would sink into despair and destruction rather than admit they were wrong.

*

(You see it all the time, disillusioned ex-radicals wallowing in despair, blotting-out their sorrows as best they may. Self-punishing. But utterly useless - completely wrong. They still hold fast to their deluded dreams. Their despair is that the dreams turned out false or nightmarish - they do not reject the dreams as an ideal. There is no repentance, no humility - they remain proud of their younger selves, their youthful idealism, their lifestyle... They regard themselves as martyrs to hedonism.)

*

Yet despair is no answer to pride: despair is also a sin.

The despair of the elites will lead only to self-hatred, submission or hedonic escape.

The proper escape from the consequences of pride is not despair but humility.

*

Repentance... that must precede all else. It is necessary: the inescapable first step towards anything better.

*

The power of Christian repentance is unbounded.

If we sin, we should repent. If we cannot undertake not to commit that sin again, then we should repent that failure too (double-repentance).

If we sin, and we cannot resolve not to commit that sin again, and we cannot even find the resolution to want not-to commit that sin again - then we should repent that failure too (triple-repentance).

There is no limit to this - it is all possible, and indeed all necessary if we are to be clear about the nature of sin and of our personal failure.

But this is not paradoxical, complex, weird nor even difficult: the rule is that we simply repent every sin - everyone can do this, can do it now; and nobody is excluded by any personal deficiency.

It is a great gift - for by it any person can clear-the-decks, shrug-off paralysis and despair; enjoy the assured hope of salvation; and embark on the adventure of being a Chrstian as best they may.

(And with all kinds of divine helps and aids coming to awareness, that were unseen before - which may well lead to unexpected successes.)  

The story of the prodigal son and his father is about Man and God. No matter what mess, what depths of depravity he falls into by his choices, the son will always be welcomed home and taken-in by his father.

Our situation is the same... and yet we don't ask for that help which would so freely and lovingly be given. Because to do so would mean admitting that we had been wrong; and an explicit admission of error and sin is the one thing that modern Man refuses to do (even unto death).

(This shows why pride is the core sin.)


No matter how far we have fallen, no matter how terrible our situation actually is - we are never left bereft by Jesus: always he is there and ready to lead us to life eternal; but we must acknowledge his reality, ask for his help. Jesus helps by consent and desire; he cannot help those who turn from him, hate him, deny him. 


Modern Man is too proud to allow himself to be the prodigal son. No matter what depths of misery he sinks-to by his own choice, he will not turn-to God - just as he will not turn-to his family. The two refusals are related.

I often read biographies (and I have know the same in real life); and it is striking how often modern people leave home, fall into sin and find themselves in a situation of - by their own accounts - extreme poverty, violence, loneliness, misery, depression and despair... such that they consider suicide (either actual suicide; or the covert suicide of alcohol, drugs or repeated patterns of reckless courting of violence and disease). They are - by their own accounts - actually living in a verson of hell.

Yet, it often emerges that the whole time he was in this (self-described) hell; there was a family back home who would have wanted nothing more than to welcome and take-in the prodigal, feed and shelter him, love him.


In few things is the evil of modern mainstream official (mass media-bureaucratic) life so clear; as the fact that this refusal to acknowledge error and sin and seek help with 'the father' (and mother) is regarded as admirable, a strength to be emulated.

The idea propagated is that it is better to die alone, in misery and despair, by slow- or fast-suicide; than to acknowledge the error of an hedonic, responsibility-avoidant lifestyle (sex, drugs, violence, rock and roll - or whatever).

This is how we have come to the point of officially-funded, propagandised and (increasingly) mandatory celebrations of unrepentant prodigal status - the many demonic festivals of Pride. That these festivals are celebrated by self-styled 'Christian' churches, tells us all we need to know about such churches.


The parable of the prodigal son is also a picture of how and why people choose hell and reject Heaven; because Heaven and hell are a choice, rather than a judicial judgement.

Another (spiritually lethal) deficit of modern people is that they affect not to understand why anybody would choose hell, knowing the nature of Heaven; and yet here we have it, in our daily lives!

Even in this mortal life we see people choose a version of hell - despair, nihilism, spiritual death; when all the time an actual living, loving family (an imperfect Heaven, but the closest picture we know) is ready to welcome them.


Note: Nowadays, the prodigal 'son' is perhaps most-often a daughter. 

(Note: Here I am using a typology of evil: Luciferic, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic - which I have adapted and transformed from their origin in the works of Rudolf Steiner.) 

*

In the past, the dominant sins were probably the triad of Anger, Lust and Pride. These, at any rate, seem to be the dominant characteristics of great sinners of history - right up into the middle twentieth century. 

But as Western society became more industrialised, specialised, coordinated and impersonally-systemic; the dominant nature of evil became Ahrimanic. 

The most prominent triad of sins became Fear, Resentment and Despair. 

 

Fear, Resentment* and Despair is the dominant mood of the world in 2020 - these are the modern, 'bureaucratic sins'. 

