Notes...
(Pssst... Yes, I know the comment thread below is written by one hydra-headed person...)
I havn't advertised this blog, thus the readership population is not Manhattan-esque...
What I write here - and will write - is very depressing to the mainstream level of Christianity. See this extract from a post below:
By the way: one of the strengths the devil has over his prisoners is once you start to awaken you are confronted with the reality of being in the devil's prison and that is a depressing, usually always an almost overwhelmingly depressing, realization; so the natural reaction is to go back asleep to it all. Many people experience this reaction when just being presented with anything Christian (the Bible, theology, etc.). It gives them black thoughts and depression and they want to get away from it. Even most committed Christians only go so far and have to medicate with their favorite worldly pastimes, so they never really awaken to the prison they are in.
The Christian blogosphere is a remarkably shallow domain. Endless small talk to the hospice. Endless laying of the foundation over and over to the hospice. Endless vain displays of philosophy and theory to the hospice. The practical level of the faith is nigh nonexistent and quickly repudiated when it makes any kind of rare appearance...
Liberal Christians and orthodox Christians have one unfortunate thing in common: the higher influences that form the foundation of one's necessary worldly understanding in life - history, imaginative literature, philosophy, art, music, science, religion - aren't contained in television shows, movies, video games, genre novels, and comic books.
8 Comments:
Have you ever read Dallas Willard?
I periodically check into the popular writers who attempt to present a more practical level of the faith, but the fact is the actual practical level exists in sources - starting with the New Testament - that are a cosmos (no pun intended) removed from the popular realm.
You have to get it from the New Testament. Even teachings such as are found in the Philokalia remain at the theoretically level mostly. Most all mystical works as well. Whatever tradition, Protesant, RC, Eastern Orthodox.
The New Testament contains the practical level (hardcore, real practical level); you just have to get to where you can see it.
"you just have to get to where you can see it."
Right. I mean, do you really think the kings language is how most people will see it? Let's say we had the original autographia, all of it, in the original language, pure, unadulatarated, would that solve all the problems?
I don't think so. Unless the Holy Spirit is flaming hot with inspiration we are helpless in understanding special revelation.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting we abandon special revelation just that we humbly approach it understanding it's all "greek" without the Holy Spirit.
Personally, I believe that God does not provide the original autorgaphia just to keep us humble, or at least it should.
We have no disagreement on the role and necessity of the Holy Spirit in understanding Scripture (including the practical level).
I assume regeneration in the audience when I write, and, prior to that I hit on the subject of the need to read the Bible (etc., etc., look at the majority of my posts on this blog below) as the means of getting that foundation.
What I'm talking about is really not that esoteric at all, it's merely practical, and it requires actual, real time effort.
Stopping yourself in your tracks and saying: "Wait a minute, what am I actually doing here? Day in day out the same shallow nonsense. I'm drifting. What - at the practical, doing level - does the Bible tell me to do?
It's when you get to that point that you begin to be led into understanding of the practical level. I can only write it out some and provide some potential shocks to help potential awakening...
" Day in day out the same shallow nonsense. I'm drifting."
As the great prophet Bob Dylan once sang, "Most people don't live or die, most people just float".
"I ... write [to] provide some potential shocks to help potential awakening..."
In another words, you're hoping that God uses you as a means in which others may be directed toward a more godly life. And even if your writing is cosmos removed from other sources writing on the same subject God can still use you as a means to accomplish His ends. correct?
Let me restate why I write: there really is mostly self-interest. Currently I'm writing in a manner where I'm forcing myself to use only biblical language to articulate ideas, practices, and goals that can be better defined and explained using other language (and let me remind anybody reading this: theology and theologians use extra-biblical language, so the standard I'm setting myself is hardly the norm).
The practical level really has to be found on one's own though.
You want to know the real reason I'm here? I just ended a rather long cycle (six years almost) of writing and interacting on this subject of the practical level of the faith, and that has come to a natural end (if kept up it turns into mere talk for talk sake), so I'm in sort of withdrawal. Nobody who knows me from that realm knows of any of my Christian blogosphere blogs. I've been trying to see just how much I can communicate with the mainstream Christian level (as opposed to the more rarified enivironment of the practical Christian level) regaring the language of the ideas, and practices of the practical level. To do that I have to be strict and use only biblical language. This is a discipline that isn't empty. It's worth doing.
The problem is the mainstream level of Christianity has no valuation for the practical level, so that aspect of what I'm doing - talking to people with no interest in the subject I'm talking about - is empty.
When I say, by the way, I give shocks I don't see that as God using me. I don't even think like that. (I.e. I don't think in terms of God using me to do this or that or whatever.) I just puts words down and interact, etc...
Yes, I am rather disappointed in the level of dulness and lack of just even worldly understanding (including understanding of themselves) of mainstream Christians in general. I discovered this, or first encountered it, a few years back, and it is still a striking fact to me.
I at first thought it was a normal situation because, afterall, mainstream Christians are more in the world, by definition, than out of it. They turn the notion of 'church' into 'family' and 'mother' and 'cub scout outing' and 'children' and... They make sacred worldly things, and live in a real sort of dazed existence, maintaining a sharp lookout for 'dangerous outsiders'. Quick to attack the 'dangerous outsiders' who when not being actual dangerous criminals tend to be actual elect of God Christians.
So you say, "yeah, 'church Christians'"... You tend to not expect too much from mainstream Christians.
But after awhile I began to think: why go easy on them? It's actually not normal for Christians to be this dull and asleep and antagonistic to higher influences, the only things that can shock them out of their daze.
I'm a Christian, so why am I different from them?
The answer is: because I fear only God and not man. (Check the description above of this blog.) This is really the central fact that separates the dead, duped, prisoners of the devil from the regenerated elect of God. The elect of God have no fear of man. The church level preaches nothing but the fear of man, and demands nothing but the fear of man.
"The Christian blogosphere is a remarkably shallow domain."
It can be. It can also be full of the ridiculous rantings of a psychopath... see http://electofgod.blogspot.com for a good example.
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