Bruce Charlton's Notions

We must die in order to be remade - to be resurrected. 

This is salvation. 

Damnation is the other choice: to reject salvation. 

We must be resurrected to enter that state called Heaven*; because for Heaven to be 'heavenly' - all within it must have-been remade, wholly-good - without disposition to evil. 

Or, to enter Heaven, we must make a permanent commitment to repent and repudiate all sin - all evil, all that opposes divine harmony - and the way that this permanent commitment is made is by resurrection -- in which all that is Good (God-harmonious) in us is retained; while all that is not is left-behind and discarded.

Such a permanent commitment is made from love; and therefore must freely be chosen - cannot be compelled; and can only be made by those capable of love who choose to make love their eternal foundational principle. 

(Only thus can Heaven be a place that is wholly Good (a place without any evil-motivation) and also wholly-free - inhabited by beings with divine powers of creation; who will always and spontaneously use their godly-powers harmoniously with God and other Heavenly beings.)  

The need for death is true for men and women - and for all other beings. 

Which is why this incarnated mortal life on earth is dominated by entropy: because every-"thing" must die, if there is to be a possibility of resurrection. 

In other words: If every being on earth is to have a chance of attaining and choosing Heaven - they all must die, sooner or later. 

Pre-mortal spirit life, although wholly-good, is very imperfect - especially in terms of freedom, of agency. 

The harmony and goodness of pre-mortal life is dependent on the passivity and obedience of spirits; because pre-mortal beings are not innately wholly good (in the way that God is wholly-good, or resurrected beings are wholly good). 

Because pre-mortal spirits are not-wholly-good, the harmony of goodness in pre-mortal life is attained top-down, by the direction and control of God. 

In effect, so far as pre-mortal spirit life goes; God is the wholly-good parents of a mixed bunch of children - some mostly-good, some mostly-evil - none wholly good. It is only by the obedience of these children that goodness prevails. 

But pre-mortal spirits mature, they grow-up, they change... Sooner or later, they get to a point where they must throw-off the passive goodness of obedience to parental authority and control. 

Then these pre-mortal spirits have a choice...

Either the spirits can incarnate on earth - some time afterwards to die, and make the choice of resurrection, or not. 

(This is God's plan - because God wishes to make and inhabit Heaven with resurrected (incarnated everlasting) beings, who have have by their choice of resurrection made an eternal commitment to live in harmony with divine creation.)

Or else those pre-mortal spirits who do not want to die and be resurrected; or who simply do not want to die - and those who reject the divine plan for an harmonious Heaven of free-beings who have chosen to be remade without evil... 

These spirits can escape their previous state of obedience to divine goodness, and enter the sphere of earth while still spirits - and therefore immortal. 

These are the demons. 

(This explains why demons are spirits - not embodied; and why they are immortal. They are spirits because they have refused temporary mortal incarnation, and are immortal because they are spirits, and unaffected by 'entropy'.)

If the pre-mortal spirits choose mortal life on earth, they must choose temporary incarnation and death (as necessary pre-requisites for resurrection); but if they reject this package, then such spirits have rejected even the possibility of Heaven.

This is why all demons are evil, and why demons are worse than incarnated Men - because demons, by their rejection of mortal incarnation, have all chosen to reject the possibility of that death which makes salvation possible. 

(If demons changed their minds and repented, and wished to prepare for the choice of Heaven; they would need first to incarnate and die. Whether this this is possible or ever actually happens I do not know.) 

So - demons have rejected the passive ('secondhand') good of pre-mortal spirit life under the parental influence of God; and they have also rejected that mortal life on earth which is a necessary stage to prepare for remaking-by-resurrection, and Heaven.   

The ruling principle of creation (that which makes creation cohere) is love; and love is the reason why the dead choose resurrection and heaven.  

The essential reason why demons have rejected mortal incarnation, and why some dead mortal Men reject the offer of resurrection into Heaven and instead choose damnation; is that demons and the damned are either incapable of love, or have rejected love as the basis of life and chosen... something else.    

Differently phrased: Demons are those never-incarnated beings who have rejected living under the domination of entropy (i.e. mortal earthly life); and by doing so rejected God's plan of salvation. 

The damned are those who chose to live and die as mortal incarnate Men on earth, and have become dis-carnated beings (i.e. souls severed from their bodies); and who die and then reject resurrection and Heaven; instead choosing some other fate.

*Note: Why our final God-destined state-of-being is embodied, incarnate - rather than spirits - is a topic I have considered elsewhere.   

*
Did God make entropy a law of the known universe, or is entropy prior to God and God constrained by entropy?

Could God have made a world without entropy, could He have made this world without entropy - a world that was not tending to corruption and chaos - and if so why didn't he?

*

For the medieval 'scholastic' theologians, the mortal sub-lunar world was the place of entropy - of decay, death and sin - and the Heavenly world was a place of eternal and perfect harmony. Entropy was therefore pretty much a product of Satan and his demons (all entropy is evil, but not all evil is entropy).

But it is hard to make such a world picture coherent, and hard to understand how two such different worlds can have any meaningful relationship (i.e. an always-corrupting and death-filled world of entropy, versus an eternal and changeless world of perfection).

*

Although entropy is destructive of life, we moderns find it hard to imagine life without entropy; in the sense that any active process would seem liable to accumulate damage.

Or, to put it the other way around, if something is static, eternal and perfect - and therefore invulnerable to entropy - we find it hard to suppose that it is actually alive.

So the medieval view of divinity and Heaven seems to secure invulnerability to entropy only at the cost of something that sounds very much like death!

*

I think that a Christian requires that a life, a specific life, must have a distinctive and personal essence which is eternal and indestructible - despite entropy.

Rather than zero-entropy stasis; what I think this implies is an eternal, active, energy using-and energy-generating process acting to purge entropy from each eternally-living entity.

In a nutshell, this is the process of making form, structure, organization - as a fundamental principle.

*

So, anything alive is alive because of the form-generating principle; and also tends to lose form and die due to entropy - the end-result depends on the relative strength of these processes of form versus entropy.

On this earth, it seems entropy is stronger than form (death is stronger than life) - so all living forms will sooner or later be overwhelmed by entropy, and will die.

Eternal life requires the opposite predominance - of form over entropy, life over death - so that although (presumably) entropy continues to occur, it is continually purged and structure continues... forever.

The possible implication is that we inhabit this high entropy world for a reason to do with the domination of the process and tendency of change - corruption, ageing and sin. But also that this mortal life is temporary and will necessarily end in death. The domination of entropy will end.

And that our habitation of this entropically-dominant kind of world is not an accident, but in some way a part of God's plan for us.

*

This mortal life is a high-stakes gamble because we live in an entropic world - a world dominated by the tendency for destructive change, disease, decay, corruption and eventual death. 

This is the world that our loving-parent God has created for us; and we must therefore assume that it is the best kind of world for His creative purposes and for our own individual ultimate benefit. 

In the first place we need to understand that this mortal world is for our learning - our life is a kind of spiritual school. But why should this school be entropic?  

