Francis Berger
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The Inflation and Deflation of Thinking and Action in this World

1/29/2023

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Christianity is a religion in the world, but it is not a worldly religion. With this in mind, it should be clear that our thinking and actions are not limited to the confines of this world but extend well beyond its temporal boundaries. Of course, this in no way reduces the temporal significance of our thinking and actions.

What we think and do during mortal life directly impacts the world and our mortal lives – yet our thinking and action must transcend these immediate limits and include eternal considerations. What we think and do in this world affects the world and eternity.

As Dr. Charlton has noted many times on his Notions blog, our mortal lives in this world are temporary, but the thinking and doing in which we engage in this temporary state is eternally significant. Moreover, it also affects and shapes eternity.

From this perspective, our thinking and actions in this world are inevitably inflated and amplified within the context of eternity. Contrary to popular belief, our thinking and actions in this world do not merely echo in eternity – they are “picked up” and amplified. But this only applies to thinking and action that aligns with God’s eternal creative purposes.

Thinking and action that does not align with these eternal purposes are not inflated or amplified in eternity. Instead, they are deflated and confined to the limits of this world, replete with its temporariness and its entropy. Within this “quarantine”, the forces of evil can harness these deflated thoughts and actions and amplify them to suit their objectives of ensuring individual and mass damnation. Thus, deflated thoughts and actions are also of eternal significance. They cannot diminish or weaken Heaven; however, they can render Heaven inaccessible.

Thinking and action in this world that aligns with God’s creative purposes usually appear weaker than thinking and action that oppose God’s creative purposes. From a purely worldly perspective, temporal thinking is far more powerful than spiritual thinking. Temporal thinking utilizes fear, force, and entropy to attack the temporal body that houses and generates spiritual thinking and action.

The aim is simple – assault the spirit through the body. Confine the spirit to this-worldly thinking. Poison the eternal significance of thoughts and actions. Provide eternity with nothing to inflate or amplify. Keep all thinking and action “deflated” in the temporary, entropic world.

In reality, thinking and action in this world that aligns with God’s creative purposes are always stronger because it has the potential to affect not only this world but eternity. Thought and action that aligns with God’s creative purposes provide the spiritual forces for Good with usable “material”. It beckons them toward co-create with the individual who generates such thoughts and actions. It inspires them to inflate and amplify the individual's thoughts and actions in ways the individual himself can barely imagine.

Evidence of this can be seen in the example of people like Vendel Enrédy, who escaped the communists in Hungary for a brief time after the Second World War but quickly chose to return to his native soil well aware that doing so would lead to his arrest, torture, imprisonment and, possibly, death.

From a purely temporal perspective, Endrédy’s thinking and actions make absolutely no sense whatsoever and appeared to have accomplished nothing. He was arrested shortly after his return, tortured, put on trial, found guilty, and imprisoned in the worst conditions imaginable.

After six years, he was liberated by freedom fighters participating in the short-lived Hungarian Revolution. Following the failed rebellion, the communists decided against re-imprisoning him and instead placed him in a seniors’ facility for aged and retired clergy, where he lived out the remainder of his days until he died in 1981.

Did Endrédy’s thinking and action have any positive effect on the world? Arguments can go either way. On the one hand, you could say his thinking and actions had no positive effect on the world at all, and that his thoughts and actions has nothing to do with positive developments like the rebellion against the communists or the dilution of hardline communism after 1956 or the eventual collapse of communism eight years after his death. On the other hand, you could also argue the opposite.

Either way, the eternal significance of Endrédy’s thinking and actions in the temporal world is real and undeniable, and I am certain that his thinking and actions in the temporal world have been amplified in eternity.

Furthermore, I firmly believe Endrédy's thoughts and actions in this world added something to eternity, something that God alone could not have added on his own.

This does not imply that only heroic thinking and action is amplified and inflated. On the contrary, I believe seemingly mundane thinking and action have the potential to be inflated and amplified in ways we cannot conceptualize -- as long as the thinking and action aligns with God and Creation. 
1 Comment
Lady Mermaid link
2/1/2023 03:13:25

Beautiful post! Jesus said that anyone who would offer a cup of water in His name would not lose their reward. This is not work based salvation; rather our actions amplify God's grace and our theosis. It's very encouraging to know that even small acts of goodness can make an eternal difference even if they go unnoticed in this life.

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