Part of being Christian is that one is to work in this world to better it. Feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, healing the sick, casting out demons. Doing God's will on Earth as it is in Heaven.
The pit trap of New-Age spiritual paths is that they draw the person, the Mage, into oneself disengaging from the world outside. The world outside is scary, ugly, disenchanted, and unimaginative. This is not due because early Christianity drove out the enchantment of creation from the Pagans that enchant it. It is because we have evolved enough culturally and technologically that we can witness all the ugly as never before. Yes partly because the industrial revolution gave us the ability to communicate ever more rapidly and provided increasingly complex and effective tools of destruction. But nothing about human behavior has changed in the past several millennia. At least not in the respect that we do each other ill. The natural world holds less mystery than it used to, our perspective has been a bit sterilized by science. While science correctly explains the processes of nature it neglects the why behind it all, the drive behind life.
Personal magic's goal, if it has any goal at all, is to re-enchant this world. A fruitless goal because it is still quite enchanted, the Mage has just lost the ability or willingness to see it. For some reason the esoteric explorations of the occult were reborn during the age of enlightenment, and science was used as a club against the influence of Christianity. Why would science favor one religious, existential, or supernatural connection over another? Politics. Progressivism adopted the same approach to society as Christianity, that we would work for a better future, only we'd achieve it without God or some other mysterious supernatural being. We'd achieve it through progress, the progress of culture and improvements in governing. We are in our fourth century since this change, since the powerful have traded their faith for progressive ideals, shifting their trust from a path of humility, forgiveness, generosity, and love to a path of self-love. We are no better off. I think this is because the progressive ideals encourage it's adherents to serve themselves first before others. While we best serve others when our needs are met, this idea goes further to the point that we are never fully satisfied in serving ourselves or achieving our goals, and our competitive capitalist nature reinforces the practice of setting new, more aggressive goals each time we accomplish an existing one. This cycle is never ending. It is madness, a path of madness for those that follow it will never be satisfied. They will be driven harder and harder to progress in their pursuit of social-progressive perfection, achieving all that they can be, as defined by a set of ideals born from an environment of economic excess and comfort.
If history and psychology can tell us one thing it is that there can be no utopia if such a development depends solely on humankind. Humankind in its diversity will never come together under one philosophy, at least one that come from humanity. Such a set of ideals would have to ring true to all people, less some people oppress others, instead it would have to come from a higher intellect and convey such truth as to be undeniable by all. Perhaps this is a truth of the afterlife, heaven. The truth of all things being made known would eliminate any cause to dissent.
New Age paths of spirituality and progressive ideals share the common ground of inward-ness, the pitch is that you must serve yourself or develop yourself before you can serve others. But where does that end? The famous self-improvement guru makes a promise to show you how to be the most you can be, to be a better human, which will as a secondary effect help better humanity. This allows us to forgive ourselves of our selfishness, the Toyota Prius of social redemption... patting ourselves on our backs. Looking into a mirror, reaffirming, "You are good.", but we never get past this on such a path.
There is another way. The Way. A path that is not hollowed-out but has been the subject of a smear-campaign that goes back to the time of Thomas Jefferson and before. The Apostle Paul tells us that effectively, faith is the reward for faith. Believing that Jesus is the King of a new creation is the first step, not the ultimate goal (a mistake I have often made). Through faith in Christ Jesus and learning all that He taught, we are transformed. We learn that our old-selfish behaviors are not but ash and that our mindless consumption of earthly things do nothing to fill our souls but instead perpetuate more spiritually destructive behavior. This transformation has us looking at the world differently, then behaving differently. When we have doubts, and we will, someone will come along (and they will!) and want to know why you are doing all these good works, what has changed your life as to be so selfless? And your response will be to question what on Earth they are talking about, that you are flawed, and selfish, and that you get grumpy with people and perhaps impatient. Then it will hit you: while you still think that you can do more, do better, no self-help guru or shallow spirituality of The Self would have ever transformed you thus. That the "all-you-could-be" of before is, in a sense, a shadow of what you already are. And you will see that your life is filled with Joy, despite the moments of impatience, frustration, and doubt that the Light or Christ shines brightly in your world and that not only have you been transformed by Christ but that through you Christ is changing the world.
