Earthly Utopias Always Fail

The attempt to live on Earth as though you were already in Heaven inevitably leads to disaster, and communities that try to do this always collapse. No exceptions. They may have good intentions but they are naive and lack wisdom.

The world of man is innately corrupt. It is a fallen world marked by sin, ignorance, greed, desire, fear, conflict and death, and any attempt to regulate this world must take those into account. You cannot pretend they are not there even in the best and smoothest running of worldly societies. You shouldn't go too far the other way and think everything is wicked and evil, but you have to acknowledge the reality of evil and its presence in every human heart. Like it or not, that is the truth.

Earth is not Heaven and Natural Man cannot function on the same principles as Spiritual Man. He should certainly aspire to love but cannot pretend love is already there because it just is not which is why all earthly societies, even the most spiritually attuned, must accept that sin is ever present in some form and degree. Hence, there must always be law and a measure of force to preserve order and peace. Idealistic souls (doves) may recoil from this but the wise (serpents) know it is so. We are called to be both doves and serpents at the same time. Either one on its own leads to illusion. In fact, either one on its own is not even real from the spiritual perspective, being a worldly human imitation of a real spiritual quality because on the spiritual level each of necessity includes the other. It is only when the mind is separated from the soul that love and truth appear distinct.

The reality of this world is entropy and death. That is why it is futile to attempt to establish a heavenly kingdom here. At the same time, the flaws of this world make it a good environment for learning which, after all, is its function and the reason for our appearance here. 

Heaven is perfection but this world can never be perfect.  We can and should try to live as best we can. We should try to build societies and cultures that approximate to the higher worlds, but heaven is only heaven because its denizens are completely purified of sin and that is not possible in this world. Earthly utopias inevitably become performative because they are built from the outside, seeking to establish perfection through regulation rather than manifesting it from within. As such their inner inconsistencies and inability to sustain the vision will always tear them apart. 

The attempt to enforce heaven is more likely to create hell and that is what the history of such endeavours demonstrates over and over again.

Good and Evil

 I have written on several occasions about the need for a radical revision of our ideas about good and evil and what these fundamental things might be. This gets more important by the day because the current understanding of goodness has become completely distorted with the corresponding sense of evil and what it really is almost wholly lacking in the modern mind

Basically, good is God. It's that simple. And evil is not God. And not God is effectively Satan. There is no in-between, no middle ground, and if you do not come down positively on the side of God you will inevitably, inevitably, be drawn onto the side of Satan. This sounds extremely crude, sensationalist and lacking in nuance or, a trap for the intellectually proud, sophistication. But there it is. It's just how things are. However, over the last couple of centuries or so we have been lured into the false idea that good is about worldly good which means supporting the earthly human being, often at the expense of the spiritual. Thus, good people are kind and compassionate. They are believers in humanity and the general welfare of all equally. They promote social justice and humanitarian causes. Good is doing as you would be done by and respecting your neighbour but respecting your neighbour without first loving God is not loving your neighbour, not as he really is.

Believing in God means observing his laws. If you love me, keep my commandments. Again, very simple. It's no good saying you believe in God and even thinking you do if you follow a worldly agenda that prioritises the needs and goals of this world. If you believe in God you know that his kingdom is not of this world. That doesn't mean you reject the world but it is not the focus of your main concern. You do not look at life in its light but from a higher perspective

Let me put this another way. What is important is not so much whether you are a good or a bad person in the generally accepted moral sense. I do not say that doesn't matter but it is not the main thing. What is important is which side you are on which means which way your heart inclines. Is it that of God and the priorities of the spiritual world or is it that of this world which means, in the traditional shorthand, Satan? Anything which does not put God first puts Satan first and Satan will always, without exception, throw his acolytes under the bus when they no longer serve his purpose as we are currently seeing. 

But, that aside, if you do not consciously serve God you will serve the devil in one way or another. Perhaps not deliberately as in handing over your soul for worldly advantage but if you do not swim against the worldly tide you will eventually be swept down to the sea of lost souls with all the rest.

