Francis Berger's Blog, page 133

Do You Choose To Be A Sheep Or A Goat?

Bruce Charlton has written an incisive examination of the choice all of us must make in our mortal lives. Utilizing the sheep and goats parable, Dr. Charlton gets right to the fundamental essence of the matter at hand - we are at a point in history when, one way or the other, you will have to make a choice, and that choosing not to decide also qualifies as a choice. So, what do you want to be - a sheep or a goat?

Why is the Western world getting worse; why is materialistic-Leftism triumphant; why are we being incrementally crushed by the imposition of totalitarian bureaucracy? What meaning can such experiences have for us, in terms of God's plan of creation?
 
My assumption is that God's motive for creation is love, and that a major aim is to enable people to choose to join with God in the 'project' of loving creation. So, the hope is that some people will choose to learn from their experiences to make the choice of Heaven.

Since Heaven is a place of love, only those who can love can dwell there - or indeed would want to dwell there. An analogy is a loving family; because that is the ultimate basis of Heaven - God's family. For those who love the loving family, it is the best possible situation - but for those incapable of love or who reject love, the family is an abhorrent situation: oppressive and boring.   

Another assumption is that Men are free agents, and God does not know who has capacity for love or who will make the ultimate choice that love is primary. Therefore such matters can only be decided by experience. In other words, who wants and who does not want love is something that emerges as creation proceeds - creation is a situation of testing and development, during which each person's attitude to love becomes apparent.

More exactly, each person is brought to a point of decision, from which is determined whether he is a sheep - who chooses Heaven, or a goat - who rejects Heaven. Of course, such a decision can be and is often deferred, but the point of decision is at least when Heaven is chosen permanently.

It seems that resurrection into Heaven - made possible through Jesus Christ - is an eternal commitment, and the possibility that this commitment to love is eternal is a vital aspect of Heaven.

So there is a sense in which the ongoing processes of God's creation are a means to the end of self-sorting ('assortative partitioning') into sheep and goats: more exactly a means to self-sorting of sheep into Heaven eternally; and goats into some-other-destiny (not Heaven, maybe not eternal).

Let me provide an analogy based upon my thirty-something years of working in universities. The situation of universities became more evil over this time, mainly due to the prgressive introduction of bureaucracy which was also the imposition of leftist-materialist (ultimately anti-Christian; thus anti Truth, Beauty and Virtue) ideology.

In this context of step-wise increase in evil, people reacted variously. Some people disagreed-with and reacted-against bureaucracy; other people saw its evil went along with it for selfish and short term reasons (e.g. careerism); others simply did not regard creeping totalitarianism (towards omni-surveillance and micro-control) as being bad or evil... They liked totalitarianism, materialism, the inversion of morality and truth... they wanted more of it.

People who perceived the evil and repented it correspond to the sheep. These are the people who comprehend and share God's values, and who want to dwell in a situation where such values prevail, which includes being a situation among others that have made an eternal commitment to God's values. Heaven is a place where Men participate with God in the work of loving creation.

Read the rest here.

A Valid Question

"Yes, let's save the earth, but if we have no children or grandchildren, who are we saving it for?"
​
  - taken from Viktor Orbán's State of the Nation Address, February 17, 2020.  

Captivity and Power

William James Tychonievich has written an insightful analysis about the nature and limits of the Devil's power - an analysis inspired by the following passage taken from the Book of Mormon: 

[Men] are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself (2 Nephi 2:27; emphasis added).

Though I have never read the Book of Mormon, I came to similar conclusions regarding the true nature of freedom and choice; conclusions I recorded in a brief blog post from last April: 

You are always free to choose the right thing. The right thought. The right action. That is the only real freedom you possess. It is always simple, but often challenging.

The wrong thing is never simple, but usually easy. When you give in to the wrong thing, it comes from wrong thought and leads to wrong action. The wrong thing is not an exercise in freedom.

​There is no choice; only submission.

When you submit to the wrong thing, freedom dissolves and drips through your fingers like melting gold.

You are left with nothing of value. The surrender brands you, and the slavery to which you have submitted shall mark you as one who failed to be free. 