Some progressives will claim that Christianity is a sword of division that makes one group hate another, that Christianity is not inclusive, that it is full of judgement against people. If this is what you think then go read the Gospel of Luke, purchase a study guide like N.T. Wright's Luke for Everyone contemplate the meaning of this Gospel and then re-assess what you think Christians are called to do and be with regard to judgement and inclusivity.
6/23/2017
An argument that I hear often from atheists is 'how can you believe that the creation story is what actually happened?"
I usually reply with the question, "Which creation story do you mean?" There are two creation stories in Genesis. The seven-day account of the creation of the cosmos, which if you read metaphorically as a poetic account of the cosmic event in language that lacked the terminology of physics only asserts that our universe is here by intention and not by accident. Then there is the Garden of Eden creation story, again if we read this metaphorically and not as a literal historical account then we get past our scientific minds rejecting the details and we can understand the symbolic truths the story teaches. It is also important to note that this was a story that Hebrews (Abraham) inherited from an older Mesopotamian myth. I always look at this story as an account to explain why humanity is different from the rest of the animal kingdom, a tale of how we were given knowledge and conscience. In the older Sumerian account the serpent was a benevolent celestial being that gave humanity the gifts of knowledge, gifts such as cultivating crops, architecture, metallurgy, and others. In Abraham's vision he was instructed to be faithful to the one God. It makes sense that Abraham or one of his descendants would revise this story, in their minds correcting it, and adding in the lessons of free will, choice, and therefore faith.
Faith is the operator of free will. Let's say that God showed up every day and proved his existence to the whole world. Who would choose to disbelieve the evidence? No one, there would be no choice, and thus no free will. Instead God gives us little glimpses, ones that we could be tempted to explain away, he gives us prophets that speak truth to word and then leaves it to us to decide. You see, therefore faith is an act of free will. I think that this subject is the root of the documented decline in faith, we have become evidence-driven skeptics who have faith in nothing... except evidence. But if God provided unequivocal evidence to the world, faith would not be required, we would know. Choice would be eliminated, free will would be eliminated and our species would regress in it's pursuit of knowledge. So, you see, these creation stories give us quite a bit that isn't 'History', and we didn't even touch on temptation nor stewardship of creation.
The pit trap of New-Age spiritual paths is that they draw the person, the Mage, into oneself disengaging from the world outside. The world outside is scary, ugly, disenchanted, and unimaginative. This is not due because early Christianity drove out the enchantment of creation from the Pagans that enchant it. It is because we have evolved enough culturally and technologically that we can witness all the ugly as never before. Yes partly because the industrial revolution gave us the ability to communicate ever more rapidly and provided increasingly complex and effective tools of destruction. But nothing about human behavior has changed in the past several millennia. At least not in the respect that we do each other ill. The natural world holds less mystery than it used to, our perspective has been a bit sterilized by science. While science correctly explains the processes of nature it neglects the why behind it all, the drive behind life.
Personal magic's goal, if it has any goal at all, is to re-enchant this world. A fruitless goal because it is still quite enchanted, the Mage has just lost the ability or willingness to see it. For some reason the esoteric explorations of the occult were reborn during the age of enlightenment, and science was used as a club against the influence of Christianity. Why would science favor one religious, existential, or supernatural connection over another? Politics. Progressivism adopted the same approach to society as Christianity, that we would work for a better future, only we'd achieve it without God or some other mysterious supernatural being. We'd achieve it through progress, the progress of culture and improvements in governing. We are in our fourth century since this change, since the powerful have traded their faith for progressive ideals, shifting their trust from a path of humility, forgiveness, generosity, and love to a path of self-love. We are no better off. I think this is because the progressive ideals encourage it's adherents to serve themselves first before others. While we best serve others when our needs are met, this idea goes further to the point that we are never fully satisfied in serving ourselves or achieving our goals, and our competitive capitalist nature reinforces the practice of setting new, more aggressive goals each time we accomplish an existing one. This cycle is never ending. It is madness, a path of madness for those that follow it will never be satisfied. They will be driven harder and harder to progress in their pursuit of social-progressive perfection, achieving all that they can be, as defined by a set of ideals born from an environment of economic excess and comfort.
