Bruce Charlton's Notions

I have often harped-on about the sin of "resentment" - because of two reasons: first, it is seldom regarded as a sin, often considered a virtue; and second that it is the master sin of leftism - which is the basis both of the "Ahrimanic" materialist-totalitarian impulse, and of its now succeeding "Sorathic" motivation of spiteful destructiveness and each-against-all chaos. 

Perhaps the major socio-political movement of the past couple of hundred years has been the creation of ever-more resentment groups: examples include the working class, particular nations, women, non-white races, non-Christian religions, and any sex and sexuality other than married families or celibacy. 

Such groups are formed by their resentment, and are joined-with other resentment groups by the mutuality of their sin. 

There is a resentment-group for everybody now - including the richest, most powerful, and famous people in the world. Indeed, one of the twists of resentment is that it often presents in terms of resentment "on behalf of others".

This has always been a feature of resentment-rooted politics. The ruling class always made-up a majority of influential and powerful communists. Feminist men likewise. And resentment "on behalf of" other races and religions is a veritable industry. 

Resentment-on-behalf-of also disguises personal resentments - which, although covert, may be the true and most powerful motivator. 

  

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of resentment is that it is seldom acknowledged - either to others, or even to oneself; and whatever is unacknowledged cannot be repented.

Much of this is to do with the fact that whoever or whatever is resented always - in a false but often compelling sense - "deserves it"; so the resentment can be disguised as "simply the facts". 

Furthermore, resentment appears under the guise of "resenting-the-resenter"...

Resenting-the-resenter means that I resent some person or group, on the basis that they resent me.

(And therefore are trying to harm me).

The fact that their resentment against me may well be true, is used to disguise the fact that I have myself developed a sinful and motivating resentment. 

(And whatever is unacknowledged cannot be repented.)

What needs to be borne in mind, is that resentment is a sin because of the harm it does to the resenter; therefore resentment is always wrong - and therefore wrong no matter how apparently "factually based" it really is. 

In other words, the facts are nothing at all to do with the sin - except in providing a fake excuse, a false and irrelevant "justification", for not repenting it. 

That is: a person or group may really and truly be dedicated to harming others - but it is still and always a sin to develop an attitude of resentment towards him or them. 

Because the sin harm us - whatever it may or may not do to others. 

Take a (semi-humorous) example from this blog. I often indulge in rants against The Normans. 

I genuinely believe that The Normans are a problem, that they are constitutionally lacking in empathy, and have caused and still cause a great deal of harm to many people in may places (not just in the UK and Ireland). 

I also believe that modern Normans are strongly motivated by resentment - especially against the native English people. 

Those may be regarded as The Facts (from my point of view), and they have various real world implications for choices and actions. But at times I confess that I have fallen into resentment against The Normans... 

Now; I need to be able to recognize when this has happened - I need to recognize when I am actually resenting The Normans. 

Because this always needs to be acknowledged and repented - because otherwise I am doubling-down on a sin.  

 

Nobody "deserves" to be resented - no matter what they have do or want to do - because resentment is not about Them but about Us. 

"Deserving" has precisely nothing to do with it. 

It is a favourite (and highly effective) ploy of Satan to win adherents in the spiritual war of this world; by the false conception of "justified resentment" against his agents. He encourages a resenter; and that resenter then creates further resentment. 

Thus Satan gains supporters on both sides - because both sides are in fact unrepenting sinners, and thus (in truth) are affiliated to Satan. 

My take-home message (to myself as well as others) is simply that: All resentment is un-justified.

It sometimes seems as if the primary purpose of the mainstream modern world is (when not inculcating fear) to cultivate resentment.

Resentment is, in my estimation one of the most evil of sins, because of its characteristic to grow - by feeding upon itself, by brooding upon grievances, by finding confirmation wherever it looks, and by stimulating others to behave in a way that apparently justified the resentment. Resenters are seldom popular with those they resent, so resentment tends to lead to grounds-for-resentment...