People who are on the side of good may behave badly sometimes. They shouldn't but they may though if they do they will repent because they will see they have not lived up to the standards expected which are those of the good, the beautiful and the true. People on the side of evil, either consciously or, which is most people, unthinkingly so, may behave impeccably but they are more likely to admire themselves for doing so. Those on the side of spiritual (true) good know they are sinners. Those on the side of worldly good often think of themselves as by and large pretty decent people, but the closer you come to real good the more you see yourself for what you are because the image you have built up of yourself is being stripped bare.

All good is in God. Nothing outside God can be good. The modern world has become deeply embedded in evil because it rejects God and even when it allows him it is only on its own terms which means it doesn't allow him at all. 

I don't often write about specific current events on this blog and that's because these are almost irrelevant set against the general trends. The task of the spiritual aspirant is to put himself right on the basic level of aligning his heart and soul and will with the reality and purpose of God. Once that is done, or starts to be done, then other things will fall into place. It's all about first principles. Get those right and you will know the difference between good and evil. Get them wrong as most do and you will have no idea and can be herded and corralled by external forces that manipulate you at their will. This is why the only real freedom is in God.

Secular Gain Means Spiritual Loss

It's often said today that we are much more enlightened than our forefathers because we are less violent, more egalitarian, more concerned for the weak and poor and so on. The psychologist Stephen Pinker has written books about this from the point of view of Enlightenment rationalism and these are regarded as authoritative by secular materialists.

It can't be denied that we have improved on the past in many respects. However, it's not quite as simple as it might appear and the improvement is not necessarily an improvement in overall terms. We now see ourselves in a purely materialistic light so naturally we pay more attention to that sphere of life. But the spiritual loss we have undergone at the same time, along with the contraction into the hard nut of the ego-self, far outweighs any gain in worldly terms. What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul? That saying has become almost a cliché. Yet it is precisely what we have done.

Obviously we will put our energy into areas we think are important. By the same token, we will neglect those areas we think unimportant or even non-existent. Modern man has shrunk his awareness of reality right down to the material world. Of course, he focuses on that as the sphere of his concern. Therefore he works to make material improvements, changes that will benefit the material man, increase his worldly happiness, reduce his suffering. But these changes might actually be spiritually harmful, especially if they encourage identification with the earthly man. Then they will cut the human being off from his true self. It's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Another cliché. But all we are doing now is making ourselves rich in the worldly sense. Do you think Jesus was referring only to money? He was referring to any and every aspect of material life and particularly when it is severed from spiritual life.

I am not condoning violence but could it be we are less violent because we are more cowardly, more self-indulgent, less tough than our ancestors? Nor do I condone exploitation of the weak by the strong but have certain improvements in the social sphere been driven only by compassion or is there also a greater amount of envy and resentment in our make-up these days? JM Smith has written an excellent piece on The Orthosphere about how democracy fosters envy*. Present developments in almost any area of life you care to look at seem to bear that out. If we're all equal why should you or anyone else have more than me? Even if you're more intelligent and work harder, it's still not fair. I resent it in a way I might not have done in a world where society was based on more traditional lines. The fact that these could degenerate is not an argument against them because everything degenerates if not maintained properly.

Does this mean that any gains in the social and material spheres are inevitably a bad thing spiritually? By no means. There will certainly be a tendency to spiritual loss for, as we have been told, you cannot serve two masters. (Cliché number 3). But if the material world is seen fully in the context of the spiritual there is no reason why the part of life that rightly belongs to it cannot be honoured any more than focus on the soul means you neglect the body. But the chief area of one's attention should always be the spiritual soul and if that essential fact is ignored then any improvements you make in the secular sphere are not just immaterial but positively harmful for they take you further and further away from your true purpose as a human being in this world.

* By pure coincidence, and I assure you it is, I see Professor Smith has just linked to an article of mine from The Orthosphere. It's strange how these things work out.