If history and psychology can tell us one thing it is that there can be no utopia if such a development depends solely on humankind. Humankind in its diversity will never come together under one philosophy, at least one that come from humanity. Such a set of ideals would have to ring true to all people, less some people oppress others, instead it would have to come from a higher intellect and convey such truth as to be undeniable by all. Perhaps this is a truth of the afterlife, heaven. The truth of all things being made known would eliminate any cause to dissent.
New Age paths of spirituality and progressive ideals share the common ground of inward-ness, the pitch is that you must serve yourself or develop yourself before you can serve others. But where does that end? The famous self-improvement guru makes a promise to show you how to be the most you can be, to be a better human, which will as a secondary effect help better humanity. This allows us to forgive ourselves of our selfishness, the Toyota Prius of social redemption... patting ourselves on our backs. Looking into a mirror, reaffirming, "You are good.", but we never get past this on such a path.
There is another way. The Way. A path that is not hollowed-out but has been the subject of a smear-campaign that goes back to the time of Thomas Jefferson and before. The Apostle Paul tells us that effectively, faith is the reward for faith. Believing that Jesus is the King of a new creation is the first step, not the ultimate goal (a mistake I have often made). Through faith in Christ Jesus and learning all that He taught, we are transformed. We learn that our old-selfish behaviors are not but ash and that our mindless consumption of earthly things do nothing to fill our souls but instead perpetuate more spiritually destructive behavior. This transformation has us looking at the world differently, then behaving differently. When we have doubts, and we will, someone will come along (and they will!) and want to know why you are doing all these good works, what has changed your life as to be so selfless? And your response will be to question what on Earth they are talking about, that you are flawed, and selfish, and that you get grumpy with people and perhaps impatient. Then it will hit you: while you still think that you can do more, do better, no self-help guru or shallow spirituality of The Self would have ever transformed you thus. That the "all-you-could-be" of before is, in a sense, a shadow of what you already are. And you will see that your life is filled with Joy, despite the moments of impatience, frustration, and doubt that the Light or Christ shines brightly in your world and that not only have you been transformed by Christ but that through you Christ is changing the world.
Some progressives will claim that Christianity is a sword of division that makes one group hate another, that Christianity is not inclusive, that it is full of judgement against people. If this is what you think then go read the Gospel of Luke, purchase a study guide like N.T. Wright's Luke for Everyone contemplate the meaning of this Gospel and then re-assess what you think Christians are called to do and be with regard to judgement and inclusivity.
6/23/2017
An argument that I hear often from atheists is 'how can you believe that the creation story is what actually happened?"
I usually reply with the question, "Which creation story do you mean?" There are two creation stories in Genesis. The seven-day account of the creation of the cosmos, which if you read metaphorically as a poetic account of the cosmic event in language that lacked the terminology of physics only asserts that our universe is here by intention and not by accident. Then there is the Garden of Eden creation story, again if we read this metaphorically and not as a literal historical account then we get past our scientific minds rejecting the details and we can understand the symbolic truths the story teaches. It is also important to note that this was a story that Hebrews (Abraham) inherited from an older Mesopotamian myth. I always look at this story as an account to explain why humanity is different from the rest of the animal kingdom, a tale of how we were given knowledge and conscience. In the older Sumerian account the serpent was a benevolent celestial being that gave humanity the gifts of knowledge, gifts such as cultivating crops, architecture, metallurgy, and others. In Abraham's vision he was instructed to be faithful to the one God. It makes sense that Abraham or one of his descendants would revise this story, in their minds correcting it, and adding in the lessons of free will, choice, and therefore faith.
Faith is the operator of free will. Let's say that God showed up every day and proved his existence to the whole world. Who would choose to disbelieve the evidence? No one, there would be no choice, and thus no free will. Instead God gives us little glimpses, ones that we could be tempted to explain away, he gives us prophets that speak truth to word and then leaves it to us to decide. You see, therefore faith is an act of free will. I think that this subject is the root of the documented decline in faith, we have become evidence-driven skeptics who have faith in nothing... except evidence. But if God provided unequivocal evidence to the world, faith would not be required, we would know. Choice would be eliminated, free will would be eliminated and our species would regress in it's pursuit of knowledge. So, you see, these creation stories give us quite a bit that isn't 'History', and we didn't even touch on temptation nor stewardship of creation.
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