Bruce Charlton's Notions

My understanding is that we are incarnated into this mortal life after a pre-mortal life as (unembodied) spirits. 

This means we are born with dispositions - and sometimes these dispositions may make salvation very unlikely. 

(Unlikely but never impossible, else we would instead have become demons, and not been incarnated at all.) 

In other words, some people are 'born evil' with dispositions that - unless they change during mortal life - will lead to the rejection of Heaven. 

Most obviously evil are those people incapable of love. 

Obviously these would reject Heaven and choose hell: reject Heaven because it is a place based-upon an eternal commitment to love; choose hell because without love there is only selfishness and manipulation. 

But another group of less-obviously evil are those who are capable of love, but who refuse to repent their sins. 

All Men (except Jesus Christ) are sinners, and one who refuses to repent his sins cannot enter Heaven, since that is a place without sin. 

Sin is Not to be aligned with God's will; whereas all in Heaven are wholly in accord with divine creative purpose. So all Men (except Jesus Christ) need to be 'purified' of sin before we can enter Heaven - and this requires repentance. 

T

here are various reasons for not repenting sins. Such as a refusal to admit we are or ever have been wrong. 

Or the wish to blame other people or circumstances for our sins - which is the wish to be regarded (and regard oneself) as an 'innocent' victim. 

Or having made some sin The Most Important Thing in our life; and refusal to give it up...

To refuse to repent is, in effect, the desire to have Heaven (and its inhabitants) re-made around one's sin. 

It is implicitly to assert that 'my sin' is more important than Heaven. 

But Heaven cannot be remade without ceasing to be Heaven - therefore this refusal to repent is to self-exclude from Heaven.

What happens to one who loves but will not repent? My guess is that such include those people who seek the oblivion of ego-less, passive bliss - oneness with God conceptualized as abstract and impersonal love. 

This is perhaps the choice of one who wishes to live eternally 'in' a being-state of pure awareness of love; but who can only achieve this by an annihilation of the self, and choosing the incapacity for action, thought, and agency. 

It is a consequence of the 'all you need is love' attitude, which claims that love dissolves sin, and therefore renders repentance unnecessary. 

In effect; such a person chooses to live-out mortal life without repenting his sins; and then (rather than give up sin) wishes to cease to be a person and become merely a minimally-aware spirit, unaware of time, in a situation of rest/ peace/ silence and pleasant almost-nothingness - which might conveniently be termed Nirvana.     

Therefore some loving people do not want Heaven and prefer Nirvana; and (to recap) I think it will be found that many such people carry with them unrepented sins - which I suggest is the reason behind this preference. 

Whether such people will indeed get Nirvana after depends on whether that is truly what they want. 

If someone genuinely wants Nirvana instead of Heaven I see no reason why God would not be able to grant this experience (whatever the underlying reality of that experience might actually be).

Yet, as of 2022 - at least in The West - it seems that the desire for Nirvana is often insincere; because in-practice those who profess Nirvana often preach sin - and will publicly defend and deny sin in principle - and thereby endanger the salvation of others. 

And this is demonic activity; and demons actually want hell - not Nirvana. 

I wrote a few years ago about 'mindfulness'* - and that kind of empty meditational practice; which is at best an analgesic, but is probably being pushed by The Establishment for much more malignant reasons.

This came to mind in watching one of John Butler's recent videos. I find him interesting because he exhibits the best and the worst aspects of the (Hindu/ Buddhist-derived) perennialist oneness spirituality as it affects the Western mind.

JB says much that is wise and valuable in the early part of the vid - and then towards the end demonstrates a stunning lack of discernment that comes through in supporting the vacuous 'mindfulness without God' fad, and references his dumb-evil belief in CO2-global-warming-totalitarianism that nowadays goes with New Agery. And the equally dumb-evil assumption that the rise in billionnaire-funded, mass media and state bureaucracy supported, mindfulness-training and climate-hysteria are steps in the right direction, that JB personally supports!

I mean, how unwise, how dense, does someone need to be to suppose that anything good for people, good for the planet, would really be emanating from such people and sources?