My thinking at the time revolved around the notion that a choice for evil was actually a choice for slavery, what William, via Nephi, refers to as captivity. Evil choices tempt through the promise of power. Perhaps some power is obtained after the choice is made, but the constrained and limiting nature of the power one has achieved becomes readily apparent over time. It is power bounded and constrained by captivity. This may appear paradoxical at first, but it actually makes a great deal of sense, as William explains in his post: 

Captivity and power. How does that work? Isn't captivity a lack of power?

In the past I always thought that, while the syntax may be a bit infelicitous, the meaning is clear enough. The "power of the devil" refers to the power which the devil himself possesses, while the "captivity of the devil" indicates other people's being in captivity to the devil. Only a tedious grammar pedant (something no one would ever accuse me of being!) would read it any other way.

After giving it some thought, though, I think that there are in fact good reasons, above and beyond over-literalism, for reading this passage as stating that both the devil and those who follow him are in the condition described by the seemingly oxymoronic conjunction "captivity and power."

The logic is simple enough. The devil tempts people to be evil and sinful, and is himself evil and sinful; therefore, whatever condition the devil himself is in, those who fall into his snare will tend toward that same condition. If Being Evil has given the devil great power, we can assume that people can also acquire great power by Being Evil. Likewise, if sin leads to captivity, we can assume that the devil, as the sinner par excellence, is also in a state of captivity. In other words, it doesn't make sense that the very same course of action should lead to power when pursued by the devil but only to captivity when pursued by anyone else.

Against this line of reasoning, there is the possibility that the arch-tempter is not also the arch-sinner -- that, like any reasonably competent pusher, the devil knows better than to get high on his own supply -- that he suckers people into committing sins that he himself isn't stupid enough to commit, thus bringing them into captivity while maintaining his own freedom.

There clearly has to be some truth to this. The devil can't possibly be the exemplar of every vice in the same way that God is arguably the exemplar of every virtue. A slothful devil couldn't be bothered to actually tempt people, for example, while a cowardly one would never have defied God in the first place. One of the litany of names applied to the devil in Revelation 12:9 is "the great," and I think we must concede that there is a sense in which he lives up to that title. If the devil were a mere nogoodnik, a congeries of vices, a contemptible sin-ridden fleabag of a spirit, he would be of no account, and there would be no need for us to so much as take notice of his existence. Fallen angels do not become vermin but dragons, roaring lions seeking whom they may devour.

But for all that, there is also a sense in which the devil is contemptible. As Lehi puts it in the Book of Mormon passage quoted above, "he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself." I think in the end we must insist on the literal aptness of the phrase captivity and power.

To try to get a handle on this, I tried to think of other instances of "captivity and power" occurring together, and the first example that came to mind was the beast of burden. A draft ox is an immensely powerful animal, a ton and a half of pure muscle, but it nevertheless lives in captivity. Or, considering political power rather than muscular strength, we might think of a tyrant, reigning with blood and horror, hated by his people and obeyed out of fear alone. How much freedom does such a man, living under the constant threat of assassination or revolution, really have? What choice does he have to bar himself up in a virtual prison, surrounded by guards? What choice does he have but to rule with conspicuous brutality, lest any show of weakness embolden his enemies? Or, coming closer to our Satanic theme, we might consider anyone who has made a Faustian bargain of the kind reportedly offered to Jesus: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matthew 4:9). "The captivity and power of the devil": The devil offers power, but only on condition of captivity.

I invite you to read the rest of William's excellent post here. 

Spell Check Is Not Always Your Friend

I don't often reflect back upon my high school teaching days in the Bronx, but as I was sitting on the train to work this morning, I inexplicably recalled an inadvertently funny essay a student had handed in - a two-page written report on ancient humans I had assigned for a grade nine world history class.

For the task, I had given my students a list of ancient humans - Homo naledi, Homo floresiensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and so forth - and I asked them to choose one, do the necessary research, and write a report of their findings. I insisted the report be typed, and advised students to proofread and spell check their work before submitting it.

