Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Leftists are quick (and dishonest) to accuse Christians of hypocrisy when they fail to live-up-to their own high standards.

But this is not (usually) hypocrisy - just the nature of 'aiming. Furthermore, Christianity is essentially not about living a sinless or perfect life - which is explicitly declared to be impossible for earthly mortals - but instead about repenting for our failure to live by ultimate standards.

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Accurately, a Christian hypocrite would be one who explicitly claimed personally not to sin, when in fact he did: it is a form of dishonesty - a false claim to high moral status.

But Christian hypocrisy palls into insignificance compared with the standard, routine, modern, mainstream secular Leftist hypocrisy: which is to sin, and then change morality so that that sin is redefined as good.

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This is completely normal for the pioneers and prophets of secularism and Leftism - especially in relation to sex.

The spokesmen of the radical Left, from Rousseau through HG Wells, (Bertrand) Russell and Russell (Brand)  - and what a catastrophic and complete decline in quality of famous progressive personnel the final name in that list represents! - the most influential and celebrated Leftist leadership have consistently engineered  official morality around their personal weakness and wickedness.

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So, if a Leftist wants to have sex outside marriage, practise assembly-line promiscuity, or get divorced, or take drugs, live as a sponger and parasite, practice professional hatred, seduce by dishonest manipulations... then their 'moral' code is simply re-engineered to say that actually all of these things (and anything else they happen to want to do) are actually good...

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Sin is defined as 'the new good', and if this angers, offends and disgusts anybody then that is good too - because (by definition) these people deserve it - being hypocrites.

In mainstream secular Leftism, [fill-in-the--blanks-with-whatever-I-personally-fancy] is first excused, then propagandised as not just self-indulgence; but actually worthy of celebration and lavish reward because on the side of equality, freedom, excitement, tolerance, spontaneity, fun, diversity - and against religion, tradition, hierarchy, patriarchy, marriage and families.

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So the mandatory pretence is now that sin is actually good (properly understood); and good is actually the very worst evil; and consequently the new moral exemplars are actively and openly selfish, hate-filled and hate-propagating, behaviourally-incontinent, lying, cowardly sub-mediocrities (mediocrity is actively preferred, because any form of excellence is - to a real but limited extent- good).


This is hypocrisy on steroids, hypocrisy in a massive stadium with light show and surround-sound - hypocrisy with the backing of the government, the law, the mass media, the education system - deep state-hypocrisy enforced by the tax office, the snooper and the mob - hypocrisy with a megaphone and a truncheon - hypocrisy at the end of a gun - hypocrisy with spies and drones and bombs.

Old-style Christian hypocrisy had nothing on this.

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Note added: Secular Leftist hypocrisy by moral inversion is the hypocrisy of great power - because only great power can change the rules, and re-define its own sins as virtues, and can force or persuade society to conform to these new ethics.

Secular Leftist hypocrisy is also self-destroying, a species of nihilism - which, paradoxically, provides its motivating  pseudo-altruistic basis. 

Thoughtful secular Leftists recognize that rigorous implementation of their programme will sooner or later destroy themselves and everything they regard as good - but they interpret this fact as evidence of their own disinterestedness: evidence that they are not - therefore - ultimately selfish.

This, then, is the consequence of rejecting God: an ethic of total destruction re-interpreted as an ethic of impartial altruism!

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For secular modern societies hypocrisy is the worst sin.

Traditional Christian morality is that to sin is bad, but everyone sins since we are naturally worldly and self-loving (prideful) - what is important is to repent the sin.

And, traditionally, denying sin or defending sin or advocating sin in others are all very bad sins indeed.

In other words, although we cannot ever wholly stop ourselves from 'transgressing', we should never encourage others to transgress; people should aim at the highest standards; should publicly defend the highest standards - although they will not be able themselves to attain the highest standards.

Therefore, in the modern loose usage of the word, 'hypocrisy' is inevitable.

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In secular modern societies, morality is regarded as being something invented and chosen; and Christianity in particular is vehemently rejected.

Yet there is a natural morality, natural law - or what C.S Lewis called the Tao in perhaps his greatest lecture series The Abolition of Man - http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm

Natural morality is spontaneous in all humans at all points in history (quite possibly it is an evolutionary legacy, related to humans being social animals), and everyone (who is not a conscienceless psychopath) knows when he is transgressing it.

But secular modernity does not recognize the validity of natural morality, and the morality of secular modernity contradicts natural morality in many respects (usually with a utilitarian rationale) - this is what can be termed 'moral inversion' - where bad (according to natural morality) is re-labelled good and vice versa; bad people and good people are reversed in public esteem.

This is a normal aspect of political correctness, where monogamous heterosexual marriage among family orientated, law-abiding and hard-working people is loathed on the grounds of its hypocrisy and judgmental-ness; while open advocacy and practice of transgressive behaviours (i.e. transgressive according to natural morality) is morally aggrandized as being 'honest' and tolerant.

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The moral inversion of PC seems to spring from its generally 'rebellious adolescent' mind set. Adolescents are (naturally) the worst behaved group in society - in terms of the psychology of personality across lifespan, it is during adolescence that a person will (on average) reach their highest levels of neuroticism, impulsiveness and extraversion, their lowest levels of empathizing/ agreeableness; and aggression levels peak around the mid teens.

The youth culture - driven by pride - has therefore evolved a new morality which makes adolescents the best people instead of the worst: the teenager as moral exemplar - the sensitive adolescent - impatient, full of angst, with multiple sensitivities, with easily bruised ego, lonely yet yearning for love - as the moral hero and compass for the rest of society...

Secular modernity (with its psychological neoteny - its essential adolescence, its suspended immaturity) therefore performs a moral inversion which relabels its own faultsas virtues, and reframes morality as primarily a matter of 'honesty'. Honesty means living by chosen standards. The square adult world is accused of hypocrisy - of failing to live up to the high standards it advocates - and this sin is seen as invalidating all else.