(The chap who interviews JB - Phil Shankland - is an Extinction Rebellion activist, who can be seen on his Facebook pages taking part in demonstrations. So much for the spiritual benefits of knowing and spending loads of time with a contemporary wise man, and meditating for hours every day - plus an active life associated with a liberal-'Christian' church!... JB himself - in other videos - apparently takes for granted the validity of Warmist claims to be able to predict and control the world climate by a - necessarily totalitarian - global government; empowered to monitor and control all human activity.)


Of course, if a oneness, Nirvana seeking, anti-ego meditator were trying to be consistent; he would have no political views at all; and no interest in other-people or the way that things apparently happen in this - by definition illusory - mortal life. He would have No Morality - because morality is regarded as just as much part of the illusion of This Life as is everything else we think is real. 

However, in practice, such folk mostly seem to be on the stupid and ranting extreme of Leftist moralistic posturing; and when followed-up through time (which, in theory, they also regard as illusory) exhibit a stunning inability to learn from life experiences.

That is what oneness spirituality seems to do to Westerners - it makes them indifferent to personal experience, and indifferent to the truth (i.e. indifferent to the maya / illusion of this changing mortal life) - but just to a sufficient extent to prevent them from taking life seriously enough to learn from the experience! Just to a sufficient extent to reject the reality of traditional sexual morality; but not quite enough to reject the moral imperatives that justify the ever expanding claims of the modern sexual revolution.

Somehow the effect of oneness and loss of ego is never quite enough to induce them to set-aside mainstream, approval-seeking, virtue-signalling, fashion-dominated Leftism...

*

I would say that meditation does indeed begin with self-remembering, being here-and-now; knowing the 'presence' of God. So far, JB is valuable, helpful. But meditation then should - instantly - move-on-to being aware not of God as a diffuse omni-presence (analogous to our immersion in the sea, or floating in air); but to knowing God as a person: indeed knowing God as our loving parent (here, now, with-us)...

(Knowing, that is, God as a Being - not an abstraction.)

And meditation should not be seeking to annihilate 'the ego' or 'the self', nor to dissolve it into the abstract one-ness of deity - but to bring forth our true and divine self.


(What would be the point of God creating mortal life if its purpose was to annihilate the body and the self? Better not have mortal life in the first place! No - the purpose of this our mortal life is to experience and learn from temporary incarnation and self-hood, so that we may be able to choose - or reject - Christ's offer of immortal incarnation and divine self-hood.) 


And meditation should be about our true-self meeting-with a Being: such as our Heavenly Father; or other divine, spiritual or other presence - perhaps the beloved dead.

And why should we meet such? Not for happiness, coping, to kill pain or reduce anxiety - But through love; that's the proper reason. It is indeed the proper reason for meeting anyone. Love of that person, or love of of God's creation.

And inter-personal love - between Beings; not love understood as a kind of gas, force-field, or high frequency vibration! 


Also, meditation should Not be about trying to sustain itself as a solid lasting state; but about (when needed, at will) touching-base with this underlying reality to reorientate ourselves in life.

We are not - clearly, from the design of this world - meant to spend our lives suspended in a static-state of meditation or prayer; but (mostly) in loving and creating. And meditation is in order to make this possible, set us on the proper direction etc.

What I (personally) aim-for: is to be able to meditate and pray often, on demand; but not continuously. As Arkle says; God does not want us to be thinking about Him most of the time; but God wants us to do what we are here to do; live in the way God wants us to live (roughly: loving and creating).

Broadly; we best serve God by doing what God wants us to do (and that is an unique destiny for each person), not in continuously contemplating God.


Meditation and prayer are therefore best 'used' as ways of reminding our-selves of this situation; and of clearing away that evil addiction to fear that JB so well describes early in this video.

To leave aside fear is necessary; but not an end in itself. Unless detachment from the temporary and irrelevant concerns of worldly angst is only a first step; then meditation becomes just a drugless Valium.

Context is everything; the meaning of meditation depends absolutely on the spiritual, religious, metaphysical assumptions that are used to understand it, and its purposes. 

We ought then to move straight-on to consider this mortal life in terms of our faith and hope of immortal resurrected life, through following Jesus. 


