Every generation is tested where it is weakest. This generation has been lulled into a false sense of security insofar as right and wrong are concerned because it believes it has put right a lot of mistakes of the past but in so doing it has made new and more grievous errors. We may have started to correct some of what we regard as the sins of our ancestors but we have overlooked deeper sins because we no longer recognise the areas of life to which these sins pertain. So we have focussed on inter human relations, as in our current obsession with 'racism' and 'sexism' (in scare quotes because these words now mean almost anything and consequently mostly nothing), but completely ignored any relationship with God. We have no relationship with God. How could we when we don't even acknowledge his existence except in a perfunctory way?
The sins of today are based on the refusal to take the primacy of spiritual concerns over material ones (which refusal, by the way, extends to the churches and is why they have, almost without exception, failed the test of Covid-19, electing to obey the worldly powers and ignore the spiritual perspective). In fact, so closed off are we to the spiritual realm that most people don't even recognise our failures in this regard as sins. They are merely matters of personal belief so outside the moral sphere. We believe ourselves to be virtuous because we think we focus on what is good but it is only what is good for the body and the earthly man not what is good for the soul and the spiritual man. We may be virtuous with respect to the former but with respect to the latter we are the most sinful of generations and we don't even know it.
The earthly man is not separate from the spiritual man but he is certainly not the same either and he must be seen in the light of the spiritual man to be known and understood properly. But we put the earthly man in the place of the spiritual man, the former has usurped the rights of the latter, and this category error is why the people of the present day are further from God than any previous generation - and consequently worse. We may not be Neros and Hitlers, actively wicked, but most people at the time of those monsters still reverenced the gods in one form or another. We do not. Our sins may be those of omission but they are no less sinful for all that and the results of them will be no less severe.
6 comments:
Well said.
People assume that having God at the 'centre' is not needed; but these modern sins show that God is needed.
For example. Everywhere in public discourse there is a prevalent carelessness about what is *really* true - and the idea that what 'really' matters is how people feel; (whether or not they are happy).
Yet even that is not governed by truth - because it is not possible objectively to say how people feel, or whose feelings matter, or to calculate risks and probabilities about future feelings, or had to add-up the feelings of one lot of people against another etc.
People don't care what is really true, because they do not care what is real - only what seems to be. And they do not believe in real-reality because they have decided that God is Not real.
It can be seen that In Practice (whatever the theory) those who do not believe God is real regard nothing as real. They are not truthful because they think there is no truth to seek or tell about.
And in a world where everything is about feelings - then in practice the shared-reality is dictated by whoever has the power to dictate. We are, in effect, Told what we feel about things, and Told what other people feel about things, and Told what ought to be done about it.
And we are being Told by people who do not believe in truth...
This rot goes so deep and extends so widely, I could not begin to say where to begin in sorting it out - except that we must first believe in the reality of God, and that we live in God's creation!
You are absolutely right when you say that people now don't care about truth and it's only feelings that count - but even they are mostly fake. It really does seem that once you don't regard God as real then nothing is. He is the foundation without which everything collapses.
A comment from Colin Mace.
Thank you for your helpful dialogue gentlemen.
I see more clearly how without god, truth becomes unhinged, blowing in the wind, and our society is left merely weighing and measuring feelings.
Bruce describes where this has led us:
And in a world where everything is about feelings - then in practice the shared-reality is dictated by whoever has the power to dictate. We are, in effect, Told what we feel about things, and Told what other people feel about things, and Told what ought to be done about it.
This also seems to be a perfect description of a world without men.
This is quite a sobering post. It reminded me of Susan in Narnia or the people in the grey town in The Great Divorce. Good respectable people may be at greater risk of separation from God compared to horrific sinners.
The philosopher Steven Pinker had published statistics about how our society is less violent today as a whole compared to the past. Many come to the wrong conclusion that this means we are a spiritually and morally healthy people. However, sick patients are normally not very violent. Nevertheless, a sick patient will eventually die if left untreated.
I know it's quite easy for me to fall into the trap of feeling "I'm okay" b/c I don't commit any outright evil actions. The sins of omission are very dangerous if one is not aware and continually repents.
We may be less physically violent but we do greater harm to the soul than at any previous time because we deny its existence. That is our great sin and it is a greater sin to harm the soul than to harm the body.
@LM - "sick patients are normally not very violent."
That's a very good point - and one with tremendous material world (as well as spiritual) relevance. A striking example is giving 'hyperactive' (ADHD) children antipsychotic medications - which have an emotionally-blunting, demotivating, sedating (and even 'chemical straitjacket) effect.
Sure, the drugs make children less hyperactive; but if that was the only goal of treatment then they could be tied to their chairs, or have their legs amputated... both of which would 'improve' hyperactivity measurement scales!
Likewise, if 'evil' is seen entirely in terms of preventing violence - then a sick and tranquillized 'hospice world' comes to seem morally ideal... And this is not very far from what many of our rulers (and their apologists) seem to believe.
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