Discussion Questions:

1.  Have you ever felt like you had insight and clarity into someone else’s poor decision?  Did you say anything?  How did it turn out?

(Community:  Your pathway to progress, pp. 35. North Point Ministries, 2008)

Let’s examine the profound and irrational assumptions/presumptions which form the philosophical roots of this “discussion” question (one of three we will examine), according to the spurious standard of today’s “doctrinally sound” Christian church.  Remember that in this series of articles on spiritual Marxism, using North Point Ministries’ small group booklet as my reference, we have been examining the doctrinal premises–and their ideological spawn–of today’s neo-Calvinist, neo-Reformed church movement, which is quickly becoming, or has become, the Christian movement of the 21st century in America, in general.

What is presented in this essay is based upon the philosophical ideals underwriting Christianity today, some of which we have  discussed in the Spiritual Marxism series already.  However, I believe that it is possible to read this essay without having read the previous ones and not be too terribly confused.  As usual, my penchant for verbosity tends to fill in most of the informational gaps which might otherwise be present in the essay of a more concise writer.

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Here again is the discussion question:

Have you ever felt like you had insight and clarity into someone else’s poor decision? Did you say anything?  How did it turn out?

What we must understand with respect to the collectivism implicit in Christianity today, particularly of the neo-Reformed/neo-Calvinist type, is that, for these spiritual Marxists, the Group understands the existential context of the individual better than he or she does, at any given moment, and with respect to any issue, and any situation.  This is because “Group”, as I’ve explained before, is the primary metaphysic.  The irreducible ontological state of existence for any human being is not the Self, but the Collective. The individual is a direct function of the group with which he or she affiliates, not the other way around.  The key to existence then is finding the “right”, or the “True” group, and affiliating yourself with it, after which, through the epistemological enlightenment of the group (understanding how you know what you can know), you come to realize that YOU never actually had anything to do with joining, or finding, the group after all.  You became affiliated with the group, not by choice, but because you were determined into it…for determinism is, in fact, the only possible causal source of everything within a universe where Group, or Collective, is the sum and substance of all there is.

In Christianity today, the “Church” is the only ACTUAL, legitimate thing. It is All in All.  And “God” is its essence…which is merely the same thing as saying God IS the Group, the Group is God.  There is no relevant difference.  And what this means–and is the whole point of fabricating a Collectivist metaphysic in the first place–is that those who claim the divine mandate to rule the group, which is correlated to their special revelation/enlightenment, means that they, and no one else, (because God works through them, alone) possess an infinite Authority over everyone else.  This literally enslaves ALL of mankind to the subjective whims of a single person or small group of people, forever and absolutely.  And that, like I said, is precisely what all of the heady-sounding doctrine is all about.

So…back to the determinism which drove you into the “loving” arms of your Collective–the One, True Collective which governs and controls all things via its oneness to the Primary Consciousness.  Or, in this case “God” (and I use “God” in quotes, incidentally, because by no means should we think that these despots in any way have any actual affiliation with the real God…for He forbids such a thing I am convinced, and has nothing, I submit, to do with them in ANY measure according to their doctrine, which denies His truth as thoroughly as it denies yours and mine):

The “Group” as represented by that transcendent and infinite and immaterial Consciousness realized its Will upon your life, and you, helpless to resist because you have no actual will of your own, complied. Therefore, the answer to the question now begged–“What is the TRUE group, as opposed to one of the panoply of impostors?”–is simple:  The Group to which you were determined MUST be the True Group, otherwise you could not be counted among it.  See, since only the True Group has the True Consciousness which can determine all things, you could only ever have chosen to join to the Group to which you now belong.  There was no choice, you might say.  Otherwise, you would not have chosen it.

It is a tautology, you see.  The proof that you were determined to the group is that you chose it.  You chose because you were determined, and you were determined because you chose.  “A is A” is not a law of identity in this instance, it is a tautology, and this is a great example.  Whatever you chose to do you did because you were determined to choose it.  Choice and determinism are equivalent.  Another way of putting it is that choice is A and determinism is A.  A is A.  The Law of Identity is satisfied. Which is, incidentally, why so many smart people fall for this kind of thinking.  (Incidentally, the ease with which Aristotle’s Law of Identity can be conformed to the collectivist metaphysic by applying it to abstract concepts (actions) which are necessarily a function of material objects (concrete existence) is startling.  It is a strong argument for doubting the rationality and veracity of that Law.)

I understand the massive cognitive dissonance that is endemic to this ideology, and the need to suspend disbelief in order to make the rational leap from the discussion question to its answer.  Nevertheless, once we concede, as Christianity today does, that the metaphysical primary is not the Individual, but the Collective–the Group–we understand that this is the only possible answer which is consistent with the premise.