*Note: Mindfulness is meditation without religion, without God. Mindfulness is thus meditation embedded-in an the assumptions of mainstream, materialist, Leftism. It is meditation reduced to pure technique. Hence mindfulness is directed merely at human happiness in this mortal life, to the individual in the present moment. This amounts to, as I say, merely a non-drug form of painkiller, anxiolytic or antidepressant. It is a way of 'coping' with the incrementally-escalating psychological evils of totalitarian Leftism - which then, of course, is able to grow unopposed and unabated.

This two minute audio is the clearest and most concise description I've come across of the difference between Nirvana and Heaven - and the difference between the aspirations of Christianity and 'Eastern' religion (as it is known in The West).

What John Butler expresses is the desire for oneness with minimally-conscious, immersive, abstract bliss; an impersonal absorption into the unity of divine love. He describes deep meditation - which he practices for about five hours a day - as being similar to death (as he understand death).

And he yearns for death to come; to be rid of his body and the thinking mind - and thus to become a discarnate and ego-less spirit.


John Butler calls this state the Kingdom of God and Heaven - but of course it is not: it is instead the stripping-away of all that makes us human. JB uses Christian language, but this is not a Christian desire.

There would be no reason for Jesus Christ to incarnate as a Man - to experience mortal life and to die and be resurrected; if our ultimate destiny was to become impersonal spirits fused with the abstract divine. In fact; if such was our intended destiny, there is no reason for mortal incarnate life at all - this embodied, thinking, personal life serves no positive function. 

Jesus Christ offered us a totally different kind of Heaven: a resurrected life eternal of immortal Men with indestructible, solid bodies. We die, but remain our-selves. We continue to think! Christ was resurrected, not reabsorbed; he continued to think and be a separate person; he did not lose his ego-identity and consciousness.


The Christian Heaven is one of persons, each different and distinct. And the loving relationships of Heaven are not any kind of fusion, but are inter-personal; they depend on us remaining individuals. As I understand Heaven, it is a place of creating; and we will participate with God, and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost in the eternal work of continued creation.

By contrast, in Nirvana there is no creation - only being: it is change-less; outside time and space. The God of Nirvana is not really a God of creation; because our created world is seen as an evanescent illusion (maya); and for us to believe creation is real or eternal is a delusion. The God of Nirvana Just-Is, unchanging, forever. 


There seems little doubt that John Butler genuinely wants a blissful and impersonal Nirvana; and does not want resurrection to the Christian Heaven. He wants to cease to be as an embodied thinking person; he wants to remain alive forever, but conscious only of the bliss of being absorbed-into divine love - with 'love' being understood as an impersonal disposition (perhaps something analogous to glowing light, a gas, field of force or magnetism, or a vibrational state).

How would God, our Heavenly Parents, be likely to regard John Butler's wishes? Would God be likely to grant them?

I think God would be sad that JB has rejected the great gift made possible by Jesus Christ; and sad that JB regards incarnation, thinking and the capacity for inter-personal love as worthless. Sad that JB regards this world, and the mortal lives of Men as worthless. From JB's perspective, implicitly - this life and our experiences are temporary errors that he wants to be undone forever.

God might be irritated, or even angry, at John Butler's preaching of Nirvana as if it was Heaven, and by his denigration of God's work of creation, and Jesus's work of salvation. But this may well be regarded as a product of humanly understandable confusion - since there are major inconsistencies in JB's ideas. For instance he praises and responds very powerfully to nature, animals, the stars, even human beings sometimes! Yet, ultimately he regards them all as worthless, indeed meaningless; implicitly he regards his powerful subjective responses as mistaken.

God would therefore be understanding of the misery that mortal life seems to hold for JB; and sympathetic about his desire to 'hand back the entrance ticket', and give-up on being a Man. Listen again to that recording above: there is a man who - at the bottom line - really wants to be dead, with his death conceptualized much like a permanent, deep sleep of unawareness.  


More importantly, resurrected Heavenly life is voluntary, a opt-in situation. God would not, therefore, punish those who chose otherwise, as such; else the choice would be coerced and the followers of Jesus merely conscripts!

