The contemporary world lives in a state of rebellion against its maker. We see this in all movements to remake human beings from their natural state into something different that coincides with the egotistical desires of the lower self, that self-centred entity that is a construct of the mortal mind rather than the soul, this latter being the true source of our individuality and naturally tied to God, its Creator. I don't care if you believe yourself to be religious. If you go along with any of the modern attempts that seek to reframe human beings according to earthly considerations, meaning those that take our earthly selves and their desires and feelings as primary, then you are a rebel against God. You don't really believe in him despite what you may say or think. You believe the created is more important than the Creator. At root, you believe in yourself, first and foremost.
The true sons and daughters of God who are aware from whence they come are not motivated by anger, resentment or envy. But scratch the surface and these are the driving forces behind the social and political movements of the present day. I suggest that the people involved in these movements, which they would doubtless describe as movements of social justice, are largely rebels against God and that what distinguishes them is fundamentally the same as what distinguished the first rebel against God. It's the desire to have their own way and to remake reality according to what they want, their own will. This can be dressed up in intellectual or moral clothing but the heart of a revolutionary is always sour and he always looks for the evil in external factors, never in himself.
The true son of God approaches the world with gratitude and humility. Yes, the world always needs improving but he recognises that improvement comes mostly from a better personal relationship with God. The spiritual must precede the material if the material is to be patterned correctly and not according to itself. The rebel always has a sense of injury. He knows better than God. He can reform what God has got wrong. And so, while he may claim to be working for the betterment of humanity, if his work is not rooted in what Jesus called the law and the prophets (which he famously said he did not come to abolish but to fulfil) then he is working against God.
Nicolai Berdyaev talked of spiritual aristocrats and spiritual proletarians. The former are those of any background, class, creed or race who are conscious of being sons and daughters of God and who accept the honour and responsibility of such a position. They are conscious of the soul, the spiritual component of their being, and seek to live according to that. They know this world exists not for itself but as a training ground for heaven. That doesn't mean we shouldn't cherish this world and make it the best reflection of heaven we can but we should know that we can never entirely succeed in that because entropy, corruption, decay, in short, mortality, are all built into it as it stands at the moment. It is not meant to be heaven and will not be until (perhaps) the end of time. The latter are those who either reject God completely or else try to fit him into a worldly agenda. Their motivations are either to do with pride, envy, resentment or else their spiritual attachment is too weak to overwhelm a fundamentally materialistic worldview. They see spirituality as an extension of the earthly viewpoint not something that radically transforms and replaces it.
There seem to be more of these rebellious souls alive today than at any previous time of history. This may just be a perception or it may be a result of the general spiritual apathy and material well-being. It could even be a consequence of the relaxation of Darwinian natural selection as souls with both mental and physical maladaptive mutations remain alive or are born because of modern technology whereas before they might not have survived. Harsh as it might seem, Nature fine-tunes. However, it could also be because more of this type of soul are being born into the world today to give them one final chance to come good. As the noose of materialism tightens the stark reality of what materialism really means, which is death, will be hard to avoid. Recalcitrant souls will be offered what may be a determining opportunity to repent, with those that fail to take the opportunity demoted, to use a sporting analogy.
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While I tend to agree w/ Bruce Charlton's observation about a change of human consciousness, I also believe our uniquely comfortable circumstances have also led to the large number of rebellious souls today. As a lover of history, it's amazing to read about how even the wealthiest of royals would probably bury at least a few of their children. Disease, war, and famine were constant fears that not even the most privileged could escape. It is much easier to turn to God when one is faced w/ the reality of mortality on a regular basis.
The Industrial Revolution brought an enormous rise in the standard of living. The phrase "No parent should ever have to bury their children" is quite modern. We have food at our convenience and can reasonably expect to live to 80 years old if not longer barring a tragedy. Compare the reactions to past plagues to the hysteria surrounding COVID that is nowhere near as lethal. While I'm grateful for our blessings, I believe that our material comforts have made it much easier to forget God. The Screwtape Letters discusses how material comfort can be one of the greatest temptations that man faces.
However, this temptation can provide some unique opportunities to grow spiritually. Choosing God in a time of historical wealth and comfort has a lot of promise. God has chosen us for some unknown reason to undergo an environment in which failure is quite likely. Perhaps the rewards for choosing God in such an environment are greater. I don't mean to sound arrogant as I know I do not have the capacity to have the type of faith that our ancestors had in the past. I only hope that being open to God in these unique times can have a different sort of meaning as it's no longer expected.
