Why bite the hand that feeds us?

The western societies of today, formerly known as Christendom, still have Christian ideals which have served us well. Although they are frequently not adherred to I take it as self evident that it is better to have them than not.

1. Love of  friend, neighbour and enemy.

2. Charity towards the poor and the suffering regardless of religion or race.

3. Endless seeking of truth  (including scientific truth).

4. Endless progress of technology (largely through application of scientific truth).

Some other parts of the world are adopting them and their societies are advancing accordingly in quality and security of life. They are crucial to who we are. From where do they originate and gain sustenance? From belief in the risen Jesus Christ.

1 and 2 were directly commanded by Christ and have transformed pagan societies into the relatively benevolent ones of today. Because they were propagated in the belief of their supernatural divine origin and universality they were taken seriously in all manner of situations ranging from peace to war.

3 and 4 stem from two aspects of the image of God in whom we are made and in whom we are sanctified through Christ. God is the source of divine truth and creativity in all the monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism). In Christianity the truthfulness and creativity are sanctified in man through Jesus Christ.

Today there is a widespread hypocritical, self-righteous streak in the secular west. There is a constant judgement of the Christian churches by humanists and materialists: there seems to be a concerted attack on the misdemeanours of priests going back decades and centuries, presumably with the aim of discrediting the church and undermining the message previously preached.

Yet by what godless standard are these judgements made? Why are the misdemeanours actually ‘wrong’? Why are they not mere evolutionary accidents, no more meaningfully regarded as wrong than are products of chance?

No moral imperatives, no promises or standards of behaviour can be asserted unless backed by the belief in the sacred. Humanists and philosophical materialists have to make arbitrary laws. Even the assertion that man is sacred comes from man himself, a bag of chemicals, and so carries no real weight.

The churches they attack were born out of the early followers and apostles and spread the the way of Christ throughout the world over 2000 years by a painful, untidy process. Given the fallen nature of man this is what one would expect in institutions of millions of people. Western society has been fed through the hand of god with Christian values by working through the churches.

Now humanists and atheists make moral judgements of churches while removing the foundation of those judgements, i.e. God. They are breaking up the very foundations on which western civilisation rests and which were laid by the monasteries and travelling preachers through the ages, often, unfortunately, modified for expediency. 

It is vital that the churches should atone for past sins in some way to the satisfaction of all, because, if I am right, they are to serve as the salt of the earth, a divine sanctum of holiness and light in a dark and crazy world rather than compel us to live in a maze with no centre. However, to remove the divine source from which morality and truth itself  originate is to remove the right to deem any action moral or immoral.

Only believers in this divine source can meaningfully attack the clerical institutions.

The church is the hand by which society is spiritually fed. If the hand has scars we need to heal it, not bite it.

John Sears

Author, 2077 AD

Reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

The deep mystery of existence.2.Time and space

Our material cosmos was created from beyond space and time, from a greater reality where there is no time arrow, no flow of events, no past, no present, no future, and no spatial separation.

The incomprehensible reality which gave birth to our natural material world is a self existing uncaused first cause which created our existence, something totally beyond our power to detect or investigate- not only at present but at any time in the future.

Even in the universe which we inhabit there are hints of timelessness and spacelessness. At the sub-molecular level quantum physics shows that the states of quantum entangled particles (e.g. their spin states) are instantaneously connected totally independently of separation in space and time.

To be entangled the separated particles (e.g. electrons) must have originated in the same quantum system, typically an atom. The entire universe today originated in the same quantum system, one trillion trillionth the size of a hydrogen atom before expanding in just one second to the size of a galaxy and in 13.7 billion years to its present volume. If I understand the physics correctly this means that every single atomic particle in the universe in all states of matter is interacting with  atomic particles in all locations simultaneously - past, present and future, near and far. From their perspective time and space do not exist.

Each cell of each virus, bacterium, plant or animal comprises intricate, purposeful machinery at the molecular level and is likely to be instantaneously interacting with all other cells in the biosphere, as well as the rest of the universe. This includes, for example, the neurones in our brain. So the multiplicity of living systems forms an interconnected organic whole, giving the universe a teleological nature. A cosmic mind that comes from....what? Do you dare say it?


There is another respect in which timelessness invades our universe of ten billion quadrillion stars. Normally we expect to take a certain time to solve complex problems. Yet in times of crisis, such as an impending multiple car crash one is sometimes able to work out the best way to avoid death or injury in just a fraction of the time which would normally be needed, a time which seems much longer to the motorist. It is as though one has been given extra 'time' in which to work out a survival strategy.

It is common knowledge that two lovers become oblivious to the passage of time being registered by the rest of the world. A taste, foreshadowing or dim reflection of eternal life, perhaps? It is also a fact that when bored time passes slowly while when fully occupied with a challenging task or when experiencing a lot of events on holiday or engaged in an adventure we believe that a longer time has elapsed than the clock or calendar indicates. And as St. Augustine of Hippo observed the past no longer exists, the present has no duration and the future has not yet occurred.

