Bruce Charlton's Notions

Error 1. An exclusive focus on salvation - when theosis should be the main activity of mortal living

Traditional theology has tended to make salvation a problem, a difficulty, the proper main focus of our mortal lives. When actually salvation is as easy as wanting it and committing to follow Jesus through death into Heavenly life eternal. 

This is clear from the Fourth Gospel (of 'John') - but traditionally Christianity chose to subordinate the Fourth Gospel into a framework provided by Matthew, Luke and Paul.

Salvation is in truth therefore a choice - and that choice is finally made after death; our nature and what we do in mortal life contributes to the outcome of that choice. 

But salvation is not 'a problem', and attaining salvation is certainly not supposed to be the focus of Christian life. Each Christian is meant to have the happiness that comes from hope - and the hope which comes from faith - and to derive happiness and security from his decision to follow Jesus. 

Christians are Not supposed to be fretting and worrying (or despairing) in doubts concerning the certainty of our salvation.  

The proper focus of Christian life should therefore be 'theosis' or becoming more divine (more God-like) - more divine not temporarily in this mortal life; but eternally after resurrection. 

In sum, this continued mortal life exists in order that we may become more God-like after resurrection: that is the reason of mortal life (and why we do not all die as soon as incarnated, while innocent - and before we have a chance to fall into damnation).   

Error 2. Double-negative theology of mortal life - when it is actually an education

Traditional theology has sometimes included theosis, but only in a 'double-negative' context. 

Original Sin is an example of double-negative theology. This posits that damnation (and Hell) is the default for all humans of whatever age, time or place - unless they are saved (by faith, the church, good works - or whatever). The negative is assumed, and Christianity posited to remove that negative. 

For another example of negative theology; Medieval Roman Catholic theology and practice developed the idea that the post-mortal state of purgatory could be shortened and ameliorated by the activities of the living (prayer and other offerings). By the actions of mortal life, post-mortal life would be less-bad - which is what I mean by a double-negative conceptualization. 

This is a negative theosis - we are not becoming better Men with a positive pay-off after death; not becoming more like God - but are alleviating various sufferings imposed by God. 

The nature of mortal life was often conceptualized especially by Protestants in terms of salvation almost-purely (leaving out theosis) - so that by wrong choices in this mortal life would could fail to commit to following Jesus and be damned, or could sin and fail to repent and be damned... 

At the extreme, our eternal state was dictated by our spiritual state at the moment of death - and the rest of life had no effect. Mortal Life was therefore a test; something that could be failed - but not something by which we could be spiritually and eternally improved. 

Such a view of mortal life devalues it into a problem 

But - especially after we have realized that salvation is not a problem - once we want it, and are prepared to do whatever is necessary to follow Jesus after death; then Mortal Life should be seen positively. 

Our mortal life should be seen as potentially incremental and building towards a positive post-mortal outcome. We have experiences (provided for us by God, the creator) - and we may learn (what God intends) from these experiences - and thereby undergo theosis; and become better equipped for a more God-like life after death and resurrection. 

   

Error 3. Regarding only Men as alive and conscious - when universal consciousness of beings is the reality

This error was already present at its foundation but has become much more severe over the history of Christianity. Until by now, Christianity is assumed to be only about men and women (Men) - human beings; and the rest of creation is assumed to be unconscious, lacking purpose - and most of the world is regarded as 'dead' - i.e. the 'material' world of physics which operates only by deterministic causes or 'randomness'. 

This has led to the present usual idea of Christianity as being almost exclusively about 'morality'; as a moral play acted-out against a backdrop of dead and/or unconscious stuff. 

But the truth is that this is a universe of Beings, who are all - in different ways - alive, conscious and with purpose. The drama of salvation and theosis plays-out for all Beings - in different ways. 

As ancient Men knew, and as human children are born knowing; Man lives among Beings - and all that we know, we know about Beings. 

When God created reality - God created Beings - and Beings are what God created - God did not create merely dead/ unconscious/ inert stuff

A corrected Christian theology

When these traditional errors are corrected we can realize firstly that - for those who have become Christian, and chosen to follow Jesus through death to resurrection as their primary commitment - this mortal life is mainly about theosis. Secondly that this theosis is positive - which means that the lessons we learn in this mortal life have a positive benefit for our post-mortal, Heavenly life. And thirdly that the drama of our mortal lives is enacted in a living and conscious world of purposive Beings - most of whom are not human.  

Over the past few years, since I spent a year or so multiply re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("of John") in isolation; I have often emphasized the covertly-deceptive way in which double-negative formulations have colonized and distorted our minds and motivations - both in Christianity and in mainstream modern secular 'leftism'.  

It is important for people to realize, to acknowledge, that the global leadership class of 2023 - especially those of The West - are affiliated to evil; i.e. are allied with Satan and against God and divine creation. 

But making this acknowledgement is not sufficient to be Christian, because the Christian God is Good - and Good by (the best and highest) human standards  of Good - as exemplified and taught by Jesus Christ. 

In other words; to be Christian, we must also correctly understand how it is that God, the creator, who is wholly-Good - makes things, such that this world is ruled by evil Men who serve the agenda of Satan. 

In other words; we need to understand enough about the nature and motivations of God to make sense of the current fact of things-now being substantially under evil leadership. 

And there are (from a Christian perspective) right and wrong ways of understanding this.

As so often nowadays; this line of reflection almost immediately gets-down to fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality - especially the nature of God (in other words - to metaphysics). 

And as so often nowadays; such reflections operate as a stress test on some of the historical incoherences of Christianity - in this instance, the dogma that the Christian God is an Omni-God (omnipotent, omniscient, and creating everything from nothing).

When the Omni-God concept is made primary - then there is no real Good or evil; because everything is of-God. 

Our human ideas of Good and evil are then merely the delusions of Beings who have been made depraved and weak, and forced (for incomprehensible reasons) to dwell in the realm of an evil dictator - with the only goal the negative one of acknowledging our own depravity and that evil of our situation. 

Somehow; this acknowledgement of evil is supposed to be the only path to our personal salvation. And yet this (we must believe) was the only and best way that we (who are supposed to be completely made by God, in complete accordance with God's designs, and having experiences completely dictated by God or God's servants) can escape eternal torment.    

I have noticed that some of the Christians who pass the Litmus Tests of our time - and who therefore appear to be 'good Christians' - are doing so negatively rather than positively. In other words - such Christians recognize the evil of the Litmus Test issues - but only because they regard this whole world as essentially evil. 

Such negative Christians regard Men as essentially depraved creatures who inhabit a world that God has given to the rulership of Satan; and which Satan - who is a sadistic, lying tyrant - operates as a prison of torment.   

In other words; such negative Christians regard God as Good (in some ultimate and abstract sense) but one whose Goodness is morally-incomprehensible - because God (as an Omni-God, qualitatively utterly distinct from men) operates by values that are beyond human comprehension and empathy. 

Because if a Man were to treat his children in this way, he would be regarded as a moral monster! 

An analogy might be parents who deliberately choose to send their son to a boarding school whose headmaster is a sadistic tyrant, and who employs sadistic tyrants as teachers; and these teachers ensure that the most sadistic and tyrannical of the boys are praised and rewarded, and encouraged to torment the children at the school and expunge anything in them that is Good or joyful. 