What I still question personally is, knowing God exists, why did He have to send Jesus? I know that sounds naïve and there are plenty of explanations but, he did make himself known to me and I have questioned ever since. The Old Testament, The New Testament and everybody's experience and understanding. To be honest, there has not been many who have included the Bible in their understanding rather just other people's readings and interpretations. I am starting to believe that most voice-pieces on this matter, don't actually read the Bible.
And thank you for not posting my worst moments.
Lady Mermaid, I also think that human consciousness changes and that we are different now to 500 hundred years ago never mind 2,000. But the questions we have to answer are the same ones. It's just that our approach may be modified. And I do believe that many people now are here because they have failed to answer those questions correctly on earlier occasions. I don't know if it's a last chance but it's one they need to take or the consequences for them will be challenging to say the least.
Kirstie, the idea is that God had to send Jesus because we were too far gone in sin and ignorance to get back to him by ourselves. But actually we don't have to worry about why God sent Jesus. The fact is he did. Jesus is there and that's all we need to know.
@William - Something I wonder about is the extent to which these times were inevitable sooner or later.
We agree that wrong decisions have been made generation after generation from before 1800; but I find some of the end times/ Antichrist prophecies uncannily prescient of our reality here and now. As if this was destined to happen eventually, even if the right decisions had been made - albeit later rather than now.
And does *this* mean that God knew that there were souls whose mortal incarnation needed (i.e. would best be served by) such times as these?
Because, these times do have unique 'properties', and would seem to be ideal for some individuals to encourage a discernment and awakening. As the world is incrementally crushed under deliberately dehumanizing rules (with unanimity of support from the leadership class, and considerable support from the masses) - this actuality and prospect seems to be very nasty soul-medicine.
But maybe only this kind of nasty medicine had a chance of effecting a cure for some of the souls incarnated today? After all, salvation under these conditions seems to be very simple - just recognizing the evil that is being done (more and more severely and obviously) and then rejecting it to choose God.
In the past few years, there is a noticeable trend, which I've come to call "a reaping of souls". Even without the pandemic, high-profile presumably untimely deaths are happening. Of course, statistics may not reflect that, it's just connecting the dots. The profile of those people is very specific. In secular terms, they are successful. Very often artistic, with a very positive attitude to life. They are not outright evil, but they will usually sport a fashionable anti-Christian sentiment, often just to look cool. In the light of the stark choice of the past year, I would say those souls were given a sort of grace. Had they lived longer, they would have drifted farther away from choosing God. So they had to die to be presented with a choice - their own lives would have been too pleasant, and spent in an atmosphere of fake goodness, never really getting that choice in a life situation. The only way to be offered the choice was to do it at death. They had goodness in them, but were not evil-resistant enough for this day and age. Usually, fully secular people will see those deaths as an unimaginable tragedy, and also very illogical - a person that should not have died, it was absurd they should have died, and yet they did. It's like they get tapped out of life's dance floor, like there is a good reason they should not continue.
Bruce, I think these times were inevitable. Wrong decisions were certainly made but as a cycle reaches its conclusion, as is now happening, the material world becomes more and more present and the spiritual more and more obscure so these decisions were also perhaps either inevitable or very likely, in general terms anyway. Specific details are another matter. However, this inevitability does not exonerate people because as Jesus said 'evil will come but woe unto those through whom it comes'. The basic unchanging reality is that whatever times are like we still all have God within us and are always capable of turning to him.
Your point about salvation being very simple under modern conditions echoes a teaching in Hinduism that I have only recently begun to understand, namely that in the Kali Yuga all one has to do to be saved is repeat the name of God. This seemed too elementary to me at one time but now I see that in times like these it is really just a question of, as you say, recognising the evil that is being done and rejecting that to choose God. Of course, this is only the beginning of a long path but it shows that the tide within oneself has turned. The pity is that at the moment so few people seem to be doing even that.
Interesting point, Hristina. I'm not sure I agree but it's certainly something to think about.Most people are living longer as if to give them one last chance when their physical life has reached a very low ebb.
@William - "'evil will come but woe unto those through whom it comes'"
A deep teaching, and hard to grasp.
There seems to be a sense in which the evil of this world is cumulative. And in particular, when evil is pervasive, and familiar, Men seem always to want to normalize it. The tragic necessity of doing evil in this world is something we do not want to acknowledge.
In the gospels Jesus seems to be saying this all the time; and the Pharisees represent those who will not acknowledge that they themselves 'cannot' being doing evil, because they are so much better behaved than 'the others'.
Nowadays, the Pharisee response is almost compulsory. The fact that we all do evil much of the time is interpreted as either 'therefore, if everybody does it, it can't be evil' or 'how dare you accuse *me* of doing evil when so many people are worse than me/ and when you are worse than me!' Or alternating between the two.
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