Post a Comment On: Bruce Charlton's Notions

It is a major error to conflate the future of Western Civilization (or of the world population as a whole) with Christian and spiritual matters.This is a mistake. Of course; the material and physical realm always has spiritual implications, because it is ultimately spiritual in nature. But the directionality of that relationship is that the material is a sub-set of the spiritual, and the spiritual encompasses and interprets the material. So the material neither defines its own spiritual consequences, nor does the material drive the spiritual - unless we spiritually choose to make-it-so. This means that we cannot track the spiritual condition of the world by monitoring its material manifestations - at least, not unless we have chosen to make the material primary. For instance (and this is a very important example):  If we choose to make the material churches the primary factor in Christianity; then the material chuirch will indeed define the spiritual nature of Christianity.
What happens to Civilization; e.g. whether The System becomes Sorathic and motivated towards its own self-destruction and the destruction of everything else; or whether some nations step-back from this, to seek either a functional and Ahrimanic totalitarian system, or perhaps try (maybe succeed) to revert to a more "medieval" kind of theocracy with religion as primary... All this kind of thing is not spiritually primary. Such changes will very probably affect whether we (and many others) will live or die sooner or later. And will affect whether our lives our comfortable and perhaps interesting, or miserable and tedious...But ultimately suffering and death are inevitable facts of this mortal life and world - so that all such distinctions (while important) are quantitative and temporary.Nor is the main question about optimism or pessimism (red-, blue, white- or black-"pill", in the current idiotic jargon) - whether "things" are-getting, or are expected to get, better or worse on average, or overall... Christianity is primarily about the spiritual and salvation - thefeore not about some person's current emotional responses.
 Christianity is about resurrected Heavenly life; and that is a matter of personal motivation: about what we want, and how much we want it. The nature of the Civilization or System, whether it survives, is repaired, or destroyed - is dissociated from the values of individual persons - unless we each choose to make it the opposite. As of 2024; the powers of evil overall and substantially control much of the material world. A major aspect of demonic temptation to induce a willed embrace of damnation, is therefore to induce people to tie their salvation to material things (including churches). Yet the reality is that - at the extreme - the entirety of world civilization might collapse and Men suffer and die in their billions - yet (in principle) all souls might be saved. Or, at the opposite; the world might experience an unprecedented reduction in human suffering, an increase in human happiness, diminished disease and the extension of human life - and yet all the dying souls from this "Earthly Paradise" might (in principle) choose to reject salvation. First Things need to be put First - therefore be-ware and do not fall into carefully prepared soul-traps; spiritual snares built and maintained by demons.