Shadows and wind over the landscape

If all the noise and nonsense that goes on among Christians on the internet seems empty and ridiculous and makes you think: what is the point, who here has a vision of eternity and death and sanctification and glorification and etc.?

What is going on is the particular emotional and intellectual things triggered by being in the mix of religion in general.

Yet, underneath it all (all the noise and nonsense) when a person is called and regenerated that is the main thing. That is a threshold that can't be fallen back through. Individuals are being called out of the world and into the Kingdom. They may not understand it all to the degree a person who buries themselves in theology and the Bible might, but that's not necessary.

There IS a spiritual war that takes place too, and that gets mixed in with it all (stoking the emotional fires and misfires and indulging in lower, pleasurable contention and debate and accusing and what not), but it is often real and necessary nevertheless.

Defending the pure and whole Word of God is necessary, for instance.

But the main thing is regeneration and the slow and steady developing of understanding and of faith. It goes on. And it goes on in time in ways we can't perceive. Recurrence, or living time. People who may not be called now may be in another part of their time. That kind of thing. Your own calling may play a role in that, by you somehow influencing others in your time, maybe not even directly, but in some way.

(Consult Tertullian on 'recurrence.' It's just a way to say that God can act in time in a way we can't perceive, because God is in eternity and above the linear, birth-to-death time of individuals. The Holy Spirit can apply regeneration to an individual at any point in the linear birth-to-death timeline of that individual's life. We can't see how that can be, yet with God all things are possible. God acts from eternity. This is not an argument for univeralism or second chance-ism, though I know some pugilists will insist it is, so be it. It's not the main point of this post.)

The main thing here is there's a simplicity to the faith that can be recovered. And built on. And the noise and nonsense isn't as destructive as it seems. It's just shadows and wind over the landscape. Christians are often looking for a worldly conformity (of church polity or ritual or whatever) which isn't the faith. The Kingdom of God exists foundationally here and now and is universal and the same for all who are called and regenerated into it. The noise and nonsense doesn't effect it...