“Talk about a person in your life who has kept you from making a bad decision.” 

(p. 32, Community:  Your pathway to progress; North Point Ministries, 2008)

And of course there must be someone, obviously.  Someone outside of you who can provide real perspective…never mind the fact that it is impossible that anyone can know you better than you, since the entirety of all reality is observed from the singular context of your SELF, and nothing else, and the same is true for all self-aware, sentient agents, including God, making NO ONE a better expert on you than you.  Period.  Don’t ever fall for the lie that someone else, even God, knows what’s best for your from your perspective.  I’m not suggesting you eschew advice and council, and certainly not prayer, obviously, but I am saying that this notion that reality is best observed by a third party OUTSIDE yourself is merely a propaganda tool designed to compel you into surrendering your existential autonomy and your self-ownership.  The notion that anyone can know you better than you know yourself is rationally false, full stop.  Your frame of reference as SELF is utter and infinite.  For anyone to know in equal measure what you know about YOU and your life, never mind possess a superior measure, they would have to actually be you.  Which is impossible nonsense.

But somehow, in this Platonist, Marxist, Protestant vision, he who is NOT you is better suited to dictate how you should live; to pass moral judgement on your decisions, and to provide the guard rails your life so desperately needs, because on your own, your “sin nature” demands that you must inevitably succumb to the absolute evil of your craven desires–a direct function of your metaphysical failure at the most basic of levels.  In short, without someone else who claims a divine right by mystic fiat to interfere in your life–to BE you in your STEAD (this responsibility will eventually fall to the Pastor, who is both YOU before God, and God before YOU)–you cannot possibly live an efficacious existence, and are doomed to eternal destruction by your very birth. You, alone, possess nothing but a purely failed epistemology.  You cannot possibly apprehend anything True or Good because the frame of reference of your SELF is evil incarnate (totally depraved).  Therefore, individually, outside of the “corporate” (Marxist collective) “covering” of your “local church”, under the absolute auspices of the singular authority standing in God’s Stead, the Senior Pastor, you cannot pursue any moral action.

The request I quoted, rationally rendered, should actually read “Talk about a person, if any, who has kept you from making a bad decision.”

But, to be frank, the idea that you, alone, would not make a bad decision and thus do not have an example of a time someone else needed to step in and save your from yourself never, ever crossed the author’s mind.  Trust me on this.  The Marxist philosophy inherent in orthodox Christian doctrine (best seen in America currently within the neo-Calvinist juggernaut) demands that the group MUST inevitably compel you into right action and away from the otherwise inexorable trend of self-destruction you innately pursue by your very existence.  The possibility that there just might not actually be anyone who has ever found it necessary to protect you from your bad decisions (which is about as vague a moral plumb line as you can get…could mean they talked you out of suicide; could mean they talked you out of a second bowl of ice cream) simply isn’t considered by any “real” (read “saved”) card-carrying Protestant in good standing.

Beware these mystic primers.  There is nothing innocuous within, ever.  There is always the underlying motive within every jot and tittle, punctuation mark or bullet point.  And that motive is control.