A week later, I began marking the submitted essays. About halfway through the pile of stapled papers, I came across a rather perplexing essay title: The History of Homoerotic Man. Intrigued and bemused, I flipped past the cover page and confronted the following introduction (as best as I can remember, minus the original spelling and grammar errors): 

Fossil findings say homoerotic man lived in Africa one or two million years ago. He probably lived in Africa because it was hot. Since it was hot, homoerotic man did not wear clothes, only some animal furs here and there. Homoerotic means upright, so homoerotic man was one of the first to get erect and stay erect. He was also one of the first to walk on two feet. Walking on two feet meant homoerotic could really get around. Homoerotic man liked to hunt and gather berries. He sometimes did this with other homoerotic men. Homoerotic man was also one of the first ancient humans to use tools on a regular basis. Most of his tools were used for hunting, but archeologists think homoerotic man used some of his tools for other things too . . . 

Yes, I'm sure he did. 

After I recovered from the laughter that had consumed me, I took a moment to consider what had led to this most unfortunate, yet hilarious, history essay. It didn't take me long to figure it out. The kid had spell checked his work as I had instructed him to do, but instead of carefully analyzing the suggestions spell check had made, the student had thoughtlessly agreed to everything by clicking the correct all button.  

Word's spell check program had not recognized "Homo erectus man" (I think the kid crammed the terms Upright man and Homo erectus together to come up with that) as a valid term and had suggested homoerotic man as an alternative; and as far as my student was concerned, that was A-okay.

The rest is history. 

Some Good News On The Marriage Front

The institution of marriage appears to be undergoing a bit of renaissance in Hungary thanks to some government incentives aimed at promoting family and childbirth in an effort to stem demographic decline.

I had, and still have, some reservations about the multitude of family support schemes the Orbán government has launched over the past few years for the simple reason that other governments in other countries have attempted similar programs in the past, most of which proved ineffective. In fact, Hungary's former communist government initiated comparable policies back in the 1970s - policies that, after a brief three or four-year upsurge in marriages and births, ultimately failed.

The long-term success of the current government's programs depends much on Hungarians' attitudes to marriage. I suspect the communist policies of the past proved fruitless primarily because they did little to address the spiritual malaise underlying the reluctance to marry and have children. Though the incentives the communists provided did motivate people to marry and have children, this motivation proved ephemeral and evaporated the moment the funds ran dry.

In other words, the family support programs the communist government launched did not resonate with people beyond the level of the purely material and was not supported by any metaphysical shift in thinking about the importance of family. The current increase in marriages hinges on one simple and undeniable fact - that contemporary Hungarians approach marriage and child-rearing at a level that is deeper than the material. If the growth in marriages today is sustained by a change in consciousness about what marriage is, then the programs stand a chance. If not, they will inevitably end up being as ineffectual as the communist policies of the past.

Here's hoping the former prevails over the latter. 

In any case, the news itself is quite encouraging. Marriages are up 84% since 2010 and more couples tied the knot in 2019 than at any other point in the past thirty years. Even more encouraging is the surprising drop in the divorce rate, which has plummeted 67% since 2010, meaning only about 33% of marriages in Hungary still end in divorce. Granted, 33% is still a high number, but it is a marked improvement on the past and, perhaps more meaningfully, a far lower divorce rate than those found in many other European countries. 

Though this marriage boom has yet to lead to a baby boom, the right ingredients for that to happen appear to be in place. True, it's still early days, but one can't help but harbor a little hope that Hungary may be turning a corner - a deeply life-affirming one at that.  

The Malevolence of Insincere Bewilderment

Yesterday I addressed learning and why I believe it should be the main focus of our mortal lives. This world is a school. We come into it as students. Our task is to learn the lessons we need to learn in order to further our spiritual development.

One of the most effective ways to learn lessons is from experience - through the events, encounters, problems, adventures, incidents, trials and ordeals that surface in our lives. Some of these episodes are the result of fate; others, the consequences of our own choices, decisions, and actions. Whatever the case, our primary task in mortal life is to discover meaning within experience and use this meaning to move closer toward our purpose - aligning ourselves with God and Creation.

