If he can’t make that clear to you on a first reading why would you bother? For example, I ask myself does this person really believe that Peak Oil is a myth? Are they that dumb? Or do they mean that the date proposed was wrong or exaggerated etc? Well, who cares, they said what they said and simply added fuel to the volcano of stupid on social media.
I’m guessing the part about if we took Jesus seriously, we wouldn’t have modern banking, the worship of money, etc. But I doubt (though I could be wrong) that he’d agree with the idea that we take Christianity more seriously today than medieval Europe did—that seems to cut against a lot of his recent writings on holy wells.
yeah I think I had Substack brain and it didn’t understand the article properly, took it as a directive to be more like hypocritical medieval Christianity, but I think I was way off. like 180
On a long enough timeline nations implode anyway, whether they operate according to the words of Jesus or the opposite. And its worth remembering that there is still an old testament, which Christ never nullified, which has laws against murder and other heinous practices. We come back to the age-old dichotomy of justice vs grace. Maybe Christ's commandments were meant for interpersonal relationships and were not supposed to be extrapolated up to the level of national or foreign policies. Jesus said love your neighbor but the whole world isn't your neighbor.
A thought provoking take. I can see why it could ruffle some feathers. I suppose its more and more why I am leaning towards the variant of Preterism you've covered recently in MAPS. Because I DO believe Christ and the Apostles, and that leads to the most coherent interpretation. But if true its still leaves us in this scary position of waiting for a Christ that already came.
Anyways, I just appreciate you being willing to say some tough stuff, even if only to stimulate contemplation and reassessment. If we're never challenged in our beliefs then we don't really know what we believe after all.
Fascinating essay. Are you claiming Christ’s teachings are basically incompatible with history/civilization, or that we simply have work to do in realizing (believing) them? At what point does Christianity become so apocalyptic as to be unlivable in this world?
Christ’s teachings may not be incompatible with history but I think they may be incompatible with living “in the world.” He said as much really. We have to decide if we actually believe in the world to come enough to keep going with it.
No one knows when the apocalypse will be. Yes, Christianity prepares us for it and most people up to our day have not seen an end-of-times apocalypse - most of us may never see it. However, Christianity prepares us not only for an end-of-times apocalypse, but for the apocalypse of each of our individual lives: Christianity prepares us for the death of our body and the journey of our soul before and after death.
We may not act as if we believed this in our daily lives - proven like you say by our excesive worries about material comfort, building civilization, etc - but that may be precisely where the struggle lies: we are broken and cannot escape our brokenness, not in this world and not by our own efforts. The tragedy may well be that we’re bound to act on our brokenness, but we are also called to ask God for forgiveness and that He redirects our heart towards the love He intends for us in the life to come.
John 17:14 and the following verses gives us a look into Jesus’ understanding of just how diametrically opposed living as a Christian would be in a world that has decided to establish its own attempt at human society. You would not have statehood, armies, or capitalistic economies (maybe not even economies in general) if everyone was to follow Jesus teaching, so yes modern day society is not interested and too far gone to implement that en masse. But ultimately the New Testament (especially the writings of Paul) is the textbook for how to swim upstream in a world where human society has taken a completely opposite direction. Christians won’t change the world, thats an Armageddon-sized task. But it’s doable in your personal sphere in the meantime.
Yoshi, I’ve noticed a theme of potshots being taken at the Eastern Orthodox in your writings. For example, “you can almost pretend it’s the year 1263, and you don’t have to worry about any modern philosophical problems.” If you want to overemphasize the online only Orthodox patriarchate of YouTube, that’s your prerogative, but it reads a bit like sour grapes when Orthodoxy has had a number of conversions in the west in recent years (many/most of whom don’t fit neatly with your caricature of them).
I can’t find what I had been thinking of, so it’s quite possible (and embarrassing) to admit that I may have been thinking of a different writer. I appreciate your polite reply, and sorry about that
Hi Yoshi, A very thought provoking post. There is a lot me in your essay. I often feel guilty wrestling with the teachings of the Bible and following Jesus Christ poorly. I have thought about attending an Orthodox Church. But I’m not sure my reasoning would be correct . I’m looking for Heaven on Earth and I know it doesn’t exist and don’t know what to about it except pilgrim on and ask for God’s mercy. Do you attend a church? I’m attending a Reformed Baptist leaning church, Elder lead with a plurality leadership. My expectations are often too high and I forget about the log in my own eye. I nitpick the leadership always looking for an excuse perhaps not to go 100% all in for Jesus. Perhaps it is impossible for one do and it can be tormenting.
I must admit those are a lot of good thoughts or at least they come together to be imposing. I do think there are some issues. In Christianity we do have a right to be separate from others. Historically the churches until Constantine were very much like how Jesus preached. I think it's impossible to characterize an action as a form of escaping. I think it's more accurate to say attacking in a different direction because they picked something specifically to "escape" whereas escaping is ambiguous about where to just where from. Similarly, pagan symbolism continually passed down and there was a conscious reason for it at least in some sense.
