March 29th

My new book Remember the Creator is published today (April 1st in America). The subject of the book is summed up in the title. This is the most important thing for modern day humanity; to remember God. But on its own, it is not enough. For what sort of God are we remembering and how are we remembering him? It is a cliché to say that God invented Man in his own image and ever since Man has been returning the compliment, but such is the case. Look at modern religion of practically any type you care to mention. People pray to God, they talk of God but I venture to suggest that the God they address is often one of their own imagining, conjured up from the limited resources of their own minds and a projection of their own thoughts and desires. 

Of course, none of us really knows God. As the absolute and eternal, he is beyond us all. But there really is a difference between those who intuit something of his reality because they have begun to open themselves up to what is beyond themselves, the truth of the transcendent, and those who may believe in something but do so from within the context of their own minds. It's like an enclosed circle and one in which there is a little break or opening so that the light outside begins to seep in. We in the West can see the mental conception of God quite clearly in Islam but it appears just as much in many contemporary Christian churches where God has been reduced to something like the head of a social services bureau, a non-judgemental figure preoccupied with egalitarianism and universal friendliness rather than the Maker of Heaven and Earth who hates sin but whose love touches like a blazing fire that burns without hurt. Make sure that the God you remember is the fullest expression you can conceive of Goodness, Beauty and Truth, and try to understand him in spiritual not worldly terms. Accept no lesser substitutes.

This is also the day that the UK was supposed to have left the European Union and regained its economic and political independence, turning back towards its true mission in the world. For, cutting through all the obfuscation and waffle, that is what this is all actually about. However, the bullying potentates of the EU and the craven incompetents of the British Government have put an at least temporary stop to that. Not to mention the behind the scenes manipulations of civil servants and bureaucrats whose arrogance is only matched by their complacency. 

Hard words, I know, and I'm not saying these are all bad people. Doubtless many mean well according to their conception of things. But they see everything in terms of this world (even the religious among them - apparently most of the clergy and all the bishops in the Church of England want Britain to remain in the EU), and they have no spiritual insight or vision, substituting for that a belief in progress on the worldly level. One must hope that their actions will make an increasing number of people realise how completely untrustworthy the political class and technocratic elites are. May they consequently turn to deeper ways of engaging with the problems of life. As the outer world descends further into illusion, remembering the Creator becomes more vital by the day.