Of course, it's not always easy to discover what the significance of an experience is, and it is sometimes difficult to ascertain if our choices, decisions, and actions were the real cause of a good or bad consequence. Nevertheless, in most cases the cause of a bad or good consequence is readily accessible, and the lesson contained within it fairly straightforward - especially if you are making a sincere effort at learning. 

A defiant refusal to learn from experience generally indicates one of two things - stupidity or pride. The stupid are too dull or lazy or craven to put two and two together; the proud are too arrogant to consider they may have been wrong. Both are doomed to repeat their errors until some form of illumination moves them. Stupidity and pride are the common causes for refusing to learn from experience, but there is another common cause, one that seems to saturate our modern world - dishonesty. 

The dishonest completely understand the experience and the lesson it contains, but pretend to be utterly baffled by it all. In other words, they are able to put two and two together, but they repudiate any knowledge of being able to do so and instead look out at the world with wide, innocent eyes as they feign a complete lack of understanding.

Yes, this kind of dishonesty contains traces of stupidity and pride, but people can be honestly stupid or honestly arrogant when they refuse to learn from experience. The dishonest, on the other hand, know they are liars. They consciously choose to deny the truth as truth because they are serving the lie. This, in my opinion, is a purely malevolent refusal to learn from experience, and those who consistently practice this form of insincere bewilderment are usually willing accomplices to evil. 

Case in point, yesterday the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare released a report indicating that the number of teenagers registered as girls at birth who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria has increased nearly 1,500 percent in the last decade. In the same period, the number of men aged 18-24 affixed with the same diagnosis grew by nearly 400 percent. 

So what was the official response to this rather alarming development? 

​"There is no doubt that there is a clear increase, but we do not know what causes the increase," Peter Salmi, analyst at the Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), said in a statement. 

Put simply, this Board of Health and Welfare analyst is claiming to be utterly clueless. He very frankly admits he has no idea what the cause for the increase could be. As far as he's concerned, it could be anything - something in the water; dietary changes; harmful radiation from an alien spacecraft parked behind the moon. Anything. 

Now, here's the thing. Do you honestly believe the fine people at Sweden's Board of Health and Welfare are that baffled - that utterly without a clue? Or do you think that maybe, just maybe, they're playing the old feigned bewilderment trick? I mean, these are supposedly university educated people . . . 

Well, I don't live in Sweden, but I have a hunch that this bout of gender dysphoria - which comes complete with all sorts of psychiatric and mental health issues and, in some cases, suicide - probably has something to do with the gender neutral preschools Sweden initiated back in the nineties and the countless other gender bender social engineering projects Sweden has unleashed upon its people in the past three decades.

But gender dysphoria is not the only thing mystifying the Swedish elite. They also don't  know the causes of the unprecedented wave of explosions in Sweden's cities over the past two years. Nor do they possess any inkling of knowledge about the massive increase in rapes and other violent crimes. For the Swedish elite, everything is a massive, mind-numbing mystery.

Now, if the Swedish elite had any sense of virtue or honor, they would admit the errors of their ways, repent, wind back their ill-conceived social engineering programs, and work to realign their country with Reality. But the Swedish elite refuse to learn from experience. Not because they don't understand it. Not because they are too proud to admit their mistake. But because they are dishonest about their intentions. The Swedish elite knew exactly what their programs would do - they were not ill-conceived, but conceived to cause illness - this makes them and the elite evil. 

If the Swedish people had any sense of virtue or honor, they would . . . on second thought, no, they probably wouldn't because it is difficult to conceive of any virtue and honor anywhere in this case.

Sorry, it just is. 

Evil Does Not Want You To Learn From Experience

I am of the conviction that the primary purpose of our mortal lives is to learn, more specifically, to from experience. Our time in this world is fundamentally about the choices and decisions we make and the subsequent actions and thinking these choices and decisions inspire. Our ability to discern the benefits or consequences of our choices, decisions, and actions determines the quality and effectiveness of our thinking and our ability to learn from experience. Learning from experience entails a conscious aspiration toward good consequences and a determined avoidance of further bad consequences.

