Tag Archives: Control

The Christian Does Not Die, He Becomes Death: Spiritual Marxism masquerading as the Christian orthodox ideal, Part 17

Calvinism/Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , ,

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.

*

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.

*

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.

 

How Does The Totally Depraved Person “Invite” or “Permit” the Counsel of the Divine Pastoral Authority?: Spiritual Marxism Masquerading as the Christian Orthodox Ideal, Part 16

General Philosophy, Metaphysics, , , , , , , , ,

“Or maybe you’ve watched a friend make an ill-advised purchasing decision.  It’s amazing how we can have such clear insight into the poor choices of our friends and family members.  If you’re connected to other people, there’s a good chance somebody has equally clear insight into implications of the decisions you’re faced with.  The only way to benefit from their clear thinking–the only way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin–is to invite their input…

We must understand that solid commitments and deep convictions just aren’t enough…  Who, outside of your family, has permission to talk to you and challenge you, if need be, about the things going on in your life?  Who’s close enough to warn you if you begin to drift?”

(Community:  Your pathway to progress, pp. 33, 34. North Point Ministries, 2008)

Notice the irony implicit in the use of these words…the ones I’ve put into bold print above:  “invite”, “permission”.

Do you see it?

Not yet?  Okay, let me give you another hint.

“–the only way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin–is to invite their input.”

Do you see it now?

Well, certainly some of you do.  For those of you who do not, don’t feel bad.  It’s really not a measure of your perceptive capabilities, nor your intellect.  It’s more a measure of how these spiritual Marxists excel at deception, which is the modern currency with which they buy their followers.  It has taken me years to develop my skills at spotting the fly in the ointment from a mile away, and your erudition will develop as well, in due time.  And once you see it…well, you will not be able to un-see it.  You will be called a skeptic, a doubter, a conspiracy theorist, overreacting, presumptive, and paranoid.  But what you’ll really be is smart.  What you’ll really be is someone who they can no longer exploit in service to there own interminable worldly appetites.

Notice the incongruent and contradictory relationship between a metaphysic which declares that you are, at the very fundamental root of your nature–your being, your existential seed–utterly insufficient to existence to the point where if you are not fully integrated into the Christian Marxist hive (the “church”) you can make no claim to existence at all, nor to the idea that you must “invite” or “give permission” to the collective (“the body”; “the nation”, the “race”, the “tribe”, the “people”, the “workers”…but in this case, specifically, the divine proxy known as the “small group”, which answers directly to the North Point Ministry autocracy known as the Pastorate, ruled by the Protestant Pope, the “Senior Pastor”).

Understand that you cannot make a claim that any one in possession of a “sinful nature”, which is the full sum and substance of his existence, has any natural right to invite people who MUST intervene in order to compel integration to the the group for that person’s “own good” (remember, according to the text I quoted, other people (the collective) inserting themselves into your life is the ONLY way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin).

Here’s a thought:  In order for one to give permission to the group to perform the daily ritual of intervention one must possess the inherent intellectual and psychological faculties necessary to determine truth from fiction, and good from evil.  But notice also how impossible this must be for someone whose nature is TOTALLY Depraved.  Who functions, above all else, always and entirely according to a “sin nature” which is utterly destructive to the individual, to the point where any rational “existence” by such an entirely debauched individual is fully impossible.

You see, since your depravity is infinite and absolute, there is no way to define SELF as somehow distinct from it.  This being the case, there can be no one who is capable of of the kind of intellectual and psychological attributes necessary to discern reality enough in order to make an invitation or to give permission to anything, or anyone, regarding any doctrine whatsoever.  Since you are entirely a function of your depravity, you must be blind to whatever “benevolent” reality North Point Ministries is so arrogantly and deceptively and so fucking blithely asking you to choose to “invite” into your life.   And this is because you, being entirely a function of your absolute depravity, cannot be distinct from it. Which means there is no way for you to discern reality at all, in order to make a value judgement concerning which group you “invite” to speak to you, and to ensure your safe travels upon the road of righteousness…a road which you must inevitably miss unless you “invite” the collective’s leadership to lead (force) you upon it.  But to be able to invite–to be able to give permission–is to be able to see the road to salvation for yourself.  But it is clear by the appeals to the metaphysic of man’s total depravity that this is simply not possible.  According to the doctrine of Total Depravity, and the adherence to the idea of the abject Fall of Man, and the categorical acceptance of man’s Original Sin which thus MUST determine man to self-destruction in the form of infinite and interminable torment in hell fire, man is no more inherently capable of seeing the road to salvation than he is of flying to the moon by flapping his arms.  In which case to “invite” the Small Group to come along and assist him in traversing it is obviously and demonstrably impossible.