Adolescent 'honesty' is not, therefore, about telling the truth - but about advocating very low standards of behaviour, then exceeding them!

Only adolescents, so the story goes, are really moral - because only they adopt an 'honestly' low standard of behaviour which they - and everyone else - can truly live-up-to, can even exceed (and exceed gratuitously! - as a pure act of surplus goodness - not underpinned by religious or otherworldly rewards or sanctions).

This is perhaps the essence of moral inversion in modernity.

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For example; for secular modernity; the open, explicit advocacy of impulsive sexual promiscuity is regarded as in itself morally admirable - since it is a standard that anyone can live up to (and gratifies at least the person doing it - the main problem being to convince the victims of assembly-line seduction that they too are being made happy and morally-enhanced by their exploitation).

Indeed, anyone who exceeds the very low moral standard, and behaves somewhat in the direction of natural morality, may be regarded as a genuine moral exemplar - e.g. a ruthless, manipulative, serially promiscuous individual who nonetheless maintains a long-term and affectionate relationship. 

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In sum, the morality of secular modernity 'solves' the ancient problem of the inevitability of human sin by denying the sinfulness of most attitude or acts - the inevitable gap in behaviour between spontaneous morality and actual human behaviour is dealt with by down-grading the definition of moral behaviour until it is low enough that anyone can attain it.

But because humans cannot stop making moral evaluations, sin is not actually eliminated, rather the location of sin is displaced.

Evaluative neutrality is impossible for humans (we cannot be 'non-judgmental'; we are judging or evaluating animals), and because societal manipulations of natural morality are pushing against human nature, the displacement of sin is only possible with a high level of social coercion. The freedom to live a hedonic, gratification-oriented life becomes *moral advocacy* of a life of self-gratification.

The displaced sin then becomes the advocacy of high standards. High standards are regarded as aggressive because high standards will not be met, which will make people feel guilty, which makes them intractably miserable (because in secular modernity there is no forgiveness for guilt - only an attempted denial of the basis for guilt).

In a utilitarian society, to behave in a way that makes other people intractably miserable is regarded as the worst of sins...

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In secular modern societies, people that advocate a high level of morality, especially natural morality, are seen as aggressors against the happiness of the majority - even or especially when such people actually achieve significantly higher standards of behaviour than the rest of society. The point is that their behaviour is not perfect, therefore they are hypocrites; which is the worst thing to be.

And of course such people really are 'hypocrites' in the sense that with high standards some level of degree of failure is inevitable.

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So we get the profound moral inversions of secular modernity, in which exemplary citizens who advocate high moral standards - like Mormons and devout Evangelicals - are the primary hate figures.

While people who both advocate and practice lives of aggressive, exploitative, manipulative self-gratification are regarded as moral heroes.

Because so long as their explicitly advocated standards of behaviour are set even-lower than their actual behaviours; arrogant, selfish pleasure-seekers are immune against being regarded as that worst of modern villains: the hypocrite.

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Hypocrisy is NOT failing to practice what you preach.

(Otherwise we could preach only sin - which is, in fact, pretty much, the currently-permitted situation.)

Hypocrisy is falsely claiming to practice what you preach.

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Edited from Saving the Appearances by Owen Barfield (1965) - the chapter "Religion":

The needful virtue is that which combats the besetting sin. And the besetting sin today is the sin of literalness...

The relation between the mind and the heart of Man is a delicate mystery, and hardness is catching. 

There is a connection, at some level - however deep, between literalness and hardness of heart.

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The above quotes hit me with the power of insight - 'literalism' is indeed our besetting sin; and this comes out most starkly in disputes; and Christians are just as prone to it as are the majority secular culture. And literalism does often lead to hard hearts - indeed that is how it can usually be noticed - by the hard, brittle, cold tone which enters discourse.

In mainstream secular culture, literalism is seen in the legalism, the microscopic analysis of sentences and individual words, which prevails in modern bureaucracies (which means in most of modern life - since the interlinked bureaucracies - the system - is almost everywhere).

And in Christianity literalism is also a besetting sin - which can be observed in all denominations - although some are worse, in this respect, than others. It is my impression that literalism is what attracts some people to Christianity, and retains them in it.

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The problem is that literalism justifies itself, by dichotomizing Christian discourse as all or nothing, and dividing the faithful from the heretics on clear technical grounds: either either people fully implement every line of scripture (when quoted line-by-line) or people have rejected the Bible; either people fully live by the rule-book or people are making it up as they go along; either everyone fully submits to church authority; either people adhere to traditional practices and ritual in every respect or else they have rejected it; either people are theologically orthodox or they are heretics or apostates.

In practice, individuals have their own favourite tests - the response to a particular passage of scripture, attitude to contraception or doctrine. In modern culture-wars (Christians versus secular mainstream) litmus test issues include abortion, and the ordination (or pastorate, or full membership) of women and sexual-revolutionaries. Within Christianity the tests are much more numerous- and generally reduce to the authority of authorities - the primacy of church leadership, scripture, traditions etc.

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My point is that these disputes have a horrible way of playing into the enemy's hands; and the way this often works is by literalism - both sides end-up using literalist arguments, and both sides have their hearts hardened and chilled by the process. Those with the hardest hearts come to the fore, take charge and and take-over the disputes, and ensure that - from a Christian perspective - there are no winners but only losers. 

What I mean is that the right side - the side which holds the correct views - ends-up as being corrupted - so they come to hold the right opinions for the wrong reasons - and thereby the right opinions become invalidated and irrelevant.

Because in Christianity, having the right beliefs for the wrong reasons means having the wrong beliefs: the reasons are a non-optional part of the right beliefs.

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It should be obvious, and it certainly is true, that a persona can sincerely hold all the correct beliefs, and do all the prescribed actions - every single one of them, and obey all the legitimate church authorities to the letter - and not be a Christian because they have hard hearts.

In other words because they lack love - also termed 'charity' and agape.

