Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 5

What is it to be spiritually uncompromising? (With reference to the Christian Litmus Test Fail of so-called "AI")

A couple of years after becoming a Christian, I encountered the work of Fr Seraphim Rose - I warmed to him immediately, as he was a modern Westerner who had become an uncompromising and spiritually-dedicated Eastern Orthodox monk - while at the same time embodying a warm-hearted, loving nature.  

One of my greatest disappointments on becoming a Christian was the insipid worldly compromise of all the Christians I knew-of: they were, where it most mattered, spiritually indistinguishable from the mainstream of atheistic materialists. 

Seraphim Rose - with his ascetic and hermit-like life - was (it seemed to me) on a different and qualitatively higher level of holiness; that very unusually enabled him to discern clearly; and give full value to the depth, as well as breadth, of the modern spiritual malaise.

By contrast, other Christians I came across really did not seem to grasp the profundity and seriousness of our civilization's spiritual malaise. 

However; I fairly soon recognized that the monastic life - which attempts to live materially in a way that is compatible with spiritual understanding; is not an answer. 

Seraphim Rose was almost unique among monks in his warm-hearted asceticism; because other monks are either warm-hearted but worldly, deluded, often corrupt -- or else they may be genuinely ascetic but with a narrow, harsh and prideful rigidity. (A group that Seraphim Rose called "the super-correct".) 

In other words, I now distinguish between the inner spiritual self on the one hand; and the public and social self. 

Indeed, I think that the - inevitably failing - attempt of people to live their lives fully in accordance with the highest Christian hopes; is actually a major source of spiritual corruption among Christians.

What actually happens is that Christians cut their Christianity to fit the cloth of their nature and circumstances. 

In other words, the limitations of their personality and abilities, and the pressure of their lives, are allowed to dictate the scope and aspirations of their Christian faith.

They limit their definitions of Christianity to whatever they can themselves accomplish.    

Examples include the spiritual Litmus Tests of our time. 

The practicalities of living in an evil totalitarian system mean that most people will "inevitably", more-or-less, go-along-with the demonically-originated evil strategies that are designed to engineer our society into a machine of damnation. 

A current example - a spiritual test that most Christians have failed spectacularly! - is so-called "AI". 

The way it seems to work is that a Christian finds himself in a work or life situation in which he is compelled to use, and even to work-with and develop and propagandize-for - "AI" systems. Compelled in that either he follows these bureaucratic diktats, or else he fails to get the job, is sacked from his current job, or cannot get promoted above a low level. 

Or else the Christian cannot resist the temptations of using AI to amuse or divert himself. 

Or he may find that he cannot resist using "AI" to add a professional (pseudo-creative) gloss to his own productions; or to project an image of greater knowledge, competence, understanding than he personally possesses - maybe at work, or in his hobbies.  

Then, because Christian finds himself in his actions and life either compelled to use, or expediently using, "AI" - he argues that therefore "AI" is not (in its actual origins, and implementation) intentionally evil; but is merely a neutral tool; or a Must-Do qualitative breakthrough in societal capability - with potential significant benefits for humanity that we therefore have a duty to exploit... 

Because Christian actually uses "AI" and has no intention of stopping; he infers that - because he is A Christian - therefore "AI" must be A Good Thing, and he soon finds himself defending and proselytising for "AI" in both public - but also even in private.   

I have come to believe that if Christians try to insist upon a compatibility of Christian actions with spiritual aspirations; what this actually leads-to is a dishonest denial of real and significant evil among Christians, and the air-brushing of their own sins as trivial or non-existent.

"Rigorous" and devout Christians are therefore, in practice (nearly-always) those who make a big deal about their own avoidance of some categories of Big Sins (like murder, theft, rape, sexual infidelity and unchastity, drug use &c.) - while denying, engaging-in and defending many other sins; but especially those expedient and publicly acceptable besetting-sins of mainstream modern life...

Sins such as systematic untruthfulness  - eg. the frequent and extreme levels of habitual and pervasive dishonesty that are now a condition of all middle class employment, including in all churches. Or fear and resentment. 