Neutrality Will Soon No Longer be an Option

 The world is dividing up into two camps. Those who are for God and a rightly ordered creation and those who will not accept the reality of these things, who are, in effect, against them because if you are not for them then you are against them. It is a question of two goods or actually a real good and a supposed one, and it is a test of your inner orientation. The supposed good will be pushed hard as the real good and the real good will be depicted as the home of the mad and bad. The process is already well underway, obviously so since 2020 or the turn of the millennium or the 1960s, depending on how alert you are to the changes which are always ratcheted up just one more notch, but actually stretching back many decades, even centuries for those with the longer view.

The great majority of human beings today have no spiritual roots and no spiritual education. This is a condition that has been long prepared for. Most people have now grown up in a secular, materialistic, atheistic world and are consequently ripe for the picking. They have no higher reference points when confronted with the evils of the present day. The saying that we should always put things down to stupidity rather than malice, though it may well be true on many occasions, actually obscures the fact that behind the scenes there really is malice. We don't see it because we don't look properly and that's because we no longer know how to look or even where to look.

Think of the present times as a great test. You have been sent to Earth or asked to come here now because there is a great opportunity. The grain is being sifted with the wheat, having proved itself to be of the right quality, going on to higher worlds. The chaff, according to the Bible, will be burnt in unquenchable fire. I am slightly more optimistic. I think that those who don't make the grade will find themselves in outer circumstances that reflect their inner spiritual state in the post-mortem world but in all God's prisons there is a door to which the prisoner holds the key. This is because the prisons are not actually God's but created by the prisoner himself as an outgrowth of his own consciousness. There is a way out but it will require repentance and change on the part of the prisoner, and, while always possible, this may not be so easy in the next world so it makes sense to get it right in this one.

For a long while because society and the culture has not been actively anti-spiritual it was possible to avoid making a decision about whether to side with truth or let yourself be drawn into darkness and lies. And don't forget that spiritual darkness does not appear dark to the spiritually blind, only to those with sight. But this is no longer possible. Now the culture all over the world is anti-spiritual. Even where there is still some sort of religion it bows down to the worldly powers and conforms to the worldly agenda. You cannot compartmentalise this world and the next and say that this world has its own rights which you must respect. You only respect this world when it recognises and puts itself to the service of the next. Certainly, this world does have its rights but they are always subordinate to the rights and the truth of the next world and must be seen in that light. Ignore that and you have lost the thread and imprisoned yourself on the horizontal by which I mean you have become a citizen of this world rather than the world of God. This world is part of the world of God but only when it acknowledges the hierarchical lineage and sees the vertical connection as primary.

As the demands to bow down to the idols of the modern world continue you will have to make a choice. But first of all you are going to have to wake up and see that these are idols and that they require worship. Nothing really changes in the field of spiritual battle. The form changes but the basic elements remain, and a fundamental element of the spiritual life is that "You shall have no other gods before me." Why? Not because God is jealous but because he is truth. To put worldly idols before him is to have deserted truth. Those idols are not just the false gods of the past, many of which were demons and fallen angels though some were probably what are known as egregores, thought forms given substance by human attention and energy, and others even angelic beings serving God but even these are not due worship in their own right. 

There are modern idols too and one of the most powerful today is science. Especially when it becomes 'the science' but even before that it was still an idol when it was practised for its own sake and seen as a final arbiter of truth. Science as an investigation into the creation pursued almost as a form of worship is a high calling but when it has become severed from that vital connection it risks descending to the satanic. I am not just talking about bombs and instruments of destruction. There is physical destruction but there is spiritual destruction too and modern science stands charged of that crime.