Well, let's just stop right there! Because in reality there are No grounds-for-resentment - and the idea that there are such grounds is a part of the sin-encouraging atmosphere of many social circumstances. For example, I have often heard it said that (given 'history') it is 'not surprising' or 'understandable' that - say - the Irish resent the English. Thus has soul-rotting resentment been celebrated and encouraged for generations*. 

The fact is that resentment is evil - so there are never Any grounds for it; and we should not speak as if it were a natural response to maltreatment.  Resentment may, like most other sins such as fear or lust, be 'inevitable' as an occurrence; but that does not make it Good. 


This is because the primary harm of resentment is upon the soul of him who resents.

The conviction of 'justified' resentment is a major cause of unrepented sin; exactly because the resenter regards the person who (he believes) has damaged him as being 'to blame' for his own resentment.


We see all around us extreme examples of 'victim groups' who have fallen into a seething, growing, self-excusing and apparently permanent state of sin; because of their continual inflammation-of and brooding-upon their (real or imagined, it makes no difference) persecutions.

And, of course, much of the modern world is long-term dedicated to creating resentment-groups of self-styled victims.

This systematic and deliberate encouragement of sin is actually even worse than exhibiting the sin itself - since encouragement (by propaganda and other forms of persuasion, by financial reward, by manipulating social status through awards and publicity etc) is a more deliberate, chosen, and strategically self-seeking activity than simply falling into the trap of self-justifying resentment.


If one were to add-together all the (billions of?) people in the world who are either self-identified members of a resentment/ victim group; with those whose self-imposed task is to encourage resentment and the perception of victim status (in politics, civil administration, charities and NGOs, corporations, schools and colleges, the arts and academia, the police and military, religions, health services and so on...) - then we come to a very high proportion of the people in the world who are in a chronic state of self-righteous, hence unrepented, sin.

(Selling resentment is big business, nowadays - with many addicted consumers.)

And because it is unrepented sin that leads most people to choose damnation and to reject the gift of Jesus; I think we must conclude that the powers of darkness have been extremely successful in corrupting this world to the point that (apparently) so many will opt for Hell, and despise any Heaven that requires them to drop their resentment.


I would say that, in general, damnation requires moral inversion - that is, the reversal of values: such that evil is seen as Good and vice versa. Mass resentment is a core example of value inversion. As is the fact that modern morality - and to such a high degree - is rooted-in the conviction that the sin of resentment is actually a virtue, and indeed defines virtue. To be a member of a victim group defined by active resentment is currently regarded as an actual moral plus!


The antidote to resentment is gratitude. First gratitude to God for creation and sustaining, and for loving us as a parent. Second gratitude to those who love us... usually people from our family, in the first place - but also true friends, if we have any.

But in general a life dominated by gratitude - properly directed - should be our ideal; repented when we fall short.

Gratitude (once established) also has the property of feeding-upon-itself, and finding grounds for more gratitude. So, while we are all sinners and will all lapse - we can always repent our resentments, and affirm our gratitudes - and that will suffice for Jesus Christ!

Because it is our great good fortune that He does not ask us for perfection in thought, word or deed; but only to acknowledge that which is Good - and that which is evil. And that is our third (and consummating) major cause for gratitude!

*Note: I am 1/4 Irish.

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is really very simple. 

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

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

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

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

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

What of us gets resurrected? 

The answer, I think, is essentially 'that of us which is love'. 

In other words, a person who has led a loving life will have plenty to resurrect (plenty from-which to re-create his immortal self); and by contrast, someone who is incapable of love, or has rejected it - cannot be resurrected, because there is nothing to resurrect. 

The 'opposite' of love - that sin which is most opposed to the essential-master virtue of love - seems to be 'resentment' (which is more usually called 'pride' - but I think resentment captures the essence better). 