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This hard-hearted lovelessness seems to be terribly common among strident self-identified Christians on the Christian blogosphere and even more so on the secular Right Wing/ Reactosphere. 

Among Christians, the inference is that these are people who have become Christian to provide a transcendental excuse to indulge in hatred.

In other words, a literalistic definition and interpretation of Christianity is being used to justify an attitude which is consistently and hypocritically directed at teh expression of hatred.

This is sometimes called Phariseeism - after the revealed attitude of Jesus's enemies among the Jewish priesthood - but it remains extremely common (albeit less rigorous, and not always focused on 'the law).

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This kind of thing is very obvious to non-Christians, and 'hypocrisy' by this definition is one of the legitimate criticisms of the Christian churches throughout history.
Because, hypocrisy is properly a matter of motivation - the prime hypocrisy is to be motivated by hatred and pride in the name of a religion that regards love as the primary and always necessary virtue. 

We are almost all of us prone to this kind of hypocrisy, and it is understandable how debates and arguments easily degenerate in this way.  But while it can be explained, there is no sufficient excuse for it - and it is very, very dangerous (I mean morally hazardous) to seek to excuse hate-motivated discourse on the grounds of necessity, on the grounds of the greater good.

When we detect it in ourselves, we must repent and cease; when we detect hate-motivation in others we must be careful not to treat them as mentors, teachers, authorities, or good interpreters - no matter how learned or rhetorically skilful they may be, no matter how correct in their expressed beliefs practices and obedience.

Such hypocrites (by the above definition) are extremely dangerous if given power as Christian leaders - dangerous to those under their authority, and damaging to the faith itself; and very difficult to get rid of once in place because it is their motivation which is at fault, rather than their actions - which are always correct and orthodox.

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So Christians must guard against hate-driven-pseudo-Christians - who are often the most orthodox and obedient in their behaviour; and must recall that love comes above all: Love of God and Neighbour covers, compensates-for, is far more important than total literalistic correctness.

In other people, but also more importantly in ourselves. We must guard against hardening of our hearts.

And if our hearts are hardening and we become aware of this, then there can be no excuse or compensation - the immediate priority must be to restore warmth to the heart (or to allow warmth to re-emerge, to become warmed); and the antidote for hardness is love.

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It is one of the strangest spectacles of living under political correctness to observe relentless propaganda and pandering favour of designated 'deserving groups' of which the PC leaders are not themselves members.

This raises the obvious question of why - for example - every white, heterosexual, native-born and descended ultra-PC male leader does not promote the cause of political correctness by simply resigning in favour of someone who he (supposedly) regards as more deserving by virtue of them not being a WHet-NB&D male.

Or, beyond this, every devout and ultra-PC leader should perhaps resign in favour of anyone who was more deserving - so that a female non-heterosexual should resign in favour of a female non-heterosexual who was also an immigrant.

And so on.

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Yet, despite being an obvious implication of genuinely PC belief, this never seems to happen.

Indeed, nobody ever seems to consider this very obvious possibility. 

Of course much of this apparently inconsistent behaviour is due to dishonest, careerist hypocrisy, but it is not purely careerist dishonest hypocrisy.

If it were only due to bad reasons then the more-devoutly-PC would continually and forcefully be denouncing the hypocritically-PC for their backsliding.

I infer that there must be reasons which persuade the most devoutly PC that it is OK to leave un-mentioned the apparently inconsistent behaviour of the predominantly WHet-NB&D male leadership.

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I think there are at least two ways of conceptualizing the behaviour of why a sincere and devoutly PC WHet-NB&D male leader might not relinquish their power and positions.

The first reason is that WHet-NB&D male PC leaders genuinely want to relinquish their power but simply cannot make themselves do it, due to their own sinfulness, which they fully understand and wish to overcome but cannot.

The WHet-NB&D male leadership are 'addicted' to power and cannot make themselves relinquish it , like another person might be addicted to cigarettes but cannot make themselves give up.

In private, they will confess their sin, and as repentant sinners they atone for their sin - in this case by creating abstract systems of allocations such that people such as themselves will in future be prevented from taking power.

So that the sincerely PC foes of the WHet-NB&D male leadership refrain from denouncing them, refrain from pointing out their obvious inconsistency, on the grounds that the WHet-NB&D male leaders are actively atoning for their sin of holding power by making sure that never again will WHet-NB&D males be allowed or able to get into similar positions of power and leadership.

So, hypocrisy goes un-denounced by the devout, so long as the leadership confess, repent and atone for their sins by serving the cause of 'virtue'.

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But in addition to this is the system orientation and indifference to individual behavior among the leadership which was characteristic of the communists, and presumably has been inherited from them.

From this perspective, acts of individual sinfulness and virtue from the leadership is irrelevant to the cause - which is a matter of objective policy.

From this perspective, an individual resigning power to another individual is irrelevant, since this would not change the system.

It is better for leaders do whatever changes the system in the desired direction, rather than indulging in personal acts of virtue which leave the system intact.

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So communists always hated the 'philanthropy' of individual charity - partly because it might delay the revolution by ameliorating the condition of the proletariat, and partly because it depended on the 'whim' of individuals which ought not be depended-on.

Likewise, the politically correct heirs of  communism would rather use the drive and skill of WHet-NB&D males to implement a system which will - in future - be such that its leaders will be anything-but WHet-NB&D males.

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Because when hypocrisy is raised up to being the ultimate sin, as it is in modern culture, then people are confronted with a choice of being 100 percent perfect or else joining the forces of evil (because for moderns there is no possibility of repentance - and one single solitary error is enough to eject you from the side of Good and throw you irrevocably into the arms of evil).

The lesson is you might as well join evil straight away - since you will sooner or later have-to anyway.

That's where hypocrisy gets you.

Forget it.

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We have all realised that the daily, hourly, diet of fake outrage (strong negative emotions) from journalists and official spokesmen is dishonest - they don't feel the outrage: they are just pretending.