The potential hazards of life in this mortal world are obvious - pain and misery in the short term, and damnation in the long term. 

This means that the potential benefits of our lives must be even larger, great enough to outweigh the hazards (because the creator loves us, individually). 

What is the advantage of entropy? 

Entropy is the innate tendency towards destruction - and, in a broad sense; one advantage of this mortal life is that of discarding what is evil in us. 

This is a conceptualization of repentance. By repenting sin, we 'leave it behind' when we are resurrected to eternal life. 

Thus, our eternal selves will be free from sin, and fitted to live in Heaven while being free agents. Because our free choices will then always be Good: always aligned with God's will. 

And this, in turn, means that we can be trusted with divine powers of creation, can our-selves become Sons of God and co-creators with God - adding to already-existing creation from our own unique (and sin-purged) selves. 

Anyone can enter Heaven who - by repentance - consents to having his sins purged, stripped-away; but the more sins, the more will be stripped away. 

Therefore, one of the hazards of mortal life is that we will become so sinful that, when it comes to resurrection, there will not be much left of us that is Good, and fit for Heaven. 

This does not bar anyone from Heaven - because the power of repentance is unbounded, and anyone who follows Jesus Christ can be resurrected; but the Man who has led a deeply evil life before final repentance will be a lesser Man after resurrection than would otherwise have been the case. 

This leads to one of the aims of the Devil. 

His primary aim is that Men should choose damnation and reject Heaven; but even among the saved, the Devil (and his demonic and evil-human henchmen) gets secondary satisfaction from corrupting Men: that is, from encouraging sins that will reduce and impair the resurrected Man; and thereby diminish what might-have-been as resurrected Men enter Heaven.

(This corruption of individual Men does not make Heaven less-good - because Heaven is wholly Good, nothing evil is there. But it does diminish the stature of those resurrected Men who enter Heaven.) 

So, this is a way of conceptualizing theosis - the process of becoming more divine in human life - because (to put it crudely) the more divine and less sinful we are in mortal life, the more of us there will be to resurrect and live eternally.  

So, the plus-side of this entropic mortal world is that we can leave-behind sin; and this is necessary to salvation. The negative-side is that we may fall so far into sin that we either reject salvation (are damned); or by the end of our lives have very little left that is Good, so that even if we accept salvation - we will need to repent so many and bad sins, that we start-out as lesser Men when we resurrect. 

So what of Heaven, which is a world of creation and without entropy? 

In Heaven all is retained, life is cumulative. 

Whereas in earthly life we change (partly) by leaving-behind; in Heaven we change by adding-to. 

In mortal and entropic life; Men may transform radically, by deletions; in Heaven resurrected Men transform only by additions.  

This scheme may help explain why this mortal life is entropic in its nature; and how such a hazardous life is nonetheless necessary and potentially useful, as a transitional experience between pre- and post-mortal existence, before a soul proceeds to the creative world of Heaven. 

It also helps us to understand our own role in this life; and how our choices during mortality make a permanent difference to our potential after resurrection.  

It seems a pretty general claim of many religions, and is confirmed by the intuition of many individuals; that this is in some sense a 'fallen world'. 

By which I mean that there is a conviction that - compared with conditions in mortal life on earth - in some way there was a past era of innocent, blissful happiness. Some 'Garden of Eden' for instance. 

I agree that this is broadly the case, but my understanding of how and why this world is 'fallen' is probably unique. 

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try and set-out clearly and concisely how I understand this business. 

 

I regard life much as do Mormons; divided into 

1. Pre-mortal spirit life - when we were innocent and childlike spirits, living under the direct influence of God. 

To become mortal Men is to opt-out of pre-mortal spirit life. 

2. The first great transformation is birth into mortal incarnate life (a world of 'entropy' - of change, degeneration and death) - which we chose to experience, as the necessary pathway to fuller divinity. 

3. The second great transformation - for those who choose to follow Jesus Christ - is death and resurrection to immortal and incarnate life; to dwell in a Heaven peopled by God, Jesus Christ, Lazarus (the first resurrected Man) and all the people who have gone before us. 

To become a resurrected Man is to opt-in to Heaven. 

 

The 'move from pre-mortal spirit life into this earthly word was either involuntary or voluntary. 

Satan and the demons were spirits who were involuntarily expelled from pre-mortal bliss (because of their prideful, resentful, opposition to that state); and who are now bound to the fate of this world (unless they instead choose utter isolation): the demonic spirits cannot move on to Heaven, cannot be resurrected. 

In addition this earthly world is peopled by mortal incarnates such as you and me; who chose to get temporary bodies with the possibility of gaining an eternal body; and who experience situations of this earth with the possibility of learning and developing from them. We can die, leave the world, and move-on to Heaven.

 

So this earthly world we inhabit is a mixed world; inhabited by both mortal incarnates and demonic spirits. Our dwelling here is indeed a fall for incarnate Men, in the sense that we are no longer innocent, and are beset by evil. 

Whereas our pre-mortal life was blissful in the same kind of way that we can imagine the happiest possible young childhood in the best possible family - but our current life is not. 

We have gone from a life in which simply to be alive was a joy, but where we were unfree and going nowhere; to a life where we may be agents free to choose or reject Heaven; and whose primary purpose in living is to learn from our experiences (which may be various mixtures of happy and miserable, according to need). 

This mixed mortal life is indeed well-designed for its core purpose of providing learning-experiences for Men - especially because God tailors each individual's lived experiences to that individual's greatest needs. 

Therefore, 'fall' does not wholly capture the transition into this world - because this world is the best place for doing that which this world is set-up to do. 

 

So there has indeed been a fall, in terms both of lesser happiness, and also the pervasive and unavoidable presence of sin (which includes all forms of entropic change). 

But at the same time incarnation brings potentially (if we so choose) an increase in freedom. As we become bounded by bodies so we are less influenced by the divine and reach a point when our affiliation (with, or against, God) must be chosen - much as an adolescent faces the choice whether to re-affiliate-with - or reject - family.

Yet, on the other hand, this mortal life is a necessary 'upward' step if we wish to become more fully divine; with divinity being defined in terms of becoming able - consciously and by choice - to participate in God's ongoing creation. 

 

So yes, this is a fallen world - less happy than pre-mortality, and permeated by evil in ourselves and others. This is a life of inevitable entropic change - hence 'pain' is inevitable. And we can be finally rescued from evil and pain only by death and resurrection.

But this life is not necessarily miserable and evil all of the time (this would be extremely rare); rather, this mortal life is not about every-body being-continuously-happy and sinless. 

Instead this life is in essence a time of transition, learning and choices: that is what this life is for. 

And, the exact purpose of this mortal life also differs for each individual Man - since all Men differ innately. 

 

This mixed mortal life is for the Heavenly life to come... Which doesn't at-all mean this life is un-important in its own right. On the contrary this mortal life is vital. But the importance of mortal life derives from its being underpinned by the possibility of eternity. 