Resentment cannot be carried into Heaven - so by repentance we must consent to its being stripped-away in the process of resurrection. 

But this means that every aspect of us which is dominated by resentment will be (must be) removed before we can enter Heaven. A Man who has, though his life, built up a mass of personal resentments, will therefore lose a great deal of himself in salvation. 

Hence the vital importance of forgiveness; because if we hold-onto a resentment directed against someone or some-institution; we are maiming our-selves now, and maiming the potential of our resurrected selves. 

But if we choose to discard this resentment (if we 'forgive') then there is more of us that can be resurrected - we will be a larger person after resurrection. 

Thus - the positive benefit from forgiveness is actually for the forgiver, not the forgiven. 

One who nurses his resentment (a 'resenter') is often operating under the spite-full (and demonic) belief (or fantasy) that his sustaining of resentment harms its subject - which harm he desires; and therefore he refuses to forgive. 

But at the worst extreme, the 'resenter' realizes that he cannot harm the subject of his resentment (either because they are in Heaven, or are no-more); and then a refusal to forgive becomes wholly negative, and necessarily spiritually self-harming. 

This is why resentment (or 'pride') is often regarded as the worst of all sins, and why it can be understood as the opposite of the Christian injunction to love. 

When indulged, when forgiveness is rejected; resentment can become the core of self-identity to the point where damnation is chosen.

Such is the situation of Satan; and such the incipient situation of those many Men for whom a resentment (and their own commensurate 'victim status') has been made their core value. 

*

What is damning is defending sin, not committing sin (which is inevitable, and has been paid for by Christ on condition of repentance).

What is damning about the modern world is that it engineers people into defending sin.

*

What is damning about the sexual revolution is not so much that it encourages people to sin, but that it provides an edifice of defences whereby, instead of the sinner admitting his weakness and inability to resits temptation, he is encouraged - sometimes coerced - into defending the sin: first by trivialising it, then by saying that it is not a sin, finally (and we have reached this stage) by inversion: by stating that the sin is in fact a virtue.

*

What is damning in modern 'science' is not so much that it compels researchers to lie (deliberately, strategically) in order to get funding and publish their work and obtain jobs and promotions; but that it encourages scientists to deny that they are lying. It absolves scientists of guilt at their lies, it provides a structure of rationalisations for dishonesty, first to excuse then later to insist upon the reality of the lie.

*

What is damning about modern art and architecture is not is much that it is ugly, nor even that it is deliberately ugly; but that it denies that it is ugly - trivialises ugliness, defends the necessity of ugliness, finally argues the necessity of art and architecture to be ugly.

*

A measure of the spiritual damage done by the defence of sin is that the advocates of the sexual revolution, the crooked researchers and the modern artists end up loathing, libelling, slandering and suppressing the transcendental Goods of virtue, truthfulness and beauty.

They become filled with hatred and resentment against those Goods which are contradicted by their defended sins.

*

If we imagine salvation as based upon a choice, and an act of free will; that damnation too is a choice and act of free will; then this may be a model of what happens - a model that may explain why it is that someone might choose Hell when offered Heaven.

Because he has, throughout his life, trained himself to trivialise, defend and justify sin; such that after death, when offered ultimate Good, he rejects Good and prefers sin.

*

Lots of people know that for Christians Pride is the worst sin. This is distinctive to Christianity - where it has a particular meaning of rejecting the authority of God, the validity of God's creation, the Goodness of God.

If you don't understand Pride, or disagree with it being a sin, then you aren't a Christian.

(Of course, you may simply disagree about whether a particular thing is an instance of Pride and therefore a sin. But a Christian cannot deny that Pride is indeed a sin. 

But you don't need to live consistently without Pride! Christianity is about 1. acknowledging that Pride is a sin, and 2. repentance of the sin of Pride in oneself when it happens; Christianity is not conditional on the (impossible?) achievement of living entirely without Pride. (Christ came to save sinners, not perfect men.)

