Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 3:41 am
Christianity isn't a flavouring. You can't sprinkle some of it over paganism, and call that paganism "Christianesque." It's something one is, or simply is not, depending on whether one fits the Scriptural definition.
First, a bit of preamble, which helps to describe my orientation
to you,
in relation to you.
I deliberately take some *distance* and always try to see what we discuss here in a larger context. And I am very clear that you require this treatment. On one hand I regard you as intelligent and informed, but on another you are an obscurantist and a fanatical brute. Remember: my view is that
you must be seen, and seeing you
you must be labeled. Fundamentalist, fanatic and zealot -- these words but appear in your biographical description. However, there alongside them other terms of description -- more favorable -- must be included.
You tell me, and you tell us, that you are the *possessor* of both Jesus Christ and Christianity. You believe that you have a right to do this because of your religious fundamentalist position. That is, and in your case, because you define yourself as a hyper-Protestant Evangelical. It is not so much that I have or take a position against your own, but rather that I choose to try to *see* you and understand how you operate and what the effects of your operations are. As with so many, perhaps all things, it is a mixed bag.
Yet it is not that I am
opposed to what you try to do. What you do is
necessary within fundamentalism. The project of returning to the original documents, of reading & studying them, of cleaning out the *contaminated* library and reducing the bookshelf to a few *proper* titles, and then cleaning out the mind and purifying one's commitments -- this is of course what you do and also what you recommend. Religionists in all schools opt at times for this manoeuvre be it Buddhism, Islam, Vaishnavism, and even the New Age pseudo- or neo-religions.
And in your case you base what you try to do on
metaphysical presuppositions. First, that God has set forth certain specific, eternal, mandated, incontrovertible and absolute declarations which all mankind must follow. That is what the phrase
All knees shall bow means. At one point or another, on this Earth, all will bow before the divine power.
And here we see, clearly and starkly, absolutism and the function of absolutism.
So what I suggest -- here on a philosophy forum -- is to examine
the function of these types of conceptions. Consider the speech put in the mouth of Ulysses in Shakespeare's
Troilus & Cressida:
The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order;
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a king,
Sans cheque to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixure! O, when degree is shaked,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
Then enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong,
Between whose endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
The core predicates here are that there is a cosmic order. And all around us evidence of order is visible. And within our own selves, and our communities, and our families, there is a corresponding natural order. But when the natural order is assaulted, and what assaults it is Chaos and Demonic Power -- and this is reflected in signs seen in the heavens such as *wandering planets* (retrograde planetary movement and also the dread appearance of comets bringing ill), then plagues and disarray appear.
And then the necessary hierarchies in our own world are *assaulted* by chaotic, demonic and unruly forces, which *untune the strings* that produce harmony, and things fall into a discordant state.
Oh Dear!
My suggestion is that we all see and clearly notice that here, in this, and referring to the same Picture, the Evangelical activist in our modernity -- in this case Mr Immanuel Can -- appears with fundamentalist doctrines and attempt to convince people to turn away from Chaos and the Demoniac, and return to the best and proper relationship to that *medicinable eye [that] corrects the ill aspects*, which in Immanuel Can's metaphysical story involves a surrender to Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity.
Now Immanuel, let's return again to your
declaration:
Christianity isn't a flavouring. You can't sprinkle some of it over paganism, and call that paganism "Christianesque." It's something one is, or simply is not, depending on whether one fits the Scriptural definition.
First, and in a certain sense which I recognize, and I assume most reading here recognize, the fundamentalism that Immanuel Can is involved in and his
kerygma in relation to it, is not unintelligible.
We
do recognize Order and even Degree as important concepts. But it is also fair to say -- and here things get more interesting and more contention -- that we are both drawn to the establishment of Order and we are also agents of Disorder, and thus of Chaos. Chaos, in our worlds, is manifest when we feel and believe that
the very surrounding atmosphere (climate) is turning against us. Huge storms threaten, or heatwaves that dry everything up. Then howling winds appear and blow the dust to the far corners. Floods, crushing snow storms -- all symbols of that deep-set sense that Chaos is hard upon us. The very ground under our feet has become unreliable. Dangers threaten. Wars and rumors of war. And note that everywhere around us, like something out of a zombie movie, the sick the diseased and the mentally ill are everywhere and unavoidably present.
So then, what is the *thing* that is sought that will put The World back into Order?
According to Immanuel Can his battle is against *paganism*. But I wish to point out that everything that he is alluding to is actually of a Cosmic scale. And when we see what it is that
we are actually dealing with, we can then gain some distance from it and begin to see that what he is dealing in is Picture as I constantly and ever-patiently say -- like a voice crying in the wilderness on a forum of assholes and drooling nutjobs!
This, friends, is why I undertook what has become my life's mission! The Ten Week *Restore Order Now* Email Course! which is changing and transforming lives! It really is "the ladder to all high designs". Why won't you assholes put your feet on the first rungs?
What holds you back?!?