 

I sometimes think that this question (or something like it) is the root of philosophy. 

'We will come', said Imrahil; and they parted with courteous words. 

The religion of the Ancient Egyptians - which is massively documented - provides a detailed picture of how the world of God's creation was before the work of Jesus Christ. 

Creation was made by the pushing aside of chaos; civilization was like a clearing in the wild forest; and the chaotic forest was always trying to take back the world of religion, agriculture and the domain of the creating Gods. 

Most of the Gods were Good, but the representatives of chaotic evil remained - such as Set (or Seth) who dwelt in the deserts around the fertile and civilized state of Egypt; and Apophis the primal world-serpant who, every night, attacked the ship of the sun, to try and prevent dawn. 

Thus light/ life/ goodness/ order was engaged in a continual and eternal battle to hold-back the chaos/ evil that surrounded on all sides; and which would otherwise return the world to its primal disorder. 

 

This may be taken broadly to represent the situation of divine creation on earth before the work of Jesus. And Jesus's work can be seen as the additional creation of Heaven, as a New Place to be inhabited by resurrected Men who have first been temporarily incarnated onto earth as mortals. The mortal state is that from-which each Man must choose Heaven - or Not.

 

By this understanding, Heaven is - and for the first time - a place that free men can inhabit where evil has been excluded - permanently.

By 'free men; I mean Men who are agents; operating-from their own distinctive divine selves; generating their own thoughts - mini-gods. In other words: In Heaven Men are secondary creators (operating within God's primary creation) - who can fully participate with God on the continuing creation of God's ongoing, expanding world. 

 

Jesus gave Men the possibility of resurrection to eternal life. Resurrection means eternal bodies; and bodies can only be eternal in an eternal environment - which is Heaven. In other words, Heaven in a world without death.

By contrast; this mortal life we know, here on earth, is ruled by chaos (or 'entropy', dis-order). All changes and decays, nothing lasts unchanged; there degeneration and disease are everywhere and death is the inevitable terminus. This mortal world - taken in isolation - is therefore the same as that described by the Ancient Egyptians.

However, since Jesus Christ; we have the chance to opt-into Heaven; which is an everlasting world without evil - without chaos or entropy.  

And at the same time, when resurrected into Heaven, we remain our-selves; indeed we become even more our-selves and able to participate in the ongoing work of God's creation. 

So, our mortal lives on this earth give us all lived experiences of chaos, entropy and evil; and the opportunity to learn from these experiences in order to make a final, irreversible commitment in favour of Good. 

In other words; mortal life on earth is what enables us to understand what is being offered by Jesus: eternal resurrected life in Heaven. And knowing (by contrast and implication) both sides, both possibilities... our free choice may be informed.   

 

My understanding of this new possibility of heaven; is that it is due to the possibility of each Man making a permanent commitment to Goodness, to creation, to the work of God. Because Heaven is composed only of Beings that have made this permanent commitment - then Heaven is a place without evil. 

All the inhabitants of Heaven (Men and others) are on the side of God and creation; and everything they (we) do in Heaven is in-harmony-with God and creation. Thus, In Heaven there is no tendency towards chaos, entropy, evil...

In another description; Heaven is based on the principle of love. The harmonious working of many free agents is possible by their mutual love. It is therefore love which is the principle of cohesion in creation - which 'organises' the work of many free individuals into a coherent, ongoing, creativity. 

 

The 'process' by which any mortal Man from earth was made able to be resurrected-into Heaven was made possible by Jesus Christ; and the 'method' made simple and accessible. Since Jesus; anyone who wants Heaven merely has to 'follow' Jesus, who will lead us through resurrection and into Heaven (a path which he himself has taken) as The Good Shepherd. 

It seems that (here on earth, in this mrtal life) not everyone knows-about Heaven, not everybody wants Heaven; and among those who do want to go onto Heaven, there are some who do not want to follow Jesus, or do not believe Jesus can or will lead us to Heaven. 

But we can trust that God the creator will ensure that everybody will have the fullest chance to know such things sooner or later; and before each needs to choose between a commitment to Heaven - or Not.

In this earthly mortal life; the deep problem is not change but loss; not that things are always changing, but that this change is so often a matter of degeneration, disease and death. In brief, this is a world ruled by entropy. 

But if we choose that Heavenly eternal life beyond the transformation that is death; we inhabit a world ruled by creation rather than entropy. It is a changing world; but a world where change preserves that which is good, where change is a building rather than destroying, where instead of death there is eternal life.  

In Heaven - instead of degeneration; there is increasing ability, functionality and knowledge. This is theosis, or deification - becoming more god-like.  

In essence there is a transformation from a world dominated by chaos to a world dominated by creation. The difference is love - since creation comes from love, and is made possible by love. 

Mortal life comes between the first transformation of incarnation, when our spirits become embodied; and the second transformation of death, when we may choose the permanent embodied life of resurrection. All people experience these potential transformations - what varies is the gap between them - the gap of mortal-life. 

Our mortal life is often very short (e.g. the time between incarnation and death still in the womb, or at birth, or infancy - these account for most human lives in history); but may be many decades long. 

The first transformation of being incarnated is what enables creativity.

(Pre-mortal angelic spirits are not creative; but live passively and unconsciously, automatically-obedient). 

And it is the second transformation of death that enables creativity to be permanent and thus divine. 

(This happens in consequence of the resurrected Man having made a permanent commitment to live by love. Insofar as this state may temporarily be attained in mortal life - permanent creation may be achieved, but the ability of people to know this creation, remains subject to entropic change.) 

Note: Why cannot demons create? That demons cannot create is a frequent insight. Assuming (as I do) that it is correct, it is a consequence of demons being incapable of love; either of being incapable love or of having made a permanent commitment to reject love. Demons can only, therefore, simulate a fake creativity - by mechanisms such as extrapolation, interpolation, novel combinations, inversions etc. - i.e. exactly like the typical fake-creative (often evil-motivated) products of fashion, journalism and advertising. It also explains why demons are keen to enlist semi-corrupt humans to their causes, since they remain capable of creativity. Creation comes from love, and cannot be wholly-evil - even when creative individuals (including geniuses, such as Picasso or Freud) are net-evil-motivated.  

Further Note: What is the purpose of mortal life on earth - given that everything comes-to-nothing, sooner-or-later? Given that every-thing perishes, in the end? The purpose of life of earth is not given nor automatic, but needs to be chosen consciously; and what must be chosen for life to have purpose, is to value love intrinsically and for itself.  A child may do this unconsciously and passively; but an adult needs to make a conscious choice of love - and needs (because of entropy) to keep choosing. 

WmJas Tychonievich recently published some interesting discussion of the business of thanking God. In particular the question of what exactly we are thanking God for. 

Here is my take on the question. 

I believe in a pluralist universe of Beings existing in an original state of disorder, or 'chaos'. This was the primordial beginning, until God began his work of creation; since which time, God's creation has been growing; and Men have become 'created-Beings' in relationship, a part of divine creation: 'Sons of God'.