Some sins are almost universal, shared between religions and no religion, and seem 'natural' - but Pride is not one of these. Pride is distinctive to Christianity, and that Pride is a sin is known as a consequence of Christian revelation - it is not a product of instinct nor a result of logical analysis.

This is a living, active dispute. Many campaigns and organizations are structured around the goal of stimulating and sustaining Pride in some group of persons. Typically, they will officially define Pride in non-sinful terms such as 'self-respect', or 'love for' or loyalty; but equally typically they will sooner or later advocate sinful Pride - including the subversion, rejection or inversion of the Christian understanding of other sins.

The sin of Pride usually leads swiftly onto resentment and hatred - and this is a reliable way of detecting sinful Pride, and discriminating it from benign or neutral self-respect, love or loyalty. Non-Christians often argue that Pride is necessary - and indeed it does seem to be psychologically necessary to non-Christians, or at least mostly-so.

Most religions regard Pride as a good thing, not a sin - so long as it has the appropriate subject matter. For modern atheist/ agnostics, Pride may be the core of their being, the thing that keeps them motivated and active.

I would say that this was largely the case for my pre-Christian self: that Pride was what enabled me to stand against the social consensus, what gave me strength to do my thing. Pride was the fuel and Pride provided my direction: thus I would not have been willing to agree that Pride was a sin, and certainly not the worst sin. 

This is perfectly understandable and maybe inevitable - if you are not a Christian. 

So, the attitude to Pride is indeed a cleavage line between Christians and non-Christians. Pride can only be seen as the evil it is, when a person acknowledges that the values of the universe do not arise from himself - but are established by our Heavenly Father who is 1. the creator, 2. Good, and who 3. loves us - we being his children.

So the prevailing 'rules and laws', the order of the universe... this is not arbitrary, nor does it come from ourselves - these things are true, objective, external (even when our knowledge of them is imprecise and prone to error) - and the 'set-up' of creation is essentially benign and made for our ultimate benefit (individually and as mankind).

Because God is the creator, Good and our Father - God has legitimate authority over us. Or, to put it another way, since God created order - there is no ordered Good except within God's creation. If we reject God, then we, Pridefully, are setting ourselves up as a rival God - yet we have no created order to dwell within. Our position is therefore oppositional to the created, ordered Good.

Or else, insofar as it is not merely oppositional, in Pride we come to dwell in a microscopic subjective universe of our own self-will - perhaps trying to persuade others to subordinate themselves to our subjective micro-universe. We make ourselves God of a tiny world where nothing has created by us, but only co-opted from God's universe and subjected to our personal interpretation.

This Pride-full, micro-subjective universe situation is not impossible, it is not even irrational - but it is anti-God, anti-Christian, a self-exile outwith the bounds of Christianity.

Christians call it Hell - it is in fact plural: a group of multiple mutually-self-isolated mini Hells - but clearly some people prefer it and choose it. That choice is the consequence of ultimate Pride. 

Pride is a rejection of the basic fact that our shared reality comes from our Christian God - and the demand to define reality from within ourselves - which is why it is incompatible with Christianity. 

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

I have often written about forgiveness on this blog, because I think the Christian injunction to forgive is widely and profoundly misunderstood - and not only by non-Christians.  

The reason that Christians are called upon to forgive everybody and every-thing is that the alternative is to nurse resentment, which is bad for us - is indeed a sin, and one of the commonest (because officially encouraged) in this time-and-place. 

There is no place for resentment in Heaven; so to enter Heaven we must be prepared to give-up all our resentments; and insofar as we harbour resentments during our mortal lives, then so much the worse for us. 

Almost always, resentment harms ourselves, and does nothing whatsoever to whoever is resented. 

For example, it is common to continue resenting people long after they have died - sometimes for many generations or centuries.

