What is wrong with (real) Christians?

It would be better - indeed it is ultimately necessary - that people become real Christians; but in the modern world, nearly real Christians are fundamentally (i.e. deeply) terribly deficient and defective.

And I am not talking about failing to live-up to ideals of Christian morality - I mean that their whole way of thinking and being is anti-Christian, contradicts Christianity.

In sum, modern Christians believe as Christians, but think as materialist atheists.


Indeed, much of the problem is exactly this disconnection between believing and thinking - Christians 'believe' all sorts of things - but their actual living at the level of thinking is all-but unaffected by those beliefs. I don't just mean that Christian thinking fails to match up to Christian beliefs, but that their beliefs don't affect their thinking At All.

The awareness of this problem is typically unarticulated - the grumbling unease and dissatisfaction that Christians feel about not becoming a New Person; the way that the world around and other people seem unreal and meaningless - a mere shadow play. Their inability to know what is really going-on, and what they ought to do about it...


Leftism

Why are so many modern Christians Leftists?

Many are quite extreme Leftists; but nearly all are adherents and supporters of mainstream politics of one sort or another, accepting the secualr ideas of what is significant and important (e.g. The News).

And all mainstream politics is Leftist (everything in public discourse, in official communications and the the mass media - including all the supposedly 'Right' wing groups and parties - all are fundamentally secular-materialist in ideology and thought-structures).

Yet Leftism is literally demonic; a systematically and strategically anti-Christian ideology - purposively destructive of The Good.

How is it that Christians cannot just see that, know that? Something is terribly wrong...


Dishonesty

Why are so many Christians so deeply dishonest in their work? And why can't they perceive this?

Modern work demands systematic dishonesty - especially at the managerial level. Surely this is obvious? - yet many Christians occupy leadership and managerial roles which they occupy because they are good-at dishonesty, and where they are dishonest for a living; and there is no sign they feel they have anything to repent.

Christians are too ready to excuse-themselves on grounds of pragmatism, and to try and distinguish in their actions between a stark made-up lie (regarded as bad) and the deniable deliberate misleading of others (regarded as part of life...) - when in fact the deniable misleading of others, often pursued through many stages and levels of organisation, is a far worse (because more calculated) sin than is making-stuff-up on the spur of the moment.

The problem, as usual, is not the sinning, but the making of excuses to oneself and others - it is the failure to repent, because the sin has been reframed as necessary, hence 'actually good' (in an inverted way)...

In sum, to be dishonest and deny it is literally to do the work of the devil - and to do it systematically and strategically. This is a measure of the extreme spiritual hazard of the dishonesty of modern Christians


Bureaucracy

The modern world is bureaucratic, and bureaucracy is death. Yet modern Christians are bureaucratic - they believe-in bureaucracy as the best and proper way to do things - from government down to the local jumble sale. Their churches are bureaucratic - everywhere and in all things is the implicit assumption is that the organisation is right, the group is right, committees are right, the vote is right... All this is obviously and profoundly anti-Christian (because Christianity is rooted in individual agency, and only individuals can be moral or know The Good) - and yet Christians cannot see it!


Nihilists

Modern Christians - even the real Christians - regard the world reductionistically, materialistically, as positivists.

Events are seen as either mechanically caused or else random - even one's own thoughts are thus seen; the world of the modern Christian is drained of meaning at the finest and most exact level of analysis. They theoretically-believe that the world is God's creation, but in their moment-by moment thoughts they regard the world just as described by 'science' (maybe sometimes externally-shaped by God).

In sum, modern Christians think as nihilists - actual-believers in nothing, deniers of the reality of the real. They do not see the world as alive and full of purpose, and they do not even want-to - they don't think this is important. They think the only thing important is what they believe, what they profess, how they live by the rules.

And the fact that everything around them and within-them is - in practice - regarded as unconscious, dead and pointless is (if thought-about at all) regarded as a sign of progress in Christianity, an escape from superstition; and indeed a positive good since it avoids the deceptive and demonic hazards of 'spirituality'.


Literalism

In sum, modern real Christians are deadly-literal, superficial, fearful - and wrong.

Their literalism shows in how they regard themselves as mechanical effect; agency merely as a craving to be externally-controlled and compelled by rules, bureaucracies, drilled-in habits of behaviour. They are superficial, lack spontaneity, are phony and manipulative in their interactions - and this is because they are thinking like modern materialists while trying to live by a set of beliefs and practices that are merely stuck onto the surface of this purpose-denying, meaning-denying, life-denying set of fundamental assumptions.

Modern Christians are like crude Robots who say and do the right things - but inside are merely whirring circuits following rigid programmes. And they like that way.  Because, technically, modern real Christians are, at the deepest level, metaphysically atheist materialists; and their Christianity is a stuck-on lifestyle choice at the level of professed beliefs and sticking to the rules.


But nobody is perfect! It is, indeed, very difficult indeed Not to be a materialist atheist at the metaphysical level, in the modern world - our upbringing, our history, and present society all inculcate and enforce it.

However, it is essential that modern Christians become aware of this very serious, very important, and indeed lethal defect of their faith.

They must not ignore their own gnawing, endemic dissatisfactions at the shallowness and meaninglessness of their lives. They must notice and acknowledge their profound state of alienation and the superficiality of their beliefs and practices. The mismatch between what they profess and how they think...

Only if these facts are known can they be repented; and only if they are repented can they (even potentially) be overcome.