Make no mistake then, the words “invite” and “permission” are simply there as tools used by these tyrants to diffuse skepticism.  To deceive people into thinking that there is some kind of cooperation being effected here.  This is the kind of conscious and intentional deception these evil institutions use to coerce otherwise intelligent men and women into surrendering the entirety of their lives and resources to the wolves who in past centuries and in past societies would have skipped the sophism and propaganda altogether and simply used threats of violence to compel people into the pews, and murdered those who refused or dissented.

*

“To invite their input”.

Listen, diplomatic terms like “invite” imply that one by natural right has full possession of his life and property.  Indeed, it implies that the only means by which anyone can legitimately seek to influence you–and the purposes and promises and objectives you have set for yourself by your own ideas and your own volition as an autonomous, fully sentient and fully competent agent–is to seek your permission; to entreat your invitation.  And this not by sophism or by deceit, but by appealing to your sense of Self…that is, by appealing to the idea that what they are proposing is that which brings value to the realization of your own existence, in a way which ultimately benefits YOU.  And by YOU–by Self–I mean one who is fully capable to his or her own existence, by nature, and thus possesses fully the means by which to discern fact from fiction, and therefore good from evil; one who employs reason as a means by which to promote the Self, which is the only rational context of existence, and that promoting Self, then, is the very definition of morality.

A casual examination of the doctrines of Protestant Orthodoxy reveals that this definition of Self utterly incompatible with the religion.  There is simply no fucking way any professing Protestant in good standing can with a straight face describe man’s Self the way I have done so above.  The metaphysic of man as an agent fully aware of himself, fully in possession of epistemological faculties resulting in a right and good discernment of truth, could not be further from the metaphysic of Christianity today, which makes no pretense of any notion of man which does not fully condemn him to abject self-annihilation to the point of rendering man fully non-existent even upon his birth, due to his categorical and singular fusion with the abstractions of “depravity”, “evil”, “fallen”, “insufficient”, “unable”, and “unholy”. In other words, the metaphysical presumptions endemic and categorical in Christianity today (and every day since Augustine, for that matter), which guide the entirety of the doctrinal cannon espoused in churches across the globe scream in bloodcurdling fashion a contradiction to the notion that anyone has any right, or any rational, psychological, or intellectual means, to “invite” or “give permission”.

I mean, the absurdity of it all makes one question whether or not he is awake or still in bed dreaming.

Nevertheless, this is what is touted.  And this is what people accept as reasonable.  This is what Christians pass off as “truth”.

God help us.

Look, it’s very simple.  The church today all but announces with every worship song and in every sermon in every church in America that you have no motherfucking right to self ownership. And that the sum and substance of all evil is to be found in the presumption that man is somehow an actual sentient and fully capable agent, fully divested with and fully sufficient to self ownership and thus possesses the necessary right to his own life…to do with it what he or she pleases in whatever fashion he or she decides, and that since in the name of rational consistency, ALL men and women must have this very same natural right, there can be no such thing as the idea that rationally and morally working out one’s existence can somehow violate the right of another human being to manifest his or her own existence; and that this, and nothing else, is the rational means to both individual existence, and the co-existence of individuals with other individuals.

No.  The church today will die, literally and figuratively, upon this hill:  that existence is fully a function of a metaphysic contrary to self-ownership and the sufficiency to one’s own existence, and that without the FORCE (the violent coercion) by those men who don title’s such as “Minister” or “Pastor” or “Father” and appoint themselves as divine proxies and then proceed to demand that the laity make no practical distinction between proxy and Deity, there can be no such thing as a human race at all.

So know this:

When they say “invite”, they mean they will invite themselves.

When they say “permission”, they mean they will permit themselves.