But clearly they do expect us to feel the outrage. And that is significant and ought to be interesting.

We are being encouraged (and sometimes this encouragement is mandatory - with social ostracism following if we fail to fake the appropriate outrage at some recognised 'tragedy') to feel outrage pretty much all of the time; and about almost anything.

For example, we are expected to be outraged over the death of a person or people we have never heard of and about which everything we know is supplied by the same article that informs us of the death.

Given that such news stories are always false in important particulars, and in ways designed to amplify the outrage, this is quite an extraordinary way to lead our lives - but this is how those in charge want us to live.

Indeed, They want us to be ever-more outraged by ever-more events; and the threshold for outrage is continually pushed downwards until a trivial altercation - perhaps a slight gesture or a fragment of a sentence - becomes an international extreme outrage.

Such a desire on the part of those who rule us goes far beyond hypocrisy. The expressed outrage is fake - but the desired response is perfectly genuine.

This is a major manipulation of the human condition. We ought to be asking what kind of people want the mass population to be in a perpetual and escalating state of outrage?

And the answer is simple: evil people.

If you want 'evidence' for the deliberate and strategic evil of those who rule us - here it is.

Modern, mainstream social discourse and behaviour is dishonest, insane, incoherent and (at root) overall-evil in its motivation -- thus for any real Christian involved with modernity, there will be not merely be conflict; but intrinsically a state of near-total opposition.

Christianity cannot be integrated with mainstream modern life - with the mass media, the interlinked bureaucracies, and social discourse/ social media - since modern culture is materialistic, utilitarian (hedonistic) and regards exclusively-this-worldly Leftist ideology as the deepest virtue.

Insofar as a real Christian has public dealings - so much will that Christian have a fake public facade.

Consequently, to those mainstream people whose ideology embraces modernity (that is, the mass majority of Westerners); Christians will appear like smiling automata - superficial and divided in their nature. That is: Hypocritical (by the modern definition.)

Superficial because their surface public interactions are not underpinned by their deepest convictions; and this is the division in their natures; and this division is understood as a fake public facade masking reality - which is hypocrisy...

It is a fact that a real Christian cannot participate in the modern world whole-heartedly, with the whole of his nature. And when he does, when is is compelled to do so, then the existence of duality, of splitting between surface and depth, is interpreted as a deception, manipulation, a lie, a fake. And this is correct in the sense that the real Christian is not the Christian that we see.

In modernity, one goal is to be authentic, a 'together' kind of personality, naturally integrated across all behaviours and situations, effortlessly yourself...

But real Christians cannot be authentic in their dealings with the modern world - because it would require integrating with purposive ugliness, sin and lies: integrating with the aims of those strategically-evil beings who dominate the Global, especially Western, leadership.

So the problem is intractable. We can only acknowledge and live-with-it; as best we may.

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The shallowness and triviality of modern life is nothing new - I felt it very strongly in the seventies - mostly as a contrast to what I knew from reading Tolkien - but it is one of those things that just keeps gets worse and more obvious.

I realize that this places me, always has placed me, outwith the major mass effects perpetrated upon us - simply an appalled and incredulous onlooker.

But I cannot - not really - understand, and I never have been able to understand, how so many people participate in this relentless, minute by minute... nothing. How many people simply dissipate their whole lives...

What is the point of it? How can they be bothered?

This masquerades as 'fun', as 'having a laugh', as 'joining in' - but so obviously is not that I am astonished that people can continue to suppose it is. It masquerades as important moral concern - but, really, who is fooled?

I cannot understand how people let themselves be manipulated into faking feelings of excitement, concern, hatred by a mass media which is ever more formulaic and ever more stale.

I keep expecting people, en masse, to wake up - and to admit to themselves that they are faking responses all the way down to the level that they supposedly regard as the bottom line. I presumed people would rebel, would demand meaning, purpose and relatedness from life. I have, indeed, been expecting this for forty years - but clearly my expectation was delusional.

In fact the situation is even worse than described above, because there is an actively aggressive quality about this shallowness and triviality - it wants to impose itself on every last person by loudness, by intrusiveness, by subversion and fake indignation.

All this stuff I knew and felt with certainty long before I was a Christian - but I didn't have an explanation for it because I could not perceive its source: I could see only layer upon layer upon layer of shallow, trivial fakery.

But what I did not understand before I was a Christian, is that the endemic and near-ubiquitous STFakery is in the service of evil, of the destruction of Good - and that is exactly why it is aggressive, intolerant; why it seeks-out opposition in order to overwhelm it.

Indeed, this is the nub of the problem. Life at a level of shallow, trivial fakery would be just about tolerable if it was in the service of truth - that would be what is called hypocrisy. But that is not the situation.

Well, now I know the source - which is absolutely important to know; and reveals the situation as far more dangerous, of far deeper significance, than I could possibly have imagined.

But how to 'fight' shallowness in the context of an ever-shallower public domain? Impossible. That would be fighting shallowness with shallowness, and there could be only one victor.

Answer: don't fight it; do different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These extraordinary times are made the more so by the stunning inability to see what is plain. We are living through the end of a great tradition and long history of Western Civilization; rooted in Greek and Rome, and, for some 1700 years, the Christian church - in its various forms. 

Insofar as this reality is known at all; it is experienced as a weight; and that weight can be felt either as an astonishing (but intimidating!) litany of unsurpassed achievements in human endeavor - or as, just, an oppression. 

On the one hand, such a long and astonishing tradition is stunningly impressive; yet on the other hand it has been overcome. 

Has been... This overcoming of Western Christian Civilization has already happened, and we stand at a point when the implications are being worked-out. Our world has moved from a long phase of collapsing, into its current phase of active destruction. 

Western civilization has-been overcome; yet the ideology that overcame it, which hates that heritage (of Classicism, but even more so of Christianity) does not acknowledge this fact - and indeed, with the right hand, presents itself as both steward and patron of exactly that civilization which, with its left hand, it is destroying as fast as possible.  