Another powerful modern idol is politics. I will venture to say that all party politics is of the devil and that is certainly so in the modern world. We need governing you will say, and some systems are certainly better than others. True, but all of them replace God with something of this world and in the end that is what matters. If you leave spiritual truth out of the equation then your sums will never add up. Politics is corruption and active involvement in it corrupts the soul. This is more true than ever now when lying has become an essential tool in the politician's kitbag. If you expand the definition of politics to mean those who stand for God and rightly ordered creation versus all the rest then I would moderate my earlier statement but how easy it is to be dragged down to the worldly level and lose your grounding in God if you do actually involve yourself in the political field. Fair better to focus yourself fully on the spiritual. God is calling all who will listen to come to him now, ignoring all other voices which will only lead astray. Hear his voice and follow that to the exclusion of all else. And remember that those who follow God should not expect reward in this world for they are working towards the next and that is where their endeavours will bear fruit. 

Good and Evil in Today's World

These may not be what you think. If the good is what accords with truth and evil is what deviates from that then they are certainly not what most people think. For most people entirely disregard the spiritual and even those who think they believe in the spiritual usually put it behind the material/worldly/human in practical terms. They define good by worldly good but if worldly good puts itself above spiritual good or even ignores the prior claim of spiritual good then it is evil. Jesus came to save souls not to set up the perfect human society. In fact, he seemed to have had no interest in that at all which may have been why Judas turned against him, Judas being a typical modern person more interested in political change than spiritual awakening.

But let's go back to basics. If there is no spiritual is there even any such thing as evil? There is bad, certainly, but evil implies something more than bad. It is not just destruction of material things, the body, physical life, for personal advantage but destruction of essence, and essence is spiritual. Bad is the opposite of good but evil actively works against good, seeking to undermine it, pervert it, corrupt it, destroy it because of hatred. Perhaps just as good is love so evil is hatred and if hatred is love deformed and turned against itself so evil bears the same relationship to good which is to say that good is the reality and evil is that reality gone wrong.

What I am saying is that good and evil are spiritual concepts, concepts rooted in a far deeper reality than just the material world. So, if you deny the spiritual you really have no business talking about evil. Conversely, if you accept evil you must acknowledge the spiritual, and if you acknowledge the spiritual you must see it as primary and the material as its support. We have reversed this relationship and reduced the spiritual to either nothing, an expression of the material or, as with most followers of religion, something to be defined in terms of the material.

For practically everybody today good is material good, what increases material comfort and reduces material suffering. Evil is what does the opposite regardless of other considerations. This partly explains the extraordinary behaviour over the last year. But this was not how Jesus saw it. Good was what did the will of his Father which was bringing souls back to him. Jesus healed the sick and fed the hungry but not very often and probably only to demonstrate the reality of divine power. What he did continuously was preach the kingdom of God and tell us how to get there. He was concerned with spiritual good more or less to the exclusion of anything else.

At the moment there is an all-out assault on spiritual good not by attacking it directly but by replacing it with a lower good or, better put, a false good, a good that relates to human beings as they are in this world and, by virtue of that, seeks to keep them and their attention in this world. This false good denies the soul, the spiritual component of man, and that makes it evil in the true spiritual sense. So, this is not evil as obvious wickedness but evil masquerading as good in order to destroy the true good. It is Satan appearing as an angel of light.

Any morality not centred in God or, at the very least, a higher reality is actually immoral. This is because it creates and reinforces a false good so blocking out the true good and preventing growth in that good. Paradoxically, the strictest adherents of such a morality are the most spiritually immoral.

What people need to understand now is that the nature of evil has changed. Now, it has moved from being principally a material thing (murder, violence, lying, cheating etc) to being a spiritual thing - denial of God. Or reality since God is reality. And this denial can only come from a misaligned spiritual will so it is never innocent. The old evils still remain, of course, but a deeper sin has been added to them, all the worse for not being regarded as such. 

The difficulty for so many people is that good and evil are not clear so millions of ordinary, decent people (decent by conventional standards) are actually on the side of evil. But that is because we look at good and evil in materialistic terms rather than, as we should, spiritual terms. Once you start thinking of the material world as a place designed to bring out spiritual choice then everything becomes a lot more obvious.