Heaven is for those who love Jesus, and fellow Men and such love is free and cannot be enforced. Those who are incapable of such love, or who have other priorities, will have other fates. From various clues and insights; the 'system' seems to be that the eternal consequences of each person's own free choices are themselves their own justice - we judge our-selves: external 'punishment' is neither required not appropriate.

In sum, Men make their own Hells by their own choices; and, presumably, their own Nirvanas too. A Man who wishes to cease being a Man, and wishes to become fused with what he sees as the impersonal reality of the divine (since he is unable or unwilling to regard God as a person); will presumably be given pretty-much what he asks for - that is, an eternal state in which his consciousness experiences what he most desires.

So, I would expect that, when John Butler dies, he will reject the possibility of following Jesus to resurrection; and instead be enabled to experience what he so much wants: that is, a state of mere-being, aware of impersonal bliss with no perceptible change, and an absence of experienced time and space. As consciousness dwindles towards this minimum, John Butler will (I guess) probably be very pleased and grateful at the prospect!

Traditional Christians are often salvation-focused; and may be hostile to ideas of theosis (regarding it as an heretical belief in salvation by works); may ignore theosis almost-entirely in their overwhelming desire for salvation at the end of life; or else may conceptualize theosis (or variant concepts such as sanctification deification, spiritual progression, exaltation) as "merely" a means to the all-important end of salvation. 

On the other side "spiritual but not religious" people (including the "anything-but-Christianity" kind of spiritual people) are often focussed upon theosis while rejecting the need-for or desirability-of salvation - their end-point is not resurrected Heavenly life, but reincarnation, or some sort of oneness-Nirvana. 

The basic stance is that this life is (or ought to be) about continual spiritual self-improvement; and that to introduce considerations of what happens after death is a contamination of spiritual purity by an ego-driven desire for self-gratification.   

My understanding is that salvation and theosis are indivisible - that we must both aim-at resurrected eternal life, and also live this mortal life such that we learn-from its experiences. 

This may be made clearer by regarding salvation as the purpose of life and theosis, as the meaning of life.

Distinguishing-between purpose and meaning is a perfectly valid thing to do; yet ultimately they are indivisible and we cannot have one without the other. 

The purpose of life is what makes meaning possible within that purpose; and the meaning of life is how purpose actually manifests in life. 

When not-Christians pooh-pooh the Christian demand for salvation as the purpose, they also obliterate any possibility of coherent meaning; and spirituality degenerates into merely a kind of self-therapy, which itself becomes indistinguishable from pleasure-seeking or suffering-avoidant hedonism - as can be seen with the New Age movement. 

And when Christians revile, neglect or subordinate theosis and "the spiritual" they destroy any ultimate reason for continued mortal life - mortal life becomes a negative thing - a double-negative attempt to avoid sin (which, Jesus tells us - and Paul) is impossible; and a mere waiting for death that is an implicit denial of the validity of God's creation. 

But when salvation and theosis are understood as indivisible purpose and meaning of this mortal life; then we have a solid basis for a properly aimed and fulfilling existence here on earth. 

I am posting another talk from the delightful John Butler, which he discusses his books, his life, and his spirituality - which I have previously called Christian Zen. 

I call it this because it uses Christian language to describe an 'Eastern' spiritual way that neither wants nor aims at the resurrected life eternal with God, Jesus, and other sons and daughters of God, dwelling in Heaven - that Jesus made possible for those who followed him. 

Instead, JB's desire is for self/ego-less, body-less, peace, stillness, oneness and unity with God and every-thing - which I will tern Nirvana. 

What is instructive about this video is that it seems to make clear why John Butler wants this. He mentions the core problem of life as 'How do you cope with the world' - and the impossibility of escaping from the world due to the constraints of the body. Clearly the hope permanently to be rid of the body is not the same as the hope of resurrection. 

JB also mentions his aim of 'less me, more God' (not my will but God's will) - which equates closeness to God with dissolution of 'me', the self, the distinct ego. 

The great hope is for total and perfect unity - in which whatever makes us distinct and unique is removed. This is holiness. He suggests the special virtues of losing the individual in the community (family, village, nation); absence of criticism between Men; and patient, forbearance and waiting - which he (from experience) regards as better lived in Russia. 

Butler describes his books on Russia (which I have read, and recommend) as describing How spirit may strengthen to bear an unbearable world. 