If there is a dominant ideological mode by 2022; that mode is untruthfulness, dishonesty, misrepresentation, lies - our world is built from lies, and by lies. 

The spirit of negation has triumphed over the spirit of creation; and (such is this mortal life) negation has the purer and clearer motivation, feels itself the more justified. 

The long history of Western civilization has greatness of creative achievement; and also greatness of horror - its motives always mixed, its triumphs always disputed. (Such is mortal life.)

But the spirit of negation which has, as a matter of fact, brought-down Western civilization, operates from a baseline assumption of absolute purity and coherence of motive; it demands nothing less than absolute perfection - and when it fails to find this, it destroys. 

Such is the ideology of negation - it is able to be and demand purity and perfection exactly because its sanction is destruction. 

The world has changed sides; everybody with power, status, influence is (more-or-less so, but always) of the party of negation*; hence (most of the time) nobody is questioning where this is going, what the destruction is supposed to achieve. 

Recent attempts to describe the goal of the party of destruction - the nature of the world being-aimed-at - are risible, and largely ignored. Nobody asks the ultimate purpose, everybody is engaged in the proximate work of 'clearing the ground' under the (vague) assumption that something not just better but perfect will spontaneously grow to occupy the ruins of The West; will (presumably) grow from the pure seeds of motivation possessed by the destroyers...  

When such 'where?' questions are being-asked; the right hand briefly brings-forward and points-at some goal of the Old West - like science, education, art - and the powers of negation briefly masquerade as steward and patron, guardian and sustainers of all that is good. 

They have, after all, long since taken-over all institutions (bureaucracies, corporations, organizations), all the social functions. Whatever remains of the long tradition of Western Christian Civilization is in their 'care'...

Yet as soon as the discourse moves-on, the directionless work of destruction recommences.

The world now stands-within this ideology of negation. 

Looking outwards from it at the collapsing ruins of tradition; it sees nothing but oppression, hypocrisy, failure. Against such a litany of injustice and disaster, their task is obvious - the necessity of destruction is clear. 

And no matter how much has been destroyed, there is (so far) always more yet to do; the spirits of negation feel that little or no progress has been made, since so much of Western Civilization, of tradition, still stands.

Hence the raging impatience, the urgency that characterizes those on the side of negation!  

So this is the shape of our times. A defeated civilization, the achieved triumph of negation, the zeal of destruction. 

Our choice would seem to be a broken tradition versus nihilism. 

But neither will do. The one is terminally ill and living in a hospice administered by those who would murder it; the other, the mass majority, are destroyers - fuelled by a morality of opposition and inversion. 

Against such a world, each of us can bring the alliance of our-selves with God. 

We can oppose both senility of civilization and the nihilism of negation by taking the side of divine creation, and a providence that works from individual souls rather than from the crumbling sweep of history or the accumulations of negative, oppositional, destructive power.

This can happen only if the base of activity is withdrawn from the arena, and if the mode of operation is lifted above the material. 

Its 'effectiveness', as a life-strategy, depends on our capacity to align with the divine, which depends on our motivation to do so. 

Success (or failure) we must discern and evaluate for our-selves - mindful that this-world is on the one hand 'only' the means to an end; yet on the other hand, so long as we personally remain alive, we have something of potentially eternal value to achieve. 

Since God is the creator - maker of this world, and our loving Father; we need not seek for this personal task:

Life will bring our work to-us. 

Our job (yours, mine) is 'merely' to recognize that task; then to choose well.

*Note - 'The party of negation' is more commonly known as Leftism - but it must be understood that as of 2022 all parties are Leftist; including not just all socialist, liberal, progressive parties, but all centre, moderate, right-wing, libertarian and officially-religious (including 'Christian' church) parties. This because Leftism is rooted in the anti-spiritual/ anti-Christian metaphysics of materialism/ positivism/ scientism and reductionism - which assumptions pervade and dominate the entirety of public discourse. 

*

Most secular Right blogs make frequent use of graphic sexual slang and analogies - and often they take this to considerable extremes of inventiveness and explicitness.

(The exceptions are among the sR bloggers I like best; such as Steve Sailer, Dennis Mangan and Foseti - who maintain good manners and gentlemanly standards in their posting; although I wish they would censor comments more ruthlessly.)

I presume that they swear and cuss in order to advertise their 'Red Pill' credentials and appear as someone who sees-though hypocrisy and sham, knows all-about sin and corruption, and is unafraid-of the seamy side of life...

But to me it shows that these people are radicals not reactionaries, nihilists not traditionalists, on the side of evil against Good.

It is quite simple: strategic use of sexual slang by a blogger demonstrates that they have not rejected the sexual revolution.

And if you have not rejected the sexual revolution, then you are a progressive at heart, a Leftist; however you may choose to self identify.

*

What they think is important is trivial and false; what they suppose to be proven-untrue is not just correct but blindingly obvious to the meanest intellect; what they suppose to be based on evidence is simply assumed...

Every new idea they have is wrong and harmful; everything they want to abolish is better than what they want to replace it with...

The people they admire are manufactured fakes - the people they despise include saints and creative geniuses.

Their idea of beauty is viscerally ugly - they go to great expense and effort to erect vile and useless buildings and construct futile technologies.

They mock wholesome virtue and call it hypocrisy because it is flawed; and give medals, prizes and aristocratic titles to the successfully greedy, lustful, dishonest and exploitative - especially when they boast about their wickedness.  

Their entire world view is a conspiracy theory of made-up paranoia; while they label common sense inferences based on plain facts as conspiracy theories.

They regard themselves as anti-authoritarian while believing anything and everything purely on the basis of their notions of high status provenance.

Most importantly, they despise and mock faith - regarding it as gullible, wishful thinking; their own faith is invisible to them, paradoxically denied by them - yet is responsible for all the above.

My interpretation of this is from the perspective that repentance is something close-to being the core value of Christianity. The Liberals are correct that God does not (it would be ridiculous) expect perfect behave from us, and that lapses (including sexual lapses) are forgiven. 