Most people want to be good but for that to be possible you have to know what good is and for that to be the case the heart must be rightly oriented. Our hearts are not rightly oriented and that is our own fault.

To sum up, let me say that whether you are for good or evil now depends on whose side you are on. God and creation or the world as it is presented in current belief systems, some of which are actually religious. It is not so much whether you are a conventionally good or bad person, though clearly you should always seek to be good and sincerely repent your failures. It is determined by whether your heart inclines towards God or the teachings of this world which deny God. And if you are not for God then, as the scripture says, you are against him. There is no neutral ground, certainly not any longer. This should be a wake up call to the millions of people who just go along with things as they are. You cannot now say "It's not my fault. It's how things are. I can't be held responsible if I just do as others do." The truth is always within you. You are responsible.

This post echoes recent ones by Bruce Charlton and Francis Berger though most of it was written before I read those. I believe this indicates there is something in the air now saying that a serious choice is being demanded of us and we need to make that choice soon.

Play the Ball not the Man

This is what we are always told.  A man's ideas are separate from his personality and moral worth. But what if that's not entirely true? What if what a man thinks derives in large part from what he is? It seems clear that many of the ideas that have formed the modern world come from people with deeply flawed characters who may have formulated these ideas at least to an extent to justify their own flaws. Rousseau and Marx are obvious examples but there are many more, clever people led astray by their own cleverness and using it to avoid facing up to the reality of their sinful nature.

A good person loves the good. Or perhaps I should say someone who loves the good pursues the good and seeks to manifest it in his life. Someone who does not respond to the good in this way but suspects it may exist may seek to deny or belittle or even to corrupt it out of shame. The good is a hard thing to live up to. What is the good? The best definition I have come across is from Romano Guardini in his book The Last Things where he says that "in the last analysis, the good is God's holiness itself." Linking the good with God and holiness is very important for it goes to the origins of what the good actually is and what it should always tend to. All lesser goods crumble into dust when the base good is denied. A good person is someone who recognises this simple truth and seeks to live up to it. Obviously he will fall short but it is the intention, the motivation, that matters. A bad person is someone who denies it and who tries to substitute lesser goods, political, social, whatever, in its place.

What I am saying here is that if your heart is correctly orientated then your thoughts and beliefs should follow. If your heart is not orientated to the true good your thoughts and beliefs will reflect that misdirection. It is not true that what a man thinks bears no relation to what he is. Sometimes it is valid to play the man not the ball if you wish to understand ideas and where they come from. 

Good and Bad People

 I was thinking of all the people busily engaged in constructing the nightmare world of tomorrow, all the politicians, the scientists, the university lecturers, the media people and so on. It's unlikely they think they are bad people and doing harm. Bad people never do. Hitler and Nero probably thought they were doing good, on some level at least. Have you not noticed that bad people usually think they are good but good people don't think that of themselves. They are always aware of ways in which they are not good.

Good and Evil Redefined

We live in very dark times, who could doubt it? And yet most people simply will not see it. I say will rather than do because I firmly believe it is a matter of choice. Most people have given their allegiance to the prince of this world and do not want to accept spiritual truth. Even if they do nominally as with the churches they don't really because accepting spiritual truth means seeing everything in the material world in the light of God. Everything. But the modern churches see even God in the light of Man for the most part which is why they have largely given themselves over to the false religion of humanitarianism in which God takes a secondary role. Love God and love your neighbour has been replaced by behave as though you love everyone, and often those who are not your neighbour more than your actual neighbour.

I don't understand exactly what went on in the American election but even I can see something very wrong took place. The one-sidedness of the media and of all the talking heads trotted out to tut-tut sanctimoniously is truly extraordinary and tells me we are living in a world of lies and deceit unparalleled in Western history. America certainly is a battleground, or a focal point of the global battleground, but I have to say that whatever happens there in the immediate future the general trajectory is likely to be downwards. Outer forces aligned with God can make valiant rearguard actions but they are doomed to failure or worldly failure anyway. This is not a time when good can triumph in the world. It is a time when the souls of human beings are being weighed in the balance, when the spiritual darkness will be ramped up and God can see who is faithful to him when to be so runs counter to everything the world considers good. Good and evil now are not what they seem to the conventionally minded. They are to do with faithfulness to God and his goals for creation. This is the time for the judgment of hearts and what takes place externally is very much secondary.

