Bruce G. Charlton's Blog, page 9

Understanding Christianity - the role of the Fourth Gospel ("John")

The role of IV Gospel in my understanding of Christianity is of a means to the end of understanding. 

Once I had grasped that understanding, from then the validity and authority of the gospel became almost irrelevant. Much as if it were a work of explicit fiction that expressed truth, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

But! In order really to engage with IV Gospel, I needed to be convinced it was worth the sustained and intense effort that was required.

Of all the Bible, I was most sure of the authority and value of IV... That was my starting point. I felt sure that, if truth were to be found, that's where it would be.

So I was able and keen to put in the effort of grappling with IV, and then it yielded a clear and simple understanding... 

But the truth of that understanding was then discerned by "intuition" - by my deepest attainable sense of inner sureness.

This intuition was something tested across time and in whatever was emerged or struck me, as life continued, as challenges were encountered. As I used my new IV Gospel understanding in living.

The new understanding "worked".

And at a certain point I felt a strong sense of Yes - This is real and true.

That's how thing happened for me.

What caused the surprising re-normalization after the 2020 global coup (Birdemic and Peck)?

I was and am amazed at the remarkable degree of re-normalization within Western societies; that followed after the successful early-2020 global totalitarian coup which was effected under the excuse of the Birdemic, and the giga-imposition of the (unnecessary, ineffective, harmful) Peck.

That the significant collapse of the world state was Not due to any kind of positive spiritual awakening is obvious from the mass failure to understand and learn from 2020; from continued strategies of Western self-destruction by multiple means; and from the gratuitously destructive, Western-caused, wars that are continually sustained and escalated.

My best guess of the cause of totalitarian recession post Birdemic is of increased dissent among the ruling class, causing loss of governmental cohesion and control.

To sustain the 2020 coup required that members of the "elite" ruling global government would suppress their own selfish short-term inclinations; and instead pursue a long-term group-agenda of mass surveillance and population control.

But instead, the erstwhile world rulers have broken down into multiple hostile factions, each pursuing a more local agenda.

Plus - rampant and accelerating individual-level self-gratifying corruption among members of the elite ( e.g. self-enrichment, and indulgence of spiteful personal resentments); has combined with the runaway factionalism, to destroy the cohesion of the 2020 worldwide totalitarian takeover.

In other words - although this relative  relief from the tyranny of 2020 is welcome, there is no cause for celebration at Good Triumphant.

There is no positive reason for betterment; the Western trend toward evil has not reversed; and the partial collapse of 2020 global totalitarianism is Not a valid reason for civilizational optimism.

Final Participation is a conscious consecration of this-moment to our eternal resurrected life

For the past decade or so, I have been trying (in multiple ways) to understand the implications of Owen Barfield's concept of Final Participation - as being the destiny and proper aim of our spiritual life. 

Some modern people seem wholly enmeshed in mundane materialist thinking and feel detached and alienated from the living world - trapped inside their own heads. Their only relief is temporarily to forget this in sleep, intoxication, psychosis - and in occasional moments when there is a resurgence of a child-like sense of belonging and involvement. 

These brief times are what Barfield calls Original Participation, because they were our original state of consciousness as young children, and also (it is believed) the normal state of the earliest ancestral Men.  

Original Participation is - pretty much - the same as Novalis's Sehnsucht and CS Lewis's Joy; Gurdjieff's self-remembering, Maslow's Peak Experience, or Csíkszentmihályi's Flow state are psychological reductions of the experience.  

Such moments may be pleasant, indeed there have been times and places (e.g. some of the Romantic movement around 1800, or the 1960s counter-culture... still ongoing) when many people aspired to abandon modern consciousness and return to Original Participation. 

Although this return to the spontaneous, natural, child-like, primitive, here-and-now consciousness is powerful and alluring to many people; it has always failed - and must be assumed impossible (except briefly).  

However it makes a difference how we regard these brief moments. 