But this absolutely requires repentance. 

So when we behave suboptimally we must repent that failure and must not defend the lapses - must not say that our failures are not-really failures. 

The trend for the past two or three generations has been to assert that sexual morality is not such a big things as all that - especially, it is not the core value of Christianity, and is sometimes over-emphasised. Other things are more important in and of themselves. Sexual sinners are not the worst kind of sinners. Sexual virtue is difficult, and nobody wholly achieves it (in the privacy of their own minds). Hypocrisy is rampant.

All this is true - but that merely means that failure in sexual morality is is frequent - it does not mean that failure in sexual morality is unimportant; and it certainly does not mean that failure is actually success!

If (or when) we do make this claim that sin is not sin - then that itself becomes a further sin which itself requires repentance. 

When I say any sin (including sexual sin) 'must' be repented I mean this as a personal principle. It is not a matter of God punishing us for failing to repent - it is that by failing to repent we choose to reject God; we choose to reject God's created order; the actual failure to repent is itself the rejection. 

We thereby damn ourselves. 

Failure to repent - even minor or sub-primary sins - simply is, in itself, our personal choice to reject salvation.

Since choice (free will/ agency) is a real fact of Life, then this represents self-damnation. In fact this is what damnation actually-is. 

The gates of heaven are open - that was the gift of Christ; but we have-to want-to go in under our own steam, we cannot be shoved-in. 

Failing to repent - that is, failing to acknowledge-the-reality-of our sins and other failures - is merely a roundabout way of rejecting divine order, of saying that we personally do not want what God has to offer - and preferring to 'go it alone'. 

And if that is what we want, that is what we will get.

People holding the materialistic view of life have no idea to what man is exposed between going to sleep and waking. He is actually exposed to these beings who persuade him in his sleeping state that good is evil, and evil good. The moral order on Earth is bound up with the human etheric body, and when man sleeps, he leaves his moral achievements behind him on the bed. He does not pass over into the state of sleep armed with his moral qualities.

From a 1922 lecture by Rudolf Steiner

This passage, which I encountered in a book collected some of Steiner's writings about sleep, stuck in my mind and triggered reflection on the topic of evil dreams.

Sometimes - quite often - I behave in a evil way during my dreams. In one sense this is hardly surprising, because I (like everybody) have much evil in my heart; so why wouldn't it come-out in dreams?

Furthermore, if dream experience is - as I assume - an aspect of the experience of our mortal lives, then the point is how we respond to these experiences. Dreams may provide experiences which can be good for us, or turned-to good - but which are (thankfully) absent from waking life. If we respond well to these experiences, then we will move towards divinity during our lives (i.e. theosis).

On the other hand, if we respond wrongly, then we will move away from divinity - and this was encouraged by the 'Freudian' idea that the evil we do in dreams is evidence of fundamental hypocrisy, and proof of each of us being 'really' depraved - dreams reveal the true self.

Steiner disagreed:

You may recently have seen in the newspapers some interesting and thoroughly well-founded statistics. It was stated that criminals in the prisons have been found to have the soundest sleep of all. Really hardened criminals are never tormented during their sleep by bad dreams or the like. This only happens when they dip down again into their etheric bodies, for it is there that the moral qualities lie. It can much more easily happen to one who is striving to be moral, that through the constitution of his etheric body, he carries over something into his astral body and is then tormented by dreams as the result of comparatively trifling moral lapses. But generally speaking it is a fact that man does not carry over at all, or only to a very slight extent, the moral constitution he acquires during earthly existence but is exposed during sleep to the beings just referred to.

So, Steiner suggests that spiritual progress during waking life is not carried-over into dreams; indeed there is a sense in which there is a reciprocal relationship whereby the better the waking Man, the more evil he experiences during sleep. (This made me think about how CS Lewis, a good man, was terribly plagued with nightmares.)

But Steiner goes further in attributing some dream evil to demonic (specifically Ahrimanic) beings. He says that awake-good people (at least during this consciousness era) are especially exposed to these ultra-materialistic anti-spiritual beings whose aim is to prevent men taking the next developmental step.

It isn't clear to me from this lecture - but often Steiner sees Ahrimanic beings as providing the challenges and threats - the necessary resistance - which modern man needs in order to grow.

If Steiner's view is broadly-correct, then it seems we must continue to suffer the misery, fear, disgust and shame of evil dreams - for our own ultimate good. The point is not to stop, ignore or be afraid of these dreams; but properly to understand them, and constructively to learn from them.

There are many ideas put forward as solutions to the crisis of the modern world (not Covid 19, that's just an element, albeit an important one, of something much larger), political, ideological, even spiritual of sundry sorts. But they all lack overall coherence. However, there is something that stands above them all which reconciles any good there might be in them at a higher level without including the dross, illusion and bad qualities they all contain without this thing. It can be summed up in a sentence.

That sentence is Matthew 12:30. "He that is not with me is against me". This pithy injunction means if you are not actively for the truth of Christ, you are against it. Not passively against it, actively so. According to this saying, there is no middle ground. If you are not for Christ, you oppose him. Neutrality is not an option. 

 This might seem unreasonable. Why, if you don't accept Christ, does that mean you are the enemy of Christ? Why can you not be a good, upstanding, morally decent person without acknowledging Christ? 

You can't because Christ is the embodiment of truth and if you don't recognise that then you don't recognise truth in which case you will be on the outside of truth, working against it whether that be in a greater or lesser sense. Christ is like magnetic north. If the lodestone of your being does not point to him then it is broken. You are broken. Your soul is sick.

I have long had the conviction that Father Christmas is real. I stick by that - and indeed believe that Santa is getting realer with every year.

This is happening because the mainstream culture is more obviously and more intensely anti-Christmas (as part of being anti-Christian - as its core, demonic, value); so the value of Santa is ever easier to discern (this being yet another example of things coming to a point as the end times develop and good and evil separate).