From a spiritual perspective, learning from experience can be boiled down to choosing Good over Evil. Good is everything that is aligned with God and Creation; Evil is everything aligned with Satan who works to undermine God and Creation. At its most basic level, a choice, decision, or action that is not aligned with God or Creation will generate bad consequences. The first step in learning from experience at the spiritual level involves recognizing and understanding bad consequences. The second step is repentance of the choice, decision, or action that led to the bad consequences. The third step involves ensuring this repentance positively influences future choices, decision, and actions in an effort to avoid further bad consequences.

But spiritual learning from experience is not exclusively about the negative, but also involves recognizing and understanding when choices, decisions, and actions are aligned with the positive, with God and Creation - that is, when we are aligned with the Good. It is also about being able to discern the benefits that derive from this alignment.

These benefits are not always explicitly clear, in the same way that the bad in bad consequences stemming from dis-alignment with God and Creation are not always explicitly clear. On the surface, bad consequences might appear good, and good consequences might appear bad. This suggests learning from experience is not always straightforward and that some lessons might have to be repeated many times or might take up great expanses of time.

Learning from experience is often painful. It often involves swallowing our pride - the humble understanding and acceptance that we were wrong coupled with the desire to turn the wrong into a right. At its core, the essence of learning from experience at the spiritual level is remaining open to and accepting of the reality that the main purpose of our mortal lives is to align ourselves with God and Creation. And this openness and the effort that should follow is paramount to our continued journey after our mortal life ends.

If learning is the primary purpose of our mortal lives, then it is only logical to assume that the forces opposing God and Creation work diligently to hinder and obstruct learning at every possible turn in an sustained effort to undermine God and Creation. The ideal world for evil is one in which learning - learning from experience in particular - is considered undesirable and unsavory - not worth the effort. But the world evil really strives to bring about is one in which learning for the purpose of aligning oneself with God and Creation is not only considered undesirable, but is made increasingly uncomfortable, and, in some cases virtually impossible.

This kind of world would first motivate individuals to callously dismiss all notions of God and Creation, thereby severing all true sense of the distinction between good and evil. It would then work to invert all notions of good and evil by presenting evil as good and good as evil. It would also reduce all semblances of good and evil to the hedonic level of pleasure and pain whereby all bad choices that create immediate, short term pleasure would be regarded as good, and all good choices that created immediate, short term 'pain' or discomfort would be regarded as bad. Any 'real' pain resulting from a 'real' bad consequence would be met with pride instead of humility, and defiance instead of acceptance, thereby negating any chance at true learning.

Evil does not want us to learn from experience because it wants to lock us in darkness and prevent us from approaching the light. Evil does not want us to continue our journey - and it accomplishes this rather effectively by obstructing our ability to learn from experience. 

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isiah 5:20)

And greater woe unto them who fall into this trap and refuse to learn from experience because they are allowing themselves to be misled from the very purpose of mortal life itself.

Thirty Years After the Collapse of the Iron Curtain, Europe Remains a Divided Continent

The Gatestone Institute documented over 3000 anti-Christian attacks in Europe in 2019, 286 of which are depicted in the map above. The documented attacks were mostly against Christian places of worship. As far as I can tell, physical attacks against Christians themselves are not noted on the map. 

I harbor some fairly deep reservations about the Gatestone Institute; nevertheless, I am intrigued by this interactive map it has created. The clear line of demarcation dividing Europe into two distinct halves is glaringly evident once you zoom in. Ironically, these are roughly the same two halves into which Iron Curtain once divided the continent.

Draw your own conclusions.

The only question that remains for me is this - what will the future hold? Will a pox of blue pins eventually decorate Eastern Europe as well? Or will the blue pins in Western Europe slowly fade away? Or increase? Or will the dividing line between east and west remain fixed for the foreseeable future?   

The Religion of Hatred

I don't like writing this kind of post, but I feel I must if for no other reason than to personally work through the ever-escalating anti-Christian sentiments and developments taking place in the West. 

Alphabet people in the UK have effectively barred Franklin Graham, the son of the Billy Graham, from speaking anywhere in Great Britain. Their reason for pressuring the venues to drop Graham was succinct, simple, and straightforward - Frank Graham preaches hate. Yes, that's right. Franklin Graham's adherence to and promulgation of Christian morality amounts to hate in the contemporary UK. Full stop. End of story. 