Even more extremely; since these parents are 'omnipotent and omniscient' - we must assume that they might not have sent their son to boarding school at all, but chose to. And they might instead have picked a better Headmaster who had some Good motivations and employed a better staff and encouraged Goodness in the boys... 

But no! These parents chose to force their kid to inhabit torture-school...

And further - these parents must be regarded as having made their son such that he was by nature depraved, that he was corruptible by evil; he is set-up (by his creation-from-nothing) such that he cannot resist corruption.  

Such choices are de facto imputed to the Omni-God - and belief in Omni-God is then made mandatory for Christians... 

Negative Christians are driven to such extremes by their dogmatic adherence to the Omni-God. 

In the past, it was possible, indeed not unusual, for Christians who believed in an Omni-God to operate in a way that was inconsistent with their belief - and which instead focused on the nature, example and teachings of Jesus. 

But nowadays, because of the stresses of these times - the contradictions of mainstream, orthodox Christian theology have been brought to the surface, and confronted by a more evil world than ever before - a world in which the organized institutional 'Christian' churches have (almost-) all chosen to obey the totalitarian agenda of evil, and who actively-support many or most of the globalist-leftist Litmus Test issues. 

Yet to regard this world and Men as essentially evil is to reject that which is specifically Christian, and to adopt a Judaic/ Old Testament/ Islamic - or even quasi-Gnostic - view of God; as incomprehensible or even apparently evil by even the best human standards. 

(The Gnostics believed, in essence, that this world - and all 'matter' - was created and operated by 'the devil'; and was therefore wholly negative, operating only as a test to elicit a spiritual and other worldly desire. For the Gnostics, we Men could not learn anything positive from our experience in this world - we could only learn the negative lesson of its evil, and experience the desire to escape from matter into pure spirit. Meanwhile - for Gnostics - knowledge of God could only be negative ('negative theology') - we could say what God was not; but could state nothing positive and substantive about God. In other words; this is a double-negative theology - in which 'Good' is only the negation of evil. While there are no modern day Gnostics - it can be seen that this negative metaphysical attitude has been, and still is, a feature of many religions and spiritualities. This is also revealed by the commonly-expressed double-negative conception of salvation; which is so often described as as an escape from default-torment - e.g. "Jesus came to save Men from Hell".) 

It seems obvious to me that Christians - i.e. those who follow Jesus Christ - cannot (and should not) follow this path of regarding this world as created by God as a prison ruled by a tormenter; and of God's nature as utterly unlike even the best aspects of the best of of Men.

The test of these times involves both accepting that this world is indeed ruled by evil men who serve Satan; and also understanding that God is Good - and Good by the best standards of the best of Men in this actual world. 

This means that (in 2023) Christians are being compelled explicitly to reject the old error of the Omni-God in Christianity - failure to do so is pushing Christians towards a kind of double-negative pseudo-Christianity, in which God and the ultimates have more in common with the world-view of Judaism, Islam, or even the Gnostic...

In other words; we are called-upon explicitly to reject a type of 'Christianity' that demands (above all else) complete obedience to the incomprehensible and (to us ultimately depraved humans) apparently-immoral demands of all-powerful and abstractly inhuman deity.

Such a Christianity has no essential role for Jesus Christ as such - its theology and demands are wholly-derivable from God as-was before the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: Jesus has been wholly-absorbed-into the Omni-God (as must all of creation be absorbed into an Omni-God). 

Such a pseudo-Christianity is an Old Testament religion (plus/ minus various Greek and Roman philosophical assumptions) - and such remains the case no matter what lip-service is paid to the importance of Jesus.  

In one version; Jesus has been absorbed into an already-existing Old Testament project, without any qualitative break or inflexion; in another version Jesus is just treated as-if he was simply God the Creator.  

To be a positive Christian in 2023 therefore entails more than just rejecting the temptations of the Litmus Tests on the basis that the world world is evil and God made it this way. 

We cannot negative our way out of trouble! 

Good comes from Good, not from a vast piling of evil upon evil. When Christians find themselves talking as if Good could come from evils, they ought to regard this as a reductio ad absurdum - and examine their assumptions that led to this non-sense! 

Christians need to be led by Jesus Christ, not by a pre-Christian conception of an Omni-God. 

A Christian in 2023 needs to detect and reject evil - yes!

But only as a means to the end of pursuing positive Good. 

**

Note added: The reader may notice that I emphasized 2023 throughout. Negative Christianity often worked well in practice in earlier eras - and this is also useful to understand. Firstly, Men had a different and more group-ish (immersive, passive, un-conscious) form of consciousness in the pre-modern era; and this resulted in society-wide forms of religion. The positive aspects of even the most negative theologies were therefore sometimes ameliorated by positive social practices - particularly those handed-down by tradition. One example would be that of Eastern Orthodox Christianity as found in the Byzantine Empire, or Holy Russia. As well as an ascetic and meditative monasticism rooted in negative theology; there were all kinds of ritual and symbolic practices that were part of everyday life and provided a counterbalancing of warmth, aesthetic satisfaction, colour, energy - often the veneration of Mary, the Mother of God was a particular route for this. Something analogous can be seen in some Medieval Roman Catholic societies of Western Europe. But things have changed - modern Men's consciousness is more autonomous and individualistic and consciously aware of things once taken-for-granted so that we must choose much that was previously spontaneous; automatically absorbed from society. Now (2023) there are no Christian societies that provide that kind of communal and primarily-motivating religious life. Each Christian is, in an existential sense, "on his own". Therefore the long-standing flaws of mainstream Christian theology have been unmasked. Thus life in 2023 is always and everywhere a testing-time for Christians; in ways that 1223, 1523, or even 1823 - were not (or not always).  

I have often commented on the deep problems with the double-negative theology in mainstream Christianity. 

It is double-negative because it regards the problem of this life as sin, and the work of Jesus Christ as purging us of this sin - of removing this sin from us. 

This mortal life is therefore conceptualized negatively, as dominated by sin; and Jesus's work is the negation of this negative - i.e. removing sin, so that we can be resurrected into Heaven: a double-negative. 

This concept regards Heaven as a perfection, and mortal Men as imperfect due to sin; so we cannot enter Heaven until we are ridded of sin - and that is what Jesus made possible. 

So, by one means or another (and this means differs between Christian denominations), before we get to Heaven we go through a process whereby sin is removed (purged) from us, and what is left-over is wholly-good, and therefore we are allowed to enter Heaven.

To enter Heaven is understood as a willingness to undergo this purgation, this 'amputation' of our sinful elements.   

I find many problems with this set of ideas - which boil down to this concept being an implicit an assertion of the idea that God (the Creator and our loving Father) has put us into a sinful world, ourselves being riddled with sin; and that to reach Heaven we must have this sin stripped out from us - implying that what is allowed into Heaven is an incomplete version of ourselves... 

(Indeed, perhaps, for very sin-full people, there will not be much of ourselves remaining, by the time we are suitable for Heaven.)

The purpose of this mortal life - according to such theology - is to reject sin: a negative purpose.  

I find this kind of behaviour - imputed to God - incompatible with him being a loving Father; who might have created things differently and better.

And I find the idea of this mortal life as a negative motivation (against sin, which sin is against-God) both inadequate and somewhat repugnant. It points at the via negativa - a life of rejection that amounts to life turned-against life.

