In a recent post I described the core nature of Gnosticism: Understanding the Enemy: Critical Theory, Radicals, and Neo-Marxists. In it I endeavoured to provide an intuitive understanding of what’s going on in the minds of those on the radical left. What their fundamental belief structure is, and how it drives their actions. Because make to mistake – what we’re experiencing is a clash of metaphysical worldviews. A clash of religions.

The secularization of our society didn’t lead to an ‘abandonment of superstition’ as the liberal atheists hoped. It turns out that Atheistkult was but a minor camp within Christianity’s ideological umbrella, and upon tearing down the central pillar the entire roof collapsed. Burning down the old-growth forest didn’t prepare the way for new saplings – it ravaged the terrain, leaving it open to new and invasive predators.

In this post I seek to provide the same intuitive description of Christianity; why it provides the necessary underlying principles for everything we hold dear, and why it needs to be taught to the youth if they’re to be afforded any protection from Gnostic Neomarxist evangelists. My goal isn’t to convince you that Christianity is true. It isn’t even to lay out the basic tenets of the religion. Rather, it’s to explain the three key pillars which we take for granted (when they’re anything but), and how they are fundamental in the creation and maintenance of the modern world.

The first is an metaphysical claim. The second concerns the ontological condition of man. And the third addresses how we ought to deal with the other two; what it means to be moral

So let’s begin.

The Good, the True, and the Beautiful Exists

Exodos 3:13-14 Moses said to God: Lo, I shall go to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is his name? what shall I say to them?

God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM.

Discussions of whether or not God exists, or what it means to ‘believe’ in God, are seldom fruitful. Forget the facile arguments which equate God to a scientific theory; it was a statement of metaphysics, with numerous consequences. What I’m going to discuss here is what Christian society meant when it professed faith in God: that it believed in an absolute Being who embodied the Good, the True, and the Beautiful – and the consequences thereof.

First, the Good:

…that there is a precise and specific definition of Good, and that it’s not up to us to decide.

Isaiah 5:20 Woe to you 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.

We can no more turn treachery into a virtue than we might turn poison into food. God has laid out the rules of morality as surely as he laid out the rules of mathematics; which isn’t to say that there’s no progress to be made; like in mathematics, there’s much for us to discover and explore, but wisdom and new discoveries lie in following the rules rather than breaking them like some sort of vandal.

Christian faith is precise and specific but our accuracy requires ongoing refinement.

Often you’ll hear about the ‘oppressiveness’ of Christianity. Sometimes the complainant will point to an example of self-righteous over-reach, occasionally to a case of hypocritical abuse (both of which have been known to happen, are legitimate grievances), but most often they’re complaining about how the intractable logic of morality can place unwanted burdens upon us. They’re upset because they can’t have their cake and eat it too, or because the owner’s manual which came with their car is too regimented and onerous – wouldn’t it be better if we had a car that didn’t require regular maintenance?

Honesty, integrity, and fidelity are Good – even if they’re often inconvenient. You’ll note that those who try and shirk these responsibilities will often provide some sort of justification as to why their case should be a special exception. It’s okay for them to steal from the boss, because he makes so much money – it’s okay for them to betray a friend, because he would have done it to them. Even in trying to undermine the Good they wind up affirming it; an irony which is especially palpable in those most opposed to the Christian worldview.

When you have a people who genuinely believe in the Good, and are well aware that it can’t be cheated, real social reforms are possible. In a society where that belief has evaporated, abuses of mercy and justice become rife.

The True

God might be mysterious, but he is never false. He is not a trickster God – a joker, perhaps, but He’s a God who plays the game straight. He doesn’t make us jump through hoops to earn His favour; He lays out rules for our own good. He’s consistent and fair in his judgment, and this extends to reality itself – we can trust in objective reality because of His promise:

Genesis 9:15 And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh.

The modern, materialist, scientific view of world is directly derived from this article of faith; that the Creator of the Universe has promised us a world which is mysterious but scrutable, where our actions have predictable consequences – assuming we pay attention and ask the right questions.

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough how unique of a God this is. How unique of a worldview this is. In Darkest Africa, regular appeasements to witch doctors and demiurges are still made – even by those who’ve been trained by missionaries to rely upon modern medicine and science. Even in our own countries, we’re seeing objective truth give way to narrative truth. Increasingly, people believe a thing because it’s something that everybody else is saying – regardless of the evidence from their own lying eyes! The problems of peer review, and the publish-or-die mentality, have undermined even our most scholarly and dry scientific journals, where less than 15% of published studies can be replicated.

The failure of modern science is one of the rotten fruits which grows when scientists lose their faith.

Without a God at the top, who holds the power of Absolute Truth, it turns out that Objective Truth quickly collapses into Relative Truth, and even further down into the nihilistic abyss.

Without a Christian God, you don’t get science; you don’t get objective courts of law; all you have is power, rhetoric, and violence.

The Beautiful

This final point is what makes Christian societies not just orderly, but joyous. Beauty, fun, laughter, and love are part of the very nature of God Himself. Interestingly, He’s also used Beauty as a frequent signpost for how we ought to proceed. Good scientific theories are beautiful; good programming is elegant; even when we look to the more painful side of life, when disorder is corrected – we find that good Justice can be redemptive for all involved.

The Good can be demanding; the True is uncompromising; but the Beauty makes it all worth it.