And defending or promoting the cause of global AI.  

The orthodox and traditional idea is that all men ought to cease from all sinning; so the answer to such examples of sinning as lying for money and status, and covering-up the demonic totalitarian plans for corrupting Mankind with "AI" - is that people ought to stop doing this - as people should stop doing everything bad. 

My view is different, because I accept as a fact that people cannot (as well as will not) stop sinning*. 

People who must deceive in order to keep their jobs and get promotions, will continue to deceive. 

People who are managerially-instructed to implement and promote "AI" will continue to do this; and those who personally get pleasure or profit from using "AI" systems will continue to exploit them for such purposes. 

In general terms: people will continue to sin, and will continue to have no serious intention of ceasing from sin. 

However, this is not a reason to pretend that sins are not sins, that evil strategies are not real, that people personally aren't working to overall-promote the plans of the demonic world rulers. 

But following what I take to be a core teaching of Jesus, I expect that all Men are and will be sinners and will not, cannot stop doing this, and shall not even have any serious or workable plans to stop sinning - and this applies even the most devout and ascetic and good of modern monks like Seraphim Rose, even in the most ideally un-worldly of environments. 

I see no reason why this our pervasively-sinful and evil-promoting lives are incompatible with being a genuinely devout and uncompromising Christian in our spiritual aspirations.  

In sum: we must not compromise our Christian principles in all their depth and rigour merely because we cannot and never will live-up-to-them. 

Indeed, only by separating our spiritual understanding and aims from the corruptions of everyday life; can we really discern, understand, appreciate the nature of this world - and the profundity of our own corruption - and do this without being overwhelmed by despair (which is itself a potentially terrible sin).  

We can always be at work at clarifying our spiritual nature in the most uncompromising way - indifferent to the constraints and practicalities that are inescapable. 

+++

* This is what Jesus also says, by my understanding; at least in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus does not select his followers for their good behaviour, nor does he say that his followers should cease from all sinning - but instead Jesus implies and says he came to save actual sinners. Stopping sinning - either in particular or in general - is Not the way that Men attain eternal resurrected Heavenly life. 

What is it to be spiritually uncompromising?

A couple of years after becoming a Christian, I encountered the work of Fr Seraphim Rose - I warmed to him immediately, as he was a modern Westerner who had become a spiritually-dedicated Eastern Orthodox monk while at the same time embodying a warm-hearted, loving nature.  

One of my greatest disappointments on becoming a Christian was the insipid worldly compromise of all the Christians I knew-of: they were, where it most mattered, spiritually indistinguishable from the mainstream of atheistic materialists. 

Seraphim Rose - with his ascetic and hermit-like life - was on a different and qualitatively level of holiness; that enables him to discern clearly and give full value to the depth, as well as breadth, of the modern spiritual malaise.

By contrast, other Christians I came across really did not seem to grasp the depth and seriousness of our civilization's spiritual malaise. 

However; I fairly soon recognized that the monastic life - which attempts to live materially in a way that is compatible with spiritual understanding; is not an answer. Seraphim Rose was almost unique among monks in his warm-hearted asceticism; because other monks are either warm-hearted but worldly,  deluded, often corrupt - or they may be genuinely ascetic but with a narrow, harsh and prideful rigidity. 

In other words, I now distinguish between the inner spiritual self, and the public and social self. Indeed, I think that the - inevitably failing, attempt to live in accordance with our Christian hopes is actually a major source of spiritual corruption among Christians.

What happens is that Christians cut their Christianity in to fit the cloth of their nature and circumstances. 

In other words, the limitations of their personality and abilities and the pressure of their lives are allowed to dictate the scope and aspirations of their Christian faith.   

Examples include the spiritual Litmus Tests of our time. The practicalities of living in an evil totalitarian system mean that most people will "inevitably" more-or-less go-along with the demonically-originated evil strategies that are designed to engineer our society into a machine of damnation. 

A current example - a spiritual test that most Christians have failed spectacularly! - is so-called "AI". 