There is a lot of Christianity which is incompatible with modern governmental and economical institutions but just as well that's how it should be. There are tons of problems with modern society. Churches could offer safety and harbor criminals for millennia and it was hardly bringing down society. I think with such a split focus, we should be focusing on church governmental policies rather than being visitors to our churches from the secular world. Amish are doing fine as are many others. What seems to be effective, or the narrative we're in, tends to fail while Christianity continues. It's difficult to conflate nature or reality with needing armies or capitalism or no forgiveness etc.
This world is irreparably separated from God. Its ruler is Satan. Mankind is his to control except they who reject the death on a stick he dangles. Few can lay down their lives here in exchange for eternity. Here are some words from some who knew that Christ wasn't sent to make the world more livable:
Christ himself in the way to his 'death': "my kingdom is not of this world".
Paul: "To live is Christ, to die is gain".
The we want our cake and eat it to would be church: "crucify him!"
I struggle to fully accept that many ‘retreating to Christianity’ do it as coping mechanism, as a mindless defence. People are in fact ‘retreating’ (if that is the word you want to use, but in my opinion we should be calling it a ‘rediscovery’, which is a word truer to what is actually going on) to Christianity, but they ‘retreat to’ (rediscover) Christianity because consciously or unconsciously those people understand that it is Christianity that brought them the culture they love and now see dying. When you see everything you love getting destroyed, you are forced to ‘retreat’ to something more fundamental, or otherwise get destroyed (loose your soul, go insane) along with it.
People rediscover Christianity because the pain caused by their loss of culture shows them the roots that held that culture alive. The bush is burning down exposing its roots more clearly - roots that still live. If people were retreating to Christianity mindlessly, would they not just as well ascribe to a different religion or philosophy, say, Islam or Buddhism?
I don’t believe that there’d be many people rediscovering the roots of Christianity as mindlessly as seems to be suggested in this essay. Of course there could be some, but I doubt they’re many. I believe people rediscovering Christianity are truly doing so in their hearts, even if what has brought them there is despair.
what the fuck did kingsnorth like about this article
Can’t say!
i'm still confused as to whether the article was tongue in cheek sarcastic or dead serious.. maybe I need to re read some of your stuff
If he can’t make that clear to you on a first reading why would you bother? For example, I ask myself does this person really believe that Peak Oil is a myth? Are they that dumb? Or do they mean that the date proposed was wrong or exaggerated etc? Well, who cares, they said what they said and simply added fuel to the volcano of stupid on social media.
I’m guessing the part about if we took Jesus seriously, we wouldn’t have modern banking, the worship of money, etc. But I doubt (though I could be wrong) that he’d agree with the idea that we take Christianity more seriously today than medieval Europe did—that seems to cut against a lot of his recent writings on holy wells.
although the final part of it is confusing
I think it sets up false dichotomies that don’t need to be set up, but I’m just a guy on the internet haha
yeah I think I had Substack brain and it didn’t understand the article properly, took it as a directive to be more like hypocritical medieval Christianity, but I think I was way off. like 180
This was such an interesting read. Going to read it three more times and let it work on me. Great job ❤️
Thank you!
An exceptionally clear and challenging statement of the problem. It’s hard to find writing like this elsewhere. Thank you!
Thank you!
On a long enough timeline nations implode anyway, whether they operate according to the words of Jesus or the opposite. And its worth remembering that there is still an old testament, which Christ never nullified, which has laws against murder and other heinous practices. We come back to the age-old dichotomy of justice vs grace. Maybe Christ's commandments were meant for interpersonal relationships and were not supposed to be extrapolated up to the level of national or foreign policies. Jesus said love your neighbor but the whole world isn't your neighbor.
All of this (pretty much) rings true to me; the only (slightly) confusing part is that the author self- identifies as Catholic.
A thought provoking take. I can see why it could ruffle some feathers. I suppose its more and more why I am leaning towards the variant of Preterism you've covered recently in MAPS. Because I DO believe Christ and the Apostles, and that leads to the most coherent interpretation. But if true its still leaves us in this scary position of waiting for a Christ that already came.
Anyways, I just appreciate you being willing to say some tough stuff, even if only to stimulate contemplation and reassessment. If we're never challenged in our beliefs then we don't really know what we believe after all.
Fascinating essay. Are you claiming Christ’s teachings are basically incompatible with history/civilization, or that we simply have work to do in realizing (believing) them? At what point does Christianity become so apocalyptic as to be unlivable in this world?
Christ’s teachings may not be incompatible with history but I think they may be incompatible with living “in the world.” He said as much really. We have to decide if we actually believe in the world to come enough to keep going with it.
No one knows when the apocalypse will be. Yes, Christianity prepares us for it and most people up to our day have not seen an end-of-times apocalypse - most of us may never see it. However, Christianity prepares us not only for an end-of-times apocalypse, but for the apocalypse of each of our individual lives: Christianity prepares us for the death of our body and the journey of our soul before and after death.
