Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Nov 19, 2021 2:59 pm
Unfortunately (for me) I have just realized in the course of this conversation that it is likely that I cannot *believe in* a Christianity based in these sort of prophecies, which by their nature can never be verified, nor disproven,
Actually, they can be both. In fact, it shouldn't even be hard.
There are a host of prophecies in the Old and New Testaments. Some pertain to the future, relative to where we are now, and so what you say is true -- they cannot presently be confirmed or disconfirmed. But not so those the fulfillment of which is already in the past...such as Daniel's prediction of the rise of the empires, or his timing of the death of Messiah. Those are verifiable.
And they're current. They predict, for example, not just the return of Israel but also the political push toward imposing a global world order, the melding and turning-into-numbers of the financial system, an increasing desperation for centralized authority, the rise of not one but a series of global plagues, significant environmental decline...one can see without stretching the imagination much that, at a time when ancient man could hardly be expected to believe these things were possible, the Author behind the Bible knew very well what would be coming eventually.
What should trouble us is not the apocalpytic thinking, but the fact that so much of it is verified as presently coming true.
Time is short. It's time to get our heads straight.
What does interest me however is the prevalence of different forms of apocalyptic thinking. The greater the uncertainty about the meaning of events, the more that the walls of technology and control machinations seem to be closing in, the more that people who are completely unqualified to assess much of anything at all are given tools to express their views (the social-media phenomena), the more that a desperate hysterical mood seems to become not just fringe but predominant. I do not know what the proper tools are to examine this but I am inclined to refer to CG Jung who always had concern about mass movements driven by unrecognized psychological currents. If what Jung proposed is true, and I think it is, a given individual needs to confront her or his own tendency to be taken in and influenced by the surrounding mass-hysteria.
Well, that's just a needle-in-a-haystack problem. It derives from the fact that there is no much information and so many guesses floating around that people become mentally paralyzed and stop searching. But by no means does it imply that there is no truth...it just signals that some people have despaired of locating it.
Apocalyptic thinking doesn't become wrong merely because it's "apocalyptic," or "too negative" anymore than it becomes wrong thereby. Apocalyptic thinking, negative projections of the future, are not even a particularly Christian exclusive. The environmental movement, the neo-gnostics, the globalists,and the technologically nervous are four other groups that are famous for doing practically nothing BUT apocalyptic projections of the future. But these they project not because they know anything, but because threats of a grim future stand to induce mass hysteria and increase their own status and power in the present world.
Christian prophecy is different. It doesn't stand to make any human agency more powerful or important. It projects a future in which human plans of all kinds, including the religious, come to grief...but only so that salvation can come, through God Himself. Compared to the hubris of the former prognostications, Christian prophecies are quite chastened and pride-subduing. However, what makes them either right or wrong is not their moral nature but rather their correspondence (o, if you like, failure to correspond) to the events described.
So far so good, for Christian prophecy. Its rate so far is very high.
But this leads to what I am essentially trying to speak about: a Christian spirituality is, first and foremost and also principally, an internal, interior affair. But it is not an application of a mythology, a mythologized praxis, onto the world itself. Yet the inevitability of just that taking place is what, exoterically, surrounds so-called Christian belief.
No, I don't think so. "Praxis" is a Marxist term, of course; I prefer to just say that Christanity is not mere "spirituality," but rather spirituality plus action. But that action, unlike "praxis" is not political, and it does not aim at controlling others or at mastering the world, the way that Marxist praxis does. The lack of such "praxis" seems to me to be a feature, not a bug, in Christianity: it's a very good thing that it's absent.
So if what I am saying here (musing out loud since this all makes my mind go fuzzy) Christian belief, as it is carried on today, has deep connections not with balance and the regeneration we agree is essential, but with social madness.
I don't see that. You'll need to show me what you mean.
Is there a cure? I mean is there a *real* or better way of engaging through Christianity (the texts, the ethics, the ‘belief system’) with a genuine spirit and spiritual potency? And if so what is that?
Well, yes -- the starting point is believing what Christ said:
"My kingdom is not of this world..." (John 18:36) Or as the book of Hebrews puts it,
"we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken," (Heb. 12:28) the eternal Kingdom of God, not some human "kingdom" or earthly political hegemony.
It makes a great deal of sense, therefore, why people — either average people and of course above-average people — are forced to jettison the entire system. But especially the system that has developed (if one takes the two webpages I presented seriously) as Evangelical Christianity has taken over what *being a Christian* is.
I don't see the reason for any of this. In the first place, what has the worldly system got to do with Evnagelicalism? Secondly, at least in most secular person's minds, Evangelicalism has not "taken over what being a Christian is" at all. I think most people continue to believe that everything from Catholicism to the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons is some form of "Christian." The hatred of Evangelicals seems to me to be primarily an American phenomenon, something ginned up by their media, mostly.
Along thse lines I do recognize that there is a far more sane Christian practice, sort of old-school, that I have encountered in classical Catholicism. (For example
Liturgical Prayer, 1922) But the focus is really on a given person’s internal life in relation to Christian (Catholic) liturgy.
Well, I know some nominal Catholics who are genuinely Christian. But the Catholic clergy and hierarchy is decidedly not, as you can see evidenced in their declarations, which actually defy core precepts of Biblical Christianity. So I don't look to that source as a model for anything actually "Christian."
Therefore the only Christianity I can validate is one that self-focuses.
It begins there, for sure; but it cannot merely stay there and be genuinely Christian. The first Christian critique is of oneself; the second step is to actualize one's convictions in relationships. And you see this very clearly in Christ's words about the two great commandments: number 1,
love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind; and number 2,
love your neighbour as yourself. (Matt. 22:37) The second takes the first out into the world.
But you're right: there's a priority there. You can't really do the second without the first being done first.
And though I do believe (I have learned it in this sense against my own will or against my own prejudice) that the Christian philosophy is very deep and valuable (in comparison broadly to other traditions) I could not deny or invalidate someone’s decision to leave the tradition.
"Tradition's" not the issue. Truth definitely is.
...this mad, deranged *Christianity* I am trying to describe? With mad power-brokers playing geo-political war-games.
If it is what you describe, then it's not Christianity at all. So yes, one can abandon it.
But "mad" "geo-political war-games" are exactly what you're going to get, according to Biblical prophecy. Because what produces them is not Christian theology, but rather mankind's drive toward megalomaniac power games. And you scan see this now...the current wolves who have put their hands on the levers of power are not religious -- of any kind -- at all. They're now all ambitious secularists, aiming at their own versions of utopia, driven by secular ideologies like Socialism, Techgnosticism and Globalism.
Right now, the last thing anybody has to worry about is there being too much apocalyptic prophecy floating around...we should worry instead about the secular present, and whas the anti-relgious power-brokers are up to right now.
