The current situation in Britain is extremely bad - one measure of which is that this statement of fact would be regarded as extreme and unrealistic by most Britons.
Yet it seems that many or most people are self-damned, since they regard their own lives as meaningless and purposeless - and their role in Life as merely to feel good about themselves in the short term until their consciousness is utterly extinguished by inevitable death.
This is because the mass of modern people are fully secular, materialistic and hedonic in outlook. And this world-view is propagated and enforced 24/7 by the official public discourse - in politics, law, officialdom, education, the police and military, science and the arts and - above all - the mass media (to which so many are addictively enslaved).
But how can such a situation be explained if it is accepted that we (each, personally) were deliberately placed in this dire time and desperate spiritual circumstance by God? How does this fit with the intended divine destiny for the people of Britain?
My understanding is that it does make sense - but as a Plan B.
Plan A was that we, the first industrialised people in the history of the world - and starting around 1800 - were supposed-to experience in the most complete way the sense of complete self-consciousness in isolation from the world - we were supposed-to go-fully-into the situation where we doubt God and doubt our-very selves...
And we did.
But then we were supposed-to touch rock bottom and experience utter alienation - recognise and know from inside its unviability; and then to move-through this state (or bounce-off it); to come out of the other side, and to move to ever higher levels of divine faith, spiritual awareness and conscious engagement with the whole of created reality.
Our experience of modernity was intended to be a transitional phase, analogous to adolescence, after which we would grow-up. That was Plan A.
Instead we - as a culture - made a different choice refused to grow-up, and stayed permanently a the phase of adolescent alienation, angst, self-doubting self-consciousness, solipsism, and perpetual rebellion against God.
Since we refused Plan A, after a suitable period to make sure; Britain moved to Plan B - which was to allow us to take the consequences of the national decision to reject all spiritual realities, including God.
So - Plan B is that we be allowed to experience the fullest extremity of a secular and unspiritual life - a life in which human consciousness is cut-off from meaning, purpose and and real relationship with other people and our environment - for us to live in a world that is (because we choose to regard it so) dead, accidental, arbitrary and utterly pointless.
The people alive today, you and I included, are those for whom such an extremity, such an absurdity, is necessary for us to learn. The consequences of a materialist life without God are there for all to see, impinging in the most aggressive way on every person's life, growing more extreme every decade... and this is a situation in which eventually even such foolish and self-deluded people as myself can eventually be brought to his senses.
Anything less extreme, sustained and absurd would probably not have been enough to snap me out of my false metaphysical assumptions - and I am not the only one. Indeed it is clear that even our present unprecedented level of insanity is not enough for most people yet to recognise.
From a Christian understanding; we can never be compelled to accept God, and God would not wish to compel us even if he could. Therefore, God so arranges things to make 'life' most conducive to our learning from experience, seeing things most clearly, and making the right choices (especially un-making our earlier wrong choices, which now trap us).
You and I are among those spirits whose obtuseness was judged to be most extreme; who required the simplest, starkest and most extreme lessons from life; because we would not learn from gentler and more complex education.
(Of course, some among us are not of the desperately pig-headed and complacently stupid type as myself - the type that this modern world is 'designed' to teach. These are instead meant to be our teachers, guides, and Good examples.)
That - broadly - is what I think is currently going-on.
It is crude and it is not ideal. It was not Plan A; but instead is a second chance, a Plan B for modern Man who refused Plan A.
Life as it is now is our responsibility; but the situation is allowed by God for our own ultimate good - because modern officially-sanctioned and encouraged and implemented British life may sufficiently 'rub our noses' in the consequences of our own collective choices, that eventually at least some of us will stop denying, pretending, and lying - and instead smell what is really there.
Even someone as stubbornly, self-destructively idiotic as myself.
So most people alive today are spiritual refuseniks? That does make a certain kind of sense since we (as in those born post WW2) really do seem to be worse than any previous generation. But I think you have to add into the mix the fact that demonic activity seems to be more powerful than before so we have a situation in which outer evil predominates and inner lack of goodness is at an all time high. No wonder the world(and surely it's the world not just Britain) is in such a state.
ReplyDeleteBut I think you're right in that Britain could have led the way up but refused her destiny. That's a heavy responsibility and a serious failure but God is merciful and I hope it's never too late to turn around and redeem the situation.
@William - " you have to add into the mix the fact that demonic activity seems to be more powerful than before" -- Indeed, although ultimately these demons needed to be invited-in; so at bottom it is the fault of humans.
ReplyDeleteAnd on the 'plus side' the demonic activity is (or 'ought to be') obvious from the inversions-of-good which are all around us, and indeed imposed upon us.
The fact that despite such obviousness we are mostly *still* incapable of perceiving the nature of things, does suggest we are a particularly difficult cohort.
The stangeness about our current situation is that in the past the problem was mostly that humans are weak - nowadays, we are strong, stubborn and apparently *determined* NOT to perceive common sense, experienced reality.