Disease at the Root

Why is the modern world so diseased - so suicidal?

The root is purpose in life. Justification - that is, why one exists. Traditionally, families would affirm their striving towards the good. That is, towards towards God. This imbued individuals and countries with purpose.

Now though, the modern world believes in no so such thing. It is a zombie, aimless, just consuming while decaying. It knows its own fraud and disease and its attempts at survival are mere minimum. There is no reaching towards Heaven, for they can never acknowledge its existence.

Declining birthrates, population replacement, etc. - symptoms of the disease at the root.

The Family

In our investigation into the nature of reality and God, much seems to rest on the simplest things. Specifically, the family appears to be central to our understanding. That is, every aspect is reflective of both the message of Christ and our relationship with God.

As children, our hope, fears, and faith our placed on parents. The same is our relationship with God throughout our entire lives. As a parent, we ideally exercise personal live towards our children - interest in their development and progress towards adults. It appears God's relationship to us is similar.

The ideal family relationship is often reflected in exercising unselfish love towards one another. This often expands to our extended family, whom are naturally the first we look for with assistance in times of trouble.

Christianity as a whole has always propagated this idea, though it is especially emphasized in Mormon theology.

Familial love, children, marital partnership - these essential aspects of our humanity and understanding Christ and our relationship with God.

Of course, these same things are specifically undermined in the modern world. It seems, top down, to be an attempt to subvert this archetype of our relationship with God. The sexual revolution undermines the unique and sacred marital relationship, and specifically its supernatural and material link to children. The "right" to separate this role from the creation of children, and more specifically the right to murder undesired children. The easy with which one can separate the scared marital union. Finally, of course, of late is the undermining of marriage itself. The corruption and mocking of its meaning and attack on the reality of gender itself. The delaying of children, the subversion of this most important role for women.

It is, not only the archetype of our relationship with God, but of course it is the most important thing to man himself - by extension community, ethnicity, country. That is, so goes family so goes man.

To step away from the cynicism and evil of this is to celebrate God and most important. That is, to make family the most important thing next to God. To embrace it, to make it a priority.

What churches are emphasizing this? What churches are celebrating it in its proper role as the most important thing? Who dares to stand for God in the face of rampant subversion and evil?

That is no exaggeration, for man himself is nought without our familial relations to one another and God Himself.

Human Folly

Folly is an inseparable aspect of humanity. It is essentially linked to self interest. Every generation, many people fall victim to frauds - that is, to other's self interest - in the pursuit of their own.

The idea that there is something new under the sun appears to be mostly linked to the ignorance of youth. Hopefully people learn while there is less to lose.

The modern world, in general, believes religion constitutes a vast fraud. There are, of course, innumerable instances of individuals perpetuating fraud via religion to support this conclusion.

Yet religion persists, in one way or another. In general, the world still has faith in science and its products. There are, of course, specific instances to support this idea, but the faith is a broad acceptance.

We all, especially in our moments of weakness, desire parental assistance. That is, a believable source of truth and something we can believe in - our own intellect, of course, limited. So at one time this was dominated by God, but now it is dominated by systems and bureaucracy. That is, the government, the medical industry, the media complex, etc.

Traditionally, religions emphasize obedience in the face of this Human Folly. This is a parental quality: you may not understand why running in the street is dangerous, and until you are old enough, you must obey.

Of course, we always think we're old enough sooner than we are.

So how does one know? That is, in the face of massive deceit, ignorance, self delusion, and perpetual human error - how is one to know?

I think Bruce Charlton has elaborated a foundation, and it is the core of Christianity. We must recognize the above situation, but still try our best. This life, as a whole, is situated as to provide us with the possibility of spiritual progress. We must, indeed, try our best - and to always be ready to repent our errors.

That is, it really is about personal choice. Especially perhaps in our particularly modern circumstances. Where many of us don't have the option of simple obedience - or even where those whom we should simply obey appear to have lost their way - we must make the active and personal choice to believe in God instead of meaningless. We much take each step, though difficult, and expect personal error and folly.