Whereas I feel in my heart (and from the example of Jesus Christ, who was incarnate, active, positive), that this mortal life is - or ought to have - a positive purpose. We ought to be able to become better through our living (experiencing and learning), rather than merely 'avoiding becoming worse'.   

Instead, I see 'sin' as essentially meaning 'death' (which is clear from the Fourth Gospel) - and also the other forms of anti-creative innate corruption and decay that lead up to death (and which modern physics terms entropy). 

Sin in this sense, is the severing of our souls from our bodies at death - and it is this 'death' which Jesus overcame himself, and made possible for those who followed his path. 

Sin, more broadly, is a turning-away from what God desires from us. And a turning-away is not dealt with by purgation but by turning us in the right direction - permanently!

In other words, the main thing that Jesus did is to bring the possibility of eternal life; and this life as a resurrection of our real selves, and with a body - destined for a Heaven where all beings are turned in a direction in harmony with divine creation. 

All beings in Heaven have made an eternal commitment to God's creative goals. 

Rather than a purgation of all that is worst in our-selves; I see the work of Jesus in terms of an amplification of our-selves at their best. 

In this mortal life we find ourselves, intermittently and infrequently - turned in a Heavenly direction. So we know from experience what it is like to live in harmony with divine creation - to work with (rather than against) God.

(We also know what it is like to be turned-away from God and creation - what this feels like, where it leads; and we may learn something of how to overcome this turned-away state in ourselves) 

To prepare us for life in Heaven is therefore something like making it possible for us to stay permanently turned in the direction of Heaven and Creation, in permanent harmony with God's creative will. 

For this to happen, we each must choose whether to allow it to happen. 

Do we want the best in ourselves to become our whole self - or not? 

(This naturally entails leaving-behind those things that can only be achieved by going against God and creation - but the positive reason is that we desire wholly to be our best selves; and because we want to dwell eternally in a situation where we can whole-heartedly and actively work for such goals.)

It is a matter of what we want, and what we want most. 

By analogy; if this mortal life is a walk; then it is a walk when we spin around: sometimes walking with God, sometimes off on a tangent, sometimes pushing against the direction of God. 

Those who choose to follow Jesus Christ, are those who value most - indeed, at root, deeply-value only - those times when they are walking with God (times when they are motivated by love, and participating in the work of divine creation). 

Those who choose Heaven are those who want to do this walking-in harmony with God and sharing God's goals all the time - because they value love and creativity above all else; and indeed these are ultimately the only things of mortal life that they truly, everlastingly value. 

Christians do themselves, as well their cause, long-term harm by their habitual (addictive?) use of double-negative theology. Indeed there is a very influential branch of theology and Christian practice that has elaborated this into a vast systematic edifice (the negative path, or via negativa) - plus, this is the basis of much 'eastern' religious philosophy in Buddhism, Hinduism (and Sufism).  

I think we can see the collapse of double-negative thinking in the 21st century; because its lack of simplicity and clarity render it incapable of dealing with the protean and pervasive challenges to faith of this era, as emanating from globalist totalitarianism with its linked-bureaucracies of governance and mass media. 

Negative motivations are counter-productive, because when all is illusion then individuals are (in practice) rendered passively obedient to that which is dominant. And, anyway, the number and strength - and fluidity - of deceptions are now too great to be individually discerned, diagnosed and rejected. 

In a world where (for many or most people) it is a case of me-against-the-world: - my Christianity against a world of demonic- materialist ideology - it seems we must be clear in our own minds; if we are not to be confused and bamboozled, and simply worn-down to impotent exhaustion by the relentless and increasing weight of error and evil.

For us, it is a case of motivation, motivation, motivation! 

Thus, we cannot anymore be motivated by such double-negatives as the avoidance of sin - most Christians who imagine this is possible are simply denying their own vast scale of sinning in domains such as dishonesty, resentment, and fear. Avoidance of sin is now effective (hence valid) only when there is a primary positive impulse towards Good. 

But most people's idea of The Good is some notion of altruism/ unselfishness/ helping-others - which is another negative value. In a world based on utilitarian hedonism, where 'other people' live materialistically - 'altruism' reduces to me trying to 'make' people happy, which is impossible; so it ends-up with the negative goal of diminishing suffering. 

(In practice, altruism at the political level entails a small class of super-powerful/ super-privileged/ super-rich individuals pretending to administer the world on behalf of the 'oppressed' by monopolizing and confiscating all resources - supposedly because this globalist-establishment are the 'agents' of 'social justice.)   

We cannot (if ever Men could) be motivated by a desire for 'freedom' - because freedom is a negative value that only gains motivating-power for Good, when there is some existing positive motivation towards Good that is being thwarted. 

We cannot, if we intend to accomplish Good, be motivated primarily by obedience to any external authority or institution; because all such are so corrupted that in practice Goodness can only be discerned and practiced by the independent thinking of individual persons, and their autonomy of thinking. 

And that returns us to the primary of personal motivation. 

In other words; it is now imperative for Christian Good both that individuals are motivated to think for themselves and do-so, and that they operate from baseline assumptions that are positively-motivating - which means simple and clear enough to be effective. 

In practice; each must discover these for himself. They are not available off-the-peg and will not be the values that get-inculcated-into the passively obedient or non-conscious, routine-thinker. 

Since the problem is insufficient motivation, we need to begin from whatever positive and good motivations we already have; and follow these motivations through, with honesty and diligence to... wherever they will lead. 

The Big Problem is that so few people seem to have the motivation even to recognize a problem with The World Now. 

This could - in theory - be because the world is now so pervasively and persuasively evil that Modern men are helpless against its temptations... But that would be to assume God has failed to give Men a reasonable chance of salvation...

Alternatively, it may be that Modern men are of innately poorer quality than Men of the past; that a mass of Men (especially in The West) are innately more dominated by evil, more prone to evil - and feebler in their strength of Good motivations than before. 

I regard this 'worse Men' as the most probable explanation for a world full of Men who do not even want to be Good; but who instead legislate and enforce inverted-true values, such that great evil is now called great good - and praised, rewarded and accorded the highest status. 

In other words: I assume that God is as Good as ever, as powerful a creator as ever; but the 'quality' of pre-mortal souls available for incarnation into this mortal life is lower than in the past. A lot of incarnated souls nowadays are less naturally-good/ more heavily disposed-towards evil, compared with the past. 

And therefore (here-and-now) all the major (large/ powerful/ wealthy/ high-status) human institutions of The Hegemonic West (including churches) are net-corrupted; are overall affiliated to the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world. 

Quite likely - you and I are similarly misaligned and enfeebled compared with Men of the past - although I would not be writing, you would not be reading, this - unless there we had at least some motivation to be motivated for Good... 

However... What worked for our ancestors may not work for us: since we are worse, and so is The World. 

We need things to be simpler, clearer and easier than They did; if we are to be able to develop and strengthen our embryonic Good-motivations into something positive by-which we can navigate our path against the current of a hostile evil-world of apparently overwhelming strength and scope. 

 

If the primal reality of God is imagined before the beginning of creation, and if God is single and personal; then creation can be understood as God's 'play'.

This is made simple and explicit in God, the Player Friend; a rare 42 page booklet self-published by William Arkle in 1993, which I only discovered-about a couple of weeks ago, and which I am currently reading.


Typically (and valuably) Arkle boils it down to God alone becoming bored with a world in which everything was caused by himself; and from this dissatisfaction manifesting creation so that divine 'Friends' - that is, fully-developed men and women - could gradually evolve, and become genuinely independent sources of surprise and innovation.