So, strangely enough, this is actually a time for optimism. Not that the world may turn a corner but that the faithful may soon claim their reward. The test is upon us and all we have to do is hold fast in love of God and the true good. It is that love which is the light that rescues us from the darkness of the present day.

The Corruption of the Good & the Lack of Imagination

Whatever good there may once have been in leftism has long since been used to smuggle in greater evil, and the chief evil is materialism and the separation from God with the subsequent celebration of man as his own god. Thus, the concept of the good is changed radically. No longer does it relate to spiritual understanding and focus and to one's relationship with God, but to the human being as it exists in this world. And no longer is the good a matter of objective reality, something with its own independent quality and truth beyond the merely human, but what bring most benefit to most people in a purely worldly sense.

This is why when you talk to a committed leftist, you talk at cross purposes. His idea of good revolves around what increases happiness and reduces suffering in the here and now. He has an enormously limited view of what a human being actually is and that deforms his whole judgement. Even if he is religious or spiritual in some way this will always be subject to his determining leftism, and leftism is fundamentally materialistic in that it sees man as he is in his fallen, almost biological, state and not as a spiritual being.

The question then arises as to why is the leftist like that. Is he just labouring under a delusion through no fault of his own or is his attitude actually a reflection of his own mind and will?  For some it may be the former but for many it is the latter case. A leftist philosophy (ideology is a better word) is the outcome of the wilful rejection of God.

That much is clear but I believe there is often something more and that is a lack of imagination. It is amusing to think of the howls of outrage one would hear from leftists if they were accused of lacking imagination but what other conclusion can you reasonably draw? Imagination is not just conjuring up and playing with a bundle of images and ideas. It is sensitivity to the higher worlds. It is openness to a greater reality. It is, in its proper sense, a spiritual faculty and if you have it you will see that spiritual reality exists. You will, at the very least, be strongly pushed in that direction even if you hesitate to embrace the notion fully because of the limited presentation of religion in this world.

This takes us to the great problem with many church-going Christians which is that they too lack imagination so their idea of religion is restricted to the moral world or to the world of belief as stipulated by authority. But this is a desiccated kind of faith that does not inspire or transform. It leaves its members in the world. Imagination is the only thing that can get us out of this world. It is not enough on its own. It must be coupled with a proper religious understanding but it points to and begins to reveal the reality of higher dimensions of being, and a refusal to acknowledge these higher dimensions certainly indicates an unimaginative mind which is ipso facto an unspiritual mind.

Miss Marple and Goodness

The other night I watched one of the Miss Marple programmes with Joan Hickson as Agatha Christie's old lady detective. The programme was made in the late 1980s and it occured to me while watching that here was someone who was good in a very pure and clean way, a natural honest and unselfconscious way, and that this simply would not be possible nowadays. Miss Marple is a saintly kind of person. She really is. God and religion are not mentioned in the films but an awareness of them is everywhere in her character and her attitude to life. She acts and thinks in perfect knowledge of the reality of the divine and this is so absorbed in her heart that it informs her behaviour all the way from thought to emotion to action. She is not a Pharisee obeying the law because it is the law. She has moved beyond law to love. But note that her goodness does not sentimentalise her. She is unbending in her concern for truth which is what makes her such an excellent sleuth.

You might think this is a bit over the top but Joan Hickson's portrayal of Miss Marple shows a person who is good because she has identified herself with the source of goodness and that self is sufficiently softened so that it can receive the imprint of goodness as wax does a seal. She has become permeated by goodness because of her receptivity to it. This is all we can do. Goodness is not ours. It is God's. Our task is to soften the self, the heart, so that it can receive and hold the image of God within itself.  Miss Marple demonstrates someone with the stamp of God on her heart. 