If they are regarded as merely pleasant psychological states, then Original Participation can only be therapeutic - like taking a short holiday from the "real world" of mundane materialism.

Yet Barfield asserted that Final Participation was not just a pleasant interlude; but in some deep sense absolutely necessary - necessary if we personally, and our society as well, were to avoid being overwhelmed by evil.   

However, Barfield was vague about how this might be achieved (he usually advised consulting his mentor Rudolf Steiner's work - but Steiner's techniques seem obviously ineffective, and Barfield never claimed that decades of practicing Steiner medications had led to any very significant effect on Barfield's own thinking in terms of Final Participation. 

Indeed, it seems that FP is not really achievable in a lasting and dominant way. 

So we seem rather to be trapped between impossibilities! We cannot go back, cannot stay as we are - yet the destined path forward seems blocked...  

Yet anyone who conceptualizes life as bounded by conception and death will find himself bounded by exactly such impossibilities. We cannot escape the constraints of entropy (and death) and evil. 

But this is forgetting the reality that we are eternal Beings, and this mortal life can be (should be) seen as a finite transitional phase between eternities before and afterwards. 

Furthermore (and here I depart from Barfield, with his ideas of multiple future reincarnations) a Christian sees his eternal future as including resurrected Heavenly life, following after this mortal life.

My idea of Final Participation is that it is the conscious choice to consecrate those moments of Original Participation.     

So that when moments of OP happen; we choose to regard them as sacred. 

In such a "consecration"; the momentary experience of OP is consciously recognized as being of potentially eternal significance to divine creation - and is actively taken-up into ongoing thinking.

This contrasts with, say, the sixties counter-culture response - which is to stay inside those OP moments, and perpetuate them or as long as possible. 

I would regard this as akin to a religiously-contemplative response to Original Participation. Contemplative because it is deliberately passive and self-negating. The moment is primary and we intend to stay with it, dissolve-into it. 

This is analogous to the contemplative kind of meditation where people seek a "blissful" state of consciousness and try to maintain it for as long as possible. 

The ideal is of stasis in perfection.  

But Final Participation is active and creative - hence is is both dynamic - like divine creation; and aspires to join-in-with and influence ongoing divine creation.

And all this is a choice, not a surrender. It is an affirmation of the self, not an attempt to lose the self. 

It is the choice to be a Son of God, a sibling of Jesus; one who want to join with God in the work of creation, and add to to that creative work whatever is unique in himself. 

So, Final Participation is an active self-confidence; confidence that by the "process" of resurrection after this mortal life we can be transformed such as to be able, worthy, and trust-worthy of eternal participation in creation.

Thus, FP is a state of being only achievable permanently (as a normal state) after our death, and only among those who have then chosen to follow Jesus through resurrection to everlasting Heavenly life.  

But Final Participation does have a vital role in this mortal life; because it is when we can add to our resurrected life. 

FP represents our choice to learn from experience in such a way that our immortal soul is permanently transformed.

We are talking about our immortal souls, not the conditions of our mortal lives on earth - so the fact that our modern experiences of participation may be relatively few, infrequent, brief - does not invalidate these experiences... 

FP experiences are of permanent value not because they last a long time; but so long as we choose to consecrate them.

Consecration would go something like this:

1. Original Participation happens. 

2. We recognize that it is happening. 

3. We acknowledge that this happening is of potentially permanent importance to our resurrected Heavenly self. 

This needs to be done when Original participation happens - Now: here-and-now. 

Not put-off until later. 

If we do not do it at the time of Original Participation - it will (probably) not be done. 

However... An intense imagined re-living of the moment, could also be used to consecrate that moment retrospectively. Because then the moment is not merely "retrospective" but a re-experiencing here-and-now - which is perhaps one reason why we may recollect and meditate on such moments... Why they may last so tenaciously in our memories. The experiences may be re-presenting themselves for consecration. 

Maybe, if we do this on principle and habitually; then this will act as a positive feedback and establish a "spiritual reward system" - so that such opportunities will become more frequent? 