The way it seems to work is that a Christian finds himself in a work or life situation in which he is compelled to use, and even to work-with and develop and propagandize-for - "AI" systems. 

Or else he cannot resist the temptations of using AI to amuse or divert himself. 

Or he may find that he cannot resist using "AI" to add a professional (pseudo creative) gloss to his own productions; or to project an image of greater knowledge, competence, understanding - at work or in hobbies.  

Then, because he finds himself in his actions and life either compelled or expediently using "AI" - he argues that therefore "AI" is not (in its actual origins, and implementation) intentionally evil; but is merely a neutral tool, a qualitative breakthrough in societal capability, and one with potential significant benefits for humanity.  

I have come to believe that if Christians try to insist upon a compatibility of Christian actions with spiritual aspirations; what this actually leads-to is a dishonest denial of real and significant evil among Christians, and the air-brushing of their own sins as trivial or non-existent.

"Rigorous" and devout Christians are therefore, in practice (nearly-always) those who make a big deal about their own avoidance of some categories of Big Sins (like murder, theft, rape, sexual infidelity an unchastity) - while denying, engaging-in and defending many other sins...

Such as systematic untruthfulness  - eg. the frequent and extreme levels of habitual and pervasive dishonesty that are now a condition of all middle class employment, including in all churches.

And defending or promoting the cause of global AI.  

The orthodox and traditional idea is that all men ought to cease from all sinning; so the answer to such examples of sinning by lying for money and status, and covering-up the demonic totalitarian plans for corrupting Mankind with "AI" - is that people ought to stop doing this - as people should stop doing everything bad. 

My view is different, because I accept as a fact that people cannot (as well as will not) stop sinning. 

People who must deceive in order to keep their jobs and get promotions, will continue to deceive. 

People who are managerially instructed to implement and promote "AI" will continue to do this; and those who personally get pleasure or profit from using "AI" systems will continue to exploit them for such purposes. 

In general terms: people will continue to sin, and will continue to have no serious intention of ceasing from sin. 

However, this is not a reason to pretend that sins are not sins, that evil strategies are not real, that people personally aren't working to overall-promote the plans of the demonic world rulers. 

But following what I take to be a core teaching of Jesus, I expect tat all Men are and will be sinners and will not, cannot stop doing this, and shall not even have any serious plans to stop sinning - and this applies even the most devout and ascetic and good of modern monks like Seraphim Rose, in the most ideally un-worldly of environments. 

I see no reason why this our pervasively-sinful and evil-promoting lives are incompatible with being a genuinely devout and uncompromising Christian in our spiritual aspirations.  

In sum: we must not compromise our Christian principles in all their depth and rigour merely because we cannot and never will live up to them. 

Indeed, only then can we really discern, understand, appreciate the nature of this world - and the profundity of our corruption - and do this without being overwhelmed by despair (which is itself a potentially terrible sin).  

We can always be at work at clarifying our spiritual nature in the most uncompromising way - indifferent to the constraints and practicalities that are inescapable. 

Dealing with fear by personal thoughts of faith and love; not via groupism, nor with optimism, pride, or safety-seeking

People always want to know "what to do" - and this need is used to manipulate us.

Because all the standard available notions of "doing good" and improving-the-world are long since captured and put to work for strategic evil...

But, of course, we really do need to know what to do! 

There's always a lot of the sin of fear about; it is infectious and people also have a tendency to seek it (a misplaced sense of "duty" to face the "reality" of "the worst" (in practice, "the worst" as interpreted and presented by the mass media) and overcome it. 

Chronic, existential fear isn't something that can be avoided or eradicated (at least, not for those capable of the experience). 

Yet we do genuinely need to overcome; we need to deal with fear; so we need to consider how to deal with it.

Typical wrong ways of dealing with fear include optimism - adopting a belief that the feared thing cannot or will not happen; or pride - that if it does happen, I personally (and my gang) can overcome it. 

Another wrong way is to seek safety from the feared - to flee it, or defend against it. 

These are bad ways of dealing with fear; because they are negative, they try to use one sin to fight another. 

Thus - optimism is dishonest, pride is this-worldly, safety is impossible in this mortal earthly life... 

