Francis Berger
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Siders Rather Than Sinners. Why It Matters After Things Have Come To a Point

6/27/2021

3 Comments

 
Over on his Notions blog, Bruce Charlton has been noting the phenomenon of things coming to a point for many years. Dr. Charlton takes the term from C.S. Lewis's novel That Hideous Strength and uses it to describe the process in which the difference between Good and evil become so extreme that potential gray areas separating them dissolve into nothingness. In this sense, things coming to a point is a clarifying phenomenon. As the distinction between Good and evil becomes increasingly stark, crisp, and obvious, choices made between the two become increasingly clear, noticeable, and revelatory.

Last December I wrote a post in which I posited that 2020 marked the year in which things essentially came to a point - that the successful birdemic global totalitarian coup had obliterated all gray areas separating Good and evil, rendering neutrality impossible. The year 2020 has made the active choice between Good and evil unavoidable.  

Another way of conceptualizing the implications of things coming to a point in 2020 is the acknowledgement of the full and undeniable unveiling of the spiritual war. As things came to a point in 2020, the two sides of the spiritual war - the side that is for God and the side that is anti-God - became incontestably visible. 

In my post from December I noted the following: 

If we take full awareness of "the point" to be the point of 2020, then the active, conscious, and committed choosing of a side, that is, the active and conscious commitment of Good or evil - must become the overarching point of 2021 and beyond. 

But what exactly does the active, conscious, and committed choosing of a side entail? 

To answer this question, perhaps it would be best to briefly cover what an active, conscious, and committed choice does not involve.

First, choosing to be for God or against God does not presuppose physically extracting oneself from the System (which is thoroughly and actively anti-God). Like it or not, we are all enmeshed in the System in one or other, and contrary to what some hardcore preppers or survivalists proclaim, almost no one can effectively isolate himself or herself completely from the System.

Like it or not, we are dependent on the System to varying degrees. Not only does it provide the bulk of what we need to ensure our physical survival, but it also demands or, more commonly these days, enforces our subservience to its anti-God agenda. If the war we are waging now were purely a physical war, barely anyone on the side of God would stand a chance against the System.

Thankfully, the war we are waging is not physical, but spiritual. That means we can remain active on the side of God and Creation despite being trapped behind enemy lines. 

Being trapped behind enemy lines is not the same as joining the enemy; and in a spiritual war, joining the enemy involves spiritual, not physical surrender.

This does not suggest that an individual should simply throw up his or her hands and choose expediency when it comes to his or her physical and material complicity with the System.

On the contrary, individuals should and must do everything they can to oppose the evil, material machinations of the System, primarily because evil, material machinations are among the only weapons the System has to wield.

Thus, if individuals on the side of God feel they must make a stand, they should. Whether that stand entails something simple and pain-free like refusing to vote, or openly challenging someone who supports a lie, or not engaging in media, or whether the stand involves something more significant such as refusing to abide by some enforced legal measure, directly opposing some form of agenda coercion, or resigning from a job, all individuals on the side of God and Creation should make the concerted effort to oppose the System at the material level.

At the same time, those who have chosen to be on the side Good must remember that battles fought at the material level, though important and meaningful, are of secondary importance. Also, material battles also run the risk of backfiring and being utilized by evil (think about the recent face mask agenda and the countless well-motivated people who ended up becoming embroiled in public rage-filled altercations with store clerks, fellow passengers, and others who insisted on the face mask. Yes, the mask-resisters were certainly on the right side of the issue, but it is unlikely that their behavior and course of action led to anything spiritually positive).

As stated above, it is nearly impossible for anyone on the side of God and Creation to be totally separated from the System physically, but it is imperative that those on the side of God and Creation separate himself or herself from the System spiritually. 

First and foremost, spiritually separating oneself from the System requires the full acknowledgement that the System in its current form is evil - more specifically, that it is actively, willingly, purposefully, and consciously aligned against God and Creation. Once this acknowledgement is made, individuals must focus on Truth, Beauty, and Virtue and spiritually oppose any and all attacks against these.

Individuals must also become ruthlessly honest about their complicity with the System and willingly repent any and every act of collaboration with the System, no matter how trivial, coerced, or unavoidable the collaboration is. And yes, this means even something as seemingly inevitable as paying taxes requires repentance. 

The keys to spiritual separation from the System - which I have referred to as system distancing in earlier posts on this blog - are attitude, thinking, motivation, discernment, and belief.

Thus, people who recognize the System's evil agenda and its infinite lies and refuse to spiritually surrender to the agenda and its lies are on the side of Good. 