The thing is: we modern Men are terribly demotivated, prone to despair - and any spiritual advice that diminishes or delays our gratification seems doomed to fail*. 

Consecrating our moments of Original Participation generates an immediate spiritual reward as well as a hope-full anticipation. 

Instead of OP being a tragic joy; doomed to be short-lived, doomed to be forgotten and lost by age, disease, death... Instead of this; the act of consecration transforms it into a moment of permanent and positive significance.  

As far as I can understand; only a follower of Jesus Christ who lives in confident expectation of resurrection can do this; and it will not "just happen" but must be done by conscious choice. 

All then depends on making that choice. 

NOTE: It may be objected that because Original Participation is spontaneous and natural, it is not necessarily good. This is true; and if an OP experience is not good, then it cannot and shall not be consecrated to resurrected eternal life - so any such attempt will fail. Christian discernment - knowledge of good and evil, God and that which opposes God; is a necessary part of Christian life - and always applies. 

* The mass of people are (quite literally) spiritually-dying of despair, for lack of any genuinely positive purpose in life. It seems obvious that the double-negative (e.g. therapeutic) values that are exclusively propagated, including by nearly all religions (eg religions rooted in avoidance of default divine punishment), including most Christian churches - are simply ineffectual; leading to short-termist this-worldly hedonism now, and ultimate despair eventually. 

Is following Christ truly a case of "Myth made fact" - Is Christianity, indeed, "a myth" at all?

CS Lewis's conversion, as is pretty well known, had much to do with an idea he got (mostly) from JRR Tolkien that in Christianity Myth became Fact. In other words; that various of the myths of the ancient world came true in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

This is one reason why Lewis regarded Christianity as the completion of paganism (as well as of Judaism) - because in essence it took much of paganism and transformed it by the addition of specifically Christian values - in particular "Faith, Hope, and Charity".

I was greatly influenced by this idea in my own conversion to Christianity; but have now come to regard the "Christian myth" as a misleading distortion of what Jesus actually did and taught. 

My interpretation nowadays is that Christianity is in its essence about the possibility of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that this was something new under the sun: an unique possibility; that was (at its core) neither foreshadowed nor foreseen among the ancient religions: neither among Jews nor among Pagans.  

I agree with Lewis that Christianity can be and actually was (especially in the earliest years of Jesus's ministry and the early period after his ascension) an add-on, easily adopted by Jews and Roman or Greek pagans alike...

But I think the reason for this was not because Christianity was aligned with Jewish expectations of the Messiah, nor that it was a completion of Greco-Roman Paganism - but simply because Christianity was a new idea about what happened after death. 

At least initially, therefore, a new Christian convert could (and apparently did) continue to practise his previous this-worldly religion; but with the additional expectation of resurrected eternal life after death...

Instead of (for instance) dying in expectation of the underworld ghost-life of Sheol or Hades, or returning by some version of reincarnation. 

Of course, Christianity as it became, developed and accreted very large and complex mythic elements - for example about Jesus's miraculous conception and early life, and expectation of his second coming. 

So Christianity-as-is has mythical aspects with all sorts of derivations and similarities to other mythic religions. 

But I believe that this was not the case originally, as Jesus lived and taught. 

And presumably this was a major reason why people found it so very difficult to understand what Jesus was actually telling then - i.e. they could not (or would not) discard their existing myths, such as The Messiah. 

And either rejected Jesus for failing to embody the prior myth, or adapted the prior myth to fit Jesus - or else adapted what Jesus did to fit the prior myth (as with the Second Coming, notion) 

I don't know if others agree; but in the IV Gospel I see Jesus trying to tell people something very simple and clear - which they repeatedly fail to comprehend; and this, in part, because they are caught-up in already-existing religious assumptions including myths. 

After Jesus's ascension, things could have (should have, perhaps) gone in the direction of the Christian after-death expectation being added-onto various existing religions - and then modifying their content in a kind of retrospective way (as the expectation of resurrected Heavenly life worked upon the pre-existing religion).