As so often, much hinges upon the primary assumptions; and here Arkle makes the primary assumption that the beginning of everything - God - is a unity. When this is the assumption, then I think it is 'inevitable' that there is an 'arbitrary' quality of 'play' about everything in creation.

Reality is because creation is more 'fun' than no reality; as Arkle sometimes put it.


When creation is driven by something negative like boredom, and negativity is cured by the independent play of other agents or actors; then we get this kind of double-negative theology which I always regard as secondary.

Yet, if creation is dynamic, expansile (as I believe) then it must indeed be motivated by some kind of (negatively) discontent, or (positively) yearning.


My own understanding is different from Arkles, and is pretty-much the Mormon Christian theology; which is that 'in the beginning' God was two, a dyad, man and woman, Heavenly Father and Mother.

By this understanding there never was 'unity' - unless the unity is regarded as being divided in twain. The 'unity' comes from Love: love between our Heavenly Parents, which eternally 'binds' them (in a 'celestial marriage'). That is my primal reality.

The primal reality is therefore one that is dynamic, as love is dynamic; and it is one of yearning, as love contains yearning. By my understanding, then, creation is the result of an overflow of this yearning love; so that there be more autonomous, agent, independently-creative persons to love.

This is a familiar motivation arising between a loving husband and wife: the positive desire for children to expand the scope and possibility of love. The married couple's aspiration for pro-creation (and also to create a home, a family, ideally one that is ever-growing and inter-linking - with all that entails in terms of the context for such growth) is thus seen of a microcosm of the divine impulse to creation. 


The classical 'Trinitarian' formulation of Christian theology 'has it both ways' in asserting that God is both undivided-unity (with no sex) and hence of its nature static and self-sufficient; and also a triad of Father, Son and Holy Ghost (with no sex) - who are different enough to be bound together by love, hence dynamic and motivated to grow.

By this classical account; sexuality is secondary, temporary, inessential; whereas for Mormon theology sexuality is primary and causal; deriving from the nature of God - our Heavenly Parents. 

I can make no rational sense of classical Trinitarianism; but as a form of words, it covers all the bases!

However, for me, God must be either one or more-than-one; and my understanding is that God is (or rather was, primally) two. And these two were a man and a woman. And their love was the fount of creation.

Most Christians tend to regard this mortal life as a test - or rather as a series of tests. This is upside-down; because life is actually an education. 

Of course, an education will involve passing tests - but the over-arching reason for a (real) education is to learn new stuff, to develop abilities - to learn from experiences and thereby be raised to a higher level in the subject being studied. 

That is the purpose of mortal life - of living, developing, growing, and having the experiences which God brings to us by his arrangement of ongoing creation. Some of these experiences take the form of tests that we should overcome; but many other aspects of life are experiences from-which we may learn. 

Here is an analogy: I was at medical school and studied to pass tough exams; and I needed to pass these exams to qualify as a doctor. 

However, the educational aspect was primary. For example; spending the morning interviewing and examining patients, and then presenting a summary and conclusions to a more senior doctor. Or assisting with medical procedures or surgical operations. Or sitting next to doctors in clinics, watching what was done, asking and being asked questions. 

In other words; most of medical education was about having experiences and learning from them - and that was the real and positive purpose of the education. And the exams (the tests) were one type of experience; yet of a double-negative kind: I must not fail them. 

In sum - the first job of a good medical school is to provide students with experiences from-which they can learn to be a doctor if they take the opportunities offered. Also, in the end, it was necessary to pass the tests in order to proceed. 

Christians often fall-into a way of talking that seems to frame mortal life in the exam-like way: as tests that must not be failed. So, these end times were are going through, where apparently supernatural purposive evil dominates a world government, which rules all major social institutions aiming to make society a machine of damnation - may be described as testing-times; and a test which God has set us his children. It is said that we must pass this test to be allowed into Heaven.

I have myself described four Litmus Tests, by which we can discern which side a person or institution has taken in the spiritual war. This might be taken to imply that such Tests are 'set' by God; and that these times of trial are to be conceptualized as like exams for admission to Heaven.

Ultimately, this way of thinking leads to what I have called the double-negative theology which is all too common in Christianity, historically - with the idea that life is about avoiding damnation.

But the truth of our life situation is more more like the whole of education than a set of exams. An alternative and positive idea, is that of life as a chance for theosis; that God engineers our personal experiences such that we can learn from them - and this learning will be of value in our post-mortal eternal life in Heaven.  

So, these 'testing times of trial' should also be seen in the broader context of providing each of us - individually - with the personally-tailored experiences we could most benefit from - if we take the opportunities offered, and learn from them. 

And at the end of this life; it is also necessary to pass the 'test' of salvation - of being able to make an eternal commitment to Love and follow Jesus Christ - in order to proceed to Heaven. 

Note added: William Wildblood's new book Earth is a School is now available for pre-order. It looks in more detail at the idea of life as education. 

To become a Christian it would seem necessary that Jesus has an important, probably vital, role in your understanding of divine activity - in addition to God the creator. All Christians regard Jesus as divine and necessary - but most Christians are unable satisfactorily to explain why.

And this is something that each must workout for himself, it seems to me; in practice. Because of this, for a long time I found it hard to be a Christian in any theoretically solid way - explanations kept crumbling...

(The ability of Christians explicitly to defend and explain Jesus seems to be increasingly necessary in the modern world - since naive Christians are falling to secular materialism with sustained high frequency.)

I was not satisfied with any of the usual explanations of what Jesus did, because they were either incoherent, or depended on an understanding of God and creation that (on living-with them) I sooner or later regarded as mistaken.

For me, any explanation leads on to further questions - until eventually I reach an assumption, and I must assent to this intuition: it must seem right at the deepest and solidest way I can manage, by sustained and intense thinking. I've reached such firm ground with Jesus - at least for the past few years.

I regard all theories of Jesus that start with an omnipotent God (who created everything from nothing) as fundamentally and necessarily mistaken - because such a God can do, and does do, everything - so there is by definition no need for Jesus.

This rules-out the entirety of traditionalist Christianity - Orthodox and Roman Catholic, and Protestant.

The only large scale theology left standing is Mormon; with its God (i.e. Heavenly Parents) who is wholly good by constrained by time and that creation is ongoing, continuing, open-ended; and began with pre-existent unorganised 'stuff' and the primordial spirits of men and women (who were embryonic Gods).

But, in my view, mainstream Mormonism errs in making Jesus primarily about atonement. This falls into being a double-negative theology of Jesus that I regard as refuted by intuition as well as the Fourth Gospel. Jesus came to bring us something more, life more abundant; not merely to undo sins and errors.

Because if Jesus was essentially an undoer, a negative figure, then that leads back to why God created the situation such as to require an undoer, but that undoer cannot itself be God... It also diminishes Jesus to be an undoer rather than the bringer of a great gift.

Yet, the strangest thing is that the work of Jesus is explained, repeatedly and clearly (albeit poetically) in the Fourth Gospel, which is about 2000 years old. If it can be read without a superstructure of preconceptions - the answer is there.

I am sometimes astonished by people's blindness to the obvious fact that their whole lives are based on double-negative motivations; and that therefore they can only motivate themselves to get-through life, by maintaining a continuous state of frothing anger and seething resentment...