Others fight fear by trying to build protective alliances, "groups" - with the implication that fear is something we collectively intend to defeat, sometime in the future, so long as we can persuade or coerce other people to join un in the fight...

But fear needs to be fought immediately - not in the future, and this means fought by each person as-he-now-is, and individually. 

We must take personal responsibility to do what is needed, without delaying for conditions to improve.  

The first faith required is that God would not leave us without the necessary resources. So anybody and everywhere can do what is needed - it's a matter of knowing what. 

Also, the answer will be (must be) for individuals and not dependent on social factors, will be immediate, can be consciously adopted - and is a matter of free action. 

The answer is therefore going to be neither hard nor abstract - and shall be within anyone's grasp who chooses it. 

Since we know that the answer must be possible to happen individually, immediately, and therefore directly. 

It's pretty well-known among Christians that we should fight fear with love and faith (a loving kind of faith, faith in the ultimate power of love).

But people get hung-up on exactly what such action means in practice, here-and-now...

For instance; faith is usually weak, and often weak because external in source, self-contradicting, and neither grasped nor inwardly endorsed. 

Faith will not overcome fear unless is real and strong to us personally, which means experientially. 

And of course Christian faith needs to be in God the creator, known as personal, parental, and good (not, therefore, faith another kind of God with other characteristics) 

Love is the basis of divine creation; and love cannot be dictated - therefore to be effective for good, love must be genuine. 

We can only make a positive difference for that which we really love. 

And as for action - the false assumption of our materialist civilization is that action must be physical to be effective; whereas if action is to be individual and immediate - then such action needs to be known as spiritual not physical; and thinking recognized as (potentially) an action that affects divine creation. 

So it is possible for any person to do positive good for whatever and whoever he really loves, and almost instantly; by thinking upon the subject on the above lines. 

But the needful will probably only click, and happen, pretty briefly...

Because the conditions necessary are rather delicate. And what it is that happens is known primarily by direct apprehension; rather than indirectly via images, words, concepts and the like...

Description and communication come after the needful has happened, and will be approximate at best - that should be expected, and not regarded as a weakness or refutation of what has happened. 

All of which also needs a kind of faith in the way that "things work" in divine creation  - by love and spiritually - also, faith that God will take notice and incorporate what brief yet significant good we may accomplish in such ways. 

 

Media negativism - the next step in disbelief

Lots of people nowadays affect media negativism; and state that they "always" disbelieve the mass media...
However, in reality their scepticism is merely skin-deep. 

What happens is that, whenever the media publishes something with which they disagree or that contradicts their world-view - then they reflexively doubt it. 
But (and aren't we all prone to this one?) when something gets into the mass media that confirms our prejudices; suddenly we find ourselves bringing it to the attentions of others with some variant of a triumphant: 
"There! See! I told you so!

Supposedly Alternative or counter-Establishment bloggers are among the very worst offenders in this regard: indeed most of the most productive, popular and influential "Right Wing" blogs would have nothing to say if they failed to comment on mass media reportage in just this manner. 
Yet, of course, if the mass media are utterly dishonest and slavishly serve the totalitarian agenda - which they are and do - then we ought especially to disbelieve and ignore them when they seem to be reinforcing our preconceptions. 
Because we can then be confident that we ourselves are there-and-then being-manipulated.  

Anti-war pacifists... Then not

I have a low opinion of self-proclaimed anti-war pacifists - especially those who make a big thing of it: the Peace Studies type. 

Although I understand it, and from the inside; because I was that way myself as a young man (for obvious reasons). 

But what really gets me, is how fragile and evanescent is pacifism - no matter how established and entrenched by years of reading the relevant books and magazines, watching the relevant TV plays and movies. 

In 2022 nearly-all these anti-war pacifist upper-middle-class intellectuals, bureaucrats, managers; became fanatically pro-war activists overnight. 

And continuing.  

Why this 180 degrees, instant and effortless, change of "convictions"?  

Apparently, very simply, because they were told to become fanatically pro-war by their favourite politicians, newspapers and especially The BBC. 

