Nonetheless, repentance requires some overt actions different from passive withdrawal from the world.
We can no longer hope to join some established 'army of the righteous', with a P.O. box and a newsletter. Indeed, such a thing never existed in the first place. The essential corruption of bureaucratic human organizations is not a new thing. The goodness of any human organization has always been dependent on the goodness of the humans within it, which they had prior to and regardless of the organization. What kept human organizations good in the past was precisely the willingness of good humans in the organization to answer to their consciences and God rather than simply follow the organization.
In ancient and modern military affairs, the military effectiveness of an army comes precisely from the people who would fight even without an army backing them. But the men (and materiel) who only are there to fill out the numbers do serve to make the army as a whole more durable, and thus extend the survival of the component who actually are effective.
This is true of all warfare, not just 'military' conflict. And we are at war. The people with the will and courage to fight even if they must fight alone for a forlorn cause are the core. They create the opportunity for others who cannot fight alone to have some kind of meaningful repentance.
Those people are not found in traditional organizations because all the existing organizations have been infiltrated and subverted by evil and have thus driven out everyone resisting that process. But they have not all been killed outright, not just yet.
@CCL - Things *have* changed, and qualitatively, and within my working life (c. 35 years): formerly net-Good institutions have, in pretty much every instance, become net-evil. And this makes a difference.
31 August 2018 at 16:03
I remember some 15-plus years ago realising that if such-and-such did not happen Now, then it would be Too Late. It did not happen - and so I stopped trying to make it happen; because even if it did happen it was, by now, Too Late.
This is a real thing - and those who don't recognise the fact are being unrealistic - perhaps by wishful thinking, or perhaps because they are pursuing a different covert agenda.
The people who stated 20 years ago that Global Warming would cause havoc UNLESS we acted immediately and radically to slash world CO2 levels; still have not withdrawn their demands, nor changed their policy - even though, by their own reasoning, it is Now Too Late...
The reasons is that the demand to reduce CO2 is merely a stalking horse for global totalitarianism - and it was really the mechanism for mass surveillance and micro-control that was wanted, and which CO2 control provided. It is seldom 'too late' for evil, since Good is susceptible to damage in this mortal life.
On the side of Good; it is never too late for a person to repent and be saved; but when it comes to human institutions, it is often too late to save them. I think this applies to many or most of the institutions of Western nations, and perhaps to most of the nations themselves, and perhaps also to the society of growth in production - which has been going since the industrial revolution.
Think of some of the Christian churches... it is obviously several generations too late to save Unitarians and Quakers; but it is surely, by now, at least several decades too late to save the other mainstream Western churches. If warnings had been heeded, and the right things had been done then - yes, they could have been saved; but warnings were ignored, and matters were made worse instead of better - and so Now it is Too Late...
There are many, and powerful, reasons to suggest that it is Now Too Late for these entities to be saved... not least because, overall, they have no effective desire to be saved; but indeed the opposite: their revealed preferences indicate a covert-but-active desire for self-extinction.
When an institutions is so corrupted that the entirely of its senior leadership and the bulk of its mid-level managers, and many of its low level employees are corrupt (that is: not even trying to prioritise the institution's specific functionality, or despising that functionality - and instead pursuing either some general ideology and/or short-term selfishness) - then the organisation is un-reformable, un-saveable - especially when that organisation is large.
There is a point of no return, a critical mass or tipping point, at which an institution or organisation is so thoroughly corrupted that it cannot find enough people within-itself to save-itself and must rely on external intervention; however, when the society as-a-whole is also corrupt; then there is nobody and nothing external to Do the saving...
If we regard Christianity as essential to the saving of The West; then - when it comes to institutions, organisations and nations - we long ago reached the point of no return.
That is the current situation. We can save souls, because for that it is never too late. But we cannot save that which does not want to be saved, and which will indeed fight against its own salvation and which wills its own extinction.
It is Just Too Late.
Note added: To be honest, I don't think the above is controversial. If you look around at the people who are pursuing Good goals (i.e. at least compatible with Direct Christian aims) in the worldly, materialist realm or on the fringe of mainstream public discourse; they are not trying to 'save' 'Western Civilisation', or any of the Western Nation States, or any of the major social institutions. Implicitly, they seem to recognise that this would be a waste of time at best - or more likely counter-productive (by strengthening groups that are net-evil). Those 'Christian entrepreneurs' etc. who are having a significant (measurable) impact on things, are doing so by trying to revive minority (relatively less-corrupted) segments of the rotten whole (e.g. forming 'breakaway' groups); or else are starting new and minority institutions, organisations, businesses, churches - with hope or intention to grow.
"If it's too late - then it's too late..."
2 Comments -
Nonetheless, repentance requires some overt actions different from passive withdrawal from the world.
We can no longer hope to join some established 'army of the righteous', with a P.O. box and a newsletter. Indeed, such a thing never existed in the first place. The essential corruption of bureaucratic human organizations is not a new thing. The goodness of any human organization has always been dependent on the goodness of the humans within it, which they had prior to and regardless of the organization. What kept human organizations good in the past was precisely the willingness of good humans in the organization to answer to their consciences and God rather than simply follow the organization.
In ancient and modern military affairs, the military effectiveness of an army comes precisely from the people who would fight even without an army backing them. But the men (and materiel) who only are there to fill out the numbers do serve to make the army as a whole more durable, and thus extend the survival of the component who actually are effective.
This is true of all warfare, not just 'military' conflict. And we are at war. The people with the will and courage to fight even if they must fight alone for a forlorn cause are the core. They create the opportunity for others who cannot fight alone to have some kind of meaningful repentance.
Those people are not found in traditional organizations because all the existing organizations have been infiltrated and subverted by evil and have thus driven out everyone resisting that process. But they have not all been killed outright, not just yet.
31 August 2018 at 14:25
@CCL - Things *have* changed, and qualitatively, and within my working life (c. 35 years): formerly net-Good institutions have, in pretty much every instance, become net-evil. And this makes a difference.
31 August 2018 at 16:03