Resentment is therefore on the spectrum of that worst of sins: spite - whereby the desire to harm others is more powerful than even the desire to benefit oneself. Resentment is like that. It is a willingness to orientate one's life around negative desires for another person or people. 

So, forgiveness is simply a recognition that resentment is a sin and does us harm; and repenting any resentments we feel. 

This means that forgiveness has nothing to do with remitting just punishments, nor has it anything to do with forgetting - and failing to learn from - the harms that others have done to us. 

Obviously, Christians need to learn from our experiences in life; and when other people have lied to us, stolen from us, assaulted us, tried to make us miserable or to destroy that which we most value - it would be idiotic to pretend this never happened! 

As for other people asking us for forgiveness... well they shouldn't do it; and they would not do it unless they were deceitfully trying to manipulate others for their own benefit. 

Anyone asking another human being for forgiveness is on the wrong side in the spiritual war. They should be asking God for forgiveness.

But even then, God Just Is merciful; so that forgiveness by God is a non-problem for anyone who has recognized their own sin and repented it. 

Repeatedly begging God for the forgiveness promised by Jesus Christ to all who repent, seems likely to be a problem of not-really-repenting - and then asking to have the fact ignored. 

If someone wants to repent, but somehow can't - then they should be repenting their failure to repent - and not psychologically-groveling to be forgiven despite not repenting!

An earlier stage of human consciousness - which we often see in the Old Testament, and many other places - is similar to the way that naughty children of a certain age (about 5?) tend to understand morality. 

But when a Christian has faith and trust in God as a good parent, he can see thyings in a context of how good parents behave to their beloved children. 

 

Sin is then understood as turning away from God (and our divine selves), and of thinking and behaving against God's loving creation; and this brings adverse consequences. 

Why? Because sin pits the sinner's will against creation. 

It's like a child who ignores his loving parents' advice and stuffs himself with sweets until he vomits and feels terrible... 

Properly understood, the vomiting is a consequence of wrongdoing, not a punishment for it. The child sets his will, impulse, short-term gratification against nature (i.e. against divine creation; which is also against God - as represented in mortal life by his genuinely-loving parents)... and this turning-away-from/ pushing-against real-reality leads to consequences, which are adverse.

 

Loving parents make these adverse consequences of sinning more proximate. For instance; by making the child feel bad, i.e. suffer adverse consequences, immediately after wrongdoing; and therefore making it easier for the child to learn.

But this carries the risk of the child forgetting, or refusing to acknowledge, that the loving parent is acting for the child's best interests - when those best interests are undertsood in a divine and ultimate context. 

So proximate punishment from wrongdoing (harsh words, restrictions, a slap) carry the risk of being regarded as engaging in retribution (i.e the child does not make the moral connection) - or (childishly) as sin being 'corrected' by punishment... 

And this attitude creates a potential (but incorrect) disconnection between sin and punishment - a false consequentionalist morality; as if a sin ceases to be a sin when it is not 'punished'...

 

An unrepentant child will refuse to admit he has done wrong (sinned, turned away from harmony with divine creation) and therefore regards anybody who thwarts his wishes as The Problem. 

At an extreme, the greedy child will (like modern, resentment-fuelled, identity groups) emotionally regard the parents as having (somehow) Made him vomit... This is a quasi magical attribution, that seeks covert materialist explanation (e.g. 'implicit racism'.)

Even a mostly-good child may forget, or fail to connect, the adverse consequences with what he did, and 'feel' a punishment as a simple act of inflicting suffering by those with greatest power; and due to a mere difference of opinion. The child may then assume his parents 'must be' acting from malice, or from pleasure in inflicting suffering. 

(Note: I am assuming here that the parents, like God, are indeed really acting from love.)

 

At the extreme of unrepentant sinning (as nowadays), nature itself may be regarded as evil! 

As when nature stops a man from really-transforming into a real-woman; and this leads to a sense of resentment, greivance, hostility against a society and civilization perceived to thwart 'my' fixed desire - from what 'must be' malicious reasons.