The self-seeking, self-aggrandising evil of the mid-twentieth century (as exemplified by the atheist-socialist dictators such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot etc.) is not much in evidence in the West. Of course, Luciferic evil is still present; but these sins require greater courage and motivation than are possessed by the masses - or indeed the rulers - in 2020. 

Luciferic sin is weaker and less common than in the past; because it requires high motivation which is fuelled by the virtue of courage. 

Great Luciferic sin entails a positive, active, for-the-self mind-set. However; courage, hence motivation, has been incrementally eroded by the passage of several generations of de facto atheism. Hence the rise in Ahrimanic sin; which is much more passive, negating, and directed against-others. 

Beyond the Ahrimanic lies the Sorathic, which is even more fully negative in its motivations. I think this happens, because the Ahrimanic sins erode their own basis. 

A bureaucratic world tends towards a state of passive, unconscious, materialism. The Ahrimanic impulse begins with a denial of the aliveness of the mineral world, extends through denial of consciousness to plants, then animals, and eventually - as for the past decades, creates a world where aliveness, and consciousness is denied even to Men. 

This materialism (positivism, scientism) is the basis of modern bureaucracy; which terms Men 'human resources', and generates policy on the basis of numbers and statistics. The individual Man counts only as an integer. 

 

When this world view of negation of the Self, penetrates the soul and has been internalised; we get the Sorathic form of evil. 

...Evil as the negation of The Good - any good. 

So, evil loses any positive goal and becomes directed-against Truth, Beauty and Virtue; against life and consciousness, against the natural and spontaneous, against Beings and their relationships. 

Sorathic evil's only 'satisfaction' (because it has become incapable of 'pleasure') is in this destruction of anything that is of-God; anything created, anything capable of creation.

 

An example? Well, a very obvious instance of Sorathic evil in 2020 is the imposition of that demonic-triad of lockdown, social-distancing, and masking. Leading, as they must do, to the permanent annihilation of human society - and the construction of a world of universal solitary-confinement.

Obviously the mainstream, birdemic-related, excuses for annihilating human society and culture are lies. But - much more significantly - even the architects of the Great Reset cannot make a coherent argument why societal destruction is necessary!

They do it, but They can't explain it.

 

Their attempted justification of universal isolation relates to the need (and benefits) of automation, robots and artificial intelligence systems; but this is a non sequitur. The 'need' for one, does Not imply the destruction of the other.

What we are therefore seeing here is a very pure form of Sorathic negation. Even the Global Establishment themselves, the people who are imposing societal destruction on the world, do not understand why they are doing this work of societal destruction. 

They insist upon its necessity; but they cannot coherently explain it!

 

The reason is that the 'need' for societal destruction cannot be explained in materialistic terms - which are the only terms possible in public discourse; and among those who deny the reality of God and creation. 

The true reason for societal destruction is that human society is Good and therefore needs to be destroyed. Society between Men is indeed one of the great and essential Goods of this mortal world; as Men at all times, everywhere, have acknowledged and acted-upon - quite naturally and spontaneously. 

The idea that this can and should be dispensed with is monstrous, outrageous and ridiculous... for anyone who is Not deep into the servitude of Satan. But then, that is precisely what we are dealing-with. 

 

Therefore human society is an obvious, and essential, target for Sorathic evil; not because it is 'useful' to destroy human community, not because its destruction will enhance the lives of the Global Establishment - but exactly because human society is Good, and a Great Good; and because destroying it will induce suffering and (in this atheistic world) despair on a scale unprecedented. 

 

(And despair is a sin, because it is a rejection of God: a failure to trust in God, and a refusal of Jesus's gift of eternal life in Heaven. Despair - that is, as an existential decision, not a mere emotion - is therefore the choice of damnation.) 

 

In this burgeoning world of Sorathic evil, we need to stop looking for the 'advantage' in evil. Need to stop trying to 'explain evil' in terms of it (for example) making more money for Them, or giving Them more power...

From now, evil needs gain no advantage by its action: evil thrives purely on the destruction of whatever is Good. 

Evil has therefore ceased to be a triad, and has become a unity - the unity of negation; the unity of simple destruction of Good.

This is Sorathic evil. 

* Resentment can be understood as primarily directed against others. Spitefulness is another term for this. A person motivated by spite will put his greatest efforts into causing harm to others, rather than promoting himself. He will even harm himself in his zeal to harm others. The 'positive' face of resentment is the burgeoning phenomenon of 'entitlement'; which, again, has a strong flavour that 'my' privilege is best expressed in terms of the intrusive inconvenience, anger and misery it causes to others.

 

Note added: 

There are implications in the above understanding for Christians; because Luciferic evil was usually opposed by trying to build church-administered systems to 'tame' Anger, Lust and Pride - by encouraging/ insisting-upon obedience to church rules. 

However, this strategy of taming by obedience (as we have seen) played-into the reinforcement of the Ahrimanic sins. And church-Christianity has dis-couraged, and de-motivated itself. Thus all the churches have (more, or less) become part of the global, atheistic bureaucratic System of Ahrimanic evil. In 2020, the mainstream churches have actively embraced their all-but annihilation by birdemic rules.