This sort of anti-Christian action is nothing new, but as Dr. Bruce Charlton plainly points out in a post from yesterday, what makes the Franklin Graham barring particularly unsettling is its directness, explicitness, and magnitude:

This feels like another threshold crossed in the UK - because now the attacks on Christianity have become explicit and specific; there is now a high profile precedent for suppression of all public Christian meetings of any kind and size.

Up until now; the specificity of preventing Christians from gathering and evangelising has been indirect; masquerading as political (not religion) suppression - as being about the promotion of the sexual revolution agenda. 

I agree with Dr. Charlton's assessment - a threshold certainly has been crossed. Anti-Christianity has been on the official agenda for a long time, but rarely has it been this unqualified - this clear-cut and obvious. Up until now, attacks on Christianity were usually supported by some justifiable leftist pretext - gay rights, human rights, cultural sensitivity, etc. - but this no longer appears to be the case.

Now wait a minute, you might say, Franklin Graham was barred because he does not endorse homosexuality; hence, he is anti-gay. In this sense, the pretext is still there. But is it? If it is, why is this same excuse not applied to other organized religions in Western countries? Dr. Charlton writes: 

But this is undeniably specifically Christian; because while Christian evangelism is crushed to uniform approval from The Establishment and its mouthpieces; other religious that advocate (from the secular perspective) exactly the same sexual morality - Judaism, Islam, Sikhism etc - are by contrast publicly celebrated, government/ charity/ educational institution subsidised.

There are many officially propagandised and paid-for mass celebrations, festivals and consciousness-raising events in favour of these other religions.

Dr. Charlton has drawn attention to a valid point. While Christianity is being attacked left, right, and center (political intimations associated with the prior three words fully intended) for its sexual morality, other religions in the West that essentially espouse similar sexual moralities, sometimes in a far stricter manner, are not only spared, but are outright lauded and celebrated by the same forces laying siege to Christianity. 

My answer to this is the following - the Establishment is associating Christianity with everything it believes is wrong about the West; it has not done the same with most other religions. The Establishment attacks Christianity because they, correctly, view it as the spirit of the West. They have made great gains in dulling the light of this spirit in most of the West. And by the West I am referring specifically to Europe and the Anglo-West (America, Canada, Australia, etc.) Kill the spirit, the Establishment muses, and you kill the West. Kill the West, and the Establishment is one step closer to its coveted one-word totalitarian government.

The Establishment in the West support, endorse, and tolerate other religions primarily because they believe these religions can help erode Christianity in the West, but they won't hesitate to turn on them if Christianity is driven into the shadows. In the meantime, it is becoming expressly clear that the Establishment wants Christianity to be viewed as a religion of hatred.

On top of that, the Establishment no longer feels obligated to obfuscate or justify its anti-Christianity. It has reached a point when it can be openly, candidly, and specifically anti-Christian because it has successfully convinced a great many people in the West that Christianity, at its most fundamental level, is a religion of hatred. A religion of exclusion. A religion of oppression. A religion that essentially is/was the poison fuel that made/makes the West a civilization of hatred, exclusion, and oppression. Remove Christianity, and the West can throw off its shackles and become a place of love, inclusiveness, and freedom.

The Establishment has begun openly referring to Christianity as a religion of hatred without feeling the need to justify it in any way, shape, or form. Start getting used to this because this looks to be the new 'norm'. This pretty much falls in line with the Establishment's denunciation of Western civilization in general - a denunciation that has more or less been accepted as fact by most Westerners who are endlessly indoctrinated into believing that their civilization is reprehensible. This indictment against the West not only pushes everything negative to the forefront while simultaneously pushing everything positive into the background, but also involves a complete inversion of negative and positive until even the good Western civilization has done is considered evil. 