This phrase is, I think, a great clue to this Christian Zen perspective. It describes the basic stance that 'the world' is intrinsically unbearable, that this un-bearability comes from the detached and observing conscious self; and therefore implies that the best and only hope is to escape the un-bearability by dissolving consciousness (and the underlying self) - so that we will just-be. 

   

By his own account John Butler has had (until recently) an 'unbearable' life of misery, loneliness and depression - alleviated only by the discipline of (oneness-type, 'transcendental') meditation. Some fifty years of meditation practice have enabled him to cope with the world, while he awaits death.

But why did JB experience life as unbearable? Well, his biography shows that this came from within; it came from the way he was and from what he wanted. And the Christian will, naturally, focus on the matter of love - because love is the principle of God's creation. 

Now, for Christians, love ought to be between persons - on earth and in Heaven (because God and Jesus Christ are also persons). But John Butler's aspirational idea of love is not between persons, but a blissful the loss of personhood into oneness. 

In this video; JB describes the great 'love' event of his life. This was a time when he and a woman friend (not his wife) were meditating together, and he experienced a vivid and compelling vision of their two souls leaving their bodies and joining into a single spiritual unity. This led to nothing relational between the two; but triggered JB to leave his wife and led to several years of a life wandering alone and miserable. 

So, the experience of 'love' drove JB further away from the world; because (I would say) this was not relational-love between persons, but was the 'annihilational'-love a loss of self (a microcosm of the hoped-for dissolution into the divine). 

From what I have gathered of John Butler's life (from the several books of his I have read) his only experience of relational love (Christian love) was with his mother; and this was warm, constant and long-lasting. 

Yet, I think this love, because it was with his mother, probably pointed backwards into a lost childhood; rather than forwards into eternity - and (in other of his work) I judge that JB regard all inter-personal and conscious love in terms of a negative attachment to the unbearable world.

He seems to regard Christian love as a narrowly-specific, immature and anthropomorphic perspective on life; something which ought-to-be set-aside in favour of the universal, 'abstract' undifferentiated 'love' of complete unity with the impersonal-and-universal-divine. 

In sum, I believe that (so far as I can tell) John Butler is an example of someone who does not want what Jesus has to offer. He does not, indeed, want to be a Man - because he finds distinct consciousness so unbearable in its suffering, that he would 'hand back the entrance ticket' of becoming a Son of God and return to a situation of pre-creation blissful mere-being. 

I think he regrets being budded-off God, because of the existential loneliness and isolation it engenders (at least in adults); and wishes to lose all awareness of himself as a separate entity - lose all awareness altogether.

From this perspective, this mortal life is nothing but a Vale of Tears; without any essential function or purpose. It is a kind of punishment, or accident; something to be coped-with by learning Not to think. And something from-which death is a deliverance.

For me, none of this is true. I see this incarnated mortal life as having a purpose that is essential to what I most want: which is resurrected life eternal in Heaven with other persons - including at least some of those whom I love from this earthly time. 

I regard this mortal life as made good (albeit intermittently, and temporality) by inter-personal love, I see love of God and Jesus as between me and other persons and living beings; and I see the aim of both earth and Heaven (the thing I most want to 'do') as being creation/ creating from and for this 'web' of loving relationships. 

As I have often said before; it seems apparent that there are some people who are (apparently from young childhood, and perhaps related to the pre-mortal spiritual nature) wanting something very different from the gift that Jesus brought us - and John Butler seems to be one of them. 

Instead of opting-into Heaven, and different from choosing the Hell of opposition to God - these people want to stop being people. 

I regard this as a consequence of the fact that when God (our Heavenly parents) took our primordial and unconscious selves and procreated them into being sons and daughters of God with consciousness and free agency; some regretted the event. 

Among those who regret being sons and daughters of God are those who respond by blaming and hating God and divine creation - these are the demons who work to destroy.

And there is this other group - of whom John Butler (along with perhaps vast numbers of adherents of Eastern religions) is one; who want to return to the state of a primordial and unconscious self. I don't think this is literally possible, because I believe that the sons and daughters of God are eternal.