That, in a nutshell, illustrates the depth and strength and moral seriousness of decades-long ideological anti-war pacifist convictions - in practice. 

Two favourite real-life names...

A Chinese chap, whose post I used to see in the college pigeon-holes, that was called Ivan Ho. 

A friend of a friend from Yorkshire, whose name was Annette Curtin. 

Even decades later; these can provoke an inner chuckle. 

Rather than being a part of the fake "Alternative" economy and promoting it self-interestedly; it's spiritually better to have a job explicitly in service to evil totalitarianism - and repent the fact

Rather than being a part of the fake-"Alternative" economy; and defending it on the untrue basis that it is genuinely Alternative; it is spiritually better to have a job explicitly in service to evil totalitarianism, and to know that is what you are doing. And to repent the necessity. 

The idea that there is any qualitatively-distinct "alternative" economy - independent-from and opposed-to the mainstream System of socio-political discourse and exchange - is itself part of that totalitarian System.

That there is an "Alternative" is delusional; because All institutions of any significant size/ wealth/ power/ influence are necessarily bound to the mainstream by multiple legal, financial and regulatory ties; or else the institution could not arise and be sustained. 

(This also applies to churches.) 

Nobody can run any kind of operation that pays taxes, employs people, has property etc - and also be autonomous. 

And if you are part of the System - you serve the System.  

Since nobody can qualitatively escape working for The System, since everything that pays us a living wage is compelled to serve Caesar; the essential is to know and repent that plain fact. 

Jesus apparently didn't try to stop people working as publicans or tax collectors (or even priests! e.g. Nicodemus) - but he did insist that they acknowledge that they are thereby (as well as for innumerable other reasons) sinners. 

This repentance at the inevitability and inescapability of being-a-sinner in this mortal life and world; is part of what being-a-Christian requires of us.

And why people whom society regarded as especially "bad" by the nature of their jobs, were so often the earliest followers of Jesus. 

So given that we are all in the same boat in a qualitative sense, and that quantitative differences make no significant difference to salvation; why am I saying that it is sometimes/ often worse to regard oneself as part of the Alternative sector?

The reason is simply that such people suppose themselves to be qualitatively and significantly more virtuous than those who are part of the mainstream - by virtue of the source of their income. 

And therefore, instead of acknowledging and repenting their servitude to evil totalitarianism, they continually celebrate their own moral superiority to others!

Indeed - such people (almost invariably) are engaged in active promotion of their bit of the pseudo-Alternative - and therefore promotion of The System. They want our attention time, support, and money; for themselves and their enterprise. And this is dishonestly justified by the false pretence that this selfishly-beneficial redirection will subvert and (maybe?... eventually?...) replace totalitarianism. 

But the beginning of wisdom is to know that in our this-worldly lives we all serve Caesar; and that, as of 2025, Caesar serves Satan. 

Christian theologians misunderstanding the Ancient Philosophers: Ultimately, fundamentally - "purpose" really means desires of living Beings

I talk a good deal on this blog about purpose, and how important it is - yet purpose is an abstraction, hence not really real, but just a symbol for reality.

(The reality is the personal desires of living Beings.)  

For most theologically-minded people, the abstract nature of purpose is important; because theologians want purpose to be detachable from individual persons - such that it can be implanted or put-into a Being - for example by God.

The currently-dominant half-baked philosophies of "AI" are also dependent on this abstraction; since they assert that purpose is something that can be built-into computer, robots and the like - inserted by external entities such as computer programmers and engineers, and their paymasters. 

But - if I am rigorous, and manage to escape the bad habits of my socialized 21st century metaphysics - then I acknowledge that purpose is ultimately the desires, the "wantings", of Beings. 

In a nutshell - purpose is an attribute of particular (living, conscious, eternal, spiritual) Beings.

A major difficulty of classical traditional theologians in the 21st century (and indeed for several centuries already, albeit increasing) is that inherited Christian theology implicitly incorporates the Ancient Greek (Platonic, Aristotelian - and also scholastic Aquinas-derived) sense of purpose as an attribute of a Being. 