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In Christianity, the Consciousness of the Group is “God”, naturally, and it is His “Sovereign Will” which “controls all things”.  It is “God” then to whom the fleshly incarnations of Himself, the Pastors (and the lesser deities, the Small Group Leaders) appeal, in order to physically and psychologically compel the unwashed masses into “right thinking” and “right behavior”.  Therefore, God compelled you into the Small Group at North Point Ministries (or whatever other neo-Marxist spiritual trap into which you may have fallen), to be instructed and ultimately governed (forced) in the ways of the One True Collective (the “Church”) by those who claim the authority to do so.  And since those who claim this authority are God’s proxies, which makes them God to you, or God qua God, for all relevant intents and purposes, the answer to this discussion question leveled at us above, “Have you ever felt like you  had insight and clarity into someone else’s poor decision?”, is…

Yes.  And no.  As a group member, yes.  As an individual whose depravity only allows him to view reality from the singularity of Self, no.  I am divine, but I am also wicked.  I am aware, and I am also blind.

Let’s break it down.

Yes, of course.  Of course you’ve felt like you had insight and clarity into someone else’s poor decision. And, as corollary to this, of course you’ve been the one to make a poor decision, and thus have had to defer your will and your mind to another person.  Maybe even the person upon which you are now, ironically, passing judgement even as he simultaneously passes judgement upon you.

This ostensibly contradictory answer is utterly demanded by the acceptance of the Group AS Self metaphysic.  As a member of the one True Group you’ve been given the divine perception afforded to everyone who understands his or her nature as entirely a function of the Church, which really means the Authority of the Pastors and their representatives, the subordinate, lesser deities, which include the Small Group Leaders.  Because you have absorbed the explications, explanations, and presumptions of “Sound Doctrine”, you have the divine, unmitigated, and inerrant authority, bestowed by spiritual osmosis,  to pronounce judgement upon anyone, anywhere, at any time, for anything which does not comply forthrightly with said doctrine, regardless of the presence of contexts or circumstances which you could not possibly understand, and may confidently declare the perpetrator utterly ignorant, morally bankrupt, and insane, worthy of all manner of death and destruction.  The slightest disagreement or inconsistency with what you know must be the infallible “Word of God” simply by being a “Church Member” invites you to offer a thoroughly justified condemnation on behalf of the Group, and a demand (disguised as “counsel”, or “advice”) that thinking and behavior be brought to heel..or else.

(As an aside, please realize that understanding of the “Word of God” doesn’t have anything to do with understanding qua understanding at all.  It merely means that one can, if even in the most remedial of ways, parrot back the presumptions, assertions, premises, axioms, and maxims to which he or she pledges fealty as function of their affiliation with the True Collective.)

In other words, because you go to True Church–one approved by the doctrinal standards of “orthodoxy” (whatever that means)–you know everything.  As the Group knows, you also know.

On the flip side, however, you, being an unremitting and unrepentant sinner by nature, categorically depraved and infinitely insufficient to any moral thing, act, or idea, abstract or concrete, you MUST sin, and sin perpetually, because the very fact that you possess an awareness of SELF, as an individual, demands that the entirely of your observance of the entirety of your existence is false.  And more than false, it is the very archetype of evil.  You can do no good thing; you can think no good thing; you can see, hear, and speak no good thing.  Because you ARE, according to the Fall of Man who is Perpetually Falling, no good thing, and absolutely so.

Thus, in equal measure as the enlightened one, bringing the all-seeing eye of the “Church” to bear upon your fellow man to level judgement and command repentance and recompense, you are also the Sinner.  The Evil One.  The one who will make mistakes, because he IS the mistake.  Therefore, as you give your unsolicited rebukes, condemnations, warnings, exhortations, demands, and absolutes to your fellow man, so you will prostrate yourself before his.

Because according to the extremely loose logic of “sound doctrine”, rooted in the Ethical (moral) primary of “Total Depravity” and the metaphysical primary of Existence through Church Membership, the only real purpose of the discussion question at the top of this essay is to promote the following ideal:

You can judge others, but you cannot judge yourself.  Your awareness proves efficacious only when it is applied to the existence of another; but it is utterly incapable of serving you, because you qua you do not possess by nature the existential sufficiency to awareness.  That is, to Truth.

And this eventually distills down into this very evil premise:

You can be the Group, but you cannot be yourself.  And this is because what a seemingly innocuous and innocent little book on small groups is desperately and yet so surreptitiously demanding is that you accept the ideal that you are Evil Self AND Perfect Group, and the paradoxical distinction denies you a reality of your own, which makes you dependent upon that of the Church leadership.  You have insight, and you lack it.  You speak truth to sin, and you wickedly deny sin.  You receive the truth with grace, and you stubbornly resist and worship Satan.  You are both the dark and the light.  The Is and the Is not.  You are Individual inside Collective.

And now, at last, we arrive at the real answer to the question above.  The only one that matters…and they know it.  It’s not about groups, its not about church, its not about God. It’s about control.  The control which flows from a fabricated reality they create for everyone else.  A reality which convinces you that…

You are you and you are not you.

You are an existential contradiction.  A positive added to a negative.  A zero sum.  A blank.  An infinite everything with a nature of infinite nothingness.  In other words…

You’re worse than dead.  You are Death.