Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 2:36 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 2:25 am
Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 11:14 pm
After 400 posts we still don't know the purpose of Christianity.
Well, plausibly, it's been offered...but among the hordes of wrong ideas and bad answers, it may have gone unnoticed anyway.
Your better strategy is to research it for yourself. Otherwise, how will you recognize the right answer when you hear it?
No, in fact it has not really been offered, or revealed, or made plain, because the central fact is that
religiousness has hit a wall. But let us suppose that there is a God that overrules existence, and our existence -- I must express it like this because, truthfully, there are conscious perspectives that are highly respectable which negate the necessity of *believing in* God. It is quite possible today to be an atheist and to get on just fine and it is just as possible not to give any particular thought to God. I do not think that such a stance negates 'spiritual life' if that is taken to mean living in a spirited, aware & conscious state. So it seems to me that what we are facing is a very real shift in essential perceptual modes.
To say *religiousness has hit a wall* means that the purpose of religion, the reason for getting involved in it, is no longer clear. So in fact what we see is (many) people who exist within this perceptual mode, and in a sense suffer in it (in the sense of suffering the wiping-away of the 'horizons' Nietzsche referred to and facing reality in a certain nakedness and vulnerability), come to a point of desperation, a crisis of soul, an existential crisis, and in that state then take action which may involve, and seems to involve, seeking out a religious community and religious ritual as a means to buttress themselves against something like *chaos*.
The fact of the matter is that it is existential crisis that is the real issue. And existential crisis requires, or provokes, response. Now, the fact of the matter is, when we examine the cultural landscape (the present state of affairs in the US is my reference-point) the entire culture is subsumed in a Criss of real proportion. It is as if the ground has shifted so quickly, and so radically, that -- think about it -- people have clearly lost their bearings. And therefore I think it is better (more productive to this conversation) to focus on that loss of bearing. That is the real condition that people face. Now one could say that *if there if a God* that this God
stands behind this event in its fullest sense. How could it be otherwise? I think this points in the direction of strange shifts in god-definition. On one hand you have those solid and dependable images or 'pictures' of God as a pillar of stability and as a place of refuge to which one can retreat. But in fact the very realm that we are in, this terrestrial existence, is the realm where we experience what reality is. And in that experience stability is threatened.
So what is the function of God? You have to ask yourself about the sort of *tools* that you yourself seek to make it through this world. Usually, knowledge is power. One desires to become more qualified, more adept, more skilled, more accomplished in order to live successfully. What is the main skill sought? What else could it be but an increase in consciousness, awareness and if you like of power: but I do not mean this in a brutal way. I mean creative power; power that comes from awareness.
Within this conversation our own Immanuel Can has (I think it fair to say) completely failed in nearly every aspect of the needed confrontation with 'reality' -- the real conditions we are ow facing. What he seems to call for, and this is the Evangelical Christian manoeuvre, is a bone fide jumping back into familiar tropes or familiar group-strategies for dealing with chaos, confusion, uncertainty and the radical loss of grounding I refer to. So the God that he
imagines (Jesus of Nazareth and the Holy Spirit) are presented as, in a sense, an escape from the real conditions that are faced. And again I use the word imagine in a special sense since it is only and strictly in our 'imagined space' where we conceive of God and, let's say, interact with God.
And so we clearly notice that the god-believers are grouping together and networking among themselves, preparing themselves, for a take-over of the present cultural and governmental situation
which is seen as chaotic and, let's face it, as overruled by demonic entity. Satan is loose upon the world. He is determining the loss of integrity which produces a shattered, confused person who
falls apart in the world. There is not enough 'center' for a person to rally around -- and I mean within their own self. I think this is what Nick has referred to as the division within the person and the soul.
Now what seems to be on the threshold -- here I am speaking culturally and existentially (and again my reference point is the social situation in the US which seems to capture the world (or is this only because the media-systems are so US-centered?) is the retaking of the power of government from a bizarre and radical faction. The "Democrats" has become a general term for radical, sexual deviant, 'Marxist' underminer of an established order and, as things are playing out, a general field of opposition of coalescing in order to confront what they describe as 'the Swamp'. This is seen and described as 'the Devil's Terrritory' and onto that image is projected all manner of content.
So I have made an effort here to allude realistically to the psycho-spiritual
conditions that we are all facing while this rather abstract conversation has been going on. We are not so much talking about a general and constant 'religiousness' that could be defined as a general outline of what religious life should be, but about ourselves in the present conditions which are anything but clear.