They will help themselves to a full portion of your life and property, because that, by their own doctrine, is their divine right.  And whatever you want?  Whatever you decide on your own behalf?

Doesn’t exist.

The Moral and Intellectual Drought of “God Controls all Things” (Part One)

Calvinism/Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics, , , , ,

To say that God (and you could likewise insert the “Laws of Physics” into this argument–it’s the same determinism) is in control of all things amounts to an impossible contradiction in terms, because the very idea by its own definition specifically declares an absolute distinction between God and the “things” supposedly under his control.  Notice this quote from a magazine I found in the lobby of a “reformed” Protestant Church recently.  The magazine cites the source for this quote as:  Charles Hodge, from volume 1 of his Systematic Theology.

“That God does govern all His creatures and all their actions, is clearly revealed in the scriptures.  And that fact is the foundation of all religion.  It is the ground of the consolation of his people in all ages; and…the intuitive conviction of all men, however inconsistent it may be with their philosophical theories, or with their professions.”

Now, there are numerous things wrong with this abysmal declaration which is an intellectual and rational fraud on its face, not the least of which is the rank presumption and obvious dishonesty employed in passing off a specific and peculiar hermeneutic as proof that determinism is “clearly revealed in scripture”, and that said determinism is the “intuitive conviction of all men”.  Indeed, one could devote an entire essay to the blatant fallacies of passing off utterly subjective interpretive premises as “proof” of what is “self evident”.  (Note:  If it is self-evident only via a particular hermeneutic, then you need to defend the hermeneutic as containing rationally consistent and irreducible metaphysical and epistemological axioms before you claim that it is proof of anything at all.)  However, that’s not the focus of this particular essay.

Notice that in Chuck’s insinuation of the “obvious” reality of God’s absolute control (“That God does govern all His creatures and all their actions”) he nevertheless explicitly and repeatedly refers to absolute distinctions between God and His Creation, i.e.:  God versus Creatures; God verses men; God verses People; God verse men’s philosophy; God verses men’s professions.

Do you see the contradiction?  Do you see the defunct logic?  The rational drought?  The stunted intellect?  This is truly horrific, and people should recoil at the evil implied in such shallow, mystic, and frankly, barbaric and medieval “reasoning”.  And then, once they have recoiled at the ideas Chuck presents, they should feel an even greater revulsion that men like him are hailed as teachers.  God help us.

You cannot make appeals to the absolute sovereign control of God over all things and yet appeal to those “things” as having an absolutely distinct existence of their own, apart from God.  In other words, in order for God to control all things, all things must in fact be declared to be themselves, alone, in order that God may control them.  But by the very determinism implicit in the statement “God controls all things”, such a separate existence is impossible, and thus it is impossible for God to control all things because God cannot control that which does not in fact exist apart from Him.  To say that God controls all things means that he must control the roots of their very existence.  Which means they can have no inherent being of their own, apart from God, which means that in order for God to control them absolutely it must be conceded that these things–that God’s creatures, that all men and their philosophies and professions–are in fact merely a direct extension of God, Himself, which thus means that there is no difference between the two…between God and his Creation.  God’s creation, if he controls it absolutely, cannot be anything distinct from God, but IS God.  And so for God to control all things really means that God simply controls Himself, and there is nothing in existence besides Him.  All things are God.  And it is this rank pantheism which passes for “Biblical Christianity” and “Sound Doctrine”.

Now, I’m not a biblical inerrantist (because the “biblical inerrancy” idea is childlike in its foolishness and naïve its intellectual defense), but I’m pretty sure that pantheism (the notion that all things are God) is NOT Biblical.  Plus, how on earth can the Protestant proponents of deterministic pantheism (tongue twister!) rationally exempt God as the instigator of all sin since they both acknowledge that sin is evil and that God is, in fact, the very existential essence of anything which acts sinfully?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is merely the nose of the dog.  This is merely a fraction of the utter rational and moral bankruptcy which passes for “spiritual guidance” today in the institutional “orthodox” church (where implicit evil with deadly eternal consequences passes for “sound doctrine”) and merely one small tittle of why anyone who actually loves good and hates evil, and likes people and loves God, should withdraw his hand from Christian Orthodoxy as a he would from the flames of fire.