(e.g. When Aristotle, apparently, explains the motion of things in terms of where entities want to be.) 

The ancients knew, from their personal daily experience - but unconsciously and implicitly, that they inhabited a living universe. This formed an unspoken background structure, a matrix, for all their philosophizing.  

Those in the past were developing their abstract logical arguments on the unconscious, implicit - yet vital - assumption of a living universe of Beings with desires. 

But modern theologians - who expound (as they suppose) ancient or medieval theology and philosophy have (almost invariably) lost this implicit assumption - at least since their adolescence - and have not restored it by conscious choice... 

The consequence is that the bottom line assumption of modern classical-theologians is of the divinely-entailed validity of an abstracted version of Greek-Medieval logic; operating in an originally-dead universe. 

(And this originally-dead-universe mind-set has been inherited by nearly-all post-reformation theology; and the atheist traditions of philosophy including science, and also and more obviously the "rationality" that underpins and regulates the modern System of governance, corporations, media etc.)  

In sum: modern (post-medieval) theology is rooted in pure abstraction - which is why it is experienced as dry, quibbling; irrelevant to me-here-now - why it Does Not Convince. 

In order to follow the reasoning of such philosophers - we are compelled to think from a stance in which abstract logic is the primary reality - operating in an otherwise life-less reality. 

So that human beings, you and me, are being regarded very much as-if we were (bottom line, ultimately) nothing-but the product of logic! 

We are excluded from the assumptions; and, consequently, the conclusions. 

Into this assumed-dead universe, God then "puts" souls - souls that he has made from nothing. 

God puts into these inserted-souls other attributes - such as purpose, and freedom.

And this kind of abstract stuff is what we are invited to imagine, invited to believe!... Nay instructed that we Must believe; about our-selves, everybody else, the world and universe!

To put it starkly - classic traditional theology of the 21st century pictures a kind of zombie universe; dead but animated by some kind of insertion of properties. 

However, this isn't what people believed 2000 or even 1000 years ago - because it leaves-out their spontaneous animism - their implicit and unconscious knowing that ultimately reality consisted of living Beings, and the properties and attributes of these Beings emerged from this living nature. 

No matter what the ancients said and wrote: this animism lay behind it; which was why the abstract logical scholastic philosophy was not - to them, then - dry and quibbling and irrelevant in the way it is to us, now. 

The history of human consciousness, and therefore of philosophy and theology; is one of emergence from spontaneous innate animism - to the present state when animism is no longer spontaneous, but is denied and ridiculed...

Consequently our ultimate metaphysical philosophy is either/ both incoherent and/or consists of irrelevant autonomous syllogisms.  

But we need consciously and by choice, to recover the implicit and (mostly) unconscious animism of the past - if we are really to understand-by-experience the nature of reality. 

Therefore we must beware of the delusions of abstractions understood in a way that did not apply to Aristotle and Aquinas - whose minds included the built-in assumption of living Beings as a "given"...

And this built-in assumption underlay everything they thought and wrote. 

*

Note: The above insight is heavily indebted to the work of Owen Barfield (eg. Saving the Appearances) and Rudolf Steiner (eg. The Riddles of Philosophy). 

Is the primary authority of the Fourth Gospel "just" a matter of my personal preference?

My according the Fourth Gospel primary authority is indeed a matter of my personal preference, since even before I was a Christian it always seemed that it was the most beautiful book of the Bible. 

But is it just that - merely personal?

No - there is something more to it than taste, and something that may be generally true.  

For many years I interpreted the IV Gospel in the mainstream orthodox way, as a kind of "mystical appendix" to the Synoptics and Paul's letters, or else part of a mosaic of Biblical evidence but without special eminence. 

This framework meant that the meanings of the IV-G could-not and did-not change anything substantive - it merely provided a kind of "radiant glow" around the main stuff, which was elsewhere. 

It was only after I had decided to read and re-read the IV Gospel as the primary authority - on the basis of what the book said about itself confirmed by my deepest intuitions, and that it really did feel deeply like a near contemporary eye-witness account by an intimate of Jesus...