What is measured by clocks is  a human construct useful in coordinating, planning, recording and understanding events. Similarly with space as measured with rulers or other devices. The mathematical relationships between mass, uniform velocity, space and time are given in the equations of Einstein's theory of Special Relativity, while in the General Theory acceleration and gravity are related, showing that space-time is a continuum affected by gravity.

But what the experiences associated with these concepts of space and time really amount to and why they are given to us is a total mystery.

See also


The deep mystery of existence. 1. Where does reality come from?

Our perception of reality, ancient and modern

John

Author 2077 AD

Reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Gems from The Hiding Place

In Holland during World War II and the decade leading up to it a  Christian family sheltered Jews from Nazi arrest and in consequence were themselves arrested.

 

The Hiding Place by the Dutch lady Corrie ten Boom, with co-writers John and Elizabeth Sherril, tells the story of courage in the face of evil – or rather it shows the power of God’s light to shine in the darkness. In my view the horrors of Germany in that period arose from a kind of supernatural belief in the superiority of the Teutonic race and the supernatural destiny of the German nation. Nationalism had already gained a hold in the decades leading up to World War I and this nationalism had arisen to fill a spiritual vacuum created by attacks on the Christian faith and its institutions by German writers and philosophers such as Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche.

 

Apart from the general cautionary lesson on the horrific consequences of aggressive atheism when malignant forces rush to fill the spiritual vacuum, a number of passages had a special impact.

 

After World War II finished a former prison camp guard asks Corrie ten Bloom to forgive him, as Christ commanded. She cannot bring herself to do this. He offers her his hand.

 

 ‘And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness...as I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him while into my heart a current seemed to pass from  Him while my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

 

‘And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than our goodness that the world’s healing hinges but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself.’

 

Earlier in the book she and her sister were holding an underground multi-denominational service in Barrack 28 which, incredibly, no-one stopped. 'Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Eastern Orthodox took part together. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings below the light bulb. I would think of Haarlem (the town in Holland where her family had sheltered Jews), each substantial church set behind its wrought-iron fence and its barrier of doctrine. And I would know again that in darkness God’s truth shines most clear.’

 

A few pages before she had obtained a Bible which she hid in a small bag. ‘Sometimes I would slip the Bible from its little sack with hands that shook, so mysterious had it become to me. It was new, it had just been written. I marvelled sometimes that the ink was dry. I had believed the Bible always, but reading it now had nothing to do with belief. It was simply a description of the way things were – of hell and heaven, of how men act and how God acts. I had read a thousand times the story of Jesus’ arrest – how soldiers slapped Him, laughed at Him, flogged Him. Now such happenings had faces and voices.’

 

In the years before the war there is a chilling observation by her brother Willem, who was studying at a German university. Only a century before godlessness was corroding the souls of the German intelligentsia and this, I believe, was the result:

 

‘Oftentimes, indeed, I wished that Willem did not see quite so well, for much that he saw was frightening. A full ten years ago, back in 1927, Willem had written in his doctoral thesis, done in Germany, that a terrible evil was taking root in that land. Right at the university, he said, seeds were being planted of contempt for human life such as the world had never seen. The few who had read his paper had laughed.’

 

A spiritual vacuum had been created by German philosophers such as Marx, Hegel and Nietzsche. When belief in God is eroded history shows that people believe in anything.

 

Occultism and the concept of the superman started with Nietzsche(1844-1900) who preached against the teachings of Christ.  Before being pronounced insane he managed to plant into the mind of many an intellectual the belief that all depended on you, not God, and that if you did not dominate others you deserved to be dominated .  The weak and poor in spirit were to be despised and exploited. Nationalism, arising to replace Christianity,  led the unfortunate German people to seek world domination in World War I (1914-1918) as well as World War II (1939-1945).

 

The growing darkness did not manifest itself in elections even as late as 1928, when the Nazi Party received only 2.8% of the popular vote, having only 12 seats out of 491 in the Reichstag. In 1933 the Nazi vote had risen to 43.9%. Jews, the disabled,  gypsies, old people and communists were subject to persecution, both officially and through individuals who had absorbed Nazi doctrine and believed in the power of the clenched fist.

 

Could anyone have forecast this? Or the horrific effects of Stalinism in Russia and Maoism in China? Hundreds of millions of lives lost throughout the 20th century and many more ruined by eclipsing the Creator with human pride, albeit with good intentions in the case of Communism.  Could something similar happen again even in a secular Parliamentary democracy, as Germany was at the time the Nazi Party rose to power? I invite you to reflect on this.

 

See also 1984 revisited: collective postmodernism

 John Sears

Author 2077 AD