I say this is not possible now. I mean it is very unlikely. It's always possible but the point is where do we take our idea of goodness from? Increasingly, it is not the idea of God, our Creator, the source of love and truth. It is state-sanctioned ideology. We cannot be transformed by this as we can be by opening ourselves up to the higher reality of God. We can only conform to it or obey it. Therefore, there is no real goodness. There is only the imitation and display of it. As I've said so often on this blog, true goodness can only be found in God. Miss Marple knows this even if she doesn't make a fuss about it.

Good and Evil

 Does this make sense? 

The strong antipathy and disgust that good has for evil comes from a love of the good. The hatred that evil has for good comes from resentment, pride, fear and the desire to bring down and destroy. Two emotions that may, on the face of it, seem similar but which come from very different sources.

Evil is Not Good

I regard it as a major error to see evil as a tool wielded by God to bring about greater understanding and development. This is a fairly common trope, whether as a Christian heresy, a variation on Eastern monism or an example of the sort of Western occultism that seeks to present itself as more 'advanced' than religion for the unenlightened masses. But it is wrong.

Roughly speaking, the theory goes that without darkness you could not know light so certain angels act on behalf of God as forces of darkness and contraction. They do what we, in our short-sightedness, call evil but they are working for the spread of good. Lucifer, of course, means Light Bearer and, according to this idea, that is what he still is. He is the force that brings about individuality and breaks down spiritual inertia so that new growth may arise. He is sometimes even thought of as Christ's dark twin, the two working in tandem to bring about spiritual evolution as the One splits into the Many before recombining as the One.

I think this is pernicious nonsense. Tolkien (as usual) had it right. In his creation myth, the One God teaches the archangels who are the children of his thought to sing creation into being which they proceed to do along the harmonious guidelines laid down by God. But they have a certain amount of freedom too and one archangel brings in discordant elements, the product of his incipient egotism. Several times God corrects this by introducing new themes that balance it out but it seems that the end product, Earth, is still somewhat corrupted. Evil has come through the pride of the rebellious archangel and though God can use that evil to bring about some new good, the evil is certainly not the source of the good or the necessary means for it. It's more a matter of making a virtue out of necessity. Evil here is not a form of good but a perversion of it.

It is important to see this correctly or you can fall into the trap of justifying evil and not standing against it as the enemy of good rather than its accomplice. And that means you will become an apologist for evil or even an enabler of it. This is the philosophy of people who eschew divine simplicity in favour of over-elaborate cosmologies that appeal to the intellect. It can be dispelled by a proper understanding of Christ who leaves us in doubt that evil is not good. It is evil.

My Kingdom is Not of this World

As the world sinks more and more deeply into illusion and ignorance with evil masquerading as good and the true good viewed as, at best, madness, we should remind ourselves of one thing. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. In fact, it may well be that it must be so.  True spiritual awareness can only really be established in the human heart on an individual basis when everything outwardly conspires against it. Only then can we say that any spirituality we might possess actually is our own and not acquired from outside.

It has always been the case that those who wish to follow the teachings of Christ with their whole being (and what other way is there to follow them?) find themselves at odds with the world. This does not just mean in an obvious way in that they are not interested in fame and fortune, but in less obvious ways too. Even spirituality, when interpreted in a way that conforms to worldly sentiment and opinion, must be rejected. The world is always the enemy of the spiritual even if there have been times when that is less pronounced than today, and there have been cultures that have tried to model themselves on a heavenly pattern.

But now that is certainly not the case. Now the spiritual has been decisively rejected and where it is allowed, it is so diluted by worldly values and ideals, meaning values and ideals that accommodate the worldly human being, that it is practically worthless. It has been robbed of inner meaning and cut down to reflect this world. It has been, if you'll forgive the analogy, effectively castrated which may be why so many modern church leaders resemble nothing so much as spiritual eunuchs, men without fire or passion.