And we get an anti-morality of value-inversion characteristic of mainstream, mandatory, leftist ideology;  where reality is contradicted (by diktat). 

And what is perceived to be a malicious, punishing God/ Christians/ ideological opponents generally - will get blamed for the consequences of Men's sinful actions and attitudes. 

 

One sees this all the time! - perhaps especially in the mass media, which nowadays operates like an advanced degree in unrepented sinning... 

The Global Establishment, indeed, encourages the masses in first defying and attacking the goodness of God's creation - and then resentfully projecting blame, for the intrinsically-adverse consequences of sin! 

*
The beginning of the Industrial Revolution was in Britain, and so was the beginning of socialism, communism - political Leftism under its various names (bizarrely, Leftists are called Liberals in the USA).

Britain invented the modern world, and at the same time invented political Leftism.

*

I say invented 'political' Leftism, because the deepest roots of political Leftism are in anti-Christian radicalism - which is why all attempts to combine Christianity and Leftism have failed - usually by rejecting Christianity. So, when they were not actual or covert atheists, the early political Leftists were mostly religious radicals (and, of course, often advocates of sexual revolution).

*

So. Britain invented modernity and Leftism at about the same time. But was this a necessary co-occurrence? No it was not - Leftism was an error - a wrong and false interpretation of the facts - and often a dishonest error.

Specifically Leftism was an error of:

1. Misinterpretation

2. Attitude

After which, the error of attitude sustained the error of misinterpretation - as it so often does.

*

(The attitude prevents correction of error, because the error is moralized. To challenge the error is the interpreted as advocating evil. For instance, my thesis will seem evil to Leftists: because pointing at the factual or logical errors of Leftism, or its bad outcomes, is always interpreted as advocacy of... well... advocacy of whatever-Leftism-currently-happens-to-regard-as-the-ultimate-sin. What this ultimate evil actually is, has varied a lot over the years.)

*

Back at the beginning of the industrial revolution in England, around 1800, there was a point when large numbers of the poor who would have died before adulthood and failed to raise any children, did not die but instead stayed alive.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/who-are-poor-traditional-poor-versus.html

Increased efficiency of first food production, then production of industrial products, meant that people, and especially children, on the edge of death - in ever larger numbers - were fed, sheltered and sustained enough that they lived instead of dying.

The population began to grow, bigger than it had ever been. And there were lots more poor people - also, the poor people began to be more noticeable to the rich by becoming concentrated into cities instead of being hidden in hovels spread thinly across the countryside.

*

The rich and middle classes were the first Leftists - and these people misinterpreted the existence of more poverty as meaning that the industrial revolution created poverty by making the poor poorer.

Upon this error was erected the wildly-false theories of Engels and Marx and, and the many other early Leftists and proto-Leftists which became visible in the middle 1800s - Owen, Ruskin, later Hyndman, Morris, later the Fabians and so on.

Some were honestly mistaken - such as Morris, who was a very decent man; others, like Marx seem to have been self-servingly dishonest (certainly, Marxism seems to have been poisoned at source such that it went to the bad much more rapidly than any other brand of socialism).

*

The Leftists said that the industrial revolution had created mass poverty by making the poor poorer. But the reality was almost the opposite that the industrial revolution 'created' poverty by making the poor richer, by keeping them and their children alive, rather than dead.

In fact, in stark biological terms, the industrial revolution benefited the poor and it harmed the middle class and rich.

This is an objective fact, as should have been obvious by the rapidly increasing population - and indeed it was obvious from the later 1800s: the poor were very clearly out-reproducing the rich, and they were not dying en masse, but surviving en masse to create a new hereditary class.

This was of world historical significance: in Britain in the early 1800s and soon after in Western Europe and the USA, and for the first time ever, generation upon generation - the poor began to out-reproduce the upper and middle classes: the poor had what biologists term 'higher reproductive success'.