However, this did not happen; and instead Christianity became so elaborated by mythic elements that its clear and simple essence was swamped; but also the confident expectation of being able to choose resurrection was inverted - into the necessity to submit to the judgment of God/Christ-as-King to be-fearfully-hoping to be chosen as worthy of inclusion in Heaven. 

Only in recent generations has it become conceptually and consciously possible to understand that Christianity does not need to be regarded as a true myth; but instead Jesus's work can be recognized as a cosmic transformation, a new post-mortal possibility: a Second Creation -- accessible to those who commit to following Jesus, into and beyond the transformation of resurrection.

On mass media censorship and propaganda - If we need to be told major stuff by the mass media, then we are already lost

The UK mass media are censored and controlled - both openly and explicitly (eg. wrt the birdemic dissent, or Fire Nation news sites); and by news blackouts wrt mass immigration and its consequences.

And, of course, this censorship and propaganda usage of media is increasing rapidly in scope, completeness, and coercion.  

There is a great deal of complaint in the alternative media about this - but the complainers are part of the problem.

The real problem is that people have come to rely on the mass media for basic information and understanding of the world and their lives. 

If we need to be supplied by the mass media with information on matters of direct human observation and experience, and if we need to have its implications explained to us by the mass media - then we are already lost.

We are lost; because because we have handed-over responsibility for our fundamental understanding of the nature of things. 

Even worse; we have chosen to hand-over responsibility for our basic assumptions and values to the worst possible external influence: to evil-motivated people, who work in corrupted and converged the institutions/ organizations/ corporations that constitute the bureaucracy of an intrinsically evil totalitarian system.

(Evil in itself; and which is also in service to the agenda of demonic supernatural powers.)

Complaints that the mass media are censoring their output are dangerously misplaced - after all, what on earth do people expect from the mass media in the Western world as it is now? 

Clearly, the complainers have grossly underestimated the pervasive extremity of evil as it actually is in the world now, and has been for many decades - and worsening. 

It is not as if knowing more "news" about the horrendous corruption and us-hatred of the leadership class, has done or would make any difference to "their" aims and conduct - their desire to corrupt, torment, and spiritually-annihilate the nations and their peoples. 

And it's not as if there are a great mass of good-motivated "ordinary people" who are being hoodwinked by media censorship, but who would otherwise compel significant and positive reforms in public affairs. 

People know all kinds of terrible stuff, more than enough! And it makes no apparent difference to their world view, values, behaviours. 

"Concerned" words are cheap, but human priorities tell a different story. 

The masses are, if much less evil as the leadership class; deeply complicit and accepting of major strategic agenda themes of the recent decades; and have a system of values that do not rise above the level of the farm yard (i.e. this-worldly hedonism, fear driven avoidance of suffering, addiction to convenience, and craving for continual distraction). 

There has never, in the history of the world, been such shallow, trivial, and cowardly (because demotivated) people as there are in the West, now. 

And if people need to be told something so obvious and everywhere - things we all know from observation and our daily personal experiences (and the observations and experiences of our direct social circle) - then clearly it is already too late. 

So, what to do? 

Forget about "effective political action", resistance, reform: that is absolutely not a possibility, when basic understanding and proper motivation is so completely absent; when indeed the actuality is of a widespread and accepted social ethic of value-inversion.

From where we are spiritually and morally; all social action must be net-evil. 

 

We must first want what is good, or no good will eventuate. 

Real understanding follow only upon proper motivation...

And then, when it comes to important matters, such understanding follows easily and swiftly.

Do know and desire a human life based on good aims and conduct; we need not, and certainly should not, depend on anything produced by the mass media. 

More on the "contact" aspect of Primary Thinking

Continuing from yesterday's post:

The idea that Primary Thinking will only happen if it entails contact with another mind, another being, another Real Self - fits with some other stuff. 

For example, if thinking is Not in contact - then it is purely personal and subjective - because thinking is something that is done by beings: thinking is an attribute of beings. 