So, in an ultimate sense, it is always right for those who regard divine creation as A Good Thing to thank God for creation - and therefore to thank God for everything meaningful which is possible because of creation. 

This is true regardless of the proximate cause of an event - of who are what caused it - so long as something of divine creation was involved in it.

However, God is not responsible for every-thing that happens everywhere, in the sense that primordial chaos continues to exist; and in this mortal and material world, chaos/ entropy dominates and has the last word. 

God's creation can be imagined as an expanding domain within chaos - with two stages. 

I envisage two coexisting kinds of divine creation: first this mortal world, which must continually be created in order to continually overcome the tendency to revert to chaos. And secondly Heaven, which is the domain of those Beings who have made an eternal commitment to live by love - and who thereby overcome chaos/ entropy wholly and everlastingly.  

It is the work of Jesus Christ to enable Men to make the choice of eternal love, hence eternal life in Heaven.     

(Mortal life and Heaven coexist, because mortal life is where Beings are enabled to make the positive choice for heaven; but Heaven was first created - initially as the domain of God only. The core purpose of creation is to 'people' Heaven with Beings who have chosen to live by love, eternally.) 

In God's creation are two types of Being: Good and evil. Good are defined as those who (sooner or later) endorse divine creation and choose to join-with it (in Heaven). Evil are those who do not endorse divine creation; who reject creation - and reject Heaven. 

Those who reject divine creation ally themselves with primordial chaos (because that is the only alternative to divine creation); and endorse the destruction of creation - of any-thing created. 

Therefore, this desired destruction includes (eventually) willing the destruction of their own status as Sons of God. This is entailed by desiring to delete creation and return to chaos - to the situation where each Being except God subsists in total isolation and minimal consciousness - which is the nearest to annihilation that can actually happen.

Those who oppose creation cannot affect Heaven - Heaven is eternally immune to chaos, has completely excluded it because all Beings in Heaven live by love. Those who oppose creation can only operate outwith Heaven; for instance in this mortal life on earth.

My first conclusion is that only those who endorse divine creation and who wish to dwell in Heaven are in a position from-which they would rationally thank God at all. 

By contrast; those who do not believe in creation, do not believe-in or support the will of God, those who intend to refuse the offer of Jesus Christ to enable us to enter Heaven... all such would Not want to thank God. 

But is it rational for those who endorse divine creation to thank God for everything? The apparent problem arises because in this earthly mortal life there is a class of causes deriving from entropy, hence tending to chaos, and working-against creation. Such causes are not of divine origin. 

It might be supposed that it therefore makes no sense to thank God for events that have not-creation, indeed anti-creation, causes? 

Yet even such events are a part of creation; because all knowledge entails creation. We could not 'thank' at all, were we not created-Beings - parts of divine creation; because uncreated Beings cannot give thanks. 

We could not identify any 'event' for which we might choose to give thanks, were we not already created Beings - because there is no knowledge in chaos, and chaos does not know 'events'. 

My overall conclusion is therefore that it is never wrong for a Christian to give thanks to God, because ultimately all depends on God's creation; but a Christian may err in ascribing some specific event to God's will - since there is evil in this mortal world, and many events come from the creation-destroying will of evil Beings.  

Therefore it must often happen (in this earthly mortal life) that Christians thank God for some-thing which was (in fact, were we able to discern) caused by chaos or by the Beings which reject God. In other words; a Christian may thank God for some evil. 

...Indeed, if public prayers in church are any guide; this happens all-the-time: self-identified Christians thank God for evil - by regarding that evil as Good. 

Whether this matters spiritually or not will depend on the situation and on the consequences. If a Christian ascribed some evil to God, and thanked God for this evil - this would presumably be a sin that needed to be repented. 

God would then ensure that the individual would later be given the experiences and chance to learn that their thanking God for this particular evil had actually been a sin. 

But whether or not that chance of repentance was taken would depend on the individual's discernment and choice - would depend upon his true underlying motivation. If his motivation is for God, creation and the Good - there would be no problem: he would repent his sin. 

But if he doubled-down on the sin of ascribing evil to God, if he refused to learn and repent; then he would have taken the side of the Enemy, against God; and being against God he would presumably, after death, reject salvation and choose damnation.  

How was it that the End Times were (broadly) predictable so long ago? Why was it clear that evil would (sooner or later) prevail in this world?

The basic reason could be that the demonic powers are immortal spirits while Men are mortal. And this was, of course, a fact well known to our ancestors - who drew conclusions that were, perhaps, much clearer and more obvious (at least, to the more thoughtful and insightful among them) then they are nowadays.  

This fundamental asymmetry means that evil is able to plan and scheme on a timescale across the whole history of the earth and multiple human generations; whereas, by contrast, each human generation must (in a sense) start afresh with learning about the world. 

Thus, the demons tend cumulatively to out-strategize Men. 

Another ways of thinking about it is that this mortal world is ruled by entropy. Although we are created-creatures in a created-world, and God is still create-ing; nonetheless we are mortal incarnates, and entropy must win-out eventually.  

Over time, entropy will overwhelm mortal creations. 

However; evil spirits are excluded from Heaven; and in Heaven, Men are eternal incarnates: There is all-creation and no entropy. 

Therefore, as  this mortal earth wears-down, the odds increasingly favour evil; and the End Times were always inevitable. 

But in Heaven... well, there things are very different. 

If entropy is a real thing on this earth; then it is not caused by God but represents the continued reality of primordial chaos. 

This means that not everything that happens is caused by, nor intended by, God. 

Yet this world is a created world, God is continually-create-ing this world. 

I see this world as continually being-created by God; as it is continually being-dismantled by the tendency to revert to primal (meaningless, purposeless) chaos. 

I imagine this to be a matter of God's creative 'energies' always-shaping that which is always-dissipating.

The consequence is that all of this mortal life has a divine meaning and purpose despite that not-everything is caused or intended by God. 

The activities of evil Beings are included in this basic schema. Evil Beings (e.g. demons, sinning humans) are continually doing evil things for evil reasons; and these are continually (in a sense instantly) being-shaped by God in accordance with divine destiny. 

No matter how much evil is at work and being-done; God is always (instantly!) shaping it to situations from-which individual Men may obtain Good: that is, to situations from-which Men may learn that which they most need to learn (would benefit from-learning) for their resurrected life in heaven. 

Therefore, although entropy rules this material, mortally-incarnated world, in the sense that entropy is never absent; divine creation dominates entropy. 

This explains how our life is always (potentially) meaningful and purposive; and why 'there are no accidents' - no luck, chance or randomness.   

Note: It seems to be a necessary consequence of the Christian understanding that Life (this mortal life) does Not have meaning or purpose for those who reject the post-mortal future of resurrected life in Heaven. This world, this Life, was-designed and is continually being-shaped to advance the learning of those who follow Jesus. 

The created world will also be shaped to create situations in which those who do Not follow Jesus can come (repeatedly) to understand what Jesus offers, and the clarity of mind and heart to decide whether or not they want it for themselves. 