*

It seems that people became aware that 'something was happening'.

And throughout the nineteenth century, as the-penny-dropped here and there, for one person then another, the British people were confronted with a choice: the choice between either feeling grateful for what they had, or resentful for what they didn't.

The mass majority chose resentment, and gave their souls to the politics of resentment - that is to Leftism.

The same happened, sooner or later (it was later in the USA) everywhere in the developed world. And resentment is close kin to hatred.

*

And so, for eight or nine generations and increasingly, the population in the Western world has been taught the Leftist error and falsehood that the industrial revolution created poverty by immiseration.

And the West has been taught that the proper response is resentment: the indoctrination in resentment is so vast and intricate as to be un-measurable: modern man has been trained in victimology, and lives and breathes the ideology of resentment.

Why? Because Leftists are resentful of what they have not rather than grateful for what they do have; and this because they cannot be grateful because gratitude requires an object; a person to whom gratitude is owed; and Leftists (being necessarily and implicitly secular) do not acknowledge anybody to be grateful to.

In theory, Leftists are supposed to be grateful to abstractions such as The State, The Proletariat, The Party, The People or whatever. In practice, this is meaningless nonsense. So Leftists are not grateful but resentful.

*

And resentment - with its companions and consequences of pride-full hatred alternating with submissive despair - is the characteristic affect of modern political and public life.

No matter how much people have, no matter how comfortable and convenient are their lives, modern man feels entitled to more. Leftism is the public summation of millions of personal grudges and entitlements into the demand for ever more rights. 

*

The industrial revolution has come, and it will surely go, and the social leadership and the mass majority of people they have indoctrinated will never realize what hit them or what really happened. They have resented the industrial revolution, especially the good things it produced (life, rather than death), and they will resent - even more - the end of the industrial revolution.

Once established and inculcated, resentment is insatiable - it consumes all experience and evidence. Long ago, Britain made the wrong interpretation and the wrong choice, and Britain taught it to the world.

And this is what must be repented, individually and collectively. And it ought to start in Britain, since that is where The Great Misinterpretation began.

*


Britain was where the cancer of Leftism began, Britain is where it should first be ended. 

However, I see no sign of this at all - indeed quite the opposite, as the tone and content of public discourse relating to the recent referendum on Scottish independence showed. Nonetheless, that is what should happen.

But this cannot happen without first a Christian revival - positive reform is on-the-other-side-of repentance: we must start with repentance of Leftism (must start with repentance) - including Leftism's deepest roots in anti-Christianity. 

Because if gratitude is to replace resentment - and gratitude can only be accorded to a person, and no human person is an appropriate recipient of gratitude - then gratitude can only in practice and legitimately be to God.

And the British have locked-out God, and barricaded the door against Him.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

*

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

This is Sorathic evil. 

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

 

Note added: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The thing about paranoid and persecutory delusions (that is; beliefs that are false, strongly held, powerfully-motivating, in practice irrefutable), is that they cannot be contradicted by further knowledge or experience. 

*
I feel in myself a deep, existential worry which is superstitious, and relates to the idea of propitiating - ultimately by sacrifice.

So, I resist expressing happiness, confidence, hope, optimism - I resist allowing myself to feel confidence in the future - I am to some extent constrained in being honestly positive about such matters, for fear that it will trigger resentment, revenge, reaction from others.

It feels like there is something which regards my feeling happiness, confidence, hope and optimism as being arrogant or 'cocky'; and needing to be taken-down-a-peg  and taught-a-lesson. 

I therefore feel negatively-compelled to think things, and to avoid thinking things, from a fear that someone or some-thing will be offended, prickly, insulted, jealous; it is a fundamentally superstitious attitude of living life among rules - mostly unknown - which prescribe and prohibit and are zealously enforced; and the main business of life as being rule-following and avoidance of rule-breaking - and the servile serving-out of punishments for our inevitable breaches.