Thinking isn't an energy or electricity, a physics-like thing or chemical changes - but even if physics/ chemistry/ biology were a good analogy for thinking, these also require beings. The notion that there can be an autonomous domain of "science" without regard to living and conscious beings is incoherent: see Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances. 

(When there is knowledge, there is no escaping consciousness.)

So, you can't have abstract thoughts floating-about in reality, without beings to think them.

A being that thinks without contact is in a pre-creation situation. 

Pre-creation there were beings (as it were...) floating around in chaos - either unaware or indifferent to one another. It was one of the events that went with divine creation that thinking began to be shared, began to happen as a direct contact between beings - and this, I presume, as a consequence of love. 

I envisage God (the prime creator) as primordial parents, whose mutual love initiated - and itself was - divine creation. 

This could also been seen as the beginning of primary thinking - which fits with m conviction that Primary Thinking is a direct form of participation with ongoing divine creation. 

Also; if primary thinking is, as I believe, a participation in the work of divine creation - then primary thinking cannot be private - cannot be confined to one mind. This also confirms that primary thinking must be something that is happening in more than one mind. 

Creation can be considered the loving harmony of many beings in such terms as the aims and methods of creation - just like an ideally loving family that remain in harmony through time: the mutual love makes the family cohere, and ensures that aims and methods are sustaining of love. 

It seems that, if we want to engage in primary thinking; then mind to mind, direct - and loving - contact, is a pre-requisite.  

Pure Protestants and "Bare Salvation"

A serious problem that besets (what might be called) Pure Protestants, is the minimalist desire for Salvation-only - a life dedicated to Bare Salvation, and (ultimately) nothing-else-matters. 
This is a consequence of that strand of Reformation theology that focuses (almost exclusively) on Salvation by Faith - by the Grace of God. 
The Pure Protestant inference is that salvation is the only thing that matters, and salvation is achieved by faith in God during this mortal life - indeed specifically faith at the end of this mortal life. 
For a Pure Protestant: "As the tree falls, so shall it lie" - eternally. In other words, by the state of our soul at the moment of death, so shall our eternal destiny be decided.  

This has some appalling consequences in practice; because the whole of our mortal lives up to the moment of death is hazardous and futile at best.
The optimal thing in a mortal life would be to die at the instant of conversion; to eliminate the risk that subsequent experiences would cause us to backslide and lose faith*. 
Presumably; it is only the prohibition on suicide that prevents this being a normal post-conversion sequela - but anyway, a PP would be very likely to pray for the deliverance from the threat of damnation by wanting Death ASAP, for as long as he has faith.
 What then should a Pure Protestant do with his life? 
Just about the only valid activities would seem to be - 1. to guard one's faith, and 2. to seek the conversion of others: evangelism. 
And this is, indeed, the tendency of Pure Protestants: faith is guarded by repeatedly re-visiting, re-living, re-experiencing the conversion experience; and by engaging in whatever evangelical activities are deemed (by current theological theories) to be likely to succeed at inducing the maximum number of conversions. 

That is the theory, or aspiration - yet (looking around at PP-tending churches as of 2025) it clearly does not work, and has not worked for some decades. 
The reasons is that with PP there is no such thing as legitimate positive, constructive, creative spiritual activity. 
And a faith-defending life spent under continuous, increasing, inescapable siege from the extreme and pervasive evil of modern Western societies can only lead to defeat - sooner or later. 

By denying the value of any this-worldly spiritual activity; Pure Protestantism creates a values-vacuum which is almost inevitably occupied by the hegemonic, secular, materialistic (and nowadays leftist) socio-political morality - which perhaps explains why self-identified Christians of this type are often strikingly successful in terms of status, money, and power. 
And this brings with it the besetting modern-Western sins such as untruthfulness, resentment and despair - and many (if not all) of the the characteristic value-inversions of totalitarianism. 
Holding-out against some of the inversions of the sexual revolution is one positive thing; but when Pure Protestantism eagerly embraces socialism, antiracism, climate-environmentalism, birdemic-healthism etc etc - then there is no cause whatsoever for self-congratulation.
Such churches have-been and are decisively assimilated into supporting the strategic demonic agenda.
   The answer lies in examining the false assumptions at the root of Bare Salvationism. 
If God sustains us alive, then there is work he wants us to do; and that work must surely be spiritual in its nature and individual in its focus. 
It's up to each Pure Protestant to discover what that spiritual work must be for himself, personally, here-and-now. 