Repentance and Justice

"Love your enemies" is a very difficult command. However, seeking a universal-level understanding of sin and repentance, this becomes easier.

We are sometimes admonished as children to put ourselves in others shoes, so as to avoid victimizing others. Perhaps we can do so though too with our enemies.

Justice calls for repentance of sins, either in this life, or perhaps by God's grace after death. Church teaching suggests to do so after death is very difficult, perhaps impossible.

So we can assume a sinner, or our enemy, has three possibilities:

1. Truly repent in this life for the evil they have done.
2. Perhaps, by God's grace, repent after death.
3. Allow their sin to eternally separate themselves from God, and suffer for it.

The first option means to face suffering and regret in this life, and perhaps after death in purgatory. Justice would presume the second would also entail suffering after death, and is far more difficult to do. The third is, of course, a horrible outcome.

Now, thinking of your enemy, you know their sin and injustice of course entails suffering. We should not feel happiness at this, but sympathy - for you and I are also sinners who must face the same struggle with our own sins and some degree of suffering as a result of those sins.

Many of our enemies, being not Christian and denying God, face a far more difficult road than ours to repentance. They cringe or chafe under the thought of our love of God for them. This being though the very reason for greater sympathy, and prayer for them on our behalf.

God, out of personal love for each, desires us to all repent and seek His love and forgiveness.

Distorting Good

A modern theme of action is to take a Christian or natural moral virtue and distort or alter it for the purposes of evil.

Such as charity, which is to mean a Christian and explicitly spiritual love - wherein material actions are subsumed and of consequent, but not purpose. We have inverted this cross by replacing the objective, God, with an insatiable array of strictly material objectives so that this virtue becomes sin.

That is, by modern standards it is considered "wrong" for any person to have any material desire not being actively met. For any person to ever feel any hunger now is a great injustice which must be combated by all means available, while traditionally many would fast as good spiritual exercise.

Is it any wonder that 70% of Americans are overweight?

So, in the name of "charity" we give a morbidly obese person excesses of food, because they are "hungry." No orientation to a spiritual purpose is ever present, but we enable and encourage gluttony. In fact, to incorporate a spiritual purpose makes this strictly material giving wrong by modern standards!

Another example: to invert "brotherhood" such that horrible excesses of murder are to be justified in the French Revolution and a wide array of Communist governments.

This appears to be how evil always operates. Because evil goes away from God and contains nothing in itself but destruction, it is by nature limited to distorting and disfiguring good and beauty as its only means of "creation" (e.g. Tolkien's orcs or "modern art"). Evil rarely shows its face directly, but operates through distortion and lies - claiming for itself a mask of virtue to hide the rotting, diseased corpse (the popularity of plastic surgery may speak volumes on this).

Winter

Spring is approaching, but on a large scale we may see Western Civilization existing in what amounts to a long Winter.

The leftist and progressive forces of the modern world believe every day brings them closer to victory. The firewood gets used up, or sabotaged by "progress". The food stores are consumed, or purposely spoiled by the forces of the left.

"Who says you should keep the jar air-sealed? Maybe it will taste better with maggots - don't be so backwards!"

Eventually Spring will come, but will we have enough fuel and food left to survive? The task of the right and conservatives at this point amounts to protecting the preserves from internal sabotage and bandits.

Jesus Commandments as an Exercise in Free Will

"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?" - MT 5:46

To follow my previous commentary on free will, we see here a challenge posed: if you only love those who love you, what makes you better or even human? Even the lowest of the humans show their own affection, the same with animals.

So we see the common human behavior, to care only for those who care for you, as the default human action, the default animal action. The selfish choice, the modern argues, is exercising free choice. In reality, this "free choice" is the non-free choice. It only demonstrates that one has done exactly what would be expected from any number of animals.

To go above and beyond that though, to make a choice beyond what even the publicans do is breaking through beyond the basest mental state, where no thought is required, to a higher mental plane. To truly exercise free choice, to fully realize the individual by going beyond the individual, as in "he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."