But God can certainly remove all self-consciousness and all awareness of difference from the sons and daughters of God ; so that after death fully, and to some extent, during mortal life (e.g. in oneness meditation) - Men can blissfully feel and experience themselves as-if they are an impersonal and abstract part of the divine. 

This is not what God most wants for us and from us; but I think it is something he will do for his children who choose to opt-out of Heaven but without being hostile to the Heavenly project. 

    **

Note added. While I believe that all the above applies in an abstract and ideal sense; I think that here-and-now (in these 'end times') it is very difficult for anyone to reject (real) Christianity without damning themselves. 

In other words; as of the conditions in The West in 2021, Christian Zen is mostly in practice anti-Christian. 

When the world is ruled by a demonic cabal - so that all which is mainstream, official, 'approved' is strategically on the side of evil in the spiritual war - then those who reject the gift of Jesus will find it very difficult not to find themselves accepting the assumptions and motivation of those who actively oppose Jesus. 

To put matters differently; because the Christian Zen adherent rejects discernment (i.e. rejects 'judgmentalism') - its becomes all-but impossible for anyone with any kind of engagement with The System (and surely we all depend on The System to keep us alive, and not to kill us) to avoid joining-with the system in pursuit of damnation. 

I would say that discernment of Good from evil has become an absolute necessity in 2021. The default is nowadays to take the side of Satan, and it requires almost an active choice to reject damnation. 

As an example, in another video John Butler demonstrates a belief in the CO2 Global Warming agenda which is deceptive and evil agenda based on several Big Lies; and speaks approvingly of the Extinction Rebellion organization - which is a tool created-by and working-for the goals of the totalitarian world government: the Global Establishment. 

This kind of gross failure of discernment seems almost inevitable when one combines a rejection of judgment with a climate of pervasive authoritarian evil. 

To put it very simply: For most people, most of the time, here-and-now; the choice is binary: Christ or Satan - and those who in other cultures and at other times might genuinely have wanted Nirvana, will sooner or later find themselves wanting Hell. 

I recently had a very interesting online conversation with someone who - from multiple personal spiritual experiences - believes in the reality of multiple human reincarnations. 

That is not an unusual thing; but this person is someone who I have know over a long period of years to be unusually thoughtful, sincere, and insightful. 

So I pressed him to consider an eternal timescale; and whether - from that perspective - repeating and repeating the experiences of a series and variety of mortal Men living this earthly life - was really sufficient. 

Whether, in particular he could imagine wanting anything better: something better than mortal Men, and living in a world better than this earth?

His answer was no, he did not want anything more - this world, this "plane of existence" was the best he could wish for; even ideally he could want nothing more or better. 

Regular readers will know that I have an extremely different set of beliefs and hopes; and that for me this mortal life and earth do not suffice, and cannot suffice. For me, to contemplate an unending series of mortal reincarnations in a world of always sinful Men and with the inevitability of decay and death; sounds like something more of a curse than a blessing. 

I have characterized this in terms of the fundamentally entropic nature of this mortal life and world; and my desire for a life of eternal creation; that this mortal life is a vital phase between pre-mortal spirit and eternal resurrection - vital, but a phase nonetheless: therefore not something it would be good to remain 'in' forever.   

This kind of consideration and thinking is something that I regard as very fundamental to the human condition; in particular with respect to the gift of Jesus Christ. 

Salvation is aimed at people such as myself; but there are people such as my old friend - I think these people are actually rather rare, yet they exist - who want something positive (i.e. they are not self-damned hell-seekers; they are accurate discerners and foes of evil) that is nonetheless very different from what Jesus offers. 

Another type of person who rejects both salvation and damnation is one who sincerely desires some kind of Nirvana state of blissful loss of awareness of the self, cessation of thinking, removal of the feeling of separation from the divine; and where the divine is understood in an abstract and depersonalized way. 

I have often stated my belief that a large majority of those who profess this kind of oneness aspiration are insincere (ultimately, dishonest with themselves) as evidenced by their attempts to persuade others and argue their position. And as evidence by their behaviour of convergence with the evil totalitarians. In other words these 'mainstream' oneness advocates claim to be other-worldly and indifferent to this mortal life; but evidence the opposite in what they do and teach. 