* That wonderful story in Acts of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, really ought to end (if Bare Salvationism was true, and if it were to have a genuinely joyful ending) with the eunuch slipping underwater and drowning, the instant after he was baptized... Rather than, as reported, going on his way "rejoicing". (And then, according to Ethiopian Orthodoxy - as I understand it - returning home to found the church in that country.)

The mind-to-mind contact of primary thinking is always mutual, shared; involving two (or more) beings

For some years I have been trying to understand the distinction between what might be termed primary thinking and mundane thinking...

In which primary thinking is assumed to come from our real/ eternal/ divine selves and is objectively real (primary thinking affects reality, and does so in a direct way - i.e. without needing physical modes of communication)...

While mundane thinking is the ordinary subjective stuff that grinds-away (sometimes unconsciously, sometimes as the stream of consciousness) in response to memories, outer perceptions, external manipulations etc; and in accordance with psychological mechanisms. 

Mundane thinking is "merely" subjective in the sense that it is inner, personal, cut-off; and (of itself) does not directly influence any other beings or the world in general. 

For me; this is a matter of absolutely core interest and concern - fundamental to my life and its purpose. It's a subject I cannot leave alone, nor do I want to neglect it 

Following-on; I have often explored why primary thinking is so difficult, so rare, so hard to initiate and continue. 

Yesterday it struck me that the answer may be implied by the fact (or assumption) that primary thinking is not private and subjective; but that primary thinking, on the contrary is linked-with, actively participates-in, ongoing divine creation.

This implies that we are not doing primary thinking unless we are in direct contact with another Being. 

Put negatively; we cannot do primary thinking unless our thinking is being-shared with another being. 

Or, positively expressed, we are thinking primarily when we are in a situation that I've sometimes called direct knowing. 

What is meant by "direct" is that there is no intermediary. Normal mundane knowing works by communication - by a message being sent, received, interpreted etc - but there is (indeed there must be, for there to be any knowing at all) potential for a direct, mind-to-mind way of sharing thinking, of simultaneous thinking. 

But it wasn't until yesterday that I realized this implies, or rather it entails, that primary thinking can only be done "in collaboration". 

We cannot do primary thinking on our own ("in our own heads"), which is perhaps why primary thinking so often seems impossible  no matter hard we strive for it... 

Indeed the striving for it often seems to block primary thinking; presumably because it merely intensifies the cut-off and subjective nature of mundane thinking. 

What I'm saying is that primary thinking happens, and only happens, when we are in "mind to mind" and direct contact with another being - which might be a living human being, or some other kind of being.

This "other kind of being" could be almost any kind of being; e.g. a deceased and resurrected human, animal, an angelic spirit, the Holy Ghost...

But (as I've said elsewhere) primary thinking is intrinsically good in the sense that it is a participation in divine creation. 

So, the "other kind of being" could not be an evil-affiliated being; at least not while such a being, is currently-actively rejecting-of or hostile-to God and divine creation. 

In sum, primary thinking is a dyadic activity at minimum - or could involve more than two beings that are actively, currently, in real time - actually sharing thinking directly and without mediation. 

To do primary thinking we must first be aligned with God's creative will, and secondarily must mutually be participating in thinking with another God-aligned being. 

(I'm not sure; but it might even be that primary thinking is only possible when there is some degree of a love relationship between beings.)

This could explain why primary thinking is rare and tends to be brief; but also suggests how it might become more frequent and sustained - in that our striving should be aimed toward discovering the right kind of "contact" with the right kind of other beings - and this contact essentially needs to happen at a spiritual (not material) level. 