And then they develop a scheme of inverted values by-which this state of angry resentment is regarded as right, proper, praiseworthy!

Of course; in this totalitarian-secular world, where all major institutions are left-affiliated - double-negativity is inevitable, since that is the basis and nature of leftism. 

But, sadly, a great deal of Christianity (as well as other religions) is also mostly negative and oppositional in its theology, hence its motivations. 

So we are all surrounded by encouragements to base our lives on negativity, on oppositions; and to value only this...

What eventuates is a public, social, political, media world in a waxing-and-waning (but never-ending) frenzy of opposition to... something or another (mostly or wholly made-up, invented, manipulated)...

And this being resisted and opposed by Christians on a point-by-point basis; such that the end-result is a Christianity of triple-negation! 

(That is, group Christian life substantially consists of Christians opposing the secular-leftists, who are themselves motivated by one or many of the oppositional leftist ideologies such as socialism, feminism, racism, climate change, healthism, anti-Fire-Nationism...)

And public discourse is consequently oppositional in nature - consisting of ginning-up personal disputes, and escalating the interpersonal rhetoric; presumably in an attempt at avoiding self-awareness of the sheer flimsiness, feebleness and radical incoherence of one's own motivations.

This has been going-on for more than three decades even in science, and for more than sixty years in general culture; and so most people know nothing different. They apparently imagine that such spiteful scapegoating and schoolboy scrapping always has been the underlying nature of discourse on ideas, morality and the purpose of life. 

In such a world; a serious Christian who engages in public discourse will be corrupted by the process - one way or another: either by its becoming a demonstration of ritualized submission of Christianity to leftism; or else by him being dragged into the melee of name-calling, face-scratching and hair-pulling enacted as spectacle in front of a contrived media-cheerleading audience and its dopey addicts. 

Luckily for Christians, none of this is necessary. The powers of evil are very concerned to distract Christians from, or to deny, the spiritual power and effectiveness of the single soul. Very concerned to corral and corrupt the single soul, by insisting Christianity is only valid when engaged in group or corporate activity.  

Yet, on the contrary; any individual who achieves clarity in his thinking, clarifies thinking for Mankind. Any Man who is well-motivated, even for ten minutes!, creates a positive spiritual template for others. Someone that seeks and attains guidance from his real-divine self or from the Holy Ghost, makes it easier for this to be repeated by himself and others. 

All true thinking makes possibilities and alters the balance of powers. 

Why? Because although our experience is one of alienated consciousness and solitude, the fact is that all Men are spiritually 'linked' in vital respects - or, more exactly, Men share in a condition of inhabiting a "spiritual thought-world" - a world of mutual knowing and interactions.

Ancient tribal Men knew this innately - and lived by it; and we each personally spontaneously used-to know this as young children - we knew that some of our thoughts could be known by others, and that we could know the thinking of others; that we were never alone, that our dreams and thoughts potentially affected the world for better, or worse. 

CG Jung got it partly-right but distorted, with the Collective Unconscious - his basic point that we inhabit a kind of spiritual underworld was correct; and that this accounts for the very possibility of communication and knowledge.  

The personal is political; but not by material means (as leftists suppose) but because 'the spiritual' is public - potentially.  

In 'making the world a better place', or indeed in helping a neighbour; it is not just that we don't need to use the material mechanisms of human society - but that these mechanisms thwart betterment, and twist it to evil ends. 

The only proper reason for public discourse (like this!) is insofar as it contributes towards personal clarity and strengthens positive motivations. 

That work is done by the spiritual act of composition; as the benefit of thinking is done by the spiritual act of having right-thoughts. The achievement is at that point - and not by the later possibility of its physical spread and 'influence' of words, images, concepts...

We really do not need to worry about access to media or the levers of power; about accuracy or misrepresentation; about communication, about persuasion, about winning (fake) arguments! 

(Indeed we must not worry about such things - because such things work precisely by the corrosive effect of such worry. Worry about the material manifestation of communications is therefore a sin, that requires to be recognized and repented. Writers and other public discoursers need to be aware of this, or else the spiritual good of their activity will be undone, and they will be corrupted by their activities: as is so often evident.) 

We 'only' need to take care of our side of things! 

Anything we say that is right and Good will (insofar as it is helpful) be taken-up and woven into ongoing-creation by God. 

Anything we think right; any needful discernment, any repentance or other decision to reject an evil, will have its positive effect on the spiritual world. 

Since Modern man is blind and insensible; Our first and most important job is to become aware: to understand, become conscious, make the right choices and clarify our desire to follow Jesus Christ, for resurrection into Heaven, to live eternally and Sons and Daughter of God. 

Nothing is more important than this, nothing is more effective.

Everything we require for the job is supplied us; nothing else is needed that what we have and can get; and nothing external can stop us from doing the job. 

Why not sin? 

First - we need to get rid of the double-negative theology implicit in "why not sin" and reconceptualise the problem as the positively aspirational: "Why be Good?". 

After all; I understand sin to be any and all departures from the positive situation of living in full harmony with the wholly-loving aims and nature of God's ongoing creation. 

"A sin" is thus any thing - any impulse, thought, action - which does not harmonize with divine love. There are therefore innumerable "sins", and everybody "sins" nearly-all of the time. 

Since sin is best defined in terms of departure from Good; it is clearly much better (positively) to aim at being-Good - rather than (negatively) trying not-to-do not-Good! 

(To get some-place - i.e. heaven - it is insufficient to be told when we stray off the path; we most need to know where we are going, and how to get there!)

For me; the answer to "Why be Good?" is that I desire to live "wholly by Love" - to live in accordance with God's ongoing divine creation - which derives from God's love, and is motivated by love. 

Indeed; anyone who wants Heaven, surely wants to live by love? 

(Else why would he want Heaven forever?) 

Expressed otherwise: Why on earth would anyone who ultimately desired to live eternally in complete accordance with love; not want to do so here-and-now, and all of the time? 

Wanting to live by love is just characteristic of the kind-of-person who wants eternally to dwell in Heaven after death. 

Yet of course we are tempted - over and again, very frequently - to live other-than by full accordance with love: to live out-of-harmony with divine creation, because it is short-term gratifying for us to do so. 

And therefore we often fail to resist these temptations; and we sin for much of the time. 

So we do not, as a matter of fact, resist temptation - and we do instead often choose to live out-of-harmony with divine creation. 

Given that fact; it might be asked: why should we even try to resist temptation? 

Why - since we fail all the time, and will continue to fail - don't we just accept the reality of sin; and sin whenever it is gratifying or convenient?

But I have already answered that question. 

The answer to "Why be Good?" is: 

If I am someone who desires resurrected eternal life in Heaven; then no matter how often and badly I fail to live the Heavenly life during this earthly mortal life - I will never stop repenting my failures, and never cease from trying to live better; simply because a life in harmony with God's loving creation is the life I want, more than I want anything else. 

H/T To David Earle for a comment that helped trigger this post.  

You probably know about the 'Jesus Fish' symbol, and how it supposedly came from the first letters (in Greek) of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour - that spelled something that sounded like the Greek word for 'fish'.

I was reflecting on the extent to which this is a helpful summary of Christianity - as I understand it. One can see that the word Christ is of compelling importance only to ancient Jews, as referring to their anticipated Messiah, a divinely-anointed king - but that this has no meaning or validity to a modern secular person. However, 'Jesus Christ' does make clear who we are talking about - not just some Spanish footballer called Jesus... So we can keep Christ as an identifier!