But those who have rejected what Jesus offers are doomed to a life without meaning or purpose; because they have rejected the purpose of creation and the purpose of this earth. They have instead decided to inhabit a entropy; a world of inevitable degeneration, disease and death with nothing to follow but annihilation. 

It is always a positive choice to follow Jesus; and every Being, every Man, is free to reject that choice. But - in a created world, shaped by God for God's purposes - that rejection carries the consequence that ultimately Life has nothing lasting to offer but death. 

As I have previous said, from reading the Fourth Gospel as well as the core sense of Christianity, I do not believe that Jesus Christ promised a Second Coming. On the contrary, I believe Jesus fully achieved everything he incarnated to achieve in a cosmological sense - in terms of changing reality; and that since ascension His role is to guide all who ask for His help, by the Holy Ghost. 

But a familiar worldly-Messianic project of redemption of this sinful and suffering mortal life, of Jesus returning to take-up kingship of a New and Purified this-world, seems to have been introduced into Christianity at an early stage - and continues. 

For such redemption to happen, this-world would need to be remade, in such a way that all that is evil and of-sin - including death - would be removed, purified, transformed; and only Good remain. 

This might be envisaged to happen all-at-once at the second coming; but there have always (I think) been some who saw this happening gradually, incrementally, a bit at a time. 

I first understood this in listening to lectures by Stanley Messenger in which he expounded the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. In this explanation, the spilled blood of the crucified Christ entered the substance of the Being that is planet earth; and initiated a process of transformation that could be explained in terms of alchemy and homoeopathy; and would lead eventually to the total redemption of earth and everything the dwells here. In the end (as I understand it) there would be a complete integration of all, into full accord with divine purposes. 

I have also come across what seems to me a variation of this basic idea in Philip K Dick's Exegesis; where he is discussing Jacob Bohme and AN Whitehead. PKD's version is that this reality began as dominated by chaos and continues as entropy. God began creation in this context; and there has since been a process by which creation gradually overtook chaos; in which negentropy incrementally overwhelms entropy... Until either at or by the Second Coming, the process is completed and all that is evil, destructive - all suffering and pain - is transformed into Goodness and Happiness. 

My above summaries are themselves of secondary sources, thus unreliable as to detail - but I offer them as the kind of thing that would need to happen if this mortal world were to be saved, redeemed, made into Heaven on Earth. In other worlds, all that is evil, all destructive change, all death - would need to be transformed into harmony with divine creation. 

And this transformation is regarded as something that will happen. It is not a matter of choice, but of processes acting-irresistibly-upon Beings. Evil and Sin are eliminated by being made good. 

Now - I regard this as both impossible - because evil cannot be made Good; and undesirable to Christians - because salvation must be chosen.  

More fundamentally; I do not believe that this is what will happen! I think it is a mistake to suppose that Jesus said he would make Heaven on earth, or by processes incrementally to transform mortal to immortal life. 

The real situation is much simpler; which is that evil and sin will not because cannot be eliminated in this world and mortal life; which is why we must die and be resurrected to enter the state of only-Goodness: we must be born again.  

Those, and only those, who choose resurrection (and allow/ embrace the necessary transformative changes to themselves) will be added to Heaven, will join Heavenly life - leaving-behind their sins and all evil; and from thence, living only by love. 

This mortal realm with its sins and evil will be left-behind; as a place for those who choose to hold to their sins and evil, and those who choose not to live wholly by love. 

Such must happen; in order that Heaven be possible; and it must happen because eternal Beings must dwell somewhere.

And if Beings do not want to dwell in Heaven, then they will remain in some part or variant of the mixed-world of this-world of mortality - where entropy and creation contend. 

I do not think I have written about this before, or at least not explicitly; but my move to Romantic Christianity came when I explicitly acknowledged to myself that I do not believe that any of the churches can make any eternal commitments or covenants (binding agreements) during this mortal life. 

In other words, and despite claims to the contrary, I cannot accept that any of the acts of churches have the eternal quality claimed for them and their rituals - whether that is baptism, marriage, Holy Communion, ordination or any other. 

I believe that these are (or can be) man-made and mortal attempts to bind-us to good - they are (or can be) the best we can do or aspire to... 

But I cannot accept that any are truly effectual in the supernatural and divine way claimed. 

This mortal life is - at its base, ultimately - insufficient, it is a thing of change, corruption, and death - we are ruled by entropy: nothing of it lasts forever. 

This was known and accepted by the ancients; and Jesus Christ did not change that fact; but gave us solid hope of eternal, resurrected and Heavenly life beyond death.

The churches are of this mortal life, and of Man; and no church can overcome the nature of mortal life...

But we, as individual persons, can overcome this world, after this world; by following Jesus Christ. 

Note added: I am not at all saying that all commitments and covenants of all churches are worthless; but I am saying that the churches do not have the capacity to render permanent and binding that which is subject to the changes of this-world. Also, I am not saying that the things of this mortal life have only ephemeral value - on the contrary, I believe that our thoughts and actions (including commitments and covenants) may have eternal value... But this eternal value is realized only in eternal, not mortal, life. It is in resurrected and heavenly life that the temporary phenomena of mortality are rendered permanent. 

In these times of astonishingly rapid reductions in our 'physical', bodily, personal freedom - the matter of spiritual freedom becomes ever more important. 

Important not merely because the spiritual is the proper emphasis; but because (as 2020 has shown) without individual spiritual freedom then people cannot/ do-not care for their personal or societal physical freedom. 

Lacking spiritual freedom; people invert Good and evil; fail to notice when they are being physically enslaved, lack the inner conviction that sustains courage - and have become the passive dupes and servants of evil.

 

The Christian understanding is (or ought to be!) that our personal freedom is vital to God. 

In particular, we must be free to in order that we can choose to follow Jesus Christ to eternal resurrected life in Heaven. Heaven is not a default state - Heaven is 'opt-in'; therefore Men must truly be able to 'opt'. 

And we are.

 

It was one of the important insights of Mormon theology that incarnation - i.e. being embodied, having bodies - is an important aspect of human freedom. Or, better, human 'agency'; because 'agent' is the term for a self-motivated entity, and that self-motivation probably a clearer conceptualisation than freedom of what is required. 

The essence of freedom is agency, which is something like the 'ability-to-choose from one-self' - and freedom is not (as sometimes mistakenly supposed) a freedom-from compulsion, nor the availability of many options. It is this agency which makes Man also a god; because agency is a divine attribute.

But agency is not categorical; it is a matter of degree. My understanding is that every-thing (i.e. every individual Being) has agency - including the 'mineral' and 'plant' worlds - because all things are beings; and agency is a part of being an individual and alive.  But the degree of agency in a tree is much less than in a child, and a child less than an adult Man

 

So, the purpose of creation is, in part, the development of agency. God wants more agency in creation, and especially in Men; because God wants Men (or, more exactly, some men) to become more divine, to be raised closer and closer to God's level of divinity and agency; so that Men may increasingly - and with greater individuality - participate in the world of creation.