However, this is not a cause for too much lamentation. It's a shame to see the good of the past thrown away and trampled underfoot. Let us not forget, though, that the past was far from good from a higher perspective. What was good in it was merely a reflection of the true good as it exists in the higher worlds. That will not be, it cannot be, lost. It is eternal.

And then there is the fact that this time of universal falling away from truth was foretold. It is the beginning of the end. That is surely quite an exciting thing. We must be careful not to get carried away by this excitement though. Those who complacently imagine themselves to be saved while others are not might be in for a surprise. What is required of us these days is that we watch and pray, meaning that we attend to the signs of Christ's presence and strive to align our hearts and minds with God. We must be detached from the world but, at the same time, speak out, insofar as we can, and let others know how the world is falling away from goodness and truth. Most people will not be interested, but some may be and, at least, we will know that we are not contributing to the evil state of affairs by our silence.

Evil today is only recognised when it is obvious. When it incorporates violence or hatred. But evil is basically that which works against good, and good is spiritual. It is what leads to higher spiritual awareness. Evil, therefore, is that which works against proper spiritual awareness. By that definition, we live in a very evil world and much that is thought of as good is actually evil. Many people who believe they are working for good are really on the side of evil. This includes all sorts of people involved in movements for social and political change.  Naturally such people would completely reject this interpretation of their actions and beliefs, but that is because they lack any real spiritual understanding which means any understanding of what the world is, what the human being is and what life is for. And often, it has to be said, they lack this understanding because of personal failings within themselves. For if you truly sense the good, you must acknowledge the source of this good which has to be God. These people are clearly not bad people outwardly and in the eyes of the world but they certainly lack the understanding of real goodness, and that is because they are not good people. Like calls to like. This is a hard saying but a little reflection will confirm that it must be so.

Christ said that his kingdom was not of this world. Those who would follow Christ must remember this and seek the real good beyond this world. But when that is understood and lived then the real good must inevitably percolate back into this world and start to change it from within. It is a matter of priorities, though. You will never make this world better by trying to do so from within its own frame of reference. It can only ever become better when a higher frame of reference, the spiritual, is brought to bear. Work on the spiritual and the material will improve, but the material will never genuinely improve when change is brought about on its own level whatever that change might be. This is because the evil that corrupts it comes from inverting reality and seeing the world as valid in its own right. "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all things will be added to you" also means that if you ignore the kingdom of heaven nothing you do will lead to any good.


Note:  When I say the material will improve I obviously don't mean it will improve materially, though it might, but it will improve as an environment in which souls may flourish and develop which is the important thing. 

What Is Good?

Anything that contributes towards spiritual awakening and salvation. By this definition many things that are called good are not and some that are thought of as bad are, in fact, good. What is good is what is good in the long term (the term of eternity, you might even say) and from the perspective of spiritual advancement. What is not good is what obscures spiritual intelligence and the awakening of the soul.

Looking at the matter in this way shows that a culture that rejects transcendence, as ours does, has rejected goodness and is therefore bad. But obviously we can't admit to this so we invent a false goodness and condemn those who don't abide by the new rules. This has the dual effect of, on the one hand, corrupting the weakly spiritual whose inner connection to the soul is feebler than their obedience to outer authority, as in society's conventions, and, on the other, leading people away from true goodness into a flattened down version that relates only to the fulfilment of human beings as they appear to be in this world.

Good and bad can only be understood in a spiritual context and in relation to the higher world. To be sure, you can have subsidiary good relating to this world but if that conflicts with the higher good it then becomes evil. That was the lesson that Judas failed to learn when he criticised the woman who anointed Jesus's feet with oil. Just like us he was putting material goodness above spiritual. Just like us he failed to understand what is good.

What is good? It may challenge our preconceptions of goodness. It may reject our hopes and confirm our fears. It may include pain and suffering. It is what leads to joy rather than happiness.