Son of God? Yes, but so are we all. Jesus is divine, and he is not identical-with 'God the creator'- but this kind of subtle theological consideration is probably not an appropriate focus for a brief summary of the importance of Jesus. Better to leave-it-out.

Then there is the word Saviour... Saving from what? is the first question. And a one word answer is Sin - but by Sin is properly meant something close to what we would say by Death; rather than by what most modern people mean by Sin, which is moral transgression, the thinking and doing of evil. Because of this moral/ ethical understanding of Sin, modern people don't regard it as the kind-of-think that one can be saved-from...

Yes, there is the idea that we need saving from 'Original' Sin - but this was supposedly inflicted by God on Adam and Eve and all descendants as a form of Justice; and that kind of Justice seems (on the face of it) un-just...

And anyway, it makes for a rather strange kind of double-negative theology if Jesus's role was to save us from a punishment inflicted by his Father. It sound close-to: good-Jesus saves us from evil-Father...

In sum: If Jesus is primarily about saving us from the consequences of sin-evil, and these consequences are divine in origin; then we are (merely) being saved from God, by God. I know there are theological explanations for this - but at a common sense level it would strike a modern person to have been better, easier, quicker for God not to condemn all Men in the first place.


So, if Saviour is not a satisfactory summary-word for the work of Jesus; is there a better one?

Yes! In the Fourth Gospel we are told several times and in several ways that Jesus gave us Life Everlasting, Life Eternal. Which means that after 'biological death', instead of everybody going to the demented, ghostly half-life of 'Sheol'; Jesus has brought the gift of resurrection to a Heavenly life, as divine children of God, in Heaven.

This Gift is given to all who follow Jesus through death.

And to follow Jesus we need to love him, have faith in him, trust him - as sheep follow a Good Shepherd.

So Jesus is, mostly, the Giver of Life.


Now, any such brief summary is bound to lead to questions, to require elucidation. And Giver and Life both invite elucidation. But I think these explanations can briefly and simply be provided, along the lines expressed above.

Such obvious questions include - why can't God give Everybody this kind of Life. Why only those who love Jesus?

And the answer is that some people, perhaps most people, do not want what Jesus offers; and the reason why they do not want it, is where the more familiar idea of Sin as moral transgression comes-in.

Another obvious question is why we can't simple be born directly into Heaven? Why all this 'tedious mucking about' in mortal life?

And that answer to that has to be along the lines that this is the only way it can happen, it is the way things-work. Evidence is that Jesus himself had to attain resurrection via mortal life; and so we must do the same.

I think other questions can be given similarly brief and comprehensible answers. 


So that is my suggested alternative to ICHTHYS: Jesus Christ, Giver of Life.

From what does Jesus save us?

To simplify, one might first say Jesus saved us from death, by his offer of resurrection. 

And Jesus also saved us from an ultimately purposeless and meaningless mortal life - i.e. "alienation", by resurrection into that "second creation" which is Heaven. (Both are achieved by an eternal commitment to live by love.) 

Salvation from death and from alienation are the "twin prongs" of Romantic Christianity (the Christian, and the Romantic) - which are distinguishable, but which can be separated only by destruction of the valuable whole. 

In theory (as of here-and-now) we might be Christian or Romantic solely; in practice, in these End Times ruled by evil; unless both are present, then motivations are so enfeebled that we shall become corrupted into conformity with the demonic agenda. 

In stereotypical traditional societies (although not nowadays in The West) - this might be summarized as the first appeal of Christianity being different for those who live in expectation of death (e.g. in famine, war, or old age); than for those (adolescents and young adults, mostly) who are preparing for a functional adult life, and who are often afflicted by a sense of the pointlessness of mortal existence. 

In the past; alienation was often ameliorated by social palliatives - by those leaving their birth family becoming members of another close-knit group. hence the vitality of churches. But this alternative has been largely abolished by modernity and bureaucracy - and changes in human consciousness. Mostly, such communities are now experienced negatively: as intolerably oppressive, as exploitative. 

From here-and-now it seems that the answers of Christianity remain qualitatively the same; but have shifted from the material and external (e.g. churches, and the objective efficacy of religious symbolism and observances causally-linked to resurrection) to the spiritual - to inner commitments within the realm of thinking.  

Of course; to regard Jesus as Saviour is an instance of double-negative theology; and the underlying reality is that in a positive sense Jesus offered a possible basis for living well this mortal life; for a mortal life that escapes futility and gains eternal purpose and meaning from the expectation of resurrected life.  

In other words; both prongs of Romantic Christianity ought to arise from the same root; which is that we know with inner and intuitive sureness that our own individual reality is truly personal, and we have chosen to be part of divine creation - and that our part is eternally significant for the whole. 

Although I harp-on about the dangers of double-negative theology for Christians; nonetheless the positive achievement of Jesus Christ (and his 'message') would not have much traction unless people felt that there was some-thing basically, fundamentally, ultimately wrong with The World - some thing which Jesus (at least potentially) set right.  

And what I mean here is at the level of our personal feelings of what is wrong: What is it (what kind of a thing) that we personally feel is wrong about our life and the world?

(What problem to which Jesus offers a solution?)

There are probably any number of things that might in theory be thus regarded; but I think there are just two apparently common but distinct wrong-feelings that seem to dominate people. 

Probably the commonest (in the Western civilization at any rate) is that suffering is the main problem, the main thing wrong with the world. So widespread and powerful is this idea that it hardly requires explaining - but anyway...

Any or all kinds of suffering might be meant: pain, misery, disablement, fear, despair, humiliation -- different people mostly experience, are most susceptible to, or focus on; different kinds of suffering. 

And the wrongness of suffering my be my suffering, the suffering of particular loved others - whether human, animal, or something else; it may be the totality of suffering in the world; or it may be the wrongness of suffering of any Beings anywhere, ever (i.e. that there ought never to be any suffering).

In sum: this is the idea that the suffering - whether its existence, its prevalence, or its severity - is what is basically wrong with this world. 

This seems to be a hugely powerful and widespread conviction - it is apparently the basis of several religions, and what they claim to cure. Suffering as the main problem to be addressed is the basis of almost all public moral discourse nowadays; the rationale of preventing, reducing, or stopping various kinds-of-suffering (or putative suffering) is the basis of a great deal of all mainstream policy and political action.  

But there is another idea of basic wrongness - less often expressed, but just as real; and that is that the main thing wrong with this world is that nothing lasts.   

Anything that we value will not last; everything will die, or in some other way be destroyed. 

...No matter how large, strong, how long it has existed - it will crumble, it will come to an end. 

All that we value the most - our love, those we love the most, whatever we most love doing, our achievements - will change, will end. All that is most virtuous or beautiful will end. 

And Be Forgotten Utterly.

We ourselves will die, everybody will die; all the animals and plants will die; our living planet, and the mineral planet, the sun and solar system - all will change, crumble, end.  

This aspect of the nature of our world, I often term 'entropy'; and entropy in this sense, is a rival to suffering as the major candidate for what is wrong with the world. 

The "weight of entropy" may be the tragedy of life.  

Yet suffering and entropy as the main problem of life, are each very different in their nature and consequences. 