Not to keep you in suspense: Father Christmas is an archetype of God*, in one of his primary aspects - as our loving and benign Father, bringer of joy, giver of gifts; and as such not only is Santa real, but one of the realest things we will ever encounter.


Here and now; Father Christmas can be real only to the extent we acknowledge (whether unconsciously or explicitly) the reality of the God of Christians - of whom he has evolved to become a specific archetype.

And to such persons, Santa may have a spontaneous reality that may powerfully overcome mistaken resistance - based upon such errors as regarding him as a pagan or demonic spirit.


This struck me as a consequence of reflecting on our cultural extremes of The Magic of Christmas versus what might be termed Christmas survivalism: the idea of Christmas as an ordeal that must be got-through best as possible.

A variant of Christmas survivalism is to subvert the magic of Christmas by explaining-it-away historically, or inverting its values, or regarding it as no-more-than an exercise in systematic self-indulgence; such as the ritualised sybaritic-hedonic-nihilistic excess of 'the office party'... In other words, to deny the reality and significance of magic, by substituting immediate pleasure for magic.


I've experienced both in myself, and can easily see that the attitude to Christmas is a barometer of spiritual well-being, of being on an upward or downward path. The analogy of Santa with God is close in terms of the Christian and the atheist inhabiting the same sensory-world; but perceiving different aspects ad drawing different conclusions.

The large and heterogeneous totality that is the phenomenon of Christmas is that which confronts us; the question is what we personally draw from that totality.

In other words; the magic is there, it is a significant part of the phenomenon that is Christmas; what varies is whether we are able and willing to experience it. And that depends - ultimately - on our basic assumptions regarding the nature of this world (i.e. metaphysics).


If we accept the mainstream Leftist socio-political ideology that this universe is dead 'physics', non-conscious, a product of chance and determinism; then all values (including truth, beauty and virtue) are arbitrary constructs of a brief-living organism...

Well, natural Christmas can have no real magic on such a basis - nothing can have magic, because magic is defined as impossible by assumption.

On the negative side Christmas is a time of a tedious obligations, commercialism and hypocrisy. The best that can be said about Christmas from such a perspective is that it can be an excuse for 'partying' to a greater extremity than is usually tolerated. 


But when our assumptions are such that we regard this world as the creation of a God who is our loving parent who made this world for our personal good...

And if, further, we regard Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus who was 'first' son of our father the creator; and who came to this earth to bring us the great gift of eternal life in heaven on the other side of death - thereby bringing permanent meaning and purpose to our mortality...

Then we will experience the magic of Christmas - we will experience what is genuine and beautiful about the season; simply leaving aside what is not. And an important part of this is knowing that Santa Claus is really-real.


*And as such, real. Because an archetype is a reality - not the totality of reality, but reality as known to a limited Being such as ourselves. Often, archetypes are, indeed, the only realities we can know.

I have recently been studying Plato's Apology (Apology = 'Justification'), which is the speech Socrates gave in court as a defence of his life and actions, against Athenian accusers. He was found guilty of various charges and condemned to death - drinking poison.

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html

*

Plato was a pupil of Socrates, and Plato uses him as a character in many of the Dialogues - which have perhaps had more influence on philosophy than anything else written - except perhaps Aristotle's work.

Over the years I have read a great deal about Socrates, including a source book which collected all the non-Plato references. And at the end of the day I found myself more confused than enlightened.

But if it is assumed that the Socrates of later dialogues is more-or-less a mouthpiece of Platonic philosophy, and if our focus is therefore placed almost wholly on the Apology, then a clear picture of Socrates emerges which is very different from how I have usually regarded him.

*

1. Socrates is primarily a religious man.  

The Apology is replete with pious references to The God (of Delphi - i.e. Apollo) and the gods as a whole - everything Socrates does and his reasons for doing things is ultimately referenced back to God/ the gods.

Not only is Socrates theoretically pious; but he describes how his conduct is guided by frequent personal revelations, in the form of a warning voice which communicates divine guidance - the voice saying mostly what he must not do - Socrates is left to his own devices in deciding what he should do. 

*

2. Socrates seems to have no other philosophical views except this piety to the gods.

From the Apology, Socrates only positive agenda - which was laid upon him by Apollo via the Oracle of Delphi is to expose the pretension, hypocrisy, selfishness and arrogance of the Athenian ruling elite.

He uses the standard 'legal' method of cross examination to demonstrate that the elite have views that are incoherent; and that they think more of themselves than of the gods - that they take personal credit for what are actually divine gifts.

For example, Socrates discovers that the politicians and orators are incoherent and working on their own behalf (not that of the gods), that the poets and creative artists dishonestly claim ownership of an inspiration which is actually divine, and that the skilled craftsmen assume that specific technical skill confers upon them general wisdom.

*

In general, Socrates deplores professionalism - the corruption of people doing things for money; which means for themselves and therefore not because of duty to the gods.

And especially he deplores professional philosophers (i.e. 'professors').

In general, Socrates ideals are humility before the gods, and piety towards the gods - as known by revelations and 'laws'.

*

Socrates is intensely patriotic: he loves Athens. He has almost-never left the tiny city during seventy years. He personalizes the city in terms of its 'laws' by which he means not just its rules, but the traditions, customs and ideals - and the Athenian gods behind these practices.

Socrates engages in his religious philosophical activity - despite the unpopularity and the dangers this brings - simply because Apollo has laid the duty upon him; and if he ever considers doing anything else, he is warned (by personal revelation) to cease.

For the same reason, Socrates will not cease from his philosophical activities - whatever the court may say.

*

What comes through from the Apology is Socrates not acting much like 'a philosopher' - and not at all acting as a philosopher in the modern sense; but Socrates as a divinely-inspired and guided prophet - and one who became a martyr by the strict definition of being killed for his religion when he could have escaped death by repudiating his religion.