My understanding is that incarnation is a concentration and boundedness of the spirit. The body, to a lesser or greater extent, is a concentration of our being, and the body is a (partial) boundary against our perception of the spiritual world.  

Before our life on earth, we were spirit beings; and on earth we attain a temporary incarnation of mortal life, our body being made of earthly and material things (which are prone to 'entropy'; hence are always changing). 

Even to be born in a body is itself a partial separation from the realm of the spirit - although as young children we are still spontaneously and naturally aware of the spirit realm. But as we develop and grow, we increasingly separate from the spiritual realm including the divine; until, typically with adolescence, we become fully separate from God and the spirit - and that point it requires our agency to re-acknowledge the reality of God and the spiritual.  

In other words, God wants us consciously to choose to believe in his reality - and not for this belief to be unconscious and unchosen. If we make this choice we are theists - God-believers - but not (yet) Christian; it is by the further choice to follow Jesus Christ to resurrection that we become Christian. 

This is why we must die to attain Heaven - the temporary mortal body must be replaced by a permanent Heavenly body. But it is this temporary mortal body that grants us the agency to make that permanent choice (and commitment) for God, divine creation and Heaven.

 

In our mortal incarnation we are uniquely 'located' in time and space; we have an unique experience (an unique experience that is continuously 'managed' by God through the continuity of creation); we are in a world of continual change (indeed, an entropic world of net decay, disease, degeneration - tending towards death). 

Thus our experience of mortal life is one of constant and unstoppable change - and this provides the continuously-varying experiences from which we can learn.  This learning is why some of us live as mortals for extended periods; while other individuals, who do not need this learning, experience relatively brief lives - and die after conception, in the womb, or soon after birth. 

When this mortal learning is (Christianly) orientated towards our eternal resurrected life; this constitutes that spiritual development that is variously termed theosis, sanctification, or deification; we are becoming more god-like (although this learning will not become permanent and fully effectual until after resurrection). 

In sum: this mortal body is derived from the earth; while our resurrected body is derived from Heaven. Our mortal body provides the freedom, or agency, required to choose Heaven; and our lived experience in this entropic world provides potentially valuable experiences that may enhance our agency in Heaven.

We are free to reject God, and beyond that - having accepted God to reject Jesus Christ. Or, to put it more exactly; it is necessaryfor Christians that we first actively choose to believe in the reality of God, and then actively choose to dwell eternally in Heaven. 

For Christians, the current rapid destruction of our physical freedom is therefore an experience; but the relevant experience is that which is from the exact perspective in time and space which we each - as individuals - inhabit. 

Loss of physical freedom does not reduce our agency; it simply provides experiences from which we need to learn. However, we cannot learn from these experiences unless we acknowledge and deploy our agency - which is itself a consequence of the divine within us. 

 

All of the time we are alive, we are being-confronted-by experiences which (for a Christian) need to be met by our personal agency. Our agency needs to be acknowledged and deployed; which means that we each need to take responsibility for our knowing and learning, and for our choices concerning God and Jesus Christ. 

I would hazard that a particular, general, lesson of these times, is related to this; in the sense that it is being made more-and-more difficult for a Christian to be unconscious and passive and remain Christian. 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that one who accepts external guidance is accepting the demonic (i.e spiritual powers that are anti-God, anti-creation) - since this external guidance is almost always (and more clearly) corrupted, and increasingly inverted in its values.  

 

My point here is that what we physically do in mortal life, about the events of 2020; need to be grounded in a conscious apprehension of our personal divine agency; which is itself the basis for discerning guidance from external divine agency - the Holy Ghost. 

The fact that we have physical bodies is an advantage. Yes, they make us vulnerable to physical intimidation; but they are also what enables us to be agents who can choose from-our-selves: from our True Selves. 

And that - whatever happens physically, and however we may choose to support or resist the various (better or worse - much and increasingly worse) powers of this world - our primary task is to learn from the exact situation in which we are placed - which situation is continually being shaped by God for our best learning in this mortal context.

Which is why we must remember to Trust in God, now more than ever; so that we are not afraid - and are able to retain our necessary focus on the spiritual. 

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. 

I am becoming ever more convinced that we are called to a creative role in this mortal life; and indeed that anything less than such a calling will be insufficient to motivate Modern Man in 2022 to remain a Christian - so strong, pervasive and accelerating are the pressures to join with the side of purposive evil against God. 

(At any rate, I observe that even among those Christians who did not fall victim to the birdemic-peck agenda up to February 2022 - have been apostatizing by believing/joining/ being-motivated-by the daily ideological propaganda of the Satanic-led Establishment on almost a daily basis, over the past fortnight.)

Salvation (choosing to follow Jesus Christ) is, of course, our first concern - and then theosis, which is the necessity to become more divine by learning from our mortal lives and making the right choices. 

But neither one nor both of these seem to be sufficient to motivate individuals in a world where real Christians have been abandoned by their churches; and where their self-identified Christian churches are continually siding with the evil-Establishment in their demonic policies and strategies - and thereby trying to lead their members towards affiliation with the Enemy.

We need, I think, a lively sense of daily purpose - of what positively we are living for - and this is 'creativity' considered as the activity of adding to God's creative providence through our own personal choices and effort. 

'Adding' is key - because it is not enough merely to recognize and affirm divine truth; since this is not something which gives our own lives any personal significance. 

To be motivated we need to have a 'project' that adds to ongoing divine creation yet that only we can do. That really is something worth living for.  

But this mortal life is not the same as resurrected Heavenly life; and we cannot create now in the same way as we shall then. Understanding this is perhaps helpful in appreciating the scope and limitation of that necessary creativity which seems to be demanded of us now. 

If it could be assumed, as an analogy, that creation requires something-like energy if a creative thought needs to be manifested (made-into) something material that will be effective in this world; then we can ask where creative energies might come from. 

The answer is God. True human creation is by definition in harmony with God's ongoing (and primary) creating; and I think it may be assumed that when God recognizes basic human creativity - i.e. in thought - as contributing to the divine scheme; then the necessary energies will be provided to make that thought into something objective, general and perhaps material. 

In other words, when our individual creativity of thinking is in-line-with divine providence; then (in a multitude of ways) God's creation will operate to include such human creativity as an addition to the divine. 

Therefore, our creativity in this mortal life (which is, I assume, a relatively rare and temporary phenomenon; even in the life of a major genius) is dependent on God's creating, and cannot work without it. 

And ultimately this is because we live in a world of entropy, where order succumbs to disorder, where usable-energy is finite and declining, where life sooner or later loses to chaos; where all that has been created will pass away.

In this mortal world; energy must be added from externally to make or sustain any-thing. 

By contrast, when we are resurrected we enter the realm of eternity; which may be interpreted to mean that we are self-renewing and intrinsically (as sons and daughters of God) posses innate and inexhaustible divine energy.  

Therefore, as resurrected Men, as divine children of God, we ourselves can manifest our own creative thinking! 