Only after doing this multiple re-read; did I realize - and with considerable shock - that instead of being mystical, abstract and vague - the IV-G was actually highly coherent and clear...  

But about what? There I was shocked to find that what it was so clear about was that the essence of Jesus's teaching was that of resurrected eternal life, possible for all those who recognized and "followed" Jesus. 

This was shocking because it was so plain; and because I had a kind of inner snobbery against a religion which was based-upon promising its adherents eternal and fulfilling life after death... 

This offer of better times to come later seemed like a simple-minded basis for a religion, designed to appeal mainly to selfish and simple-minded people...

Almost like the nasty caricature of Christianity by its enemies - a controlling socio-political scheme offering "pie in the sky" for those who do what we say, and think what we tell them to think. 

A classic bit of priestly manipulation...

Except that in the actual IV Gospel, when read as a coherent whole; the offer of resurrected life was not conditional upon obedience to an external authority or adherence to complex laws and rules. 

Indeed, there wasn't anything in the valid parts of the Gospel* about setting-up a priesthood or church. 

The Gospel is about an un-socio-political, as non-institutional, as could be imagined; it is all about loving familial and marriage relationships.  

IV-G was about our attitude-to and relationship-with Jesus primarily, and his Father secondarily yet necessarily. 

So that when I then went back to re-read the other books of the New Testament in light of the IV, I often seemed to be reading about another Jesus; a Jesus whose focus was very different from IV-G, and who was (as his priority) proposing primarily to set-up a new priesthood and a new church - with all that entailed in terms of laws and practices**. 

Therefore to read the IV Gospel as the primary authority of Jesus Christ that the Gospel itself tells us that it is; seems to entail a very profound reshaping of what has become the mainstream orthodox understanding of "what Christianity is" - its nature, aims, mechanisms.

If the IV-Gospel is accepted and embraced as true and valid in its own right; then the rest of the Bible needs to be approached with a great deal of selectivity; and a good deal of it needs to be discarded.

Small wonder - it seems to me - that the IV Gospel has, and apparently since very early after the ascension of Jesus; been accorded only a minor, subordinate, supplementary role in defining the teaching of Jesus and the true nature of substantive Christianity.   

*The process of reading and re-reading, spontaneously led to the rejection of a few parts of the Gospel being recognized as - to me - obviously alien and from another source, with a contradictory implication from the unity of the whole. For instance, Chapter 21 comes after the Gospel - pretty clearly - has ended with a recapitulation. 

**. More exactly, "Christianity"/ following Jesus is presented an inner desire and attitude, that can (when necessary) be practiced in the context of any religion, or none. 

The biggest Christianity problem of our times

A few observations... 

Lack of Christianity is killing people, and the world. 

In that sense any kind of Christianity - of desiring salvation by Jesus Christ - is better than nothing. 

I believe that the decision concerning salvation comes after death of the body. Which is just as well; because it means that the very large majority who are not Christian and have little prospect of becoming so, still have the chance to choose.

Nonetheless, it is still "our-selves" that makes the choice after death: the eternal spiritual self that we carry over through death... 

This means that any of the majority (it seems) who were born with good souls, souls capable of love and valuing love, and who are genuinely ignorant or innocent in mortal life; will have a good chance of choosing rightly after death...

When they have discovered that the offer of resurrected, eternal Heavenly life is real and possible; their loving nature and desires will make them want what Jesus offers.  

Yet, even among those born with good souls; how few adolescents and adults - especially in The West - are genuinely ignorant or innocent! 

And it is exactly their desires that are disordered - that are too-often (at least, so far as one can judge) actively turned-against salvation. 

And even among self-identified Christians, there seem extremely few who seem to have salvation as their positive priority...

And it seems that the Churches are so confused or corrupted in their priorities that they seldom seem to help and very often strongly hinder clarity on this crucial point. 

Because negative desires - such as fear of death or misery or hell - do not suffice; and indeed (given the many alternative possibilities to salvation) hardly assist at all in making the right choice.  

This is perhaps the biggest "Christianity problem" of our times.