GM ☕

Got church stuff on my mind again. 

Our entire F'd up modern world is an unfolding of events from a single accretion - the assertion that there should be an organized "church" with political, in other words 'coercive,' power, and the radically dubious idea that men could inherit spiritual authority of Peter, and wield the keys of heaven as a bludgeon.

The one saving grace that allowed Christianity to survive this attack was the fact that a lot of well intentioned men made sure to moderate this beast from the inside. 

And although this political church, this principality, has always had real Christians in it, that has not stopped the chain of reactions that lead to the secular political beast we now suffer under. The error is the politics, not the secularism. I'll credit the political church for guarding against accretions, but it did a poor job (none at all, really) of removing accretions from its own body. These built up over time, necessitating the Reformation. It was the political church's intractability, its unwillingness to reform, that led to the 30 years' war. The 30 years war ended in the peace of Westphalia, which is the official starting point for the secular state with powers derived from the will of people (who are retarded) instead of the love of God. In ancient times, a man who paid one fifth or more of his product to a master was called a slave. Now the state requires double the amount a slave would pay, and that's without estimating the compounding extraction from sales and capital gains. And still, the beast is hungry. The more you feed it, the hungrier it gets! 

This is ultimately the fault of the first heresy - a heresy against the spirit itself, unmediated by human error. When you organize politically, you give special importance to human error. And the church, under Constantine, was a political organization. The true church is of the spirit. 

My point is... We're trying to build a better world. What we build cannot be disentangled from the chain of cause and effect set in motion 1700-ish years ago. But the degree of success will depend on some kind of balance between values and awareness of past mistakes. I think it would be a profound mistake to run back to the wolves who started this giant problem.

#gm 

 in light of all this, there is an aching need to gather, regardless, and practice things that actually are important and clearly needed

the church that I was baptised in was one of these "non-demoninational" types, the Church of Christ, who had almost no intrinsic doctrines aside from what is obvious in the text

i'm curious to know how the smaller, anti-doctrinal churches stack up against these criteria, and trying to position myself in the future to be a congregant 

 IMO, the nondenoms are failing miserably. The first thing we all need is a solid education in what the bible says, and where it comes from. Self study is ridiculously difficult. I'll give credit to the political church, both of them, for doing a much better job of structuring and maintaining spiritual curricula. 

I don't agree with their dogma, but I might actually just go to learn. 

 indeed, i'm getting the gist of that but i definitely am not going to a Catholic church, the idolatry is too offensive to me

so, yeah, good point, probably best to just see what's around near where i find myself and try them out, and go with what the spirit tells 

 Yeah, the idolatry... So much idolatry. Its more than the statues for the Catholics and the bad art of the Orthodox - giving authority to {anything} is idolatry. 

When it comes to teaching, the big unsaid question is - how do you evoke the knife's edge of rationality, such that it leads to faith?

And I always point out that faith isn't belief. Those two words lead in different directions.