The same has been applied to Christianity, for the past two centuries at least, but with the exception of the French Revolution, it has rarely been as expressly clear and obvious as it is now. Simply put, in the Establishment's view, there is nothing good about Christianity. Nothing good at all. Not only is it outdated and oppressive, but it has become in-accommodable. In other words, it has no place in the contemporary world. Anyone who continues to adhere to Christianity - real Christianity, not the watered pablum the Establishment has hijacked and endorsed - will be immediately suspect and likely regarded as someone consumed by a hateful ideology.

If this sounds hyperbolic and overwrought, consider the carefully chosen words of a prominent UK political commentator who recently had the following to say about Viktor Orbán's defense of Christianity and Christian Europe: 

Race and power are entwined. When the right talks of “Christian Europe” or “Christian traditions”, it does not include black pentecostal churches in the inner cities. Christianity has become a synonym for “white”. When Orbán talks of defending “Christian Europe”, he is not defending religious dogma – only 15% of Hungarians go to church each week. He is advocating a modern version of the fascist conspiracy theory instead.

Christianity is now code for fascism and white-supremacy. Some leftist politicians have spouted similar rhetoric in Hungary when they referred to Christian families as 'scary formations' comprising the seedbed from which white supremacism and racism sprout. Those who deplatformed Franklin Graham in the UK were quick to point out Graham's support for US President Donald Trump. Man, what could more hateful than that? 

Christian persecution will intensify in the West. Count on it. Prepare for it. Above all, spiritually.

Note added: Of course the real reason the Establishment hates Christianity is this - the Establishment's overarching goal is mass damnation. The System they control is geared toward that purpose. Christianity presents a real, viable, and direct threat to that goal; hence, it must be done away with. Once and for all.

Recent Nationalist Victories: All Gain, No Pain; Or a Feigned Retreat?

The celebratory banter concerning the perceived retreat of globalism in the face of rising nationalism has reached a slow boil in certain corners of the internet over the past few months. An increasing number of commentators and bloggers seem convinced the tide of globalism has crested and that the global elite are on their back foot. Some commentators and bloggers assign this development to the gradual awakening of the masses who are beginning to see through globalism's sham; others, to witty and courageous nationalist politicians who are outwitting the global elite at every turn. Whatever the case, quite a few thinkers appear assured that globalism is in decline and that a new world of glorious, free, and independent nation states awaits us in the future. I am sympathetic to these notions, and I desire them to be real and true; nevertheless, I can't help but feel the jubilation might be a bit premature and more than a little ill-considered. 

Sure, anti-globalist forces have notched a number of apparent political victories onto their belts over the past few years, but what these victories will signify in the long-run remains an open question, at least for me. One mild criticism I would like to level at the euphoric nationalist cheerleaders is this: Are these victories you're seeing really victories or might they be merely feigned retreats? 

Globalists have worked incredibly hard to institute their System over the past century; a System that aims for and intends to eliminate the nation state in the West in favor of a one-world totalitarian government. Even with my limited understanding of these things, I can assess that the System the global elite have erected is incredibly intricate and complex; one that permeates practically all institutions in the West including, but not limited to, government, education, media, finance, science, and yes, even religion.

Is it realistic to assume the global elite would simply allow this sophisticated and labyrinthine operation to be dismantled or rendered obsolete by the outcome of a referendum vote or a superficial change in ruling parties within one of their cherished democracies? Even if the global elite did turn away with a shrug or throw their hands up in surrender, would these actions not precipitate immediate and drastic disruptions - initially in the financial sector, but eventually in nearly every aspect of our civilization? 

Call me a pessimist, but I cannot imagine the global elite surrendering anything willingly or diplomatically. As painful as it is to accept, the global elite have amassed vast amounts of power and control over the past century. Their influence is evident nearly everywhere, and it is inconceivable to believe that they would relinquish this power, control, and influence without some kind of retaliation or rearguard action.

Many feared such a retaliation or rearguard action would occur during the Brexit process, but as of yet, the stock markets haven't plummeted, currencies haven't hyper-inflated, democratic governments have not been overthrown, civil wars have not broken out, and economies haven't crashed. Simply put, with a few minor trivial exceptions, Brexit and other recent nationalist victories appear to be all gain with no pain. Is this a sign that nationalism has effectively neutralized globalist forces? It's a possibility, but I reckon it a slim one.