I'm not suggesting "a recipe for primary thinking", and I don't possess one...

Indeed, since I am saying that primary thinking is rooted in fundamental mutuality, harmony with divine creation, and indeed perhaps love; it cannot be attained by any standard method or procedure! It is another kind of thing altogether. 

But maybe this "dyadic" perspective will stop me from pursuing futile and counter-productive efforts; and perhaps point me in the right direction. 

If it isn't how the best (and ideal) families work - then it isn't how God works

So much false, distorted, and misleading information in and around Christianity, and human attention and abilities are so limited, that we need ways of swiftly recognizing and disposing-of clear wrongness (regardless of the vast volumes are teaching and commentary that affirm the wrongness).

Because of human inattention and inability; the most effective way of disguising and perpetuating wrongness, is by combining complexity and abstraction - therefore our best antidote is to keep things personal and direct. 

Christians have the great advantage that Jesus made it clear (in the teachings and recorded behaviour of the close-friend eye-witness account of the Fourth Gospel "John") that we should think of God's relationships with Men, in terms of a family. 

Since nearly everybody has sufficient experience, backed by innate knowledge and instincts, to know how an ideal family ought to behave; then we can evaluate statements/ assertions about God and divine purpose by this family comparison. 

Such a comparison disposes of a great deal of common (mainstream, official, and traditional) assertion about the basis structure of the plan of salvation for Mankind in context of the spiritual war of this world. 

In particular, we can infer that salvation is not really "a plan" - at least, not if a "plan" is the kind of thing that is used by a national military leader in order to win a war. 

The proper analogue of "victory" in the war of this world ought to be (not one nation defeating another, but) the salvation of an individual person: which is their transformation into resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

This fits with what Christian-committed parents wish for each and every one of their beloved children. 

Such parents are Not seeking a spiritual "group-victory", analogous to the material victory of a tribe or nation; because such a victory would reasonably (and necessarily) require the spiritual sacrifice of one or (almost certainly) many of their beloved children in order that the family-as-a-whole might defeat then enemy, and triumph in some (hoped-to-be) overall way.  

However; loving families don't aspire to work by such "spiritual sacrifices"; they do not consign one or more children to damnation (perhaps hell) in order that the others, or the group-as-a-whole might be saved. 

No!... instead, ideally loving families would seek always for the best - spiritually - for each and all members. 

The family conceptualized as a group is of secondary concern, and the "unit" of family is derived from the individual members and their mutual love.  

The family analogy reveals the wicked ultimate consequences of talk on the lines that God has "already won" the spiritual war of this world; and/or the common assumption that salvation is groupish - of tribes, nations, Mankind.

Such talk is analogous to saying that a nation has "already" won a war, despite that fighting continues and thousands are still dying and being hurt and maimed. 

Such a statement makes sense on in terms of the the primacy of nation; but when individual beloved persons are primary, then a war is "won" only person by person.

And a war continues uncertain for as long as there are any persons whose spiritual destiny is not decided. 

So, in following Christ; the only "victory" is the salvation of particular persons, and such victory is actually an eternal transformation of that person's nature - and this is not an end-point for him, or the world; but a new beginning.

Life itself, family life (where the persons involved are all eternal beings), is the unending participation of each individual in ongoing divine creation. 

And divine creation is an aspect of love; the consequence of love, the purpose of love - which is why the ideal family is so exact an analogy. 

Divine creation is not of its nature "winnable". Creation is to be lived; and lived well; with each individual who chooses resurrection making his own unique contribution towards its open-ended and ever-lasting growth.    

Initiation by participation in imaginative fictions

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog; I discuss how a genuine participation in the process of reading imaginative fictions - including many children's classics, fairy tales, some sci-fi, and works in the fantasy genre - can be a process of initiation through various stages and levels of broadening and deepening experience. 

Such experience may stay at the level of the strange and marvellous, or ascend right up to an initiatory of experience at the level of deity.