For example, a selfish person might feel there is nothing wrong with the world at times when he is personally completely-happy (i.e. when he personally is not suffering); and someone might also assume that if suffering could be abolished from the world - then there would be essentially nothing wrong with it. 

But someone who believed that entropy was the main problem would perhaps be most aware of the wrongness of the world at exactly those times when he was most happy, and did not suffer. Because he would realize that this state could not last. 

(Have we not felt this ourselves, in the first full flush of falling in love? Perfect happiness... all-too-soon undercut by the fear and conviction that it Will Not Last?)

Indeed, the more 'successful' was a Man's life - the more joyous and fulfilled, the more loving and creative -- the more strongly would the fact of entropy weigh upon him; because he would be ever-aware that all this would, for sure, be lost.  

One who regards entropy as the main problem in this life, this world; cannot envisage any this-worldly way in which the situation could be cured - because this world is 'ruled' by entropy. 

No conceivable political program or psychological treatment would make any difference. The better that things became - the more tragic the sense that none of it would last...

This circles back to Jesus Christ; because Jesus did not claim to eliminate or even diminish suffering in this world...

Or, even if you think Jesus did claim this, then the past 2000 years have (surely?) been a massive refutation that He could deliver it! 

Consequently; those who focus the most on suffering as that which is basically wrong with the world, are often those most hostile to Jesus and Christianity. 

But Jesus did claim to offer a way of escape from entropy: this is what Jesus meant by resurrection, eternal life, and heaven. 

Regular readers will no doubt be relieved to hear that I think my 'project' of reading the Fourth Gospel in isolation, on the basis that it is most important book of the Bible, seems now to have reached its natural end-point.

I regard the Fourth Gospel as chronologically the first, and qualitatively the most authoritative, source on the life and teachings of Jesus. As I read and re-read, I found that the discipline created a situation as if the Fourth Gospel was the only scripture.

And indeed, whenever I turned to other Gospels, or to the Epistles and Revelation, they looked very much inferior; very much like rag-bag collections of theology, memoirs, theories and folk tales about Jesus; and of very mixed validity - since many things in them contradict the Fourth Gospel.

I don't know that I can ever again regard the bulk of the New Testament as any more intrinsically authoritative than I already regarded the Old Testament - which I see as a collection of many types of writing (including myth, fiction, poems, rulebooks, histories and prophecies), made over many years and with no single purpose in mind - a collection of potentially valuable resources.

At any rate, I feel a sense of completion - and I no longer feel internally-driven to continue. My initial assumptions about the special and unique validity of the Fourth Gospel remains and has been greatly strengthened; and I can understand why it has been systematically downgraded by the historical churches throughout history.

(By 'sytematic', I mean that the method and assumptions by which the historical churches created and have interpreted The Bible, and especially the New Testament, have downgraded the Fourth Gospel in multiple ways. By choosing Not to accord it primacy, the unique and challenging qualities of the Fourth Gospel have been negated, simply by its being 'outvoted'.) 

This downgrading seems inevitable, given that the Fourth Gospel provides no authority for churches, nor for a priesthood, nor for celibacy, nor for the ritual communal life that has often dominated Christian practice; the Gospel's vision of the Christian life is highly individual, personal, un-institutional. 

In the Fourth Gospel; Christians are seen to more like a new kind of family, than a new version of ancient religions.

And the historical church has mostly portrayed Jesus as a rescuer of an otherwise-doomed Mankind - a double-negative description, with Jesus negating the negative state of a 'fallen' world. Whereas the Fourth Gospel shows a Jesus dealing with individual persons to enhance their existence - a positive addition to human possibility, with Jesus making possible a qualitative transformation of mortal to divine Life.

The Fourth Gospel sees 'Christianity' as a one-at-a-time opt-in life, likely to be chosen by a minority of people; not a thing of masses, not a matter for politics or organisation.  

So, on the one hand, a Fourth Gospel-centred understanding tends to undermine the validity and relevance of a great deal of historical Christianity - including undermining things that have been, and are, seen as the very essence of the religion.

On the other hand, Fourth Gospel-centred Christianity may be exactly what is most needed in a world where, already, most of historical Christianity (in the West) has-been not just undermined, but subverted and inverted into purposive anti-Christian evil...

The Fourth Gospel is a message of hope directly and immediately applicable to every person in every situation - no matter how isolated. Across the centuries, leaping the millennia; the Fourth is precisely the Gospel for here and now.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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


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

*
For Mormons, God the Father has a body. This is often depicted as absurd by the Classical theology of mainstream Christians; despite that a common sense reading of the Bible would suggest God the Father does have a body - like his Son Jesus Christ.

(And, of course, countless millions of simple but devout Christians always have believed that God the Father has a body.)

An insistence that God is a spiritual being without a body has many implications - or perhaps it is clearer to say that a God without body goes-with a whole constellation of theological ideas; and this is precisely the constellation which the Restored Gospel inverts.

So the fact of God having a body is part of a strikingly different set of interlocking perspectives in Mormonism.

*

If Man has a body and God the Father does not, if Man is incarnate and God a spirit, this implies (not logically, but it does suggest) that the body is a disadvantage. The idea fits into a scheme whereby spirit is good and body is bad - a drag.

Since Man is incarnated in mortal earthly life with a body, then this suggests mortal life is a punishment - or at least a penance - but certainly an incarnate mortal life cannot be presented as an unalloyed spiritual advance or opportunity.

Even resurrection will have a double edged quality if it means we are forever trapped in a body. Christ has a resurrected body - but Christ is also a simultaneous God-Man in some mysterious sense, and part of a Trinity which is likewise impossible to understand in a common sense fashion; so the human situation remains obscure.

*

There has always been a tension, or perhaps it is rather a confusion, in mainstream Christianity and Classical theology about why resurrection is a good thing - because so many implications suggests that a purely spiritual existence is better than life with a body.

From Classical theology it is hard to understand why the body should be retained, since the body is seen in essentially a negative way - as dragging the spirit down, causing temptations and pains...

Why should we want or need a body for the rest of eternity?

*

But if it is accepted that God the Father, as well as his Son Jesus Christ, have bodies and we are in their image - so they both have bodies of the kind we have; then the body is straightforwardly and common-sensically an enhancement.

To be incarnated into mortal life is therefore a positive thing, a step in spiritual progression, or divination - it is a theosis, bringing us closer in our nature to God.

Thus our incarnate mortal life can be seen as a positive thing, a step in the right direction - of being more like God, rather than a punishment.

(Whereas if a body is bad, this depicts a God who is limiting us, rather than enhancing us.)

And to be resurrected - with a purified spirit in a perfected body - is therefore a positive thing, because it is better to have a body than not to have a body - and this applies to eternity as it does to our present life on earth.

*

The implications go even further, because the Mormon schema implies a God that works linearly in the world and in time - it fits with theosis conceptualised as a necessarily step-wise process.

(Because if God could simply make us incarnate and provide us with the experience of earthly life instantaneously, 'by waving a wand' as it were - then presumably He would. The fact that He did not, and had us incarnated and living mortal lives, implies that this is necessary - or at least optimal - for our spiritual development. Which implies that God is working inside time and inside constraints of the universe.)

So altogether Mormonism makes (or restores to) Christianity the explanatory model of relationship at the focus. For Mormonism the love of God and love by God which is at the heart of Christianity is the love between persons - persons of the same kind although  widely differing degree.