Ahrimanic evil was opposed by 'counter-cultural', anti-System, individualistic ideas - which, when not 'Romantic' Christian - often fell back into Luciferic evils (especially lust). And it is tempting, nowadays, to suppose that evil can be attacked by resisting and destroying the Global Bureaucratic System ('The Matrix'). But, if I am correct that this Ahrimanic System is already being superseded and consumed by negative, Sorathic evil; then the current, world dominating evil cannot be resisted by any form of destruction. 

In sum; if we aimed primarily to destroy The System, we would only reinforce the emerging Sorathic spirit of destruction. 

What then? Resistance to Sorathic evil is as simple as the evil it opposes; in that it is to pursue the positive virtues most characteristic of God - which are love and creation (which are one: creation being a superabundance of love); that is, to pursue loving and creating.

('Loving' in the sense of love in the best marriages and families; 'creating' in the broadest sense of thinking and acting from our real, divine self - we are children of God; which is always original and generative.)

And, resistance to Sorathic evil must be individual, or based upon personal, loving 'familial' relationships; because of the danger of Ahrimanic ('Systemic') evil, standing behind the Sorathic.  

So, our course seems clear and simple, as well as difficult and hazardous; which is for each individual to resist Sorathic destruction by creation; to resist Sorathic negation by love. And to ensure that these values and behaviours of creation and love come from within-us: that is, come from God-within-us. 

And not to wait for a lead from any church, institution or other-person - nor to look behind to see if anyone is following us. We must do what needs to be done our-selves, starting now.

 

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One of the main ways that purposive evil has created the prevalent mood of nihilistic despair is by subversion of metaphysics - this has been especially important in destroying the morale of the ruling elite - and creating the mainstream self-hating suicidal animus of public discourse for most of the past century.

Maybe the key metaphysical subversion was to create doubt in the reality and significance of the self ('consciousness', self-awareness, the ego, or 'I') - I mean that ultimate 'me' which comes underneath and before anything else I experience: that which I find when I dig-down as deep within my-self as possible.

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It has seemed obvious to almost everybody (adult or child) who has ever introspected, that the self is a reality, and that it has agency: the ability to choose, to evaluate, to motivate. The self is a cause - or so it seems to intuition.

Furthermore, this self is vital to most religions - certainly it is vital to Christianity; because without a self to choose Christ as Lord and Saviour, then there is no possibility of, or meaning to, Christianity,

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However, this metaphysical basis has pretty much been overthrown in mainstream modern intellectual culture - and certainly in public discourse.

The way that discourse is structured, there is no space for genuine autonomous choice, no place for the self to reside - merely an arbitrary and subjective 'belief' and an explanation for observed behaviour.

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Now it is vital to recognise from the start that metaphysics is the structure of reality as we understand it; and because it is the structuring principle of reality, then it cannot be proven or disproven.

Therefore, experience has no relevance to evaluating the truth of a metaphysical system, evidence from history or science has no relevance to the validity of metaphysics.

So, since the self is a metaphysical assumption; there is no evidence for the reality of the self - and there never can be evidence for its reality.

Neither can there be evidence against its reality; no actual or possible discovery of philosophy, history or science could possibly count as evidence against the reality and autonomy of the self.

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But the idea is general that 'modern science has proven' that the self does not exist, or is not a necessary hypothesis. Or something.

Modern people try to function on the basis that at the core of their being is... nothing. There is no core, the self is a 'projection' of higher systems.

So when a man looks deep within himself, and he finds his-self; then this is stated to be an illusion.

The proof? Because... science.

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What does this do to a man? To be told that his perception of primary inner reality is some kind of mistake. The idea that at his core is... nothing?

Well, it does things like confuse, bewilder, stun, paralyse, despair. It injects distrust into the deepest level of thinking. It renders thought helpless, unable to gain traction, unable even to begin to understand the world.

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Given that there is no reason at all to doubt the reality of the self/ consciousness/ ego/ 'I' - then why would anybody want to do this to himself, and to his fellow men? Why would such a pernicious metaphysical notion be propagated, become mainstream? What could be the motivation for inducing confusion, bewilderment, paralysis, despair?

The answer is - delight in destruction of the Good and the possibility of Good; in other words evil.

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The evil of subversive metaphysics is not a small thing; it is not a game; it is not an amusing way of passing the time; it is not a contribution to the intellectual environment: it is a very real, very pernicious evil - akin to gratuitous torture.

To act sinfully is bad, but may be inevitable; to deliberately choose to plan to induce others to act sinfully is much worse than doing the sin. The hands may be clean, but the heart is filthy.

To despair is a sin; but deliberately to induce despair is worse. Those millions of intellectuals - philosophers, scientists, doctors, novelists, dramatists, movie-makers, journalists etc - who have engaged in strategically-subverting the self, should forget about making excuses and repent what they have done.

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Spite, spitefulness is a strong candidate for The Worst Sin (I've blogged on this often).