Yet I think it likely that there are genuine Nirvana-wishers (perhaps especially in Eastern societies) who reject the theosis - the desire for spiritual development towards full creative divinity - that is an essential part of Christianity; and the personal understanding of the world. 

If what we assume about the ancient and ancestral hunter-gatherers, and their cultural equivalents in more recent years - is correct; they had a belief in serial reincarnation without end in 'this world' - and were fully-satisfied by this. 

So it is perhaps not surprising if there are some people alive today who share this basic world view. 

On the other hand; the destiny of Western Man as-a-whole is, by my understanding, towards Christian salvation and Christian theosis; and I am confident that (especially since the millennium) an increasing proportion of those who reject salvation are actually embracing damnation. 

In other words; it seems clear to me that a large majority of those in The West who reject Christianity have actually taken the side of evil; and are either being dishonest with others when they claim they have not, and/or else dishonest with themselves - and have never thought sufficiently rigorously and truthfully to recognize the fact. 

Yet even if I am correct and there is - as a strong generalization - only the two choices of Christ or Satan; nonetheless, each person is in fact unique, and came into this mortal life and earthly world as unique. 

It would therefore be a mistake to suppose that all sincere and thoughtful people who reject evil will also want what Jesus Christ offers. It would be a mistake to assume that all individuals Must fit into one of only two categories.  

On the one hand; I know enough about my old friend to regard him as one of the exceptions. On the other hand - I do not believe there are many others like him! 

But then, I do not believe that many of the hundreds of millions of self-identified Christians in the world, are sincere in their professed belief. 

It seems to me that extremely few "Christians" have asked themselves the right questions concerning what they most desire through an eternal future; and have genuinely considered whether what they want is the same-thing as what Jesus Christ actually offers to those who follow Him. 

Here comes a big generalization... 

We can divide a long and archetypal human life into three phases of 1. childhood, followed by 2. single adulthood then 3. marriage and parenthood (shortly after which, in most traditional societies, came death). 

Indeed, we can divide life into just two phases - family, and not-family.  

Then we need to make an imaginative evaluation of these phases in terms of potential. This evaluation may be based on personal experience to varying degrees - but mainly on our capacity to intuit the ideal. 

So: which is our personal ideal as the greatest phase of potential human living? Is it family life. Or is it the phase of not family life? 

In 2021, in the mainstream modern world as we get it from the global government and the mass media; from major social institutions (such as law, economics, education, science, most churches) - there is an explicit or implicit endorsement of the ideal of not-family life. 

Most people aspire to an ideal not-family life; as providing the greatest scope for what they most want. 

The potential of human existence is based-upon some version of an idealized young, single-adult life - involving some combination of wealth, power, freedom, high status, fame and attention, travel and leisure, excitement and comfort; lots of preferred-type sex with attractive others and without guilt, strings or recriminations... 

Underpinned by our own beauty, sexuality, charm, intelligence, dominance, strength and fitness, perfect health and immunity to illness, disease and ageing. 

For many decades (since the 1960s, for sure) such an ideal of human life has been perfectly normal, general, official and counter-cultural, and unremarkable...

 It is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and what Christianity has to offer.  

Christianity is of potential appeal to those who see, at the ideal level, the highest form of human life as being in some sense (and there are many possible senses) family. 

Or, in other words, a life based on love (and from that love: creativity - which is the manifestation of love-through-time). 

Because Heaven is an eternal familial existence.

Our world is divided into those who regard an ideal family as their ideal life; and those who regard not-family as their ideal life.  

Therefore for mainstream, normal modern people who endorse the young/ single/ adult ideal of free and maximally-pleasurable living - Heaven is sub-optimal at best and an horrific prospect at worst.  

Our world is thus divided into those who regard Heaven as Heaven - and those who regard Heaven as Hell...

And Hell as Heaven.

Note: There is another category; those who do not want family, and do not want not-family; because they do not want to remain people/ selves/ egos. They want an end to separateness - annihilation of the personal human in themselves. They want, in other words, nothing - in one form or another. When they die they want either the (blissful?) spiritual-nothing of Nirvana-oneness; or else the total-nothing of atheism - but either way, they don't want to know anything about it.