Thinking itself becomes 'objective' and manifest creation - without the need for God's 'input'. 

If the analogy holds, then our mortal creativity is real and important - but secondary to God's 'energetic' support; while Christians may look-forward to a condition where we have made an eternal commitment to God, and can thereafter become god-like in our own creativity. 

I regard it as a serious spiritual error - despite its being so very common - when it is assumed that the future of this mortal world has been assured by the promises of God and Jesus Christ... 

e.g. The idea that eventually the powers of Good must and will prevail on earth... The conviction that The Church must survive and will ultimately thrive.  

Such ideas seem to me deeply mistaken, in terms of setting aside the central fact of Man's agency, his freedom on the one hand; and the fact that this mortal world and earth are ultimately ruled by 'entropy', by the powers of chaos - such that all which is formed and organized needs to be sustained by constant consumption of energy and effort; and eventually degeneration, destruction and death will supervene. 

This is the nature of this mortal life, and such was recognized by the first Men capable of conceptualizing our basic situation - i.e. the ancient Greeks. 

To believe otherwise seems to be one of the earliest and deepest errors that came into Christianity; due, I suppose, to sidelining of the (first and most important) Gospel - i.e. the 'Fourth' Gospel, of 'John'. 

But the core message of Christianity is (surely?) the the Messiah brought us the possibility of resurrection to eternal Heavenly life; and he did Not (contrary to much Jewish expectation) come to usher in any kind of paradise upon earth. 

Again and again Jesus emphasizes that the things of this world are temporary, but what he brings is - by contrast - permanent (hence necessarily elsewhere).   

The clear and simple inference is (surely?) that our mortal lives, the things of this world, and the earth itself; are all impermanent and will come to an end; but that we shall instead (if we want it deeply, and by following Jesus Christ) receive something much better - because everlasting. 

I therefore find it quite strange to see Christians speaking as if there is some kind of guarantee that eventually 'things' on this world will be sorted-out; as if there was a divine pendulum that would always swing back from the brink of dissolution; or as if history was a wheel that would cycle back and away from disaster.

Such an impulse to reassure oneself seems like clutching at straws; and worse than this, seems to be pushing against the kind of next-world-rooted attitudes which Jesus is often (in all Gospels) reported to have taught as our proper goal. 

Although (ideally) rooted in the next - Christianity acknowledges that the details and sweep of this world - and in particular of our own specific mortal life - is of great and eternal importance; while also being temporary and doomed to destruction. 

So the proper Christian attitude is not indifference or hostility to this-mortal-world. Although destruction will eventually overwhelm creation in this world (potentially including All the churches) - and this needs to be accepted; nonetheless we are placed here by God for Good Reasons - and this is the right kind of world for those-reasons. 

Therefore, here-and-now; we have choices to make, goals to strive-for, work to do - as best we may

Why is Heaven postponed? Why should we be made to wait? Why can't we have Heaven now - whether here on earth, or elsewhere? Why are we compelled to go through all this mucking about in mortal life? 

This is, and perhaps always has been, the most powerful question for those who believe in a Good God. And it is a killer question for those who believe in an Omni-God. If God really is all powerful and also really is Good - then why must we wait, when we could have it now? 

Self-identified Christians are afflicted as strongly as anyone else. In the time of Jesus it seems that most people Did not Want what He offered. They instead wanted Jesus to be the Messiah. 

In other words they wanted a better mortal life now, more than they wanted resurrected everlasting life. 

Or else they did not really believe Jesus's promise of eternal joy beyond death. 

Or maybe they demanded both: paradise on earth now (or ASAP), and after death then eternal resurrected life in Heaven? 

The killer question for Christianity is: Why can't people have what they most want? 

The official compromise answer was that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, but Heaven on Earth must wait until after his second coming... 

But this compromise doesn't work at all well. The killer question still stands: Why must we wait, if Jesus is God, and God is omnipotent? 

Why - if He really is omnipotent - didn't Jesus finish his work in the first coming? 

Why - if He is really Good - does Jesus allow, indeed actually cause (because as Omni-God He is omnipotent, and created absolutely everything) even the very worst the sufferings of mortal life? Why do this when (apparently) He could give us Heaven Now? 

And if a wholly-Good God allows/ actively-causes all the nasty stuff He does in this mortal life; then is this really a definition of a Good God that we would really want for ourselves? 

How could we have faith in and trust and love such a God; a God with such incomprehensible and apparently evil understandings of Good? 

It has the same for most Christians for the past two thousand years and continuing; what these "Christians" really want is a better world now, rather than Heaven later. 

For example; they want their church to become powerful enough to impose a better world now; indeed many Christians believe that one-or-another Christian church did indeed impose a better world in some times and places - and regard this as a primary justification for Christianity.

But if then, why not now?   

Or, such church-Christians believe that Christians are better people now, than not-Christians. (Or - at least - they believe their affiliated church's kind of Christians are better people.) 

They believe this despite that better-people-now wasn't what Jesus promised - any more than he promised a better-world-now. 

Because of its implicit determination to put this world first, in a context of asserting an Omni-God; historical Christianity really has painted itself into a corner; and from here it is clear that messing around with incomprehensibly complex abstractions does not convince people anymore - if ever it really did convince, rather than compel obedience.

There are two answers. The first is to be clear that Jesus's Kingdom is, as he repeatedly said in many ways, Not Of This World. Jesus promised us eternal resurrected life after death in Heaven - and if that is not what you want above all; then maybe you aren't really a Christian? 

Secondly; we need to to explain why Heaven must be after death and resurrection, and cannot be Now - in this mortal earthly life. 

(This entails (inter alia) that the (un-Biblical) Omni-God assertion must be dropped; and God clearly conceptualized as The Prime Creator who worked and continues to work creation with already-existent Beings in an already-existing universe - a universe that already contained evil.)

To answer the question of why we must wait for Heaven, we need some such concept as the Second Creation (if not exactly that) to explain clearly and simply how it is that (as Jesus often explained - and as is obvious to observation!) this mortal life cannot become Heaven; and that is why God the Prime Creator was not sufficient; and that is why Jesus was necessary - and therefore why it is only on the other side of death that evil can be left-behind, and we can enter Heaven.  

(...Only after which can we understand the real purpose of this mortal life - which is, to learn spiritually in preparation for Heaven; and the constraints of evil and entropy within-which God's creative power operates on earth and in mortality.)

NOTE ADDED 23rd March 2024

For those unfamiliar with this blog, I should clarify my reiterated view that - in broad terms - I believe that people "get what they want" after death. In the sense that they will subjectively-experience (or be-aware-of) something like what they want and ask-for (or "believe in") in terms of reincarnation or paradise (of the various types), life as a kind of ghost (Sheol, Hades, ghosts on earth etc.), Nirvana, extinction. The exception is when people are affiliated to demons and desire things evil - in which case they are delivered to the demons with whom they have chosen to affiliate - but this is also "getting what they want", even though they will not like what they get.  