Suffering is the Price of Free Will, and Meaning is the Antidote

Genesis 3:22-23 And he said: Behold Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of pleasure, to till the earth from which he was taken.

The account of Genesis is a meditation upon what it means to be sapient. To have command over the animals – the human ability to tame and command the different creatures we find upon the planet – but also the horror that comes from knowing that we are born into an existence of toil, that death is our ultimate end, and that eventually all of our works will crumble to dust. And even worse – despite the inevitability of entropy which will render our lives moot, we are nonetheless responsible for every decision we make.

How incredibly unfair it is to be born into this life of woe and vanity.

The animal lives by drives and instincts. When it is hungry, it eats. When it is tired, it sleeps. While our animal companions share in many of our higher mammalian emotions – anticipation, love, sorrow, and regret – they do not consider counterfactual possibilities. They simply do what they do, and while they may come to a bad end, they are never aware of this until tragedy strikes; nor can they be held morally responsible for the choices that led them to where they are… for they never truly chose in the first place.

For us humans, every choice is fraught with responsibility. What we eat, whether we work or sleep, whether we act out in passion or restrain our instincts. We are aware that these choices have consequences, and we cannot become unaware – not without drifting into the nihilist’s somnabulatory existence, either through addiction to sensory pleasures, eventually rendering the mind into something subconscious, more animal than human – or through the practice of induced ego death, accepting pain and destroying the self.

To have free will – to know good and evil – comes at the price of existential suffering. And the message in Christianity is that this suffering is worth it. Pleasure can be extorted from others; but love can only be given freely. Were God to insulate us from evil – even from underserved evil words – we could never know that the good which we received was genuine.

Only a free willed being can genuinely love another, and love God; and a free willed being necessitates the existence of an incorrect choice which is nonetheless attractive (if evil were wholly unattractive, it would be the same as having no choice whatsoever). Good requires the possibility of evil; and it is this possibility of evil which leads to existential suffering.

The Gnostics blame suffering on the Demiurge; by which they mean (if they are atheistic) the institutions of society which create unfair equilibriums – Capitalism creates the rich and the poor, Marriage creates husbands and wives, the Justice system creates cops and criminals. If they are theistic, they blame God for creating differentiation, for creating the cruel law that you cannot have your cake and eat it too, for denying them the agency of a penis, or the pedestal of a vagina. They seek to tear down the institutions and violate all of the natural laws, with the hope of finding infinite, subconscious pleasure on the other side. The Buddhists blame suffering on the ego; they seek to annihilate the self, the desire to engage with the world in pursuit of pleasure and relationships. They seek to remove all of the desire-seeking which is inherent to being an individuated self, believing that this removal of personhood will result in the timeless bliss of Nirvana.

The Christian accepts that suffering is the price of being a Child of God, and takes up his burden, pursuing meaning and ever greater individuation. The Christian seeks to become even more himself, not less – and to justify the pain of existence by the creation of outstanding works of beauty.

Pick up your Cross, and Follow Him

Matthew 16:24-26 Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it.  For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul?

The first pillar was metaphysical in nature; God exists, God is Good, and we live in an ordered world. The second was ontological; to exist and know good and evil is to suffer. The third is moral: the correct way to live one’s life is to bear one’s daily cross.

Every day we experience the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To survive we must struggle against them – struggle against the earth which demands that we labour to eat, and struggle against other men who seek to do us evil. But the Christian life calls us to go higher; to ask which slings and arrows we might bear so that we can bring joy and mercy to others? How might we dedicate our suffering to improving the lot of humanity? How might we find meaning through service to those we love?

This must not be understood in the Buddhistic sense, however, of surrendering one’s own right to exist.

Luke 22:36 But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a scrip; and he that hath not, let him sell his coat, and buy a sword.

A man who hands away his agency can be obedient, but never good. Only the potentially dangerous man can be a Child of God. Only the man who owns a sword can decide to keep it sheathed.

The Christian God is not interested in servants who are never tempted; who are castrated, docile, and harmless. He wants armed men, fully aware of the possibilities before them; He wants men who are virile and capable, who will stand up to defend themselves, their society, and the innocent from the unrighteous; and yet, he doesn’t want us to pursue our foes down the lower paths.

Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence.

One pitfall is impotence; the other pitfall is vengeance. We are not called upon to punish the unrighteous for their sins; merely to defend ourselves when they aggress. Nor are we called to force righteousness upon those who hate it; it is our duty to respect their free will, and allow them to follow the Demiurge into Sheol.

 It seems to me that the cultural Christians get this backwards. They fail to resist the evil of aggressors, while attempting to enforce righteousness. They fail to bear the cross of kindness, while accepting the cross of victimhood.

The role of the Christian is to be the salt – the preservative – which holds on to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in this world. To seek the upper path, and scorn the lower path. To kick the dust from our heels, and build for the future. And to allow those who’ve abandoned the will to live to seek their just ends, unaided.

These are the three pillars which make up traditional Christianity, and which created the modern world. Without them we will lose everything. We’ll lose the integrity needed to trust manufacturing, the faith needed to rely upon science, and the minimalist governments which allow individuals to become the best versions of themselves without undue interference.

In fact, it seems to me that we’ve already lost all of those things.

The time has come to preserve what we can; to know our enemies and know ourselves, and keep our sheathed swords at the ready.