*

This constraint motivated by fear of reprisal may be realistic in human society - given the endemic nature of spitefulness, and the 'dog in the manger' attitude of so many people who delight in the misery of others and whose main concern is that nobody else should have more or be more than themselves.

(This is, indeed, the case for such high-flown garb as 'equality', egalitarianism, sexual liberation, democracy and so on.) 

*

But there is more to it than this. The constraint is also (and perhaps primarily) inner - it is present even in the privacy of my mind, of my stream of conscious thought.

This is not surprising since belief in gods, spirits, ghosts, malicious ancestors at large - belief in 'the supernatural' in general - is spontaneous and natural to humans - we believe that our inner thoughts are to some extent accessible and shared and communicated, and that among those who share them are powerful and malicious entities (something like the Christian concept of demons).

This is a powerful constraint - and I suspect it is a very general factor in human affairs (although I can only observe it indirectly in other people - I and sure it is there). However, although general, spontaneous, natural - I suspect it is anti-Christian in a developed sense of Christianity - for the simple reason that it implies God (who knows our thoughts) is not fully loving, but is prone to the same kind of resentment and revenge as other people - indeed the worst kind of people - in this world.

Yet at the same time (because it is general, natural, spontaneous to humans) this tendency to assume that God really does have a resentful and vengeful attitude is a constant tendency to which individuals and organizations and society tend to recur (for motivations which may be 'good' - e.g. encouraging or enforcing good behaviour - as well as wicked).

*

This can be seen even among our own young children, who sometimes act towards us in a way that shows they are afraid that we do not really love them, that we need propitiating.

Sometimes the children are right - because parents are not perfect; but they are fundamentally wrong in that loving parents really are not motivated by resentment and really do not need to be propitiated - indeed a loving parent is appalled and deeply sorrowful to perceive this attitude in his children - an attitude based on fear. 

*

So, the situation seems to be that it is (at least to some significant extent) natural for humans to treat God as if he were a demon; and demons (I think) really do want to be treated with superstitious concern, propitiated and sacrificed-to.

Demons (presumably) want us never to be free of the constraining fear to express (or even to feel) an attitude that is positive care-free, hope-full. They want humans to cringe, to be eaten up with anxiety about deflecting bad luck, evil influences, they want us to be hog-ridden by superstitious observations, they want us to be always and repeatedly destroying good things as 'sacrifices' - and to regard this destruction of good things as necessary to deflect divine 'wrath'.

*

Unsurprisingly, because humans are error prone and yield to sin, this attitude of constraining fear has been (to varying extents, but sometimes very fully) incorporated into Christianity - the attitude that God watching out for us to trip up, get angry, punish us - unless this is deflected by propitiation and sacrifice - by a general human attitude of pessimism, expressions of misery... an attitude which is in fact and to some significant extent a dishonestly negative expression of our state of mind.

People come to fear - even inside their heads - a full and honest expression of positive and happy states of mind; asif this would trigger the jealous resentment of God! This I feel in myself, and I believe I perceive it in people all around me.

But I believe it is anti-Christian - a flaw, an error, a sin - a consequence of insufficient Christian faith and not a sign of Christian faith: this anxious, superstitious focus on propitiation and sacrifice is itself an insult to God rather than respect for God; deeply saddening to God, rather than what he wants from us.

*

Indeed, when we treat God as if He were a demon, it is analogous to someone who falsely accuses her loving parents of 'abusing' her. It is to treat our loving Father in Heaven as if He were an abuser.

That is a measure of how serious an error we are making; how serious a sin it is to feel constrained against expressing - even to ourselves - our happiness, hope, confidence.
*

Note: On this view, Christ as a propitiation and sacrifice is a matter of getting all that stuff out-of-the-way; of telling us not to worry about it any more because Christ has utterly and permanently taken care of it.

We are tested every day by the sin of fear. And the temptation - offering a delusory escape from fear - is safety.