As soon as Man emerged from his original state of immersive participation; as soon as he became became capable of conscious independent thinking - which happened (so far as we know) in the time of the ancient Greeks; it was recognized that this earthly, mortal life cannot be everything. 

Cannot be everything - not that it 'should not' be everything; nor that we wish that there would be more - but that It Makes No Sense to assume that there is nothing other than this earthly, mortal life. 

Why? 

Well, in a sense this was so obvious to anyone capable of thinking and understanding that 'why' did not apply. 

But the reason was - in a nutshell - that this world is one of change; of degeneration, decay, disease and eventual death. This is a world dominated by entropy, as we might call it. And such a world as this could not bring itself about. 

To the ancient mind, and to the mind of pretty much all Men up to the past few hundred years - this was an insight of simple truth; and the only reason for someone Not to reach this understanding, was either mental incapacity or idleness: a brutish refusal to consider the nature of Man's life. 

But Modern Man has - for various reasons, not-unconnected-with brutish incapacity and idleness - developed a tremendous capacity for doubting the obvious, including obvious truth. 

There are explanations that explain 'why' it makes no sense to posit entropy without previous creation, to assume a tendency for destruction and death without a prior and more powerful tendency for making and life - but no such explanation can penetrate the idle, delirious, dishonest superficiality that characterizes modern discourse. 

Such is the ludicrous pride of almost all Men, now, that the grossest incapacity of insight, observation and reason are paraded as marks of superiority; just as the inability spontaneously to be appalled or disgusted by gross, calculated lying, pride, greed, even vice and sadism - are all regarded as evidence of a 'higher' more progressive morality!  

'Ancient' Man realized that this ephemeral and always-changing reality makes no sense unless there is another reality. 

All were agreed on that - but disagreed about the specific nature of that 'other and greater reality' - the reality which makes possible the illusions and changes of this reality.   

They disagreed about the nature of the other and Real reality for the simple reason that it was non-obvious; and impossible to articulate clearly, concisely and comprehensibly to all Men. Each attempted answer, each description of ultimate reality, was therefore partial and contextual - and there were many such answers. 

In other words, it was cognitively easy to know that this mortal earthly reality was only a part of a greater reality; but it was difficult to say exactly what was this greater and eternal reality. 

Modern Man is, however, incapable (has rendered-himself incapable) of recognizing that the difficulty of describing the wholeness of reality in a way that everybody can understand and agree-upon does Not invalidate the primary insight that there Must be such a reality. 

Instead, Modern Man has made the baseline assumption that this mortal earthly life dominated by entropy and inevitably terminated by death is every-thing there is; and that (somehow!) We Know this to be a solid fact! 

Based on this assumption of this-life being everything, nothing makes sense; all is incoherence. 

Because all is incoherence, Men have lost the capacity to reason. 

Because Men cannot reason, they cannot make sense of the world - it is just one thing after another - and Men cannot even discern motivated actions, nor discern evil in motivations. 

Because Modern Man can make no sense of life; life has neither meaning nor purpose, but only a cloudy and uncertain present that arises-from nothing-much, and soon disappears into nothing-much. 

Thus Modern Man is always afraid, and cannot be encouraged; his only antidote to spontaneous overwhelming despair is to not-think even harder than already. 

The condition of Man is now very, Very bad - far worse than is recognized even by vehement critics. 

A refusal to know that which is both obvious and deeply true, makes an extreme incapacity to think consecutively on any one subject - meaning that recognition of even the most blatant lying (and all other evils) is become impossible.  

Modern Man is therefore deep in trouble, and a measure of this depth is that his 'solution' is not to eliminate the problem; but instead to eliminate all trace of his own awareness of the problem. 

His answer is to keep digging at his own deficits until he has become completely unable to recognize anything beyond whatever is being fed-into his consciousness at this moment. 

Having written-himself-off as nothing more than an ephemeral accident of blind chance; Man has rendered himself incapable of motivated thought and action; and now (un-consciously, because he will not allow consciousness) seeks to become altogether passive and receptive; to eliminate awareness of even the fact of his own, self-defined-as-futile existence. 

The modern malaise goes very deep; consequently its ramifications are extremely wide. 

We can see that its roots lie in sin, in unacknowledged hence un-repented sin; and this is why it keeps getting worse and worse - because evil feeds-upon evil. 

In theory, the remedy is at-hand: (thanks to Jesus Christ) simply one turn of the mind distant. Graspable in a moment. 

But evil has its layers of defence; its clever-silly rationalizations that reject the obvious and therefore can impose belief in the false; its ingrained and socially-supported habits of distraction and fear-driven resentment. 

Only each Man himself can escape these toils; but he must first desire to escape... 

And therein lies the most intractable problem of all. 

Anyone who has been a Christian for more than a few months will realize that our state does not bear much resemblance to the idea of 'enlightenment' which has floated vaguely into Western Culture from the East. 

By enlightenment I mean, the idea that someone attains a permanent insight, realizes the one fundamental truth about reality; and thenceforth is transformed positively and for the better ...

Or else, if there is backsliding, the path back to enlightenment consists in remembering and repeating that same original enlightenment. 

Such ideas are a part of oneness spirituality; for which there is indeed (at least potentially) a single insight of enlightenment:

Which is (approximately) that 'everything' is one - and all appearances to the contrary are maya (illusion). 

That (or, what the words point-at) is regarded as the single truth; and all possible enlightenments are of this same insight; and if one loses grasp of it, then any true future enlightenment must be a repetition of that single reality. 

But for Christians, in this mortal life, it is not like that - not even in theory. Because this life is Not one thing but many; and life is Not an illusion, but a reality from-which it is intended that we will learn. And any such learning during our mortal lives will be eternal - for all those who accept Christ's offer of resurrected and everlasting life. 

For Christians, this mortal reality is plural - not one. For Christians there ought to be many specific enlightenments. 

After all - why else would God sustain us alive unless there was more for us to learn from this life? 

When God decides that we have learned enough, or learned what we most need, then he will allow us to die; but (surely?) not until then - and of course, many leave this finite mortal life without having learned what they most need.

Therefore, in total contrast to oneness spirituality: Christian 'enlightenment' (or its equivalent) consists in many and different insights, each related to a specific need and learned from a specific context; after which we are confronted by different specific contexts from which you are intended to learn different specific lessons. 

This can lead to the dispiriting feeling of 'one step forward, one step back' - as if we are learning nothing, and there is no kind of genuine spiritual progress. 

But this is a consequence of false expectations. It is not true, or not necessarily true. A Christian who is making spiritual progress in one thing will still be confronted by the need to learn many other things.  

And any genuine spiritual 'progress' that we do make is - obviously - not primarily in terms of this mortal life; since earthly mortality is dominated by entropy (that is by decay, degeneration and death) - therefore any such progress would inevitably be temporary... 

The only durable spiritual progress is that which is 'stored' in our potentially-immortal soul and can be carried-through from this realm of inevitable loss into a realm of pure creation; where all that is Good will last forever.