Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

These End Times aren't all bad! First because any time and place is right for those incarnated into them. Because God arranges it so (and we consented to embark upon this arrangement). So it is broadly correct to assume that our actual life is broadly the kind of life that we most need ('need' from an eternal perspective). Certainly (because God is good, and loves us personally), our actual life will (sooner or later) provide us with the kind of experiences that we most need to learn from for resurrected life in Heaven.
(But if, like most people, we reject the eternal choice of resurrected life in Heaven; then indeed our mortal lives will probably be just as meaningless and purposeless as most mainstream secular people believe them to be.)
More specifically; the quality of these End Times is that many traditional but obsolete, or superficially appealing, partial and false solutions are being closed-off; or actually have gone. And this is potentially A Good Thing. For decades we have been tempted by incomplete answers to the fundamental problems of life... Well, now these sure have lost their luster! I mean, when we see the shambolically un-Christian and this-worldly way that their adherents have responded to the birdemic-peck (and the other Litmus Test issues). Strategizing and planning our futures, or binding our fates to institutions, has become obviously ridiculous and foolish when the world is zealously tearing itself apart and extreme evil becomes the new normal.    We are now saved the waste of time and effort of exploring, and getting-stuck-in, ideas and ideologies that contain some truth - but not enough to suffice: not the core and saving truths. 
What we ought to be doing therefore gets easier and easier to discern. That is; we more easily know what we ought to do: which is individually to discern and follow our individual path of divine providence. But, as always, choosing to follow that destined path while aware of all its probably hazards - is yet another thing.We must dispense with optimism, and become based on trust in God (the creator and our Father) to arrange matters for our eternal benefit; but not necessarily for our benefit in this temporal life and world.   Trust in God is absolutely necessary to hope; because there is zero possibility of us knowing the route of divine providence, nor its destination. (That is what we lose when we dispense with the idea of planning our future.)  Yet we must be able to 'monitor' the spiritual outcomes in our lives to ensure that we have not strayed from destiny, by self-deception or expediency. The need for conscious choices never ends so long as life continues.  In sum - when optimism about this-world becomes impossible, hope for the eternal world to come is the only game in town. When this World is obviously aiming at evil; to follow Jesus's commandment ultimately to be 'Not of this world' emerges almost as an essential for daily survival.