I don't believe the global elite are infallible. Nor are they omnipotent. Having said that, they are probably not as bumbling, short-sighted, and incompetent as many bloggers and thinkers would have us believe. Over the past few weeks I have pondered the possibility that the recent nationalist victories against globalism, these apparently massive gains acquired with little in the way of pain, might amount to nothing more than the one step back in the old 'two steps forward, one step back' dance, which is summarized below: 

Those resisting evil feel as if they have won some sort of victory, as if they have forced evil into some kind of compromise. There exists the illusion of regained territory, but nothing has been gained at all because the territory evil won in step one remains firmly within its control. In other words, it has advanced while its opponents have been pushed back.

The process described above could be applied to Brexit and other recent, apparent nationalist victories, at least at the speculative level. Have nationalists really won anything? Or have globalists merely allowing them to believe they have won something? 

As I thought about this, I stumbled upon an interesting analysis of Brexit written by blogger Steven Guinness, who focuses primarily on geopolitical and economic matters. Mr. Guinness offers the following observations about Brexit specifically and nationalism in general (notes and bold added by me): 

With Britain in the process of leaving the European Union, you could argue that one of the main planks of the Commission’s (The Trilateral Commission) agenda has failed. If the global elite want the integration of European nations, and for the majority of those nations to be controlled through a centralised behemoth like the EU, surely seeing the UK become independent from the union goes against everything they believe in? Not necessarily.

[. . . ]

From a UK standpoint, the country’s departure from the EU may appear on the surface to be rallying against the tide of globalism. But my concern is that globalists will successfully manage to position Brexit and the spectre of a global trade conflict as causes for an economic collapse, when in fact it is monetary policy over the last twelve years which will be the primary culprit.

Rather than heavy handedly marching into western nations and claiming their sovereignty, I would be concerned that the global elite will allow nationalist movements to fall on their own sword, and for the onset of a series of crises to consume geopolitics throughout the next decade. The job then would be to implement a whole raft of reforms and to educate the next generation on the perils of self determination.

The realisation of a ‘new world order‘ means tearing down existing structures, or at the very least jeopardising them to the point of collapse, to facilitate the new. Out of resurgent nationalism may come a swathe of centralised directives that make today’s level of globalisation seem tame by comparison.

Whether this is is happening or might happen is open to debate, but the possibility is definitely one we should not dismiss callously. At the very least, it would help explain why the global elite have not triggered chaos in reaction to the opposition against their agenda  -  yet. 

Thus far, I have focused exclusively on the political and economic in this post, which is primarily what most nationalistically-inclined bloggers and thinkers focus on when addressing the current tug-of-war between nationalism and globalism. But we must remember that what occurs at the political and economic levels are firmly grounded in the spiritual level. And it is at the spiritual level, and only at the spiritual level, that the war against the global elite and their demonic agenda can be won. 

For the sake of argument, let's imagine Mr. Guinness's speculation proves true - the globalists allow nationalism to sprout in the West for a few years, all without any perceptible disadvantages or consequences. People buy into nationalism again. Embrace it. Even opponents of autonomy and sovereignty begin to admit they may have been wrong. Then, out of nowhere, the global elite begin pulling the plug through the machinations of their System into which most nations will still be firmly assimilated via trade, economy, finance, etc. How will people in the West react to the sudden discomfort and suffering such a pulled plug will undoubtedly cause?

How will Western people react when the world goes from all gain no pain to, seemingly, all pain no gain?

Will Western people be able to withstand economic disruptions, extended periods of unemployment, a possible increase in civic violence, and a meaningful decline in the overall comfort and quality of their material lives in the short term for the promise of something better, greater, and freer in the long-term?

Will Western people gratefully sacrifice comfort and pleasure and welcome material pain in order to align their societies with Reality for spiritual gain? Or will Western people buckle under the physical disruptions and material deprivations the global elite unleash and, consequently, willingly surrender to the global agenda in an effort to regain the comforts and the pleasures they have lost?

As with anything else, the answer to this question lies in the spiritual, which I will probably explore in another post concerning perceived nationalist victories on the global stage.