@TDT - While I know you are sincere, I do not print your comment because it reverses nearly all the causal arrows and inverts what is most fundamental in human affairs; it is thus subversive of my posting yet I do not want to expend time and space refuting it (and I would not convince you, anyway). Nobody ever saw things that way - i.e. regarding the West as defined by whiteness rather than Christianity - until about a century ago, for me this is conclusive of its analytic feebleness, and this is confirmed by the feebleness of all politics based upon it. I think you have adopted the categories of New Left Political Correctness but simply reversed the moral evaluations - however, the categories themselves are wrong, and the categories have been designed (by Satan) to lead us to damnation whenever we use them to structure understanding. Race is of course real, but to me a race-based politics is a vast evasion of the reality of Spiritual Warfare which stretches from before, throughout and until long after human mortal life.
29 December 2014 at 05:52
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The West cannot be saved, because it is secular.And because The West has no religion, there is essentially nothing to save.
The West has no essence, is merely contingent - just a time-slice through an always-changing, self-subverting, and continually-inverted aggregation of attitudes, beliefs and practices.
So culturally, the West is purposefully, strategically destroying itself - always, as a continuous process.
And biologically The West is destroying itself: by choice the Western population have long since ceased to replace themselves; by strategy it is replacing its own population - and from existential terror (and deliberate wicked intent) this whole subject is taboo, denied, lied-about.
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The West is not even trying to save itself; indeed The West has self-destruction built-in, woven-in, pervasive.
How can you save something which so much wants to kill itself? Something which regards every effort to keep it alive as an aggressive act of torture.
Take your eye off Western Civilization for just a moment and it will be swinging from the rafters with its own belt around its neck...
So long as The West has no religion, it cannot be saved; and there is only one possible religion for The West: Christianity. A Christian revival is the only hope. But there is no sign of this happening - all the large mainstream self-identified Christian denominations are primarily secular, hence are well down the path of killing themselves (where they are not already long-since dead).
Only (real) Christians can perceive this clearly; so what should Christians do?
The choice is either a greater focus on politics and policies, on laws and society, on constitutions and systems... As our numbers and power ever-diminish, to argue harder and harder to reverse the juggernaut of secularism who have near-zero interest and knowledge of Christianity, but ever greater hostility towards what they suppose it to be?...
Or to switch attention away from politics altogether - to ignore the adverse oceanic tides of mass secular movements, and the corruption and dishonesty of most churches leaders, and instead to focus attention on bringing the message to persons, one individual at a time?
To be always fighting-against (and net losing), or to be positive for (and sometimes winning)?
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If we focus on the big picture - then being a Christian in The West is to be a miserable failure; but, if we focus on the person, then to be a Christian is to experience a deep and mostly hidden well-spring of courage, love, hope, meaning, purpose, belonging - secretly to be gloriously happy despite whatever happens on the surface.
It is impossible to exaggerate the difference that this makes to me, and to every Christian; it is an almost exact inversion of what it was not to be a Christian - when every pleasure was potentially available, nothing was forbidden - but never hope, never happiness.
The secular modern is afraid to probe too deeply, because he is sure there is nothing underneath - all is surface. He is afraid to look ahead, because he has decided that will be nothing there. To him, all human lives are failures because they end in decline, suffering, and death - biography is tragedy (either unfulfilled promise or the disappointment of all desire).
His strongest principles are without foundations - and therefore will almost certainly be discarded when they become inexpedient, or even if they are not discarded then this will be an arbitrary gesture. His most profound yearnings can only be fulfilled in imagination - which is to say they will not be fulfilled, and are delusions.
He sees Christians as torturers because they talk of eternal life, and of the disciplined and constrained path which leads to it - and for modern man that means snatching away the pleasures which are all that make life bearable, and the hope of extinction which is all that makes life endurable.
For such a man, life equals 'existence'; eternal life equals eternal torment.
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As Christians, we may be able to save someone, or more than one person, from this horrible existence; and the benefits are not deferred, not only after life and in eternity - but immediate, in this life, here and now and straight away.
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Our resources are finite, our effort and enthusiasm requires realistic grounds for optimism.
Therefore, let's stop monitoring and trying to turn-back the civilisational tsunami of secular nihilism - but ourselves drowning in pessimism.
And instead adopt the positive, optimistic, realistic goal of saving a few people: saving them into invincible joy.
"The West cannot be saved, because it wants to die; but persons can be saved, and their lives transformed into joy"
3 Comments -
For me that primarily boils down to the following question: How do I raise Christian children?
These are the people that I am given the opportunity to invest most in, and I'm not sure how to do it well.
28 December 2014 at 20:23
Absolutely excellent article.
28 December 2014 at 21:47
@TDT - While I know you are sincere, I do not print your comment because it reverses nearly all the causal arrows and inverts what is most fundamental in human affairs; it is thus subversive of my posting yet I do not want to expend time and space refuting it (and I would not convince you, anyway). Nobody ever saw things that way - i.e. regarding the West as defined by whiteness rather than Christianity - until about a century ago, for me this is conclusive of its analytic feebleness, and this is confirmed by the feebleness of all politics based upon it. I think you have adopted the categories of New Left Political Correctness but simply reversed the moral evaluations - however, the categories themselves are wrong, and the categories have been designed (by Satan) to lead us to damnation whenever we use them to structure understanding. Race is of course real, but to me a race-based politics is a vast evasion of the reality of Spiritual Warfare which stretches from before, throughout and until long after human mortal life.
29 December 2014 at 05:52