Conversely, people who deny the existence of an evil agenda, or worse, actively endorse the System's evil agenda or any one of its evil lies as "good" are on the side against God. 

The Litmus Tests of Serious Christianity are one way to determine which side an individual or group has chosen.

Sin is another factor that does not necessarily determine which side of the spiritual war an individual has chosen. Many mistakenly believe the spiritual war is primarily about sin, with the sinful making up the anti-God side and the sinless making up the side that is for God. Within this conceptualization, anyone who commits sin has automatically chosen to be on the side against God.

Not quite. 

First of all, every human in the spiritual war (and that's everyone, whether he or she accepts it or not) is a sinner, regardless of which side he or she is on.

Every. Single. Person. Including me. 

If the spiritual war necessitated that all on the side of God and Creation be sinless, the war would have been over yesterday if not nearly two thousand years earlier.

Hence, all "siders" are sinners, and all sinners are "siders."

The only meaningful distinction between the two is this: sinners on the side of God and Creation are repentant sinners, while those on the side of Satan are not. 


Those on the side of Good only acknowledge and repent real sin, not System-fabricated sin.

Those on the side of Good acknowledge sin, repent it, and utilize repentance to further align themselves with God and Creation.

Those on the side Satan only acknowledge and repent System-fabricated sins, not real sin. 


Those on the side of Satan embrace sin, relish in it, and utilize their un-repentance to further align themselves against God and Creation.

Separating sinners from non-sinners was not "the point" of things coming to a point in 2020. "The point" of things coming to a point in 2020 was determining which side the sinners would ultimately take. 

Therefore, the key to the spiritual war of 2021 and beyond is to remain focused on siders rather than sinners. 
3 Comments
bruce charlton
6/28/2021 00:32:15

@Frank - Absolutely right.

An example of coming to a point is the birdemic and the peck. The side of evil have made it a clear and inescapable choice either to accepts the narrative as-a-whole or reject it.

Any attempt to be moderate or to take the middle ground about the birdemic Does and Will lead to the continuation and permanent installation of of the totalitarian restrictions and the destruction/ micro-control of the churches, economy, culture etc.

In other words, either we recognize it as a Big Evil Lie; or else we have-joined-with supporting and perpetuating the Lie by our own complicit dishonesty and evil intention.

Maybe it is helpful to think of repentance as something like 'identifying and spiritually-isolating' sin? The corrupting harm of sin can be dealt with by knowing it as such and being clear about our own rejection of it as an ideal.

(This is on one side - negative, Not-This; and being clear about our own commitment to do whatever it takes to follow Jesus, for resurrection or salvation (when the time comes), is the other and positive side. )

Reply
Francis Berger
6/28/2021 08:26:38

@ Bruce - Thanks.

"Maybe it is helpful to think of repentance as something like 'identifying and spiritually-isolating' sin?"

Yes, that certainly is a big part of it. I think it becomes increasingly difficult to idealize, rationalize, or explain away sin once it is deeply identified and isolated. That doesn't mean the sin won't be committed again, but when it is, it will immediately be recognized for what it is, which should lead to learning (although the learning could years, perhaps even a lifetime in some cases).

I have grown tired of the "but we're all sinners" line of thinking that has been employed to defend those who blatantly, willingly, and actively support the anti-God side.

For example, referring to a priest who very publicly kneels down before the antiracist agenda as a "sinner" doesn't cut it. Stupidity and ignorance don't cut it either. That priest has actively chosen to be against God and has turned away from Jesus. He refuses to identify sin as sin, let alone spiritually isolate it. Even worse, he has embraced inverted faux-virtue, which he holds up as a "good." He is on the wrong side, and he will continue to be on the side against God until he fully repents these choices he has made.

All the same, if you point this out to some people, they accuse you of being judgmental, arrogant, proud, or a sinner in your own right.

Reply
bruce charlton
6/29/2021 00:01:12

It is certainly interesting to consider the failure of discernment of Christians when confronted by such gross treachery. Perhaps a significant factor has been the unfortunate tendency to regard doctrinal orthodoxy as the essence of being a Christian, in a legalistic/ checklist manner - a problem that set-in so early in the church history that most people apparently regard it as definitional, despite nothing of the sort appearing in the Gospels.

In other words the needs of 'the' church (whichever one) have been so long conflated with the definition of Christianity that even joining the side of Satan does not look like a sin - so long as 'the' church officially approves in terms of its own definitions.


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