The primary explanatory model of Mormonism is human relationship; so God's love for us is not a special abstract thing called Agape but rather the same-kind of love that we have for each other and for Him, but taken to a vastly greater degree and purity.

*

Therefore, an insistence that God the Father has no body can be seen to have been a key factor in enforcing the highly abstracted and philosophical nature of mainstream Christianity; whereas a simple acceptance that God has a body fits with a simple and lucid Christian faith in which everything is what it seems, by common-sense criteria; and where the core of the faith does not have to be redefined as a philosophical abstraction, nor set out-with common sense and any possible explanation, as paradoxical formulae and utterly incomprehensible mysteries.

*

There are just so many ways in which modern culture is actively subversive, inverting values and corrupting behaviour - that to focus upon any in particular is to invite failure. 

Special attention paid to a specific response to a specific problem (which will usually result in the need to do something quite complex and effortful) - opens us up to a weakened and distracted response to the many other simultaneous problems. 

If we take a single-issue approach to dealing with our sins, in a world where there are So Many sins, we will end-up chasing our tails. Even if we weed-out one form of sin by great effort, meanwhile the others will have grown unchecked*. 

What is required is that values we live-by, be rooted in some source of real and true values that is autonomous from the mainstream culture. 

In other words; when Western civilization is become an ocean of corruption in which we must swim - because its corruption has invaded all institutions; we can no longer lead a Good life by the double-negative strategy of avoiding evil; but only by the positive strategy of pursuing Good. 

And to do this requires living in accordance with a source of Good that is independent-of, and uncorrupted by, our civilization.  

Then it does not matter what that culture is - past, present or future; nor what is does to us - because so long as we are rooted in reality and truth, we can recognize and repent whatever is corrupting, subversive or value-inverting. 

The traditional way for this to happen, was that the individual would obey the guidance of a religious group (typically a church) that was autonomous and Good. 

But now there are no churches or other religious groupings that are both big-enough and autonomous from the subversions of culture nowadays - and which can be relied-upon to remain autonomous for as long as we may need them. 

To be rooted-in a church, is therefore merely to be rooted in a variant of the mainstream corrupt-culture. 

The other way is for each individual to 'obey' the guidance of some internal source which is both Good and autonomous. 

Is this possible? Is there a source within-Man that is sufficiently autonomous of the evils of culture, and also Good? 

For me, the answer is Yes - because this is a matter of metaphysical Christian theology. 

In other words; my fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of God and divine creation assume that God is Good, and we are God's children - and therefore we each have within us that which makes God Good.

In other words we each have in us (because we are God's children) a True and Uncorrupted Self which is in harmony with divine creation, and from-which we can be guided towards that which is Good.  

If one believes-in a real-divine self, and that this True Self can be 'consulted' for guidance; then that potentially solves the problem of living in a corrupting civilization where that corruption includes the churches. 

Furthermore, in principle, each of us can deal with problems of corruption on an individual, case-by-case basis; rather than by - as with traditional religions - seeking generic solutions to particular classes of problem, or following general guidelines such as laws or prescribed practices. 

It all seems to depend, in the first instance, on whether one believes this source of inner guidance is real/ true/ possible.

*It is possible that a person may be dominated by a particular besetting sin, which needs to be weeded-out before anything else can be done - alcohol or drug addiction is an example. But we should not pretend that dealing with a single sin makes someone overall a better person - assuming that the sin was already repented. 

I mean that what is vital with a besetting sin is repentance. Reform of a sin is good, in and of itself; but only Good overall when it is indeed Good overall! 

Reform may, or may not, be possible in a particular instance; but it is at best is preparation for a subsequent change in overall attitude to life.

It seems to me that we have to make a decision about the significance of life: more exactly we need to discover what it is that we personally really feel about the significance of the "events" of this our mortal life. 

There are various "philosophies" of this life that are knocking-around; but none of the standard ones that we are likely to encounter seem to be validated by my own deepest and most lasting intuitions, insofar as I am conscious of them. 

For instance; some people sometimes talk as if life is a cumulative process, a matter of building towards - so someone might look back on their life as if it was all working towards who (and what) he is now. 

This is often a way used for structuring obituaries and biographies (whether informal and verbal, or written) - the idea of encapsulating what somebody's life was "about"... but it is hard to say how seriously it is taken by most people. 

It often seems like an as-if and ironic kind of activity; just "something to say", as in a funeral eulogy. 

On, the other hand; it does seem like some people actually live in order to make what they regard as an impressive obituary - the idea that their lived-life is validated by their post-mortal official reputation. 

(I should note, here, that (even just five years into retirement) the various academic/ scientific/ educational achievements of my own working-life, seem hollower, and are experienced as far less satisfying, than I had ever imagined at the times they happened!) 

At the opposite extreme is the idea that each person's life is ultimately futile; amounting to nothing and ended by annihilation of the self. 

This may be softened by stuff about "living-on" in the memories or hearts of others... But even to the extent this is true, it merely "kicks the can" a generation or two downstream; since we cannot thus survive beyond the lifespan of those who really-knew the real-us.  

The annihilation story is the underlying official and global metaphysical assumption; the one that lies behind all modern social institutions. It goes with the idea that individual people exists to serve the social systems. 

But the idea that an individual life is futile is also the implication of oneness spirituality in its various manifestations; including such ideas that this mortal life is an illusion, a deception, a simulation. That we are not really individuals at all, we only think we are. I mean the idea that we never really had or have an independent reality as "agents" as beings with the capacity for freedom...

People quite often talk in this way; although, again, it is hard to say how deeply they really believe what they are saying - often it just seems like a social status game.

My own deepest intuition is that this life is not futile; or rather that life is not necessarily futile - although we can choose to make it so. 

But that is merely a double-negative: I would go further and say that life is purposive and meaningful - but not in the way of an obituary. 

Rather; some events in life strike me as innately "of eternal significance". 

That feeling or belief is a kind of psychological fact-of-life for me - some things that happen in my life, combined with the way I responded to these happenings, are experienced as having a quality that seems to stretch-out into the eternal future; as if (from my point of view) everything has been changed by them.

I said a "psychological" fact, but part of this psychological fact is that this significance of some "events" goes beyond my own psychology, that the significance is objective - it is part of reality. 

Now this is a strange intuition! at least when compared with the kind of interpretative explanations that are knocking around the world nowadays. 

It is a strange thing to suppose that an-event-as-I-personally-experienced-it might form one of the building blocks of eternal reality; yet that is indeed how it seems. 

It is a secondary matter, coming after this intuition, to devise some model of the world in which this is possible; a moving-picture of the world in which it makes sense that an-event-as-I-personally-experienced-it could have a real, eternal significance.

Furthermore, this intuition includes that the significance is both objective and personal - that is, both important to me personally (so that, somehow, "I" am still going to be around to appreciate this importance) - as well as of continued, everlasting significance to "reality in general".* 

And that is one of the motivators behind my philosophical, metaphysical, activity - and also a reason why the theology to which I adhere - Romantic Christianity, as I call it - has ended-up being different from all the mainstream options. 

That is, in sum: None of the mainstream explanatory options make coherent sense of my intuition that an-event-as-I-personally-experienced-it could be a thing of eternal, and indeed personal, significance. One of my (self-motivated) tasks is therefore to devise a scheme by which the validity this intuition is explained. 

*I should emphasize that I do not have this intuition of eternal significance for every-thing that happens, but only for some things that happen.