The Apology tells us that Socrates was therefore a model of religious piety, devoted to his city state and its customs, traditions and laws; and therefore Socrates was NOT - as so often portrayed and understood - any kind of proto-skeptical, atheistical, counter-cultural intellectual rebel - interested only in abstract ideas, and loyal only to (what later men mean by) 'philosophy'.

On the contrary, as well as being rigorous and indomitable; Socrates' aims and methods were apparently simple, straightforward, easily understandable, loving and humble - that is, to recall a corrupt society back to divine service.

*

Socrates was therefore in the major essentials very much like an Old Testament prophet - and the differences were mostly of nomenclature (Apollo instead of the Hebrew God), details, circumstances and style.

*

I am inclined to think that Thomas Traherne (1636-74) is an Anglican Saint, perhaps the only Anglican Saint who was not a martyr?

This on the basis of his writings, which seem divinely inspired to a degree otherwise unaccountable other than that he lived in close-communion with God (which is, to be a Saint).

*

But Traherne died in obscurity and his work was lost for two centuries.
Supposing he is a Saint, this may mean that the failure to recognise him earlier was evidence that the Church of England had become corrupt or made a serious wrong turn in failing on principle to recognize the validity of modern Saints; and/or that Traherne was fortuitously recovered about a hundred years ago for our use in modern times.

*

Because Traherne is a mystic - and perhaps that is what we most need in an era when all branches of the church, even the most vital, are corrupted by (often misplaced) worldly concerns.

Traherne is also unsurpassed as an embodiment of the via positiva, the way of affirmation, the path of Christianity which lives by the glory of God in this world.

*

Traherne's re-discoverer and first editor - Bertram Dobell - wrote that in the Centuries of Meditations there was just a single significant 'blemish' - which was The First Century Number 48. Dobell found this 'entirely repellant, and entirely at variance with the general spirit of the work' - and he would prefer to have omitted it from his edition.

Let us, then, look at this 'blemish' in context:

*

From: http://www.spiritofprayer.com/01century.php

47: To have blessings and to prize them is to be in Heaven; to have them and not to prize them is to be in Hell, I would say upon Earth: To prize them and not to have them, is to be in Hell. Which is evident by the effects. To prize blessings while we have them is to enjoy them, and the effect thereof is contentation, pleasure, thanksgiving, happiness. To prize them when they are gone, envy, covetousness, repining, ingratitude, vexation, misery. But it was no great mistake to say, that to have blessings and not to prize them is to be in Hell. For it maketh them ineffectual, as if they were absent. Yea, in some respect it is worse than to be in Hell. It is more vicious, and more irrational.

48: They that would not upon earth see their wants from all Eternity, shall in Hell see their treasures to all Eternity: Wants here may be seen and enjoyed, enjoyments there shall be seen, but wanted. Wants here may be blessings; there they shall be curses. Here they may be fountains of pleasure and thanksgiving, there they will be fountains of woe and blasphemy. No misery is greater than that of wanting in the midst of enjoyments, of seeing, and desiring yet never possessing. Of beholding others happy, being seen by them ourselves in misery. They that look into Hell here may avoid it hereafter. They that refuse to look into Hell upon earth, to consider the manner of the torments of the damned, shall be forced in Hell, to see all the earth, and remember the felicities which they had when they were living. Hell itself is a part of God's Kingdom, to wit His prison. It is fitly mentioned in the enjoyment of the world. And is itself by the happy enjoyed, as a part of the world.

49: The misery of them who have and prize not, differeth from others, who prize and have not. The one are more odious and, less sensible; more foolish, and more vicious: the senses of the other are exceeding keen and quick upon them; yet are they not so foolish and odious as the former. The one would be happy and cannot, the other may be happy and will not. The one are more vicious, the other more miserable. But how can that be? Is not he most miserable that is most vicious? Yes, that is true. But they that prize not what they have are dead; their senses are laid asleep, and when they come to Hell they wake: And then. they begin to feel their misery. He that is most odious is most miserable, and he that is most perverse is most odious.

*

Dobell's objection was based on an interpretation that Traherne was saying that "countless multitudes were suffering eternal torments would add to the enjoyment of the blessed (for I cannot see that his words will bear any other construction)".

I personally interpret the passage as being written from a divine perspective, in which everything that is, is Good (ultimately, all will be turned to Good) - and I see this as being a unifying theme in the Centuries.

**

On a different theme, look at the preceding passage:

To have blessings and to prize them is to be in Heaven; to have them and not to prize them is to be in Hell, I would say upon Earth: To prize them and not to have them, is to be in Hell.

To have blessings and not to prize them is to be in Hell - he means this is to reject God.

Not to prize one's blessings is sin.

*

If we find that we cannot prize our blessings, then this must be repented.

If circumstances, such as illness - perhaps melancholia, are such that we simply cannot prize our blessings; then we must not accept this as reflective of reality, we must not accept it as true - but must acknowledge that we have blessings, but repent that we cannot (try as we might) prize our blessings.

*

From this it may be seen that it is a great sin to subvert the ability of others to prize their blessings - to take-away their recognition and gratitude for blessedness; despite that so much (almost all) of modern 'art' and culture, political discourse and media, are aimed-at precisely that: inverting traditional virtue into hypocrisy, relabelling simple beauty as kitsch and plain truths as dangerously-simplified.

*

From First Century:

46: It was His wisdom made you need the Sun. It was His goodness made you need the sea. Be sensible of what you need, or enjoy neither. Consider how much you need them, for thence they derive their value.

Suppose the sun were extinguished: or the sea were dry. There would be no light, no beauty, no warmth, no fruits, no flowers, no pleasant gardens, feasts, or prospects, no wine, no oil, no bread, no life, no motion.

Would you not give all the gold and silver in the Indies for such a treasure?

Prize it now you have it, at that rate, and you shall be a grateful creature: Nay, you shall be a Divine and Heavenly person.

For they in Heaven do prize blessings when they have them. They in Earth when they have them prize them not, they in Hell prize them when they have them not.

*