We may not act as if we believed this in our daily lives - proven like you say by our excesive worries about material comfort, building civilization, etc - but that may be precisely where the struggle lies: we are broken and cannot escape our brokenness, not in this world and not by our own efforts. The tragedy may well be that we’re bound to act on our brokenness, but we are also called to ask God for forgiveness and that He redirects our heart towards the love He intends for us in the life to come.
John 17:14 and the following verses gives us a look into Jesus’ understanding of just how diametrically opposed living as a Christian would be in a world that has decided to establish its own attempt at human society. You would not have statehood, armies, or capitalistic economies (maybe not even economies in general) if everyone was to follow Jesus teaching, so yes modern day society is not interested and too far gone to implement that en masse. But ultimately the New Testament (especially the writings of Paul) is the textbook for how to swim upstream in a world where human society has taken a completely opposite direction. Christians won’t change the world, thats an Armageddon-sized task. But it’s doable in your personal sphere in the meantime.
Lord of the Rings would be completely believable to medieval man, fantasy to disenchanted modern man.
Yoshi, I’ve noticed a theme of potshots being taken at the Eastern Orthodox in your writings. For example, “you can almost pretend it’s the year 1263, and you don’t have to worry about any modern philosophical problems.” If you want to overemphasize the online only Orthodox patriarchate of YouTube, that’s your prerogative, but it reads a bit like sour grapes when Orthodoxy has had a number of conversions in the west in recent years (many/most of whom don’t fit neatly with your caricature of them).
This is the only time I remember writing about Eastern Orthodoxy, can you point me to any other examples?
I can’t find what I had been thinking of, so it’s quite possible (and embarrassing) to admit that I may have been thinking of a different writer. I appreciate your polite reply, and sorry about that
Oh no worries!
Hi Yoshi, A very thought provoking post. There is a lot me in your essay. I often feel guilty wrestling with the teachings of the Bible and following Jesus Christ poorly. I have thought about attending an Orthodox Church. But I’m not sure my reasoning would be correct . I’m looking for Heaven on Earth and I know it doesn’t exist and don’t know what to about it except pilgrim on and ask for God’s mercy. Do you attend a church? I’m attending a Reformed Baptist leaning church, Elder lead with a plurality leadership. My expectations are often too high and I forget about the log in my own eye. I nitpick the leadership always looking for an excuse perhaps not to go 100% all in for Jesus. Perhaps it is impossible for one do and it can be tormenting.
He is part of the Roman Catholic Church.
Thank you.
I must admit those are a lot of good thoughts or at least they come together to be imposing. I do think there are some issues. In Christianity we do have a right to be separate from others. Historically the churches until Constantine were very much like how Jesus preached. I think it's impossible to characterize an action as a form of escaping. I think it's more accurate to say attacking in a different direction because they picked something specifically to "escape" whereas escaping is ambiguous about where to just where from. Similarly, pagan symbolism continually passed down and there was a conscious reason for it at least in some sense.
There is a lot of Christianity which is incompatible with modern governmental and economical institutions but just as well that's how it should be. There are tons of problems with modern society. Churches could offer safety and harbor criminals for millennia and it was hardly bringing down society. I think with such a split focus, we should be focusing on church governmental policies rather than being visitors to our churches from the secular world. Amish are doing fine as are many others. What seems to be effective, or the narrative we're in, tends to fail while Christianity continues. It's difficult to conflate nature or reality with needing armies or capitalism or no forgiveness etc.
Nice post, Yoshi. The trend you are describing here is what I refer to as the "egalitarian ratchet effect", which I discussed in the following post and which you may appreciate: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why
This world is irreparably separated from God. Its ruler is Satan. Mankind is his to control except they who reject the death on a stick he dangles. Few can lay down their lives here in exchange for eternity. Here are some words from some who knew that Christ wasn't sent to make the world more livable:
Christ himself in the way to his 'death': "my kingdom is not of this world".
Paul: "To live is Christ, to die is gain".
The we want our cake and eat it to would be church: "crucify him!"
I struggle to fully accept that many ‘retreating to Christianity’ do it as coping mechanism, as a mindless defence. People are in fact ‘retreating’ (if that is the word you want to use, but in my opinion we should be calling it a ‘rediscovery’, which is a word truer to what is actually going on) to Christianity, but they ‘retreat to’ (rediscover) Christianity because consciously or unconsciously those people understand that it is Christianity that brought them the culture they love and now see dying. When you see everything you love getting destroyed, you are forced to ‘retreat’ to something more fundamental, or otherwise get destroyed (loose your soul, go insane) along with it.
People rediscover Christianity because the pain caused by their loss of culture shows them the roots that held that culture alive. The bush is burning down exposing its roots more clearly - roots that still live. If people were retreating to Christianity mindlessly, would they not just as well ascribe to a different religion or philosophy, say, Islam or Buddhism?
I don’t believe that there’d be many people rediscovering the roots of Christianity as mindlessly as seems to be suggested in this essay. Of course there could be some, but I doubt they’re many. I believe people rediscovering Christianity are truly doing so in their hearts, even if what has brought them there is despair.